Inviting prominent Jewish and Arab scholars to debate peace in the Middle East is a lot like inviting that hopelessly dysfunctional couple over for a chat you hope will save their relationship. Sure, your efforts will be paid off by hours of free entertainment, but at some point, you’re gonna have to knuckle down and roll out that so badly needed intervention. And so, you hide all you guns and knives and hope for the best.

And so it went last night at UNLV as the Black Mountain Institute hosted a tête à tête between celebrated Lebanese novelist and thinker Elias Khoury and A. B. Yehoshua, considered by many to be the greatest living writer in Hebrew.

Hopes for substantively, dispassionately dismantling the plethora of obstacles hampering a lasting peace in the Levant were quickly dashed, however, as both mens’ egos (predictably camouflaged as historical outrage over past atrocities) flared, and the whole fiasco crumbled into a sustained shouting match (with plenty of catcalls coming from the slightly inebriated neo-Zionists writhing mere inches from my seat). Predictably, both sides left the stage — yawn — agreeing to disagree.

El ta-da!

We act as if American propaganda is a thing of the past, and are then outraged when leaks about the latest program come to light.

As a writer who’s had the unique honor to work in both the military and media realms, I wonder about a larger question: Which media outlets knew of their analysts ties to Big War - and when.

The more saddening takeaways from Sunday’s New York Times investigation quickly answers those questions. The revelations below remind us all that we have the Mainstream Media we deserve, as well:

• “Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest.”
• ” … analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations.”
• “CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.
• “NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: ‘We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.’”
• “Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. ‘We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,’ he said.”
• “A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives ‘refused to participate’ in this article.”
• “CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.”