The polls show it and commentators of all political stripes often cite the figures: Killer drone attacks by the U.S. military and the CIA in the Greater Middle East and Africa have strong US public support. According to the Pew Research Center’s most recent poll in May, 58 percent – up slightly from 56 percent in February 2013 – approve of “missile strikes from drones to target extremists in such countries as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.” The numbers of Americans disapproving of drone attacks actually increased from 26 percent to 35 percent over that two-year period – a hopeful sign, but still very much a minority view.
But how well informed can US citizens be on this subject when the major news media time and again ignore or underreport drone-strike stories – as we have discussed here and here in recent weeks? Stories – such as The Intercept’s October series based on a trove of classified materials provided by a national security whistleblower – that would likely raise serious questions about the drone program in many more Americans’ minds if they were actually given the information?
And now, in the latest example of journalistic negligence, The New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream news organizations in late November continued their apparent policy of no-bad-news-reporting-about-drones.
This time, the major media chose to ignore four former Air Force drone-war personnel who went public with an open letter to President Obama. The letter urged the President to reconsider a program that killed “innocent civilians,” and which “only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruiting tool [for extremists] similar to Guantanamo Bay.”