US media and Iran's nuclear threat by Kaveh Afrasiabi

Such an approach may "sell the news" better and make the networks appear more "patriotic" in the current conservative political milieu in the United States, yet it hardly qualifies for the high standards of independent media self-priding as the "fourth branch" in the political system. On the contrary, as both the examples of Iraq, and increasingly, Iran demonstrate, the main, and mainstream, media in the US is better viewed as an appendage of the executive branch manipulating it, and its agenda, almost at will.