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The watchdog group Fairness and accuracy in reporting (FAIR) recently published an advisory regarding the media coverage of the WikiLeaks documents. According to FAIR, less than a week after the release of the immense “Afghan war diary,” it has already been parsed and broken down to fit the various news outlets’ narratives. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote of the content in the Wikileaks documents, “If you don’t know by now… all that means is that you don’t read the mainstream media. Which means that you don’t really want to know,” and CBS correspondent Lara Logan called for the emphasizing of Taliban atrocities of war to balance out those committed by NATO forces. It seems as though Time magazine has taken Logan’s cue. Its most recent cover features the image of an Afghan woman whose nose was cut off by Taliban members with the caption “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” Perhaps most telling of all is the media’s lack of focus on leaked documents with titles like, “Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission-Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough,” the product of a CIA study in how to bolster support for the war. The future of the Afghan war is at a critical point. According to a recent Gallup poll 60% of Americans believe the war is going badly and with the federal deficit grown to a mammoth 93% of GDP the general taste for war is rapidly growing bitter. With the war’s support eroding, WikiLeaks’ disclosure of over 91,000 documents will play an historic role in the future of the west’s involvement in central Asia. But the question remains: how will they be used and by whom?
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