DANNY SCHECHTER

WEAPONSOF MASSDECEPTION

HOW THE M

EDIA FAILED TOCOVER

THEW

ARON

IRAQ

N E W S D I S S E C T O R / M E D I A C H A N N E L . O R G

ColdType

EMBEDDED..UPDATED

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

This is the best book to date about how the media covered the second Gulf War or maybemiscovered the second war. Mr. Schecchter on a day to day basis analysed media coverage. Hefound the most arresting, interesting , controversial, stupid reports and has got them all in thisbook for an excellent assessment of the media performance of this war. He is very negativeabout the media coverage and you read this book and you see why he is so negative about it. Irecommend it." – Peter Arnett

“In this compelling inquiry, Danny Schechter vividly captures two wars: the one observed byembedded journalists and some who chose not to follow that path, and the “carefully planned,tightly controlled and brilliantly executed media war that was fought alongside it,” a war that wasscarcely covered or explained, he rightly reminds us. That crucial failure is addressed with greatskill and insight in this careful and comprehensive study, which teaches lessons we ignore at ourperil.” – Noam Chomsky.

“Once again, Danny Schechter, has the goods on the Powers The Be. This time, he’s caughtAmerica’s press puppies in delecto, “embed” with the Pentagon. Schechter tells the tawdry tale ofthe affair between officialdom and the news boys – who, instead of covering the war, covered itup. How was it that in the reporting on the ‘liberation’ of the people of Iraq, we saw theliberatees only from the gunhole of a moving Abrams tank? Schechter explains this later,lubricious twist, in the creation of the frightening new Military-Entertainment Complex.” – Greg Palast, BBC reporter and author, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”

"I'm your biggest fan in Iraq. Your book is amazing. Amazing. I started reading it last night and Ihaven't been able to stop reading. I spent the night sitting up in front of the computer, readingpage after page. I only stopped when the electricity went off and then I tried sleeping- but sleepwouldn't come because I kept thinking of some of the things you had written – especially aboutthe embedded journalists. ... I hope it sells 3 million copies and that it becomes required readingeverywhere. Not for your sake, for our sake and the sake of all the ignorant people out there. Idon't know how many fans you have- or how many you will eventually have but I mean everysingle word. I lived through that incredible lie." – "Rivervend", an Iraqi woman blogger whowrites "Baghdad Blogging"

EMBEDDED

BOOKS BY DANNY SCHECHTER

Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, Rowman & Littlefield, USA 2003.

Inovatio Books, Bonn, Germany 2002.

The More You Watch The Less You Know, Seven Stories Press, l997, l999.

News Dissector: Passions Pieces and Polemics 2000, Akashic Books (2000), Electronbooks.com(l999)

Falun Gong’s Challenge to China, Akashic Books, 1999, 2000.

Hail to the Thief, How the Media "Stole" the 2000 Presidential Election (Ed. with Roland Schatz),Inovatio, 2000, Germany, Electronpress.com. U.S.A.

EMBEDDED: WEAPONSOF MASS DISTRACTION

HOW THE MEDIA FAILED TO COVERTHE WAR ON IRAQ

DANNY SCHECHTERN E W S D I S S E C T O R / M E D I A C H A N N E L . O R G

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTIONPublished in Canada by COLDTYPE.NET, a division of News Design Associates Inc.10469 Sixth Line, RR#3,Georgetown, Ontario L7G 4S6, CanadaTel: (905) 702-8600 / (905) 702-8526 / Fax: (905) 702-8527 Email: tonysutton@newsdesign.net Web site: http://www.coldtype.net

In association with MEDIACHANNEL.ORG575 Eighth Avenue, New York, New York l0018 USATel: (212) 246-0202 x3006Email: dissector@mediachannel.org

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrievable system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwiseexcept for reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Copyright ©2003 Danny Schechter

DEDICATIONTo all who fought and the many who died to penetrate the "fog" of war in search of truths hidden in the sands of Iraq, the files of government agencies and the studios of media companies.

And to my colleagues at Globalvision and Mediachannel.org for giving me a platform for these dissections. And to Tony Sutton of ColdType.net for believing that others should have access tothem.

And, as in all my earlier books, to my daughter Sarah Debs Schechter who knew that there wassomething horribly flawed in what she was seeing, hearing and reading about this "war."

Hopefully, this work will help her understand why and how.

BOOKS BY DANNY SCHECHTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

PROLOGUE TO A POST LOG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN

BLOGGING THE WAR AWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

CCHHAAPPTTEERR OONNEE:: WWIINNNNEERRSS AANNDD LLOOSSEERRSS

TRAINING THE MEDIA FOR WAR: A PENTAGON

PRESS REPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

REPORTS ON THE POST-WAR WAR: ASSESSING

THE AFTERMATH AS A WAY OF SEEING HOW

WELL THE MEDIA PREPARED US FOR

THE OUTCOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

CCHHAAPPTTEERR TTWWOO:: PPRROODDUUCCIINNGG TTHHEE WWAARR

HOW A MEDIA-MILITARY MERGER PRODUCED

THE WAR AND PREPARED US TO WANT TO SEE IT . 51

WORDS FROM THE WISE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

CCHHAAPPTTEERR TTHHRREEEE:: CCOOUUNNTTDDOOWWNN TTOO WWAARR

DISCREDITING THE U.N.; DENIGRATING THE

INSPECTORS; PREACHING TO THE COUNTRY. . . . . . 77

CCHHAAPPTTEERR FFOOUURR:: MMOOBBIILLIIZZIINNGG OOPPIINNIIOONN

PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES; RIGHTWING

LIBERATION THEOLOGY; MEDIA DEBATES; PREPARING THE COVERAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

15 BUNGLED STORIES (EDITOR AND PUBLISHER) . . 107

CCHHAAPPTTEERR FFIIVVEE:: BBAATTTTLLEEFFIIEELLDD BBLLUUEESS

THE QUAGMIRE DEBATE; TV GENERALS DISSENT; TALKING ENDLESSLY ABOUT “THE PLAN;” EMBEDS

ON PARADE; CENTCOM NEWS NETWORK . . . . . . . 111

WAR AS ONE BIG JOKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

CCHHAAPPTTEERR SSIIXX:: SSUURRRROOUUNNDDIINNGG BBAAGGHHDDAADD

INVASION ENCOUNTERS RESISTANCE; THE FALL

AND RISE OF PETER ARNETT; THE DEBEDDING

OF GERALDO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

WORDS OF THE WISE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

CCHHAAPPTTEERR SSEEVVEENN:: WWAARR KKIILLLLSS JJOOUURRNNAALLIISSTTSS

JOURNALISTS BECOME THE STORY; WAR PRIORITIES SHIFT; NOAM CHOMSKY’SVIEW; RIP; KELLY AND BLOOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

ANOTHER WAR OF WORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

CCHHAAPPTTEERR EEIIGGHHTT:: SSOO TTHHIISS IISS VVIICCTTOORRYY??

THE LOOTING OF BAGHDAD; WAS THIS EVEN

A WAR? WERE JOURNALISTS MURDERED? WAS BBC BIASED? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

THE STATUE SPECTACLE: WE WANTED IT TO BE

TRUE BUT IT WASN’T, BY TED RALL . . . . . . . . . . . 228

CCHHAAPPTTEERR NNIINNEE:: RREEMMEEMMBBEERRIINNGG TTHHEE FFAALLLLEENN

CALL FOR MEDIA CRIMES TRIBUNAL; COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS REPORT; ROSTER OF THE DEAD AND THE MISSING . . . . . . . 233

FACTS FROM FAIR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

CCHHAAPPTTEERR 1100:: WWHHAATT CCAANN YYOOUU DDOO AABBOOUUTT IITT??

A CALL FOR MEDIA ACTIVISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

AFTERMATH: THE SUMMER OF SUMMING UP . . . . 243

MANHUNTS AND MEDIA MYOPIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

LETTER TO ED MURROW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 THE NETWORKS AND NEWS MANAGEMENT. . . . . . 262

CCHHAAPPTTEERR 1111:: IINNTTEERRNNAATTIIOONNAALL PPEERRSSPPEECCTTIIVVEESS

THE IRAQ WAR ON TV: A SPLIT REALITY

(FROM MEDIA TENOR IN BONN) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267LAST WORDS: DECEPTION AS POLICY . . . . . . . . . . 279

CCRREEDDIITTSSABOUT THE AUTHOR: DANNY SCHECHTER . . . . . . 283 ABOUT COLDTYPE.NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

CONTENTS

7

9

IT is safe to predict that the debate over therationale for and effects of the 2003 war onIraq will fester for decades to come. Why didthe United States act as it did? Did SaddamHussein’s Iraq ever really represent a threat toworld security? Was Baghdad seriously violat-ing United Nations restrictions on weapons ofmass destruction? Did these weapons stillexist when the war began? Did Washington’spre-emptive invasion, at a cost of $917,744,361.55, according to Pentagon accountants,free Iraq’s long-suffering people?

Other questions: what was the full and finalcosts in lives, military and civilian, limbs, anddestruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, economyand cultural treasures? Did that country’s peo-ple really welcome the “liberation” promised tothem in some 31,800,000 leaflets dropped ontheir country along with an unknown amountof deadly ordnance. (Newsweek estimated thatall of this paper could have been put to morepractical use in the form of 120,454 rolls of toi-let paper.)

The war had its official statisticians just assporting events do. They counted everything,including the 423,988 members of U.S. militaryunits deployed (as opposed to less than 10 per-cent of that number in other forces, just 42,987“foreign” troops rustled up into what was clum-sily labeled a “coalition of the willing.”

What was unaccounted for, at least by theinvaders and rarely shown in western media,were the civilian casualties. As a matter of pol-

icy, the United States refused to release any fig-ures or even estimates. The United Nations wastracking the problem. At the end of May, theiragencies were guestimating that the toll maysurpass ten thousand, a stunningly large num-ber, considering all of the assurances given thatevery effort would be made to limit damage tothe society and its long suffering civilian popu-lation.

According to Ian Bruce in the Glasgow Her-ald: “The toll will exceed the 3500 civilianskilled in the 1991 Gulf war and the 1800 to 2000innocent Afghans known to have perished dur-ing the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban andwipe out al Qaeda’s training camps.” HaidarTaie, who runs the Red Crescent’s tracingdepartment in Baghdad, said: “We just don’tknow for certain. But thousands are dead,thousands more injured or missing. It will taketime to reach a definitive count. It was certainlya disaster for civilians caught in the fighting.”

“The War For Iraqi Freedom,” as the Penta-gon and at least two networks branded it, wenton for 720 hours. It was well documented bythe Pentagon, which transmitted 3,200 hoursof video and took 42,000 pictures, most ofwhich the public did not, and may never, view.

What we did see, and read about the Iraq Waris the subject of this book fashioned in the heatof the conflict. If journalism is a matter of courseconsidered the first draft of history, this is one ofthe first book-length attempts to focus on thecoverage and its many flaws, written before our

PROLOGUE TO A POST LOG

PROLOGUE

10

memories fade. It focuses on the different ver-sions of the Iraq war that were transmitted ontelevision and in the press, the versions thatshaped impressions and public opinion.

This book is about more visible WMDs thanthe ones discussed in the media. It is about themedia itself viewed as a weapon system:Weapons of Mass Deception. Those weaponsdrove a media war, a war that many nowbelieve perverted freedom of the press in thename of serving it. Many used patriotism as apromotional tool, pandering to fears andnationalist sentiment.

There was warfare within the media, too, asmedia companies battled each other forscoops, exclusives, branding and positioning.They fought for market share, “mindshare” andad-spend share. Within the trenches of theindustry, and sometimes within the companiesthemselves, journalists and program producerswrestled with their colleagues and counter-parts for guests and a competitive advantage.They worked with the military discipline of sol-diers, only they were paid for their overtime.(When I worked at ABC, staffers were called“the troops.”)

Yet, even as they competed against theircounterparts, they also collaborated with eachother, often drawing on the same footage, car-rying the same stories, echoing the sameadministration claims and following the Penta-gon’s lead. Often they cloned each other’slooks, formulas, formatting and “enhance-ment” techniques. They often looked andsounded more alike than they thought. Theirsameness trumped their differences.

All news organizations rehearsed their cover-age, pre-produced graphics and features, and

“deployed” the latest techno toys. This mediawar brought out some of the best in journalismand too much of the worst. It showed the newsbusiness’ vast technological capacity to bringus live coverage from the battlefield, but alsodemonstrated its power to sanitize that cover-age and spin it propagandistically. It shame-lessly recycled stories, repeating key themes,updating updates, all while promoting its owncoverage.

This media war promoted the war it covered.It mobilized approval among opinion-makingelites in Washington, London and other worldcapitals. First, it constructed the political envi-ronment, contributing to the sense ofinevitability about the need for war and thenfostered approval for it. Critical voices quicklyvanished as fighting got underway.

