Hiroshima in America author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 8/6/09) has taken a hard look at "the suppression of film and photographic evidence of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki" that "would play a key role as America embarked on a nuclear era with severe impact still with us today."

He gives us a history of how, "in the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings":

This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades....

More recently, [compiler of the U.S. films Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel] McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

Bringing us up to date with the fact that "after 60 years at least a small portion of that footage reached part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful" Original Child Bomb documentary, Mitchell says that "Americans who saw were finally able to fully judge for themselves" exactly "why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race--and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today."

Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Greg Mitchell on Hiroshima" (8/5/05). And see Extra! Update: "Media to Smithsonian: History Is Bunk" (4/95)

Calling the six months of unanimous news media silence on New York Times reporter David Rohde's kidnapping "the most amazing press blackout on a major event that I have ever seen," Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 6/23/09) now wonders

if a great debate will break out over media ethics in not reporting a story involving one of their own when they so eagerly rush out piece about nearly everything else. I imagine some may claim that the blackout would not have held if a smaller paper, not the mighty New York Times, had been involved. Or is saving this life (actually two, there was a local reporter also snatched) self-evidently justification enough?

Bob Steele, the Poynter media ethicist, summed it up well for [E&P's Joe] Strupp this weekend: "News organizations are balancing competing obligations if a journalist is kidnapped or detained. The primary obligation to the public is to report accurately and timely on meaningful events. If you have a journalist who is detained or kidnapped, that will generally reach the level of newsworthiness. News organizations also have an equal obligation to minimize harm. That means showing care and caution to not further endanger someone whose life may be in jeopardy. These are competing obligations and loyalties."

High ideals to be sure, but Steele comes back to what may be the overriding realistic factor here: "There is also a matter of fairness and consistency. Would a news organization apply different standards in the case of a government diplomat or a business executive or a tourist than they would one of their own?"

Noticing that "many of the headlines greeting North Korea's nuclear blast yesterday carried the phrase 'as big as the Hiroshima bomb' or words to that effect," media writer and Hiroshima in America co-author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/26/09) says "that's not the only reference point that Hiroshima should evoke":

Simply stated: The fact that the U.S. first developed, and then used--twice--the WMD to end all WMDs against heavily populated cities, killing a quarter of a million civilians (and very few soldiers), has severely compromised our arguments against others building the weapon ever since.

Americans may not like to hear that but it happens to be true....

I'm not saying that there is nothing scary about North Korea or Iran (or anyone else) getting the bomb. I'm just pointing out that it is almost impossible for us to work our will on this abroad given our long track record. Yet how we are viewed usually is not reflected at all in comments by American pundits and politicos.

To Mitchell, "that's the true meaning of the 'Hiroshima' you see in the headlines." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Greg Mitchell on Hiroshima" (8/5/05)

Recapping at TPM Café (5/27/09) how the U.S. "press bent over backward to paint both Bushes as moderate, sensible, nice guy Republicans," Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell writes that "a hard-right [George W.] Bush, whether real or media-created, would have never beaten Gore--not that this one did either." Reminding us that "the New York Times, for example, had been very tough on [President Bill] Clinton on its editorial page," Mitchell says that "once in office, a long honeymoon between press and president ensued," and "just as Bush's approval ratings tanked and criticism was about to spread, 9/11 came along to torment the country, but save Bush." Mitchell then brings us into the present with shrewd insight into a hypothetical:

No one in the media criticized Bush for months, let alone suggested that maybe he had let down the country and invited a terrorist attack, or at least failed to prevent it. (Imagine that happening in the future if the country is attacked again under Obama--watch Fox and Friends howl.) Some have suggested that the New York Times, and others long accused of exhibiting liberal bias, went overboard on backing Bush after 9/11, given a rare chance to wave the flag and promote a war (Afghanistan) without shame for once and bolster their flagging image as super-patriots.

Of course, the problem was: They didn't stop there, and most went along like sheep in the run-up to the Iraq War.

