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Out of Top 100 News Outlets, Not a Single One Questioned Syrian Attack
‘A disturbing trend has been ongoing within the mainstream media when it comes to reporting on United States foreign policy, and while some may argue that the media is typically critical of President Trump, 26 major editorials were published in response to his recent decision to launch airstrikes against Syria, and not a single one criticized the attack.
In fact, that sentiment was shared by the top 100 newspapers in the United States, according to an analysis conducted by Fair.org. Out of those papers, none of the editorials issued in response to an escalation of the war in Syria that could have sparked World War 3, condemned it. While 74 papers issued no response, the editorial teams from 20 papers showed overwhelming support, and six papers neither supported or condemned the attack.
None of the top 100 newspapers questioned the US’s legal or moral right to bomb Syria, and all accepted US government claims to be neutral arbiters of ‘international law.’ Many editorials hand wrung about a ‘lack of strategy’ or absence of congressional approval, but none so much that they opposed the bombing. Strategy and legal sanction are add-on features—nice but, by all accounts, not essential. The total lack of editorial board dissent is consistent with major papers’ tradition of uniform acceptance of US military action.
The analysis noted that as the “most influential paper in the country,” The New York Times, “has not opposed a single US war—from the Persian Gulf to Bosnia, to Kosovo to Iraq to Libya to the forever war on ISIS—in the past 30 years.” That trend has stayed in place in 2018, as the Times’ response to the attack showed its newfound support for the Trump Administration.
The New York Times’ Editorial Board claimed it was “reassuring that his military response to a suspected chemical attack that killed dozens of people in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7 was coordinated with Britain and France,” and applauded Trump’s decision to go after Syria because “preventing chemical weapons was in the ‘vital national security interest of the United States.’”’