The media war targeted the larger public, too,and in the United States at least, built what wasreported as a consensus for the war and anational acceptance of its official goals andeffects. The war coverage sold the war even asit claimed to be just reporting it. Media outletscalled attention to their news gathering tech-niques, but never to their effects. During thefirst Gulf War, communications scholars foundthat people who relied exclusively on televisionfor their news and information tended to knowthe least about the issues. I am sure similarstudies will produce similar findings about thiswar. Most Americans lacked much knowledgeabout the issue before the war. Only 13 percentof America’s teenagers could even find Iraq ona map. So much for the educational job doneby the media and the schools.

Not everyone who watched the build-up tothe war or the war itself bought into its terms

PROLOGUE

11

or was persuaded by its storyline. The war andits coverage also turned off and tuned out tensof millions who took to the streets, rejectingthe pro-war media frame, in the largest globalprotests in history. Relying on independentmedia, international newspapers and feistyweb sites for their information, they criticizedboth the policy and the press. In the aftermathof the giant February 15 2003 protests, TheNew York Times commented that there werethen two opposing global superpowers: themilitary might of the United States and worldpublic opinion. As the war erupted, the criticswere “disappeared” from the media view justas Saddam disposed of his critics. He used vio-lence; our media used inattention.

Even as those protests were often badly andin some cases barely covered, they neverthe-less spoke for millions who rejected the mediawar aimed at their minds and spirits. One canonly hope that, as the claims and “evidence”used to stoke up the war are unmasked, themedia role will also be seen for what it is.

As Paul Krugman commented on The TimesOp-ed page. “Over the last two years we’vebecome accustomed to the pattern. Each timethe administration comes up with anotherwhopper, partisan supporters (a group thatincludes a large segment of the news media)obediently insist that black is white and up isdown.

“Meanwhile, the ‘liberal’ media report onlythat some people say that black is black andup is up. And some democratic politiciansoffer the administration invaluable cover bymaking excuses and playing down the extentof their lies.”

Most of us were not on the battlefield. Ourunderstanding of what happened, our percep-tions, points of view and prejudices wereforged and framed by our media choices. Weneed to see that as a problem that demands tobe addressed. Just as we consider politicianslying to us a problem, media accountabilityand responsibility are as important as politicalresponsibility ●

13

INTRODUCTION

ew of us escaped seeing the non-stopreports from Iraq, from journalistsembedded and otherwise, reports fromwhat have been described as the front

lines of the fight for “Iraqi freedom.”Throughout the American media world andbeyond, there has been a hearty sense of a jobwell done, except of course, for regrets overthose colleagues and soldiers who never made ithome.

We all watched the war as if it was only a mili-tary conflict. It wasn’t.

There was also a carefully planned, tightlycontrolled and brilliantly executed media warthat was fought alongside it. For the most part,that other media war was not covered or fullyexplained even though it was right in front of us.

The media war was there in living color butmany didn’t realize it had a life of its own, influ-encing as well as transmitting the BIG STORY. Ithas to be viewed on more than one level. Not allthe news was what it appeared to be. In fact, it allfollowed a scenario, and served a function fore-cast years earlier by Canadian media guru, thelate Marshall McLuhan who predicted: “If therewere no coverage . . . there’d be no war. Yes, thenewsmen and the media men around the worldare actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.” McLuhan spoke of the media environ-ment and television as a medium that rarelycalls attention to itself. He called it “pervasivelyinvisible.”

The war coverage inundated us for weeks, as if

there was no other news in the world. It wasblow-by-blow and wall-to-wall, with the focus onthe U.S. military campaign as it rolled across thedesert. We watched as “the coalition” fought itsway into Baghdad, stronghold of strongman Sad-dam Hussein, capital of the regime whose over-throw had been demanded – and accomplished.We saw the images and heard first-personaccounts from many of the journalists abouttheir adventures, difficulties, scoops and disap-pointments.

War as propaganda

THE Baghdad-based reporters who workedunder limitations imposed by the now defunctIraqi Ministry of Information were not shy abouttelling us what they had to put up with. Whenthat ministry and the TV station it managedwere “taken out” in bombing attacks that mayhave flouted international laws, American news-casters cheered. Its propaganda function wascrude and obvious.

There was also propaganda flowing from otherregional media aimed at the “Arab Street” andthat also was crude and distorted – and, from itsperspective, also was effective. Many commenta-tors accepted pro-Iraq propaganda. They expec -ted far more Iraqi resistance than materialized.

While outlets like Al-Jazeera and Abu DhabiTV strived to offer professional reporting that insome instances out-scooped western networks,other commentary reflected longstanding cul-

BLOGGING THE WAR AWAY

15

INTRODUCTION

16

tural biases, anti-Americanism, inflammatoryantisemitism, with loads of violence and noattention paid to Saddam’s human rights abusesor women’s rights. Kurdish journalists, who livedthrough the impact of Saddam’s ethnic cleansingof rebellious Kurds in the north, criticized Arabsatellite stations for these serious shortcomings.

Many U.S. newscasts pointed to these flawsand biases in part to project their own work asbeing free of similar biases. “They” – the “other”– practiced propaganda common to backwardsocieties. We of the developed world practicedworld-class bias-free journalism, or so wewanted the world to believe.

Propaganda was pervasive

THE truth is that there were pervasive pro-West-ern propaganda techniques built into Americanmedia presentation formats. Many may be dis-guised; others obvious. They were also rarelycommented upon or critiqued, except by warcritics. Few journalists put their reporting skillsto work to report fully on their own govern-ment’s propaganda campaign and its interfacewith their own media products.

Washington’s anti-Iraqi propaganda was multi-dimensional and a key component of the “coali-tion” war plan (Deceptive words like “coalition”were themselves part of it.) Aimed at the Iraqiswas a well-crafted arsenal of psychological opera-tions or Psy-Ops carried out by an IO (InformationOperations) directorate that simultaneously tar-geted and destroyed the county’s communicationsystem and replaced it with its own. A secondfront – and perhaps a more important one – wasthe western public. Iraqis were targeted by bombsand information warfare while western audiences

had a well executed propaganda campaign oftenposing as news directed their way.

Explains British-based propaganda expert Paulde Rooij, in several well-sourced assessments:“One generally doesn’t think of psychologicalwarfare as something waged against the homepopulation; but this is perhaps the best way toappreciate the U.S. experience during the pastfew months. The objective of such a campaign wasto stifle dissent, garner unquestioning support,and rally people around a common symbol. Amer-icans, and to a lesser extent Europeans, have beensubjected to a propaganda barrage in an effort toneutralize opposition to the war, and this fitsdirectly into a psy-ops framework.”

Suddenly all the networks had platoons of retiredgenerals and pro-war military experts interpretingwar news. U.S. TV quickly resembled Chilean TVafter the coup. CNN’s news chief Eason Jordanrevealed that he had sought approval from the Pen-tagon for his network’s key war advisors. OneCanadian critic called the network, “the Pentagon’sbitch.” At war’s end, critic Michael Mooredemanded the “unilateral withdrawal of the Penta-gon from America’s TV studios.”

War as a political campaign

PENTAGON media chief Tori Clarke, who workedwith PR firms and political campaigns beforebringing a corporate style, and politically ori-ented spin operation into the Pentagon, admittedthat she was running her shop the way she usedto run campaigns. This approach was coordi-nated throughout the administration with “mes-sages of the day” and orchestrated appearancesby the President and members of his cabinet.They were not just selling a message but “man-

aging the perceptions” of those who receivedthem. Politically, they used “stagecraft,” a termthat once was used to refer to covert operations.On May 16th, 2003, The New York Times detailedhow the Bush Administration relies on TV enter-tainment techniques to sell the President and hispolicies. Significantly, media people are directingthe effort. Elisabeth Bumiller wrote:

“Officials of past Democratic and Republicanadministrations marvel at how the White Housedoes not seem to miss an opportunity to show-case Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lightedsettings. It is all by design: the White House hasstocked its communications operation with peo-ple from network television who have expertisein lighting, camera angles, and the importance ofbackdrops.

“TV news people have been tapped in thisaspect of the media war. First among equals isScott Sforza, a former ABC producer who washired by the Bush campaign in Austin, Tex., andwho now works for Dan Bartlett, the WhiteHouse communications director. Mr. Sforza cre-ated the White House “message of the day” back-drops and helped design the $250,000 set at theUnited States Central Command forward head-quarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war.

“Mr. Sforza works closely with Bob DeServi, aformer NBC cameraman whom the Bush WhiteHouse hired after seeing his work in the 2000campaign. Mr. DeServi, whose title is associatedirector of communications for production, isconsidered a master at lighting. ‘You want it, I’llheat it up and make a picture,’ he said early thisweek. A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, aformer Fox News television producer in Wash-ington,” Bumiller revealed.

These smartly polished sales techniques

worked and typified the way the war was sold –and covered. It all underscores once again thatwe no longer live in a traditional democracy but,rather, a media-ocracy, a land in which mediadrives politics and promotes the military.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman,who has written about how media coverageshapes public opinion, makes another pointabout the way TV coverage distorts reality. “Theadministration’s anti-terror campaign makes methink of the way television studios really look.The fancy set usually sits in the middle of ashabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape.Networks take great care with what viewers seeon their TV screens; they spend as little as pos-sible on anything off camera.

“And so it has been with the campaign againstterrorism. Mr. Bush strikes heroic poses on TV,but his administration neglects anything thatisn’t photogenic,” Krugman wrote.

No wonder we had newscasts in which imagestrumped information. Clearly, just as the Penta-gon boasted of its war plan, there was anotherplan alongside it–a media marketing plan thatwas even more carefully guarded lest it fall intothe wrong hands. News management alwaysworks best when those who are its target areunaware of its dynamics.

War as a TV show

THIS war was a TV show on a new scale with asmany “events” as a televised Olympics. Mediaoutlets were willing, even enthusiastic partici-pants in presenting the made-for-television spec-tacle. It would be wrong and overly deterministicto conclude that these TV news operations weretaken over, duped or manipulated by the kind of

INTRODUCTION

17

INTRODUCTION

18

crude force that prevails in some other countriesbetween government agencies and the media.The Pentagon was not faxing instructions to thenewsrooms, nor would they have to. Media com-panies had their own reasons for playing the rolethey did, as did the “yellow press” publisherWilliam Randolph Hearst who used – and, manysay, started – a war as a way to sell papers. He isreported to have said: “You furnish the picturesand I’ll furnish the war” – at the beginning of theSpanish-American War.

Today the relationship between governmentand media is more symbiotic, even synergistic.Wars like the one in Iraq are staged to projectAmerican power to the world. The picturesadvertise that power (and market weapons sys-tems at the same time).

The news business is more than happy tooblige because war attracts viewers in largenumbers. Journalists quickly become intoxicatedby the ether of war and all the excitement anddanger that awaits on the front line. For manyreporters, war is where the action is. It is also acareer builder. Covering war has always been away for journalists to prove their bona fides, winbragging rights and, of course, move up the lad-der in the corporate news world.

Some journalists are drawn to war as mothsare drawn to flame and light. For them, war rep-resents the highest form of professional callingand appeals to their sense of patriotism andpride. Many promote the mission of those theycover as their own, just as many beat reportersare often co-opted by the officials and the agen-cies on which they report. The seduction is sub-tle. Some may be bought as intelligence assets,but most would resent any suggestion that theyhave sold out – or sold in. Years ago, Humbert

Wolfe penned a famous ditty about the waymany journalists voluntarily and enthusiasticallyserve the interests of others, without distance orskepticism:

“You cannot hope to bribe or twistThank God! The British JournalistBut seeing what the man will doUnbribed, there’s no occasion to.”Networks like war. It offers riveting program-

ming “reality”. They produce it as “militain-ment,” to borrow a term from TIME Magazine.Its life and death drama brings in viewers andholds attention. The spectacle builds ratings andrevenues. It also imbues news organizationswith a sense of importance and self-importance.It allows executives to demonstrate how valuablethey are to the national interest. Executives atMSNBC boasted of how their war coveragebrought Americans together and “emphasizedthe positive, not the negative.”

Positive coverage also helps networks gainmore access to the powerful, satisfying theiradvertisers in an industry where three out ofevery four commercials are bought by the 50most powerful companies. In 2003, pleasing theBush Administration also promised an economicbenefit, since while the war was being waged,media companies were lobbying for regulatorychanges that would benefit their bottom lines.FCC Chairman Michael Powell, son of the Secre-tary of State who was serving the war policy,rationalized the need for more media consolida-tion on grounds that only big media companiescould afford to cover future wars the way thisone was being covered.

The embedded journalist

THIS book focuses on the campaign thatinvolved co-opting and orchestrating the newsmedia. The most visible center of this strategywas the effort to embed reporters whose workwas subsidized by the Pentagon, overseen by“public affairs” specialists and linked to TV newsnetworks dominated by military expertsapproved by the Pentagon. When the war wasover, Rem Rieder, the editor of the AmericanJournalism Review (AJR) gushed: “It is clearthat the great embedding experiment was ahome run as far as the news media and theAmerican people are concerned.” Military Com-mander Gen. Tommy Franks agreed andpledged that embedding would be used in futureconflicts.

