SOLOMON: Media -- Mourning in America
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18928
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
June 11, 2004

If journalism is history’s first draft, the death of Ronald Reagan has caused a step-up in the mass production of falsified history.

It’s mourning in America.

The main technique is omission. People who suffered from the Reagan presidency have no media standing today. It’s not cool to mention victims of his policies in, for example, Central America.

Reagan lavished big money from the U.S. Treasury on anti-Soviet mujahadeen – “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan who evolved into groupings like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Yet his supposed idealism rarely gets a critical look through the obit-omit media lens.