Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [244]
39. On the importance of Racak as a basis for mobilizing U.S. allies and the public for war, see Barton Gellman, “The Path to Crisis: How the United States and Its Allies Went to War,” Washington Post, April 18, 1999; Madeleine Albright referred to Racak as a “galvanizing incident” (quoted in Bo Adam, Roland Heine, and Claudius Technau, “I Felt that Something Was Wrong,” Berliner Zeitung, April 5, 2000).
40. See Edward Herman and David Peterson, “CNN: Selling Nato’s War Globally,” in Philip Hammond and Edward Herman, eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto, 2000), pp. 117–19. More recently, three Finnish forensic experts, who were members of a panel that examined the forty bodies found at Racak, disclosed that their team found no support for the alleged mutilations by the Serbs, and the data presented in the article casts further doubt on the claim that all the victims were executed. (J. Raino et al., “Independent Forensic Autopsies in Armed Conflict Investigation of Victims from Racak, Kosovo,” Forensic Science International, vol. 16 [2001], pp. 171–85.) It is a notable fact that the OSCE has not yet seen fit to release the original forensic report from which this article’s data is drawn.
41. Herman and Peterson, “CNN: Selling Nato’s War Globally.”
42. Editorial, “Election Risks in Cambodia,” New York Times, November 28, 1997.
43. Editorial “Gathering Storm in Serbia?,” Washington Post, September 11, 2000; “Repudiating Mr. Milosevic,” editorial, New York Times, September 26, 2000.
44. Editorial, “Kenya’s Flawed Election,” New York Times, December 31, 1997.
45. Editorial, “Mexico’s Radical Insider,” New York Times, July 3, 1988.
46. Editorial, “The Missing Reform in Mexico,” New York Times, August 24, 1991.
47. Editorial, “Turkey Approaches Democracy,” New York Times, November 11, 1983.
48. Editorial, “Victories for Voters in Latin America: Uruguay’s Slow Boat to Democracy,” New York Times, December 1, 1984.
49. Editorial, “A Victory for Russian Democracy,” New York Times, July 4, 1996.
50. “And the Winner Is?” Moscow Times, September 9, 2000. See also Matt Taibbi, “OSCE—The Organization for Sanctioning Corrupt Elections,” The Exile, Issue no. 18/99, September 14–28, 2000.
51. Of the major mainstream media, only the Los Angeles Times addressed its findings, with the article “Russia Election Chief Rejects Fraud Claims in Presidential Vote” (September 13, 2000); a title that features the rejoinder of Russian officials, not the charges themselves. For a discussion of this article see Taibbi, “OSCE”.
52. On the overall atrocious mainstream media reporting on the Russian economic and social collapse, as well as on the elections, see Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade, chapter 1.
53. The Soviet Union did undoubtedly mistreat its own and client-state peoples, although the treatment of Russians by the Western-backed “reformers” since 1991 has hardly been an improvement. However the charge of sponsorship of international terrorism was inflated and hypocritical given the West’s support of its own very impressive terror networks. See Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982); Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World (New York: Claremont Research, 1986).
54. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1986), chapter 5.
55. The only mainstream report on Weinstein’s return with “no startling revelations” (i.e., nothing), was R. C. Longworth, “Probe into ’81 Pope Attack Short of Funds,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1994.
56. See “The Gates Hearings: Excerpts from Senate Hearing of Nomination of C.I.A. Chief,” New York Times, October 2, 1991.
57. See Edward S. Herman and Howard Friel, “‘Stacking the Deck’” on the Bulgarian Connection,” Lies of Our Times (November 1991);