AJR writer Sherry Ricchiardi amplified theview most favored by the mainstream mediaorganizations that participated in the embeddingexperiment: “… despite initial skepticism abouthow well the system would work, and some dead-on criticism of overly enthusiastic reporting inthe war’s early stages, the net result was a farmore complete mosaic of the fighting – repletewith heroism, tragedy and human error – thanwould have been possible without it.” She quotesSandy Johnson, The Associated Press’ Washing-ton bureau chief who directed coverage of the1991 Persian Gulf War.

“Compared with the scant access allowedthen,” Johnson says, “This system has workedincredibly well.

“The naysayers,” she adds, “will be eating theirwords.”

Will we?Most embedded reporters claimed that they

were not really restrained but rather assisted intheir work by Pentagon press flacks. This isprobably true – and the reason the systemworked so well. Manipulation is always moreinsidious as well when the manipulated do notfully recognize how they are being used in a care-fully calibrated media spin operation. Many of the“embeds” acknowledged that they came to iden-tify with and sometimes befriend the soldiers inthe units they tagged along with, usually with thecaveat that it was no different from covering anybeat.

Former TV reporter Michael Burton offered adifferent view: “The idea originated with thePentagon, where military and political strate-gists pitched the idea to editors last year as acompromise. The Pentagon strategists, alreadyplanning for the Iraqi war, wanted proud, posi-tive, and patriotic coverage over the national air-waves. If the editors agreed to all their provi-sions for security reviews, flagging of sensitiveinformation, limitations on filming dead bodies,and other restrictions, then journalists would bewelcome. The editors not only went along – theyaccepted the ground rules without a fight.

“Now, the story of war is seen through the eyesof the American battalions, but without the realviolence. American children see more images ofviolence on nightly television than they do inthis war, because of the deliberate editing athome. Instead, they see a fascination with hightech weapons, battle tactics, and military strat-egy reporting,” Burton says.

He claims this leads to bias, although heacknowledges that many of his former col-leagues demur: “Some reporters disagree, say-ing that eating, sleeping and living with the U.S.troops does not make them biased (in spite of the

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constant descriptions of “we” and “us” whenreporters talk about the military units). They saythey are revealing more human-interest storiesin real-time. But, while embedded journalismprovides more opportunity for human interest, itonly does so from the American military’s per-spective.”

Veteran New York Times war reporter ChrisHedges seems to agree with this view. He toldEditor & Publisher magazine that he preferredprint reporting to the TV coverage but said thatboth were deeply flawed. “Print is doing a betterjob than TV,” he observes. “The broadcast mediadisplay all these retired generals and charts andgraphs, it looks like a giant game of Risk [theboard game]. I find it nauseating.” But even theprint embeds have little choice but to “look atIraq totally through the eyes of the U.S. military,”Hedges points out. “That’s a very distorted andself-serving view.”

The Project on Excellence in Journalism stud-ied the early coverage and found that half theembedded journalists showed combat action butnot a single story depicted people hit byweapons. There were no reporters embeddedwith Iraqi families. None stationed with humani-tarian agencies or the anti-war groups that hadbrought more than 15 million people on thestreets before the war in a historically unprece-dented display of global public opinion. Thecumulative impact of the embedded reporters’work prompted former Pentagon press chiefKenneth Bacon to tell The Wall Street Journal:“They couldn’t hire actors to do as good a job asthey have done for the military.”

War as sport

THEY were actors in a news drama that had allthe earmarks of a sporting event. In fact it seemsto be designed as one. I found propaganda ana-lyst Paul de Rooje’s perspective on this aspectvery insightful He writes: “Propaganda cam-paigns usually follow a theme … During the 1991Gulf War, the theme was the “video game”,which was evident due to the number of demoli-tion video clips. This theme couldn’t be reusedbecause the video-game scenes raised someuncomfortable questions about this enterpriseespecially among opponents of the war. It wastherefore necessary to conjure a new theme, andall indications are that this campaign followed a“sports show” metaphor. The main advantage ofthis approach is that Americans are very com-fortable with the “sport show” – it is part of theirdaily diet, it is intelligible to them, and it givesthem a passive “entertained” role. Casting prop-aganda in such a known, comfortable frameworkmakes people adjust favorably to the message…

“…When one watches a sports game, there isno need to think about the “why” of anything; itis only an issue of ‘supporting our team’. You arealso only supposed to root for the ‘good guys’team, and hate the ‘Iraqi meanies’. Dissidentvoices are also drowned out – you are only sup-posed to cheer for the home team… The ‘play-by-play’ military analysts incorporated thesports analogy completely–with maps/diagrams,advice to players, and making the audience thinkabout the marvelous strategy…”

How the war was shown

MANY of the cable news networks pictured Iraq

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as if it was the property of, and indistinguishablefrom, one mad man. Accordingly, attention wasfocused endlessly on where Saddam was, was healive or dead, etc. Few references were made toU.S. dealings with his government in the l980s orthe covert role the CIA played in his rise to power.

Saddam was as demonized in 2003 as Osamabin Laden had been in 2001, with news beingstructured as a patriotically correct moralitysoap opera with disinterested good guys (us) bat-tling the forces of evil (them/him) in a politicalconflict constructed by the White House along“you are either with us or against us” lines. Fewexplained that there had been an undeclaredwar in effect for more than a decade with Iraq(and Islamic fundamentalists) well before the hotwar of 2003 was launched. That was a war foughtwith systematic bombing in the name of defend-ing no-fly zones and a campaign of U.N.- imposedsanctions that may have caused as many as a mil-lion deaths. This context, in fact, most contextwas missing. The coverage recalled the title of abook on our media culture published some yearsago, aptly entitled “The Context of No Context.”

The imbalances of coverage

THERE were many stories in this war but mostfollowed a story line that reduced the terms ofcoverage to two sides, the forces of light versusthe forces of darkness. This is typical of all warpropaganda. In this war it was presented on oneside, the “good side,” by endless CENTCOM mil-itary briefings, Pentagon press conferences, AriFleischer White House Q&As, administrationdomination of the Sunday TV talk shows andoccasional Presidential utterances riddled withreligious references. Counter posed on the other

side, the “bad side,” were the crude press con-ferences of Iraq’s hapless minister of misinfor-mation, a cartoon figure whom no one took seri-ously. The two armies were spoken of as if therewas some parity between their capacities. Therewas endless focus on the anticipated chemical orbiological weapons attacks that never came, andon the weapons of mass destruction – findingWMD was a major reason for the war – that haveyet to be found (at this writing).

Omitted from the picture and the reportagewere views that offered any persuasive counter-narrative. There were few interviews with ordi-nary Iraqis, or experts not affiliated with pro-administration think tanks. Or with military peo-ple, other than retired military officials whoquibbled over tactics not policy. Or with peaceactivists, European journalists and, until late inthe day, Arab journalists. We saw images fromAl-Jazeera but rarely heard its analysis. This listof what was left out is endless. Footage was san-itized, “breaking news” was often inaccurate”and critical voices were omitted as Fox Newsplayed up martial music and MSNBC ran promosurging “God Bless America.”

The role of Fox News, an unabashed 24-hour- a-day booster of the war, probably deserves a bookof its own. Its aggressive coverage pandered tothe audience, simplified the issues and attackedcompeting media outlets and correspondentswho deviated in any way from the “script” theywere promoting. Fox’s apparent success inattracting viewers with its non-stop hawkish nar-rative led to a “Fox Effect” that caused many com-petitors to try to emulate its approach. MSNBCwas accused of trying to “outfox Fox.” Its coveragepolarized the media war and bullied war critics.

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War as staged spectacle

ONE of the most dramatic stories of the war wasa dramatic rescue of U.S. POW Jessica Lynchfrom an Iraqi hospital. It was covered for days astriumph for the U.S. military. A month after itoccurred, The BBC took a second look. Itsreporters found that the truth of what happenedcontradicted what seemed at the time like aMade for TV Movie (and yet may inspire one!).

Reported Ellis Henican in Newsday: “Her res-cue will go down as one of the most stunningpieces of news management yet conceived.” AndJohn Kampfner, a British journalist who hastaken a hard second look at the case for the BBCand the Guardian newspaper, concurs. His docu-mentary, “Saving Private Jessica: Fact or Fic-tion?” aired in Britain on March l8.”

Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Timesadded: “Sadly, almost nothing fed to reportersabout either Lynch’s original capture by Iraqiforces or her ‘rescue’ by U.S. forces turns out tobe true. Consider the April 3 Washington Poststory on her capture headlined ‘She Was Fight-ing to the Death,’ which reported, based onunnamed military sources, that Lynch ‘contin-ued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustainedmultiple gunshot wounds,’ adding that she wasalso stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in.

“It has since emerged that Lynch was neithershot nor stabbed, but rather suffered accidentinjuries when her vehicle overturned,” Scheerwrote. “A medical checkup by U.S. doctors con-firmed the account of the Iraqi doctors, who saidthey had carefully tended her injuries, a brokenarm and thigh and a dislocated ankle, in contrastto U.S. media reports that doctors had ignoredLynch,” he concluded. (Later, the claims in the

piece would be challenged as distorted by Geof-frey Sherwood on Asia Times: “Kampfner'sanalysis was flawed on several levels. If CENT-COM went to great lengths to manipulate thewar reporting, as Kampfner alleges, then it failedmiserably." This debate is likely to continue.)

The war’s other “most dramatic moment” wasthe toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein.Many media critics like Ted Rall debunked thisstory thoroughly. “The stirring image of Sad-dam’s statue being toppled on April 9th turns outto be fake, the product of a cheesy media opstaged by the U.S. military for the benefit of cam-eramen staying across the street at Baghdad’sPalestine Hotel. This shouldn’t be a big surprise.Two of the most stirring photographs of WorldWar II – the flag raising at Iwo Jima and GeneralMacArthur’s stroll through the Filipino surf –were just as phony.”

Competing narratives

OUTSIDE the United States, there were compet-ing narratives in the coverage of the war. Ameri-cans saw a different war than the one presentedin the media in Europe and the Arab world.These differences raised “vexing questions” formedia scholar Jacqueline E. Sharkey “about theresponsibilities of the press in wartime, journal-istic values such as objectivity, and the relation-ships among the press, the public and the gov-ernment . . . During the war in Iraq, televisionnews operations in Arab countries providedviewers throughout the world with an alterna-tive view of the conflict, “ she wrote in the AJR.

“Arabs and Muslims are getting a dramaticallydifferent narrative from their American counter-parts,” says Fawaz Gerges, who holds a chair in

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Middle Eastern studies and international affairsat Sarah Lawrence College and is an ABC newsconsultant on the Middle East. The U.S. net-works have focused “on the technologicallyadvanced nature of the American militaryarmada,” he says. “The Arab and Muslim presstend to focus on the destruction and sufferingvisited on Iraq by this military armada.”

The U.S. government has at times sought tosilence Arab media outlets. In other instances,U.S. media outlets like Fox News denouncedtheir news coverage, in one case, as “culturallyArab.” The U.S. military bombed Baghdad’sArab media center during the war, claiming twolives. In mid May 2003, The Wall Street Journalreported from Mosul: “The U.S. Army issuedorders for troops to seize this city’s only televi-sion station, leading an officer here to raise ques-tions about the Army’s dedication to free speechin postwar Iraq, people familiar with the situa-tion said. The officer refused the order and wasrelieved of duty. The directive came from the101st Airborne Division’s commander, Maj. Gen.David Petraeus, who has ultimate authority inMosul and the rest of northwest Iraq, the peoplefamiliar with the matter said. He said it wasaimed at blocking the station from continuing tobroadcast the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera.”

Media Writer Norman Solomon noted in a syn-dicated report carried on Al-Jazeera’s website:“Widely watched in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera’scoverage of the war on Iraq has been in sharpcontrast to the coverage on American television.As Time Magazine observed: “On US TV itmeans press conferences with soldiers who havehand and foot injuries and interviews withPOWs’ families, but little blood. On Arab andMuslim TV it means dead bodies and mourning.”

Coverage in Europe also differed from thatoffered by U.S. media outlets. Writing fromSpain, professor Herman Gyr noted, “It is oftenhard to believe they are covering the sameevents and the gap between American andglobal perceptions of this war will certainly havesignificant repercussions for some time tocome.”

“In the end, I think, the difference between thetwo views of the war (that of America & Israelversus that of the rest of the world) boils done toa single question: Were there alternatives?Americans were told by their media that therewere no alternatives and that the only optionwas for Americans to get in there and get the jobdone (=war) and let the rest of the world bedamned. The rest of the world was told by theirmedia that there were numerous other options(diplomatic, economic, etc.) that would haveinvolved less death and destruction In short,there were two very different wars to watch: onealmost entirely military in nature (the Americanversion) and another portrayed in unrelentinglyhuman terms (the global version),” Gyr con-cluded?

