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Norman Solomon
mediabeat@igc.org

Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist on media and politics. His weekly column "Media Beat" has been in national syndication since 1992.

Solomon's new book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" was published in early summer 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, which describes the book this way: "Many people were appalled by the Bush administration’s blatant propagandizing in the run-up to the Iraq war. But what they don’t realize, according to media critic Norman Solomon, is that pro-war propaganda has a long history and almost formulaic quality in the United States. From Vietnam to Iraq, American combat-ready spin has almost invariably compared our foe to Hitler, identified our enemy as the aggressor, and said that we were doing everything possible diplomatically to avoid conflict. With this illuminating book, readers will find it easier to see through propaganda -- and foresee the next war."

Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts.

His book "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You” (co-authored with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich) was published in 2003 by Context Books.

A collection of Solomon’s columns won the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. The award, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English, honored Solomon’s book "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."

In the introduction to that book, Jonathan Kozol wrote: "The tradition of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and I.F. Stone does not get much attention these days in the mainstream press ... but that tradition is alive and well in this collection of courageously irreverent columns on the media by Norman Solomon. ... He fights the good fight without fear of consequence. He courts no favors. He writes responsibly and is meticulous on details, but he does not choke on false civility."

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Solomon’s books include "Target Iraq," “Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News,”  “The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh,” “False Hope: The Politics of Illusion in the Clinton Era,” “The Power of Babble: The Politician's Dictionary of Buzzwords and Doubletalk for Every Occasion,” and “Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation.”

 

Contributions

Is the administration serious about withdrawing troops from Iraq?
ASK THIS | August 03, 2005
The White House has consistently rejected calls for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Yet the commander of American forces there said recently that "some fairly substantial reductions" are possible in the spring and summer of 2006. How credible are such statements? Is this talk just a gambit related to the 2006 elections? And should the matter of troop withdrawals solely be determined by debate within the administration?


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