Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning?

“All over the world, autocratic-minded rulers [...] have learned that de facto control of the political content of television is perhaps the most important lever of power in our day. They have learned that it does not matter politically if 15 or even 25 percent of the public is well informed as long as the majority remains in the dark. The problem has not been censorship but something very nearly censorship's opposite: the deafening noise of the official megaphone and its echoes----not the supression of truth, still spoken and heard in a narrow circle, but a profusion of lies and half-lies; not too little speech but too much. If you whisper something to your friend in the front row of a rock concert, you have not been censored, but neither will you be heard.”
Jonathan Schell, The Nation, August 14, 2006