What many Americans don’t know is thatsome U.S. outlets offered competing narrativesas well. CNN mounted two expensive news gath-ering operations. CNN America offered coveragefor the “homeland” that was often a thinly dis-guised form of boosterism, while CNN Interna-tional served the rest of the world, with a morenuanced picture.

Independent journalist Michael Massing whospent part of the war encamped at the CENT-COM media center in Doha, Qatar, explained thisseeming conflict in The New York Review ofBooks:

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“The difference was not accidental. Six monthsbefore the war began, I was told, executives atCNN headquarters in Atlanta met regularly toplan separate broadcasts for America and theworld. Those executives knew that (Paula) Zahn’sgirl-next-door manner and Aaron Brown’s spaceymonologues would not go down well with theBritish, French, or Germans, much less the Egyp-tians or Turks, and so the network, at hugeexpense, fielded two parallel but separate teamsto cover the war. And while there was plenty ofoverlap, especially in the reports from the field,and in the use of such knowledgeable journalistsas Christiane Amanpour, the international edi-tion was refreshingly free of the self-congratula-tory talk of its domestic one. In one tellingmoment, Becky Anderson, listening to one ofWalter Rodgers’s excited reports about U.S.advances in the field, admonished him: “Let’s notgive the impression that there’s been no resist-ance.” Rodgers conceded that she was right.

“CNN International bore more resemblance tothe BBC than to its own domestic edition, a dif-ference that showed just how market-drivenwere the tone and content of the broadcasts. Forthe most part, U.S. news organizations gaveAmericans the war they thought Americanswanted to see.‘”

Obviously I could not see all the coverage orcompare and contrast it in any systematic way.What is clear and important to recognize is thatthere are different ways stories can be covered.Media diversity matters.

The outside view of a media insider

THIS book brings together an outsider’s cover-age of the war focused on covering the coverage.

I was ‘self-embedded’ in my small office in NewYork’s Times Square, the media capital of theworld, as editor of the not for profit Mediachan-nel.org, a global media monitoring website withmore than l000 affiliates worldwide. I focused oncovering the coverage on a global basis everyday, and disseminating my findings, ruminationsand dissections (I am known as “the news dis-sector”) in a daily weblog. Many of theseweblogs run 3,000 to 4000 words a day, and oftenappear seven days a week, which speaks to myobsession, fixation and passion on this subject.Call it what you will.

In addition, I write regularly on media issuesfor the Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net) that has 350 media partners in l00 countries.I was able to access this unique internationalnews source as well.

I also bring to this work nearly 30 years ofexperience inside the U.S. media system. Thereis a mission to my “madness,” as well as amethod. From years of covering conflicts on theradio in Boston and on TV at CNN, ABC Newsand Globalvision, the company I co-founded, Ihave come see how often inadequate is the “firstdraft of history,” as daily journalism is called.How it excludes more than it includes. How itnarrows issues while framing them. How it tendsto mirror and reflect the worldview of decision-makers while pandering to the patriotism of theaudience. And, most interesting, now that wehave the web for daily comparative access to sto-ries in different countries on the same subject,how ideology and cultural outlook shape whatwe report and choose not to report.

That made it possible for me to monitor andreview, with the help of readers and other edi-tors in our shop, coverage from around the

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world. Clearly some of it brought biases asstrong as our own, but also offered information,context and background missing in U.S. mediaaccounts. Most of our news outlets, for example,covered a war IN Iraq; others spoke of the warON Iraq.In the U.S., there was often no linebetween jingoism and journalism.

This is the essence of the analysis I offered,day after day, cobbled together from articlesfrom the world press, independent sources,international agencies and my own observationsof the U.S. cable coverage, network shows, BBCand CBC News. I relied on the coverage fromaround the world to offer far more diverseaccounts of the facts on the ground as well astheir interpretation.

I began each morning at 6:00 a.m., watching TVat home with a remote in my hand and a notebookby my side. Daily, I scanned CNN, BBC, MSNBC,Fox and whatever else was on. I read The NewYork Times, the New York Post and other dailiesand weeklies, as well as news magazines andopinion journals. I clipped away in a frenzy.

I was in the office at 7:00 a.m. and was soon hop-scotching between web sites and email over flow-ing with stories I missed. I would cut and paste,collate and collage and then start writing. Iworked fast, and sometimes sloppily. I squeezedin as much as I could and thought relevant and auseful corrective to the main media frame. Fortu-nately, I had few distractions. No phones. No onebugging me. I posted at 9:00 a.m. with an editor tooversee the copy and correct my many typos.Within an hour, we tried to send the weblog out tothe many Mediachannel readers who subscribed.

After work, I’d be radar-locked back on thetube, watching the late news, the talk shows andeven comedy programs. I found that the Comedy

Channel’s Jon Stewart was often more on targetthan the news networks. I preferred Canada’snewscasts to our own. Sometimes CSPAN fea-tured talks or hearings worth paying attention to.When I couldn’t take it anymore, I tuned out anddropped off to sleep and then did it again the nextday. Sometimes I had trouble sleeping as the stu-pidity of the coverage recycled in my brain.

I guess I am one of those “feelers” whoempathize with war’s victims more than the sol-diers whose deadly work was often sanitized. Onthe tube I kept hearing about the “degrading” ofIraq’s military while witnessing the degrading ofjournalism itself.

Watching the media war took a personal tollon me. I was often bleary-eyed, wandering towork in empty streets, as the city woke up tonew terror alerts and fear that the war had con-sequences that we were not ready for. What keptme going was the constant supply of items,extracts from news stories and comments fromreaders. As well as a lot of encouragement of atype that most journalists rarely get. Journaliststend to resent our readers and rarely interactwith them, but they help me enormously.

Fortunately, the weblog gave me the space andthe freedom to have a rather extended say. Couldit have been shorter? Probably. Would it havebeen as comprehensive? No. Clearly the haste ofthe effort did not permit as much reflection as Iwould have liked. I am sure my work is flawedwith unintended errors, some of my making, andsome in the reports I quoted. Covering war isoften as chaotic as war itself.

You will encounter duplication. The reason issimple. While I was blogging daily for MediaChannel, I also produced weekly reports on warcoverage for the Globalvision News Network and

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occasional articles for Alternet, Znet and otheroutlets. So there is some repetition even thoughI tried to avoid overdoing it. I decided againstrewriting everything for this book because Ibelieve there is value in putting all of this mate-rial written at the time together in one place. Ibelieve even those who saw the original reportswill welcome a chance to reread this body ofwork, especially, now, before our memories fadeor when we prefer to forget all the pseudo newsthat bombarded us. It is important to rememberour minds were invaded along with Iraq. Wewere targeted, too. Taken together, it is my hopethat the book may be a useful in encouragingmore critical reporting when Washington startsto prepare for the next war, and the one afterthat.

I deluge. You decide.

Not alone

IT may all sound crazy, and admittedly idiosyn-cratic, but at least I know am not alone. Increas-ingly I hear comments like “disgusting” appliedto the way the war news was being presented. Atone point, I led the blog with comments by thehead of the BBC, Greg Dyke, as reported in theGuardian:

“BBC director general Greg Dyke has deliv-ered a stinging rebuke to the U.S. media over its“unquestioning” coverage of the war in Iraq andwarned the government against allowing theU.K. media to become ‘Americanized.’”

What bothers me about his remarks is the all-too-common view that “unquestioning coverage”is what all of American journalism has become.It has not. I hope we are demonstrating that thisone-note war journalism charade (parade?)

doesn’t speak for all Americans. I have collected excerpts from weblogs and

longer pieces for this book. My hope is that it willencourage others to scrutinize the coverage andtake responsibility for their media choices andfor trying to improve our press. I hope it will con-tribute to the construction of a counter narrativethat challenges all the half-truths we saw.

America’s media is too important to be left inthe hands of the few who own it, and the mar-keters who run it. Media responsibility has tobecome an issue, not just a complaint. Condemn-ing governments for exaggerated claims aboutWMDs and an invented war rationale is notenough. Our media has to be held accountablefor serving as their megaphone.

The future of our democracy depends on it.

Questions to ponder

IN this regard I, like so many others, am left withdeeper questions than the ones I began with.There are no easy answers.

Some years ago, an old friend, social historianStuart Ewen posed a few such questions in “PR:A Social History of Spin,” on the power of publicrelations, showing how scientific and welladvanced the engineering of consent hasbecome. He asks:

“Can there be a democracy when the public isa fractionalized audience? When the public hasno collective presence?

“Can there be a public when public agendasare routinely predetermined by “unseen engi-neers?

“Can there be a democracy when the tools ofcommunication are neither democratically dis-tributed nor democratically controlled?

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“Can there be a democracy when the contentof media is determined almost universally, bycommercial considerations?

“Can there be a democracy in a society inwhich emotional appeals overwhelm reason,where the image is routinely employed to over-whelm thought?”

Finding answers to these questions has beengiven a new urgency by the war in Iraq and thecoverage of that war. Let us ask these questionsanew – and join the struggle for answers that willrevive our democratic culture and foster a moreresponsible media.

Gratitude

THIS book could not have emerged without thesupport of Globalvision and the MediaChannel.org. It was designed and produced initially withthe committed help of Tony Sutton, an interna-tional newspaper consultant based in Toronto,Canada, who runs ColdType.net in his sparemoments. He stepped in when other publisherslacked the capacity or the guts to get this workout quickly. It could not have been completedwithout the active help and editorial support of afriend who prefers anonymity and who workedtirelessly with me to shape this book over aspring weekend. I am thrilled that Steven L.Mitchell of Prometheus Books recognized itsimportance and decided to rush it into print.

I appreciate Victoria Graham’s professionaleye and hand as an editor. The book could nothave happened without weblog editor JeanetteFriedman, and later Bill Curry; without support

from Rory O’Connor, Tim Karr, and MichaelSummerfield of the Globalvision News Network.I am grateful for the technical help of DougGeorge and Anna Pizarro’s administrative andeditorial assistance.

And I sincerely thank the readers who send initems, comments, donations and so many kindwords. Happily, my daughter Sarah DebsSchechter was among them.

You can give me feedback on the analysis andcontents of this book by writing dissector@medi-achannel.org. Please visit my daily onlineweblog http://www.mediachannel.org/weblogand help us keep Mediachannel.org alive.

Just one last point: this book begins at the endof the war with the post-war reporting and worksits way backwards. Knowing how the story isevolving helps us put all the lies and deceptionsthat led up to it, and which were repeatedthroughout, into a new framework.

As you will see, a war brought to us with con-stant “Breaking News” was not above fakingnews. A war whose rationale had to do with dis-armament and finding weapons of mass destruc-tion was fought in large part with Weapons ofMass Deception.

That’s how I saw it. Now, it is your turn. ●

Danny SchechterNews DissectorNew York, May 23, 2003Parts of this introduction were written for the Nieman Report, the journal of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

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C H A P T E R O N E

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By KATHLEEN T. RHEMWASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 22, 2002 – Thescene atop Cardiac Hill at Marine Corps BaseQuantico, Va., was somewhat surreal today. Agroup of about 30 media representatives werepoised at the summit waiting to photographand interview trainees on a road march.

But as the trainees hiked into view, it was quicklyapparent this was no ordinary military unit. Nearly60 reporters in a ragtag mix of military protectiveequipment and civilian outdoor apparel trompedup the hill with a dozen or so Marines and soldiersoffering directions along the way.

The media on the march were completing thefinal leg of the seven-day Joint Military Contin-gency Training for Media course. They had spentthe past week with the Navy and Marine Corpsgaining a familiarity for military operations. Thelast steps of the way was this five-mile road march,carrying 25-pound packs, complete with“ambushes” and a “gas attack.”

The media waiting for them atop the hill hadbeen invited to get a taste of the training and inter-view their counterparts. Most spoke freely of thesituation’s irony.

All irony was forgotten, however, when theMarines launched the first simulated attack. Thetrainees dove for cover, seeking the best possiblehiding the woods had to offer. They got even moreserious when smoke began wafting around themin a simulated poison gas attack.

Some got their protective masks on like sea-soned military pros; other struggled and lamented

that they’d be dead in a real attack. But all seemedto realize the seriousness of what they were learn-ing.

“The most useful training by far was the nuclear,biological and chemical training,” ABC News’s JimScuitto said. He has covered military operations inAfghanistan and is currently based in the tiny Per-sian Gulf nation of Qatar.

The media trainees assumed they were prepar-ing to cover a war with Iraq, even though militaryofficials are quick to remind all that no decision hasbeen made regarding using military force in Iraq.

“The one thing that will be different about thiswar will be that (chemical) threat,” Scuitto said. Hesaid the briefings on different types of chemicaland biological agents and their symptoms wereparticularly useful.

