ABSTRACT
For nearly a half a century American editors and government officials have lectured the world on the virtues of a free press, the desirability of the free flow of information, and the necessity to avoid governmental domination of the informational system. For, in fact, the United States, with its enormous media system operating with state-of-the art technologies, has been as closed as a society could be to information, facts, and opinion which in the slightest challenged the national war policy. The informational assault against the American people is an altogether different affair. Praising US press coverage of the Gulf events, "George Bush said that the press kept its eyes and ears open during the war". In a recently released poll, a Los Angeles Times-sponsored survey "discovered that two institutions enjoyed significant boosts from the war—the military and the television news organizations.