"In fact," Mitchell notes, the date of his piece "marks the fifth anniversary of the day the Times belatedly admitted its failures on Iraq (while refusing to name or punish reporters and editors). It wasn't just a failure on WMD, it was a failure to recognize Bush and his crowd for what they were, individually and collectively."

Eyeing a new poll that "revealed that one in four Americans now believe that the 'faux' news delivered by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is replacing 'real' news sources as viable outlets," Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/5/09) has to wonder "if the remaining (if relatively low) public respect for the press is gone for good":

Yes, the delivery platform of the future will change--the Kindle, iPhone apps or rubbery plastic may replace paper everywhere--but the content still has to be credible. And now it must be said: The media blew both of the major catastrophes of our time.

I speak, of course, of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. I wrote a book about the first, calling it So Wrong for So Long. I could write a sequel on the second disaster, and maybe title it So Wrong Again.

Even though "individual reporters at certain papers did some fine watchdog work," Mitchell writes that their efforts were "to no avail" and that "defenders of the press in this matter are cherry-picking the good stuff, much like Bush with his intelligence on Iraqi WMDs."

See Extra!: "Busted Bubble: The Press Fell Down on the Job on Housing Prices" (11-12/08) By Veronica Cassidy.

Just one highlight in Brad Jacobson's wide-ranging interview of Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell (Media Bloodhound, 5/5/09) is Mitchell's scorn for "media coverage of the anti-tax tea parties":

Greg Mitchell: Most amazing was that they tended to treat it like protests in the past. There have been national abortion rights protests and immigration rights protests and of course anti-war protests and everything spread out around the country. But never, that I'm aware of, has there ever been protests like this that were essentially promoted by a major news organization, that is Fox, who were actually promoting it, not just saying we're going to cover this. And so it was almost like the mainstream media was afraid to sort of say, "Look, this is not just grassrootsy or even sponsored by a national organization." It was also promoted by talk radio and promoted by the leading cable news network, which makes it a completely different thing than local activists who want to speak out. They're going to a rally to see Glenn Beck. It's a whole different thing.

Well worth reading, the interview also hits upon coverage of the McCain/Palin ticket, Internet media's effect on for-profit journalism and Jon Stewart's "boiling point." Also listen to any of Mitchell's CounterSpin appearances--on topics as varied as media presentations of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, friendly fire-victim Pat Tillman and the New York Times' mea culpa for pre-Iraq War misreportage.

The ABC network, in conjunction with the BBC and Japan's NHK, has repeatedly polled Iraqis about the state of their country and the U.S. occupation. On Monday night (3/16/09) they aired a report that featured findings from the latest poll. Anchor Charles Gibson reported:

Every year we have taken an extensive look at where things stand. Polling Iraqis and sending reporters across the country, both at times dangerous undertakings. But this year, extraordinary change, real optimism. 59 percent of Iraqis now say they feel very safe in their communities. And 65 percent say things are going well in their own lives. Both numbers up dramatically.

Reporter Terry McCarthy also cited the poll: "84 percent of Iraqis now say their neighborhood is safe, almost double the level in 2007." But neither Gibson nor McCarthy mentioned some of the poll's other striking findings, which were outlined by Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell (3/17/09):

Last year, 70 percent of Iraqis in the same survey said we were doing a bad job there. This year that dropped all the way to...69 percent. And that includes the always more favorable views of the Kurds.

That means 90 percent of Sunnis are negative (remember, they are supposed to be "awakening" towards us), and two out of three Shiites agree--largely unchanged from 2008....

Fifty-six percent now say the U.S. was wrong to invade, actually up (despite the cooling of violence) since last year's 50 percent.

Mitchell quoted an ABC News online piece (3/16/09) that gave a more balanced account of the poll than that night's broadcast:

Just 27 percent [of Iraqis] are confident in U.S. forces (albeit nearly double its low). Just 30 percent say U.S. and coalition forces have done a good job carrying out their responsibilities in Iraq. Still fewer, 18 percent, have a positive opinion of the United States overall. Barely over a third think the election of Barack Obama will help their country.