The “confidence chamber,” in which participantswere exposed to tear gas to demonstrate how mil-itary protective masks work, brought the serious-ness of the potential threat to focus for a lot of peo-ple.

“Even when you do it right, you’re likely to get ataste of (the gas). It gets into your skin, and a littlebit is going to get down your throat invariably,”Scuitto said. “That just shows how dangerous theenvironment can be, because even when you’reprepared, and even when you’re forewarned, it’snot necessarily completely safe. That’s a soberingthought, but that’s also useful because it’s the kindof thing you have to be prepared for.”

Reporters lauded other training as well. “Welanded in a hot (landing zone), figured out where

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we were supposed to be in relation to where thetroops were going to be, how to get on and off hel-icopters, what to do for a gas attack, how quick youhave to react,” said Fox News Channel’s Pentagoncorrespondent Bret Baier.

Baier has also covered military missions inAfghanistan and said in the next war he’d liketo embed with a unit. “I think this next war isgoing to be a lot different media-wise. I trust(the military) that they’re trying to get a lotmore people in more forward areas,” he said. “Ithink that if that happens and you’re able to filestories with the military, then that’s the mostcompelling story out there and maybe thesafest place to be.”

That’s exactly what the military wants reportersto think. Military officials would rather have mediamembers embed with units and remain under theirprotection than running around the battlefield ontheir own. It’s safer for the media and safer for themilitary.

“We believe in this. There has been a lot of dis-cussion about how best to prepare journalists forembedding in a more conventional conflict shouldthe president order us into whatever is next, per-haps Iraq,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Andrew Davis,director of Marine Corps Public Affairs.

“We want to have journalists with us who areknowledgeable enough to write smartly about themilitary, get the ranks right, understand the tacticsand the equipment and also have enough self-pro-tection and field skills so that they wouldn’t endan-ger themselves or endanger the mission or endan-

ger the Marines,” he said. Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke traveled to

Quantico to participate in the march this morning.She said she thinks the military and media mem-bers who participated each recognized how hardthe others work.

“One of the things I’m hearing from both themedia and the military is they have a new andgreater appreciation for how hard each other’s jobsare,” she said.

ABC’s Scuitto agreed. “I already had a lot ofrespect for what these (military) guys do,” he said.“But you gain more respect when you see the typeof training these guys go through.”

Embedding media members with military unitsisn’t without controversy. On the evening before thebig march, some media members expressed theirdiscomfort with being seen wearing camouflagemilitary equipment. Many used white tape to write“press” or “TV” boldly on their gear.

Media members want to clearly define their roleas noncombatants on the battlefield.

“Particularly in certain parts of this world it’salready perceived that the American media is onthe military’s side,” Scuitto said. “I don’t believe ittrue, but that’s the perception.”

Davis said the military recognizes the potentialproblems and agrees wholeheartedly. “We havebeen scrupulous about keeping the distinctionbetween noncombatants and combatants,” hesaid. ●

Source: The Defense Department’s American Forces Press Service

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“How about the war at home? And in this case,unlike Iraq, I will pay my own expenses.

“Signed,“Your News Dissector“Danny Schechter”

No, I am not holding my breath for a positiveresponse, but as I read and write about theembed experience, I decided I would like to try itfor myself. As a former assistant to the Mayor ofDetroit, I know that the inside-the-entourageview can be more revealing than the view fromthe outside where one hangs around waiting forhandouts and pithy sound bites.

I have been as skeptical as every other jour-nalist has been about the impact of the embed-ding. I know the Pentagon rated it a big successand plans to do it again.

Former TV reporter and author Michael Bur-

ton explains, “This is the first American warwhere journalists are ‘embedded’ with thetroops. The idea originated with the Pentagon,where military and political strategists pitchedthe idea to editors last year as a compromise.The Pentagon strategists, already planning forthe Iraqi war, wanted proud, positive, and patri-otic coverage over the national airwaves. If theeditors agreed to all their provisions for securityreviews, flagging of sensitive information, limita-tions on filming dead bodies, and other restric-tions, then journalists would be welcome. Theeditors not only went along — they accepted theground rules without a fight.

“The majority of editors and publishers arepleased with the program, because it allowsreporters to be much closer to the action than inthe 1991 Gulf War.”

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PENTAGON PUTS JOURNALISTSTO USE IN SELLING THE WARThey have to decide whether to embed or stay out of bed

mbed me, please. Ari, beam me up. I have sent the following request to Ari Fleischer, the soonto be departing White House minister of media pacification, the man who Howard Fineman ofNewsweek compared with some party line promoting mouthpiece of the old Kremlin.

“Before you leave us, Ari, would you consider a request for embedment in the office of KarlRove, the White House’s Machiavelli of the moment?

“I crave an up-close and personal insider view of his movements and machinations. You gave usunprecedented access to the war in Iraq.

Also pleased were some media analysts andmilitary leaders. Rem Rieder, the editor theAmerican Journalism Review (AJR), gushed, “Itis clear that the great embedding experimentwas a home run as far as the news media and theAmerican people are concerned.” The disgracedformer National Security Advisor and Fox Newsembed in Iraq, Oliver North, was beside himselfwith praise for the access it gave him. U.S. Mili-tary Commander Gen. Tommy Franks agreedand pledged that embedding would be used infuture military operations.

Now that the war is over, some of the “embeds”are more candid about their experiences thanthey were when they were on the battlefield.Talk Radio News reporter Gareth Schweitzer,who was with the 3rd Infantry, told Mother Jonesthat he valued his experience but had misgiv-ings.

He told Michelle Chihara: “Physically, therewas a lot of stuff they simply couldn’t not showyou. You were riding with them. It was there.There was no way to anesthetize the process. Atthe same time, on a couple of occasions when Iwas taken by a colonel to a site he wanted toshow me, it was just a PR rap. The army defi-nitely had a message they wanted to get out. Atone point, a colonel came back to the unit just totake me and another journalist on a guided tour.He wanted to show us places where Iraqis hadbeen fighting and where they had been sleeping,– a weapons dump. I wanted a chance to look atthe stuff myself, without the guided tour. But itjust wasn’t always possible.

Mother Jones: But how hard was it to be objec-tive about the decisions being made by thetroops who were protecting you, possibly savingyour life?

Schweitzer: “You know, anybody who tried toclaim that their reporting, as an embed, wasunbiased was not telling the truth. Then you’relooking for the wrong thing from the process. Atleast for myself, I was not trying to be embeddedfor mere facts. We were getting our informationfrom our own eyes, and from American battlecommanders.”

The perceptions fueled by this type of report-ing had political consequences, he said.

“What’s struck me is that for a lot of the con-servatives who supported this war, validationseems to be in the victory. We prosecute it suc-cessfully, we win and the fact that we win vali-dates us being there in the first place. Thatmakes no rational sense at all. The purpose ofour entrance was not to defeat another army butto accomplish a lot of more difficult tasks, noneof which have been accomplished, save gettingrid of some of the Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hus-sein.”

Schweitzer also noted that there had beenmany mistakes, including information fed toreporters that in the hot house of live televisionwas relayed to the public without verification.Like what?

Schweitzer: “On a variety of occasions,reporters said that they had stumbled acrosschemical weapons sites, and it was displayedprominently on TV, on some of the news chan-nels, and it was also broadcast by a number ofpeople. And on each and every occasion itturned out not to be true. There were alsoreports of ‘heavy fighting’ up north by the townof Karbala. There was almost no fighting there.”

The Project on Excellence in Journalism foundthat half the stories from embedded journalistsshowed combat action but not a single story

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depicted people hit by weapons.Media Tenor, the international media monitor-

ing organization, studied newscasts in six coun-tries. It asked: “To which degree were journalistsin the U.S. and abroad serving the interests oftheir governments, intentionally or not? Was themedia merely part of a larger war strategy?”

Media Tenor continues: “Many facts about thisand other facets of the war will surface only overthe course of the next decades, but our researchdoes indicate that news media in different coun-tries, if they did not lend outright support totheir governments, cloaked in voices of patriot-ism and criticism, certainly did not oppose them.

“Not surprisingly, we generally found over-whelming agreement with issues related to thewar on U.S. news broadcasts.”

So what is the bottom line? According to Bur-ton, the former TV reporter: “The war with Iraqmay indeed signal the decline of independentjournalism in times of war and the loss of theadversarial role journalism once played with theU.S. government. With 24-hour coverage, Ameri-cans are seeing more wartime video than everbefore, but less of the big picture than any otherwar. So far, the White House strategy to sell thewar through the U.S. media has succeeded.”

All of this gives me second thoughts about myown imaginary request. I guess I don’t want thatembed slot in Washington after all.

Watching this White House is hard enough.Living there could be soul-sucking. ●

IRONY AND REALITY IN REPORTING THE POST-WAR WAR NEW YORK, MAY 16, 2003 – We are watching aTV scene in Baghdad: A group of Iraqis is march-ing, marching in anger, with signs in English fora CNN camera that is recording their demands.They want a government, they want to get paid,they want the lights on, they want the garbagecollected. Their rage is palpable.

The camera cuts to an American military offi-cer, smiling at them, motioning to them to calmdown. He offers no response to their specificcomplaints.

Cut to the sound bite that was used, for thebenefit of the folks back home: “Isn’t it wonder-ful that these people finally have freedom ofspeech and can express themselves?”

You can’t make this up, but news networks arenot very good at dealing with irony. Their focuson routinized news reality cannot cope with thesurrealism that now characterizes post-warreporting. As optimism pours out of Washington,pessimism stalks the streets of Baghdad. ArabNews commented on the irony of the irony, evenas most American outlets do not:

“It is an irony that a nation so often accused ofimperialism should prove so incompetent whenit comes to playing the colonial administrator;the French and British are still so much better atthese things, even decades after their empireshave gone.”

The liberation of Iraq was barely a week oldbefore most of the U.S. news army staged its ownwithdrawal. There was a murder to cover in Cal-

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ifornia, tornadoes terrorizing the Midwest, a so-called “road map” in the Middle East, a New YorkTimes reporter blew it badly in Midtown, and, asfeared and predicted, there was an ugly surprisefrom the Osama bin Laden brigade.

In America this week, the first of two sequelsto the movie “The Matrix” opened in theaters.One of the lines in the original film had inspiredthe Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, to enti-tle his book “Welcome to the Desert of the Real.”But many analysts of the film, according to AdamGopnik in The New Yorker, view it as inspiringthe sense that “reality itself has become a simu-lation.”

Gopnik cites Jean Baudrillard’s book, “TheGulf War Did Not Take Place,” as a sign of thedifficulty many face in determining if the greatvictory we saw in the media did indeed takeplace. In the spirit of a once popular commercial,many of us who are now in recovery from warnews addiction syndrome (WNAS) are asking,“Was it real or was it Memorex?” How real wasthe widely pictured desert of real war? Do we yetknow why it ended with a whimper, not a bang?

The current issue of The Atlantic carries anexcerpt from “Martyrs Day,” a ten-year-old pieceby former editor Michael Kelly, who died cover-ing this Gulf War. He saw it as necessary to fin-ish the unfinished business of the first one. Backthen, after Gulf War I, he wrote:

“I think even then there were the beginningsof a sense that we had come out of this thingwith a great deal less than we should have – thatwe had in a sense muffed it. This sense that wehad somehow managed to snatch a quasi-defeatout of victory soon grew much stronger andbecame much more defined.” This same senti-ment is being whispered today.

Even if the TV war has ended, the real war isnot over in Iraq, or for that matter, inAfghanistan. The deadly terrorist strike in SaudiArabia demonstrates that Al Qaeda has lived tofight another day. We have not heard the lastfrom them, even if many in the media forgot thewarnings from critics that the war will not makeus safer, that more terrorism is likely, thatactions bring reactions.

Will these developments lead to a new wave ofretrospection in an American media system thatwas nearly indistinguishable from the Pentagonoperation throughout the conflict? Will hardquestions and tough investigations finally punc-ture the spirit of triumphalism that PresidentBush is counting on to tough it out for five moreyears?

Don’t count on it. In Washington, it is back to business. Accord-

ing to the Financial Times, Rupert Murdoch, whoserved the administration well throughout thewar, awaits his reward in the form of a lifting ofFCC restrictions on the number of TV stationshe will be able to own. That is expected to comedown June 2, once Colin Powell’s son, Michael,the FCC Chairman of a regulatory commissionwho never saw a regulation he liked, is able todeliver. Powell Jr. has said that more media con-solidation is needed to insure that there arenews organizations big enough to cover futurewars. That circle is about to be squared.

Meanwhile, dissenters look on in anger butwithout the clout to stop the give-away of thepublic airwaves, or this anschluss and expansionby the big players. The dissenters are still askingfor counts of casualties in the war, and assessinghow badly the media system turned them into acasualty by marginalization.

