When war is peace and right is center

It's not 1984, but Newspeak lives on in the media's skewing of the terms of our political debate
By David Sirota
Salon.com

"War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength" -- more than a quarter-century after those oxymorons were supposed to pervade an Orwellian 1984, today’s media make such Newspeak even more preposterous: On economic issues, we are often told that right is center, center is left, and left is fringe.

For a year, national reporters (with help from conservative talk-radio goons) have depicted the center-right Obama administration and its corporatist policies as quasi-Marxist. We've heard that a government-run public healthcare option is a "liberal" cause, even as polls confirm that most Americans -- not just liberals -- support the idea. We're told that legislators backing no-strings-attached bank bailouts are mainstream "centrists," while bailout opponents are extremists -- even as public opinion surveys say the opposite.

This is Washington's "fair and balanced" journalism (or "journalism," as it were) and as two of the most respected metro newspapers show this week, its distortions can bleed into local coverage.

(More here.)