ON PROPAGANDA
Tech Central writes about the war of images, and makes some good points, but focuses on how Americans are getting fed up:

Right now the Middle American psyche is being overwhelmed with reasons to hate the entire Arab world; and yet the Bush administration insists that we are in Iraq to help the Arabs. Unfortunately, the administration seems to be completely unaware of how sick and tired of Arabs the average American has become, unaware because it is politically incorrect to express such sentiments of outright hostility: but what is politically incorrect to express is all too often the motive force behind those sudden and spontaneous movements of the popular psyche that only seemed to come from nowhere because they came from a place unfamiliar to most pundits and paid prophets, namely, the gut level feelings of the average guy.

It's weird, in a way, that the global media is biased against the United States, the world's leading information society; weird, but true. Take this quote (same source as above):

Liberals complain that the Bush administration's approach is too simplistic. Quite frankly, it is nuanced to the point of incoherency. It asks of Americans that they hate only "the bad guys" in the Arab world, while it simultaneously calls on Americans to be willing to sacrifice their sons and their pocketbooks in order to create a happy future for "the good guys" in the Arab world. Yet our television and computer screens are full of the images of the bad guys of the Arab world doing unspeakably ghastly things to us, while we search in vain for the image of even one of the good guys for whom our nation has staked its resources and its prestige. Show us just one photograph of Iraqis publicly denouncing this gruesome act as a slander against Islam and a blasphemy against God.

I'll give you an Iraqi publicly denouncing these acts: the great Omar, who writes (with fine sarcasm):

The bottom line, and to talk more seriously, is that the picture the media are giving us about Iraq is almost convincing, even to me, if it wasn’t for this insignificant detail [the booming Iraqi economy], and something must be done to make it right before most Iraqis start to realize that! But to be fair our Arab and Muslim brothers, supported by the legitimate Arab leaders and cheered by most of the major media are aware of that, and of the dangers of the vicious cycle of (prosperity-stability-more prosperity-more stability) that the Americans and the Iraqi traitors (like myself) are trying to establish. They (our brothers) are doing all that they can; bombing oil pipelines and ports, beheading foreigners in the name of Iraqis and Allah, attacking electricity stations, creating chaos that allows thieves to loot everything they can, yet it’s still not working!! The Iraqi Dinar stands stable despite the fact that some Arab governments formally warned their citizens from dealing with it, the oil production is increasing, the markets are full of goods, most Iraqis are busy working, studying selling and buying and the average income is rising!

Please, all those who care about the poor Iraqis and want to save them from the brutality of the American invaders and who want to prevent the Americans from stealing our fortune; meaning Bin laden, Zagrawi and their followers, Arab and Muslim tyrants, our good friend monsieur Dominique de Villepin, all the pacifists of the world, the major media, and in short, all those who hate America and obviously love Iraq: Get your s**t together and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT or else one or two years from now Iraq will be…a prosperous country, and then we will never forgive you for letting us down when we needed you!

Omar, however, does not have a news station. All we have is al-Jazeera, biased against America and ruthlessly propagandistic (the Iraqi bloggers can't stand it) and our own news stations, biased towards bloodshed and pornography, rejoicing that the prisoner abuse scandal gives them a chance to emulate the worst sex-and-violence excesses of Hollywood. Are a handful of abused prisoners more important than the tens of thousands of now-better-paid schoolteachers and doctors, the refugees returning home, the prisoners released? Now, but they get better ratings.

I'm not exactly lamenting that we're losing the war of images. It's a structural problem: that's what we do. What can you do about it?