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The data confirming that we were ill served bythe media is now in from Fairness and Accuracyin Reporting. It studied U.S. war coverage andfound “the guest lists of major nightly newscastswere dominated by government and militaryofficials, disproportionately favored pro-warvoices, and marginalized dissenters.

Starting the day after the invasion of Iraqbegan, the three-week study covered the mostintense weeks of the war (March 20 to April 9). Itexamined 1,617 on-camera sources in storiesabout Iraq on six major evening newscasts: ABCWorld News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBCNightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, FoxNews Channel’s Special Report with Brit Humeand PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Among their findings: “Official voices domi-nate: 63 percent of all sources were current orformer government employees. U.S. officialsalone accounted for more than half, 52 percent,of all sources.”

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugmancontrasted U.S. and British coverage, chargingthat U.S. outlets “behaved like state-run media.”Geneva Overholser, a former ombudsperson atthe Washington Post, now with the Poynter Insti-tute, agrees. “The comments I’ve been hearingabout U.S. media becoming ever more like state-run media seem to me to evoke somethingdeeper than partisanship or ideology.

“What I sense is a narrowing of the discussion,a ruttedness – call it an echo chamber of conven-tionalism. Sure, we have the appearance of con-troversy, what with our shouting heads andsneering pundits. But real debate – substantiverepresentation of viewpoints not currently invogue, of people not currently in power, of issuesnot currently appearing in our narrowly focused

eye – is almost absent.” It seems clear that this pattern of coverage is

unlikely to improve unless and until the mediasystem itself is reformed. For that to happen,more Americans need to see media as an issue,not a complaint. ●

NOW THAT THE WAR IS OVER,MEDIA SHAME SURFACES NEW YORK, MAY 08, 2003 – “Disgusting” is astrong word to apply to the Iraq war coverage,but that’s the epithet author Russell Smithinvokes in the new issue of The New YorkReview of Books in a column about “newnewspeak” that indicts “patriotic lapses in objec-tivity.”

Even as NBC rushes out a new book lionizingits war coverage, a small undercurrent of criti-cism from within the news industry threatens toturn into a flood of denunciation as the shockand awe wears off, and journalists realize howbadly they have been had.

This tends to follow a rule first enunciated bythe German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauerwho wrote: “All truth passes through threestages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violentlyopposed. Third it is accepted as self-evident.”

Stage One: Ridicule. In the aftermath of Presi-dent Bush’s flight to an aircraft carrier for aheavily-staged photo-op, questions, comments,sneers and jeers are slowly rising up from apress corps that heretofore has been compliant,complicit and in the words of James Wolcott inVanity Fair, easily bullied.

Stage Two: Violent Opposition. We have wit-

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nessed a mild dissent on coverage, from the lipsof MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield who questionedthe media’s accuracy during a lecture at KansasState University, for which she was savaged as atraitor by media bores on the right. Michael Sav-age, her right-wing MSNBC talk show colleague,denounced her as a “slut.” Rush Limbaugh toldher to go to work for Al-Jazeera.

Stage Three: Accepted as Self-Evident. We’regetting there. As politicians question the Victoryat Sea setting for Bush’s photo-op, Eric Zorn ofthe Chicago Tribune questioned the lack of hardreporting about the man’s own efforts to dodgeactive service during the Vietnam war, the eventand its significance:

“There was no relentless examination (ofBush’s military record) on cable news outlets, nointerviewing the commanders who swear Bushdidn’t show up where he was supposed to, no sit-downs with the veterans who have offered stillunclaimed cash rewards to anyone who canprove that Bush did anything at all in the Guardduring his last months before discharge.

“So much for the cynical distortion that hasbecome conventional wisdom in many circles. Somuch for the myth of the ‘liberal media.’”

There is a deeper cultural dimension to thisproblem, this patriotic lapse in objectivity, claimsWolcott: “If the press has given Bush and hisCabinet a horsey ride it isn’t because they arepaid submissives. They are not prostitutes. Theyare pushovers.”

He also argues that the political damage doneis incalculable: “The American press sniffs at thecult of personality that once plastered the wallsand billboards of Iraq with portraits of SaddamHussein while remaining oblivious to the cult ofpersonality that has cowed most of them. The

press in this country has never identified lesswith the underdog and more with the top pedi-grees. The arrogance of the Bush Administrationis mirrored in the arrogance of the elite media.”

For more insights on elite media, jump pastthe Versace ad at the end of Wolcott’s scathingpiece and you arrive in Dominick Dunne’s high-tone gossip country. Vanity Fair’s man abouttown admits to getting upset with himself forbreaking away from the war coverage to put on atux in order to slip out to the next party.

He tells us about all the celebs who turned St.Patrick’s Cathedral into citadel of luminaries forthe funeral of NBC’s Embed-in-Chief DavidBloom. In his last e-mail, read at this grandevent, Bloom seemed to have a premonition ofhis own demise.

Enthuses Dunne: “The all white flowers wereperfect. The music triumphal. A head of statecouldn’t have gotten a better send off. I neversaw so many priests on one altar.”

While the greater glory of God was invoked inNew York, up at Yale a senior editor ofNewsweek was spilling his guts. The New HavenRegister reports: “A senior editor at Newsweek,Michael Hirsh, told a Yale audience that he wasfairly appalled‚ by television’s coverage of theIraq war.

“This has not been the media’s finest hour,”said Hirsh, who won the Overseas Press ClubAward in 2001. He said war broadcasts fromGreat Britain and Canada were so different fromAmerican broadcasts that one might havethought the reporters were covering two differ-ent wars. He called American TV “self-absorbed” and “jingoistic” and said, “The naturalskepticism of the media was lost after 9/11.”

We are only now beginning to hear first-hand

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what really transpired in the briefing rooms andembed posts, even if the scale of civilian casual-ties is still unknown.

Michael Massing reports in The New YorkReview of Books about those CENTCOM ses-sions that spun the story of the day completewith military video and lots of map pointing. Hecharges that many of the colleagues he wasimprisoned with in that bunker in the Dohadesert knew nothing about the region, the cul-ture or the context. They were functioning as ste-nographers, not critical journalists, he said.

Russell Smith says he was more peeved byCNN, “The voice of CENTCOM” as he called it,than Fox News, which one satirist describes as“the Official News Channel of the Homeland.(‘Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer. Ein News Chan-nel.’)”

“CNN was more irritating than the gleefullypatriotic Fox News channel because CNN has apretense of objectivity,” Smith writes. “It pre-tends to be run by journalists. And yet it dutifullyuses all the language chosen by people in chargeof ‘media relations’ at the Pentagon.”

Clearly there is much we still don’t know aboutwhat happened on the ground in Iraq and thedetails of why the media covered it the way itdid. Unfortunately, too, the growing chorus ofcriticism is still too little, too late.

Mark the words of a media monitoring newsdissector: Observations like these and evensharper criticisms to come will move soon fromthe margins to the mainstream on their way tobecoming the conventional wisdom, “self-evi-dent” truth, as per the very late Dr. Schopen-hauer.

In the end, with hindsight and reflection, all ofjournalism will look back in shame. ●

THE LINK BETWEEN WAR, THEFCC AND OUR RIGHT TO KNOWNEW YORK, MAY 01, 2003 – By now, all of usrealize that there is a high-powered media cam-paign aimed at promoting the war on Iraq andshaping the views of the American people, rely-ing on a media-savvy political strategy to sell theadministration’s priorities and policies.

There is an intimate link between the media,the war and the Bush Administration that evenmany activists are unaware of. Few administra-tions in history have been as adept at usingpolling, focus groups, “perception managers,”spinners, and I.O. or “information operations”specialists to sell slogans in order to further a“patriotically correct” climate. Orchestratingmedia coverage is one of their most well-honedskills, aided and abetted by professional PRfirms, corporate consultants and media outlets.

Our Republican Guard relies on Murdoch-owned media assets like the Fox News Channel,supportive newspapers, aggressive talk radiohosts, conservative columnists and an arsenal ofon-air pundits adroitly polarizing opinion anddevaluing independent journalism.

They benefit from a media environmentshaped by a wave of media consolidation that hasled to a dramatic drop in the number of compa-nies controlling our media from 50 to betweenfive and seven – in just 10 years. Then there is themerger of news biz and show biz. Entertainment-oriented reality shows help depoliticize viewerswhile sensation-driven cable news limits analyti-cal journalism and in-depth, issue-oriented cov-

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erage. Is it any wonder that most Americansadmit to being uninformed about many of thekey issues we confront? Is it surprising thatmany blindly follow feel-good slogans or appealsto national unity and conformity? This mediaproblem is at the heart of all the issues that weface. And it is getting worse, not better.

If we want to save our democracy, we have topress the media to do its constitutionally pro-tected job as a watchdog of the people in power.We must insist that all views be given access, andthat concerns of critics of this administration beheard and debated.

We live in a climate in which even journalistsare being intimidated for stepping out of line. InIraq, the hotel assigned to journalists was firedon by soldiers, who killed two media workers. Inthe U.S., Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hershwas baited as a “media terrorist” by Pentagonadvisor Richard Perle. Hundreds of journalistswere “embedded” in order to sanitize war cover-age. Independent journalists were harassed orignored. Antiwar commercials have been sup-pressed and censored, while conservative talk-ing-heads outnumber all others by 700 percent.

Last week MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield spokeat a college about the coverage of the Iraq war.She was honest and critical. “There were horrorsthat were completely left out of this war. So wasthis journalism? Or was this coverage?” sheasked. “As a journalist, I have been ostracizedjust from going on television and saying, ‘Here’swhat the leaders of Hizbollah, a radical Moslemgroup, are telling me about what is needed tobring peace to Israel,’” she said. “And, ‘Here’swhat the Lebanese are saying.’ Like it or lump it,don’t shoot the messenger, but that’s what theydo.”

The “they” undoubtedly were her bosses atthe General Electric and Microsoft-owned chan-nel, the same men who fired top-rated talk showhost Phil Donahue and then used the war to tryand outfox Fox’s jingoism with promos proclaim-ing, “God Bless America.”

They quickly sought to silence Banfield. “NBCNews President Neal Shapiro has taken corre-spondent Ashleigh Banfield to the woodshed fora speech in which she criticized the networks forportraying the Iraqi war as ‘glorious and won-derful,’” reported the Hollywood Reporter. Anofficial NBC spokesperson later told the press,“She and we both agreed that she didn’t intendto demean the work of her colleagues, and shewill choose her words more carefully in thefuture.”

It was the kind of patronizing statement youwould expect in the old Pravda or Baghdad’s oldministry of misinformation. In Saddam’s Iraq,she would have been done for. Let’s see whathappens at NBC. Already, Rush Limbaugh is call-ing on her to move to Al-Jazeera. Michael Sav-age, the new right-wing host on MSNBC whoreplaced Donahue, has branded her, his own col-league, a “slut” on the air!

Even mainsteam media monitor Howard Kurtzof the Washington Post is now looking back onthe war coverage in anguish. “Despite the invest-ment of tens of millions of dollars and deploy-ment of hundreds of journalists, the collectivepicture they produced was often blurry,” hewrote in his column. He raises a number of ques-tions: “Were readers and viewers well-served ordeluged with confusing information? And whatdoes all of this portend for coverage of futurewars?”

There are other questions that need asking.

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What is the connection between the war, the pro-Bush coverage we have been seeing and theupcoming June 2 FCC decision that is expectedto relax broadcast regulations? Is it unthinkableto suggest that big media companies stand tomake windfall profits once Colin Powell’s son,FCC chief Michael Powell, engineers new rulesthat permit more media mergers and concentra-tion? Would these big media companies want toappease and please an administration that fre-quently bullies its opponents?

According to experts cited by the Los AngelesTimes, if the media moguls get what they want,only a dozen or so companies will own most U.S.stations, giving them even more control over themarketplace of ideas than they already have.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democ-racy explains, “The ownership rules on the FCCchopping block have been developed over thelast 50 years. They have been an important safe-guard ensuring the public’s basic First Amend-ment rights. The rationale for these policies isthat they help provide for a diverse media mar-ketplace of ideas, essential for a democracy.They have not been perfect. But the rules havehelped constrain the power of the corporatemedia giants.”

The FCC is, in effect, holding out the possibil-ity of freeing the networks from restrictions onowning more stations. At a time when the indus-try is hurting financially, big bucks are onceagain being dangled in front of media moguls. Nowonder none will challenge the government onthe current war effort. Would you be surprisedthat the Conservative News Service gave itsaward for best Iraq war coverage of the war toDan Rather (and not Fox because of Geraldo’santics)? This is the same CBS that was once

admired for the reporting of Edward R. Murrowand Walter Cronkite.

Powell makes the connection between the warand his agenda. He says that bigger media com-panies are needed more than ever because onlythey can cover the war the way the Iraq war wascovered. Need he say any more?

At first glance, the relationship between mediaconcentration and what we see on TV seems ten-uous. But is it? The cutbacks in coverage ofworld news that left so many Americans unin-formed and unprepared for what happened on9/11 took place in the greatest wave of media con-solidation in history. It has already had an effect.– AlterNet, May 7, 2003 ●

WHITE HOUSE PRESS PARTYBECOMES A BUSH RALLYNEW YORK, APRIL 29, 2003 – It was an uncom-fortable scene: a roomful of some of the mostpowerful journalists in America applauding thePresident as he boasted of his success in Iraq. Itdidn’t happen in the White House but it mighthave, since the positive reception was offered upby White House correspondents at their associa-tion’s annual dinner in Washington.

It was April 26, the 70th anniversary of thebombing of Guernica in Spain. But the symbol-ism was no more appreciated there than it hadbeen at the United Nations some months earlier.At that time a tapestry copy of Picasso’s famouspainting of that wartime atrocity displayed out-side the Security Council chambers was drapedat Washington’s request when Secretary of StatePowell came to make the case for a war on Iraq.

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As is the custom at these annual dinners, thePresident was on hand, traditionally as the tar-get for a comic assault. Not this year. There wasno humor, no satire, no criticism, no real barbsallowed. The New York Times called it the mostsubdued such event ever. Just one big happyfamily, with Press Secretary Ari Fleisher on oneside of the dais, and his nemesis, the dean of theWhite House reporters and war critic HelenThomas, on the other. She was not invited tospeak.

This was the year for an aging Ray Charles toplay old standards, and for President Bush to askfor God’s blessings for the souls of two Americanreporters who died covering his war. Once again,he was playing preacher, not president. He citedapprovingly the late NBC reporter DavidBloom’s last email speaking of his love of wife,children and Jesus. The President was giving nota speech as much as a benediction.

The press is there year after year, it is said, asa sign of respect for the office of the President.Reporters like to see themselves as having anadversarial relationship with the officialdomthey cover, but except for a few stalwarts likeHelen Thomas and perhaps Dana Milbank of theWashington Post, they seem more like adulatorsthan journalists.

In this year of triumph, Bush spoke of the greatsuccesses of the war, and praised embeddedreporters. He spoke of toppling the tyrant andused other applause lines that worked so well inhis many speeches at military bases.

To my surprise, this audience of professionalskeptics gave him a big hand, as if victory in Iraqhad been assured.

Yes, the smoke is clearing, the looting is sub-siding and the President is declaring an end to

the military phase of the invasion. But was there“Victory in Iraq”? And if, so for whom?

As American newscasters gloated when eachformer regime member was snagged, describedby his place in the Pentagon’s deck of cards –“We got the ace of spades, heh-heh” – it seemedas though the rout was complete.

Saddam is out of commission. But, is he aliveor dead? Tariq Aziz says he is still alive. But itdoesn’t seem to matter as much as it once did.

Our Republican Guard has defeated theirs. Iraq is in ruins. The infrastructure is busted up

pretty good, along with the country’s stability,economy and former sense of enforced unityunder Saddam. Now the country is fractured intopolitical factions, many demanding that the U.S.get out.

Is this Iraqi freedom? If the Afghanistan experience is any guide,

reconstruction and order will be a long timecoming. On April 26, the day that The New YorkTimes reported the Pentagon was sending a“team of exiles to help run Iraq,” The Times’sCarlotta Gall reported from Kabul, “In a veryreal sense, the war here has not ended.” She isone of the few U.S. journalists still in the Afghancapital.

According to media monitor Andrew Tyndall,the Afghanistan story, in network parlance, hasall but “gone away.” He reports, “The war inAfghanistan received 306 minutes of coverage onthe newscasts in November 2001, but thatdropped to 28 minutes by February 2002, and lastmonth it was one minute.”

The Bush Administration had also deemedthat Afghan war a victory, and much of the pressconcurred, even though Osama bin Laden andMullah Omar were never found. Terrorists

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remain in Afghanistan, and they may beregrouping and getting stronger.

As one who covered the victory parades afterthe first Gulf War, I remember the yellow rib-bons flying and the crowds chanting, “We AreNumber One!” That conflict, too, was proclaimeda victory until it was clear that it wasn’t. Yes,Kuwait was returned to some of the richest peo-ple in the world who own it. But Saddam sur-vived, hanging on for the next 12 years.

Soon the initial media-supported image ofDesert Storm was revised. The sense of victorywas short-lived. In the aftermath, the media com-plained about having been had, as atrocitieswere revealed and it turned out that the smartbombs used were not so smart. The Presidentwho won the war would soon lose his bid forreelection.

Fast forward to Iraq, 2003. Who won? And who lost? A high-tech U.S. military equipped with the

best weaponry in the world overwhelmed a sec-ond-rate, no-tech defense force. It was no con-test. If it was a prize fight, the ref would havecalled it in the first round. It was just as thosewho planned it knew it would be – a bloody andone-sided massacre. The coalition of the willingquickly became a coalition of the killing. All thefears of the anticipated use of bio-chemicalweapons that aroused the public and made thewar SEEM so risky never came to pass.

“I never thought Saddam would use thoseweapons,” ABC’s Ted Koppel confided after thewar was over. He revealed that the general hewas embedded said he didn’t believe theweapons would be used either.

The war’s biggest and most spectacular opera-tions, the shock and awe and the decapitation

strikes, all were pricey failures. The “collateraldamage” that we were told would be minimalwas enormous.

Warnings about the dangers of looting cul-tural treasures were ignored. U.S. soldiers stoodby and watched, sometimes plunging in to pickup a souvenir or two. A employee of Fox Newswas busted and later fired for stealing two paint-ings, one of which he said he wanted to give tothe head of his super-patriotic channel. Theyfired him for his gesture.

“We” won, but what have we won? There is oil of course – nothing to snipe at, at

least not in the way that those who suggestedthat oil was the rationale for war were sniped at.

The successful battle plan so great at quicklyliberating territory was half-assed when it cameto liberating people. The precision bombingsomehow knocked out the lights and the watersupply. No one knows how many Iraqis died. “Wedon’t do body counts” was the military com-manders’ standard response to questions aboutestimates of how many died. There were sureenough casualties to overwhelm Iraq’s under-stocked hospitals.

For U.S. viewers, this reality of war-as-hell wasmostly out of sight and out of mind.

It was sanitized from view, admitted AshleighBanfield, the MSNBC correspondent who hadbeen groomed as her network’s answer to CNN’sChristiane Amanpour. Banfield told a collegecrowd at Kansas State – but not her TV audience:

“We didn’t see what happened when Marinesfired M-16s. We didn’t see what happened aftermortars landed, only the puff of smoke. Therewere horrors that were completely left out ofthis war. So was this journalism? Or was this cov-erage?”

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ABC’s Koppel would agree when interviewedby Marvin Kalb, the veteran NBC warhorse whoretired to a cushy job at Harvard. Koppel admit-ted that most Americans, both on the battlefieldand off, never saw the true face of war. “Watch-ing war on TV from a distance,” he said. “is pulsepounding entertainment. That’s damn goodentertainment. We need to show people the con-sequences of war. People die in war.”

We know about some of those who died,mostly Americans. There was endless airtimegiven over to POWs who were glorified as heroeseven though most were victims. But the Iraqiswere faceless. We rarely heard their names. Noreporters were embedded in their world. Theirfighters, the “soldiers of Saddam,” the “enemy,”were always presented as fanatical and worse.

The idea that people fight to defend theircountry is true everywhere, whatever theregime. The Russians died in the millions resist-ing the Nazi invasion of their country, even asmany disliked the dictator who ruled them.When those communists were fighting as alliesby our side, they were praised, not baited, in thepress.

In the end, America’s TV viewers who weregiven so much televised access to the war lostout when it came to understanding the conflictand realizing its impact. There was little empa-thy in the coverage, and hence little understand-ing when so many Iraqis greeted their liberationwith demands that the liberators leave. “No ToSaddam and No To America” is their slogan.

Ironically, one of the unspoken “winners” inthis conflict was America’s nemesis, Osama BinLaden. As Jason Burke recently explained in TheGuardian, “the primary objective of the terroristactions that Bin Laden sponsored has not been

to hurt the economies or the society of the Westthrough physical damage. Instead they havebeen designed to rally the world’s 1.2 billion Mus-lims to Bin Laden’s banner. By radicalizing theMiddle East, the war in Iraq has played straightinto Bin Laden’s hands.”

A big loser was the credibility of Americanjournalism. The losses were not only those jour-nalists who died but also the many who lived andwill have to live with the role they played as pub-licists for policies leading to a preemptive war, awar that outraged and alienated the world.

Alexander Cockburn of The Nation who is notknown for understatement, may have beenunderstating when he characterized the impactof the coverage as signaling the “Decline and Fallof American Journalism.”

It was not only writers on the left who werechallenging the coverage. Even Howard Kurtz, ofthe Washington Post, whom I debated on CNNwhile the bombs fell, and who was defending thecoverage then, now that the war is over, is raisingthe larger questions.

On April 28, Kurtz began to sound like me,admitting, “Despite the investment of tens of mil-lions of dollars and deployment of hundreds ofjournalists, the collective picture they producedwas often blurry.”

“The fog of war makes for foggy news,” said S.Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Pub-lic Affairs. “War is too messy to package intosound bites and two-minute stories.”

Now that the shooting is over, these questionshang in the air: What did the media accomplishduring the most intensively and instantaneouslycovered war in history? Did the presence of allthose journalists capture the harsh realities ofwar or simply breed a new generation of Scud

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studs? Were readers and viewers well-served ordeluged with confusing information? And whatdoes all of this portend for coverage of futurewars?

Please realize: I am not against the press, nordismissive of the enterprise, hard work andtenacity shown. Many of our reporters werebrave, most hard working and a few even bril-liant in the stories they filed. I can’t fault thetechnique or the way in which they worked togive us an insider’s seat at a war. The technologywas amazing and some of the imagery unforget-table.

At the same time, one must ask, what was thecumulative impact of this news army, what arethe stories that went uncovered in a heavilymanaged system? Bear in mind that propagandaworks best when you are unaware of it. Censor-ship is most effective when it is subtly achieved.Without “shooting the messenger” we can andmust evaluate the message, its social meaningand political effect.

There has been a gradual erosion of the adver-sarial stance of many on high-status beats,reporters who appear to be seduced by the auraof power and the prestige of those whom theyhave been assigned to cover.

The White House correspondents’ dinner is acase in oint. Journalists there were “em-tuxe-doed,” socializing with war makers. It is onething to be polite. It is another to be co-opted.

President Bush knew he had a friendly crowdto wow and woo. He spoke eloquently of journal-ists he knew who died, especially the conserva-tive Michael Kelly, without touching on any ofthe issues that worry advocates of free expres-sion. He was preaching to those who should bewatchdogs, who should be scrutinizing his poli-

cies, not complicit in his project. There was no dissent shown from any of these

correspondents and stenographers of power,nary a negative word. Instead, they cheered.They cheered. At one point, the outgoing presi-dent of the White House Correspondents Asso-ciation commented that some reporters hadeven suggested that anti-war musicians like theDixie Chicks or Harry Belafonte be invited toentertain. He scoffed at that proposal. “Imagine!”he sneered. “You can’t make this stuff up.” Hewas right on that point. You can’t make this stuffup. ●

WAR AS NEWS BECOMES WAR AS HISTORYNEW YORK, APRIL 23, 2003 – The non-stopnews cycle turns instant events into history witha new rapidity. Soon we will be flooded withbooks, videocassettes and documentaries aboutOperation Iraqi Freedom through a media recy-cling operation already in high gear.

New media products offer one way of amor-tizing the investment in so much news coverage.But it is also a way of reinforcing the U.S. TVview that good has triumphed over evil, that thewar was welcomed and worth it. Soon, the NewsBusiness will start handing out awards for bestcoverage by an embedded journalist under fireand, later, memorial plaques for those who died.Our heroism and valor cannot be forgotten.

What is needed more is real introspection anda critical reassessment. Were some media out-lets acting more like publicists and promoters ofthe war than journalists with a duty to remain

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neutral, balanced and fair? Were the warriors given an expensively pro-

duced free ride? The Pentagon seems pleased as Punch at the

positive spin it received despite the carping ofthe thin-skinned Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld who has never read a critical commenthe could agree with. “Gee,” “Gosh” and “No”were his three favorite words when confrontedwith critical queries.

CSPAN spent a day with Pentagon media chiefTori Clark who did a good job of avoiding self-congratulation, even as it seemed that was theway she felt. Her predecessor Kenneth Bakerhad praised her in the pages of The Wall StreetJournal, gushing, “You couldn’t hire actors to doas good a job as the press has done” from thePentagon’s point of view.

There are many issues that remain unre-solved, unexplored, uninvestigated, unreportedand under-played. And some involve the role ofthe “embedded” journalists who had a rarefront-row seat to the war, but ended up giving usonly a partial view. The controversy over theembedding is only one aspect of a deeper debatethat is emerging over what did and didn’t reallyhappen in the war. Every narrative tends to pro-duce counter narratives, especially when newdocuments and other sources emerge. Revision-ism is now part of the craft most historians pur-sue. Just as the first Gulf War was originally pro-claimed a big win until it wasn’t, so this war hasalso given rise to troubling unanswered ques-tions, perhaps as numerous as the unexplodedordnance littering the streets of Iraq’s cities.

Among the concerns to be pursued: 1. How was the Weapons of Mass Destruction

issue constructed and why did it succeed despite

solid evidence to the contrary? Ditto for the linkbetween 9/11 and Iraq.

2. Was the circumvention of the U.N. plannedin advance? What political forces were involvedin the pre-emptive war strategy?

3. How did the looting begin in Baghdad? Wasit unexpected? Was some of the looting an insidejob by criminals with keys to the vaults? WereU.S. troops encouraging it?

4. Was the toppling of the Saddam statue astaged event? Why were no other statues, manyof them larger, not toppled earlier by Iraqis?

5. Did Baghdad fall or was it handed over? Wasthere a deal with Saddam, members of hisregime, or the Russians?

6. Why were journalists fired on? Accident orpart of the war plan?

7. How did U.S. companies like Bechtel lobbyfor a profitable role in the reconstruction? Weretargets selected with lucrative reconstruction inmind?

8. What was the extent of civilian casualties?What was the extent of damage to the country?

9. What behind-the-scenes role did Israel play? 10. What was the relationship between the

uncritical coverage we saw and the lobbyingunderway at the same time by media companiesseeking FCC rule changes that will benefit theirbottom lines?

Wars transcend media coverage: Some outletsbecome winners, others losers. In America, theFox News Channel with its patriotic posturing,martial music and pro-war boosterism has usedthe conflict to build a right-wing base and polar-ize the media environment. Fox won the cablenews ratings war, even as most critics com-plained that it degraded journalism in theprocess. The so-called “Fox effect” has moved its

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competitors, like CNN and MSNBC, to the right. In global terms, Al-Jazeera has emerged with

new respect and a bigger audience. As MichaelWolff noted in New York Magazine: “The net-work is being transformed the way Gulf War Itransformed CNN – but then CNN’s audience hasnever exceeded more than a few million,whereas Al-Jazeera already speaks to a good 35million people every day.

“By the time this whole thing is over,” I said tothree (Middle East) correspondents, “you’ll befar and away the dominant media organization inthe region – one of the largest in the world! Youcould end up being Time Warner Al-Jazeera.”

The Al-Jazeera man responded: “No, Al-Jazeera Time Warner.” Clearly, they understandbrand positioning.

The real war may have ended but the mediawar grinds on and heats up. While most of theworld had its eye on Baghdad, Rupert Murdochhad his on the Direct TV satellite that he wantsto add to his arsenal of media weaponry.

In Washington, the FCC, under the leadershipof Colin Powell’s son Michael, announced plansto lift media rules that limit concentration of

media in the hands of a few companies, this onJune 2. Michael Powell has already cited the warcoverage as the reason America needs mediaGoliaths.

This story bas been badly covered in theAmerican press, but not in England where TheGuardian’s Annie Lawson reported, “U.S. broad-casters’ war stance under scrutiny.” Unfortu-nately, only non-profit groups not the govern-ment are calling for such scrutiny. The Center forDigital Democracy, which promotes diversity indigital media, says it believes news organizationsin the U.S. have a “serious conflict of interest”when it comes to reporting the policies of theBush Administration.

“It is likely that decisions about how to coverthe war on Iraq – especially on television – maybe tempered by a concern not to alienate theWhite House,” said Jeffrey Chester, the DigitalDemocracy Center’s executive director, in arecent article. “These media giants stand tomake untold billions if the FCC safeguards areeliminated or weakened.”

This issue has yet to surface in the Americanmedia. Does anyone wonder why? ●

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with himself, telling the Washington Post how hescored a scoop TV bookers call the “big get.”

“You work hard, work your sources, makeyour contacts, not get discouraged, just keepcoming,” Howard Kurtz reveals. When Rathergot to Baghdad, he says, “I went to my hotelroom and started preparing lists of questionsand tried to memorize an outline of the ques-tions. I had 31 or 32 questions. I put them in threedifferent orders. I practiced them. I sat in front ofthe mirror and pretended he was on the otherside and tried out the questions.”

News outlets are not looking in that mirror, butmusing instead about the interview’s likelyimpact. Britain’s Independent speculates:“Assuming CBS gets the tape in time, the choicesegments will be aired tonight opposite whatwas previously seen as the scoop of the season,the interview with Robert Blake, Hollywood B-

lister and accused wife-killer, by ABC’s indefati-gable Barbara Walters.

“A true connoisseur of American televisionmight wonder what the difference is, in terms ofluring the punters, between a film star accusedof one murder and a foreign ruler who is knownto have murdered millions. Was it not Stalin whosaid that “one death is a tragedy, a million deathsare a statistic”? But in this land of the 15-minutesensation, President Saddam is the exception.

“The contents of Rather’s interview are deadlyserious, which presumably is why Iraqi televi-sion, which taped it, has not made availableextracts for CBS to air as promised, either on itsMonday evening news or on its Tuesday break-fast show, and why no transcript had been pro-vided by the Iraqis at the time of writing.

The Independent concludes: “Rather’s inter-

N E W Y O R K / F E B R U A R Y 2 4 , 2 0 0 3

IRAQI ‘MONSTER’ SEEKS TOWIN OUR HEARTS AND MINDSSaddam takes to the airwaves with Dan Rather in prime time

onight’s the night that the Iraq War truly goes prime time in America with the airing of DanRather’s heavily hyped exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein. Already the right wing

press is up in arms because cameramen from Iraqi Television actually shot the standoffbetween one of the world’s most controversial anchors and its most contentious dictator.

The frequency this time is CBS, but there is already static on the horizon, with the Murdochmedia insinuating that Rather was used. (News junkies remember how CNN’s Peter Arnett was demo-nized as a traitor for even reporting from Baghdad during Gulf War I). In contrast, Rather is pleased

view may do wonders for CBS’ ratings but not forthe all-but-vanished prospect of a peaceful solu-tion to the crisis.”

The New York Times places the interview inthe context of a more mundane media war: “Thisis the last night of the all-important sweepsperiod, when networks broadcast their most-hyped programming, and TV news is increas-ingly hijacked to report on the results of manu-factured “reality,” as if the bachelorette’s choiceof suitors or the latest expulsion from the islandwere events of global consequence. The appear-ance of Mr. Hussein in the midst of it makes for atruly eclectic, if not peculiar, mix.

“The nation may be cruising toward one ofthose moments of cultural humiliation when theworld compares the number of people whowatch the Hussein interview with the 40 millionwho last week watched Joe Millionaire pickwholesome Zora over Sarah, the presumed gold-digger. CBS may be hoping only to match the 27million viewers who watched ABC’s MichaelJackson documentary earlier in the month —and even then it’s unlikely that Fox will be rush-ing in to air unseen scraps of the Baghdad inter-view. But it’s hard to imagine how Mr. Hussein,who claimed 100 percent of the vote in last Octo-ber’s referendum in Iraq, would react to newsthat he lost the ratings battle to Barbara Wal-ters’s visit with the jailed ex-star of “Baretta.”

This reference to Walters calls to mind a juicy“exclusive” one-on-one she snagged years agowith Fidel Castro, then Washington’s most hatedevil-doer. That interview, shot by ABC News, wascarefully edited to leave out most of Comman-dante Castro’s more political points. The full textwas later released by the Cubans to be publishedside by side in an alternative paper showing how

politicized U.S. TV editing can be. Sanitizingmedia is not just the province of dictators.

One of the more fascinating propositions in theinterview is said to be Hussein’s offer of a tele-vised debate between him and George Bush. TheWhite House immediately shot this down,revealing that the President may be authorizinga covert assassination team to take its own shotat the man who has said he would rather diethan leave his country. Such a debate is alreadygrist for the comedy mill, with all the makings ofone of those World Wrestling Federation“smackdowns,” and could probably make mil-lions as a Pay TV event. That is, if MTV doesn’tscoop its competition with a special edition of“Celebrity Death Match.”

The winner of this latest episode in the mediawar remains to be seen and it will be shortly.Whatever Saddam says is still a first in giving theIraqis real “face time.” For the moment, theyachieved parity in a media war which has untilnow, had a ‘rather’ one-sided spin.

(At the war’s end, the conservative MediaResearch Center in Washington gave DanRather an award for the best war coverage.Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reportedthat Rather’s boss was dismissive of media crit-ics. “CBS News President Andrew Heyward dis-misses criticism that media outlets were too jin-goistic‚ in their coverage. American journalistsare rooting for America to win,” he said. “You’renot going to find a lot of Americans rooting forIraq. That doesn’t mean they’re not objectiveand fair in their reporting.”) ●

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WAR CALLS AND THE NEWS BIZ RUSHES TO ENLISTNEW YORK FEBRUARY 25, 2003 — War calls,and many a journalist is answering. Throughoutthe world, media organizations are planningtheir sojourns to Baghdad. All want to be inplace for the “big one.” They are lining up atIraqi missions asking for visas. Others are tryingto get the U.S. military to give them a front rowseat.

In the old days, there was a sharp debate aboutwhether to get ‘in bed” with the people you arecovering. Today it is the military that is pursuinga policy of “embedding” journalists with U.S.units. Back in the Gulf War, reporters had todemand access. Today, it is the military doing thedemanding.

Why? “What is driving this is a fear that Iraqwill win the propaganda war if reporters are noton the ground with troops,” writes Dave Moniz,of USA Today. As a result, explains News World:“The Pentagon has pledged that reporters willgain more access to troops on the ground duringa war with Iraq. But the promise has met with amixed response from journalists. Most wel-comed the move, but some questioned whetherthe fine words would be translated into action,while others questioned the Bush administra-tion’s motives. The U.S. press corps heavily crit-icized the Pentagon for keeping journalists awayfrom the action during the recent war inAfghanistan.”

At a recent media panel in New York, JudithMiller of The New York Times says that the

press will “not allow” the Pentagon to excludethem. She and other journalists are also takingtraining in self-protection. If she goes, she saysshe will learn how to use a suit to defend againstchemical warfare. Chris Cramer, president ofCNN International, revealed that 500 CNN jour-nalists have already taken war safety training.Globalvision recently lost an intern to the adven-ture promised in taking pictures of the soldiersin training in the deserts of Qatar.

Access to the war is one concern – shilling forit is another. Far too many journalists take anuncritical, even fawning attitude towards men inuniform. Says Cokie Roberts on NPR: “I am, I willjust confess to you, a total sucker for the guyswho stand up with all the ribbons on and stuffand if they say it’s true, I’m ready to believe it.”

Independent radio producer and author DavidBarsamian amplifies this point: “When the U.S.marches to war, the media march with it. Andwithin the media the generals generally areheavily armed with microphones. The din of col-lateral language is rising to cacophonous levels.The mobilization and ubiquity of present andpast brass on the airwaves is an essential com-ponent of manufacturing consent for war.”

He assessed U.S. media coverage earlier thismonth. On PBS’ NewsHour on Thursday, January2 with Ray Suarez as host, the lead story wasIraq. The guests were Patrick Lang, U.S. Armyand John Warden, U.S. Air Force. GeoffreyKemp, a war hawk and ex-Reagan NSC stafferjoined them. The discussion totally focused onstrategies and tactics.

“How many troops would be needed to do thejob? What would the bombing campaign looklike? And the inevitable, when will the warbegin? It’s kind of like placing bets on a bowl

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game. Suarez, formally of NPR’s ‘Talk of theNation‚’ played the classic role of the unctuousand compliant questioner.

“There were no uncomfortable inquiries aboutthe U.N. weapons inspection process, casualtyfigures, international law, the U.N. Charter or thenotorious U.S. practice of double standards onSecurity Council resolutions. Instead, the pun-dits pontificated on troop deployments, carrierbattle groups and heavy infantry forces such asthe 3rd Mechanized Division,” Barsamian said.

This type of pro-Pentagon punditry alsoinforms the reporting in major U.S. newspapers,says Mathew Engel, a Guardian reporter basedin Washington who notes that military leaks areoften not accurate. “Most of these stories, whichlook like impressive scoops at first glimpse, actu-ally come from officials using the press to per-form on-message spin. Whatever the category,the papers lap this up, even when it is obviousnonsense, a practice that reached its apogee lastyear when palpably absurd plans for the invasionof Iraq emerged, allegedly from inside the Pen-tagon, on to The New York Times’ front page.”

“It’s a very cynical game,” says Eric Umansky,who reviews the papers for Slate.com. “Thereporters know these stories are nonsense andthey know they are being used. But it’s an exclu-sive. It’s an exclusive built on air, but CNN says‘according to The New York Times’, so thepaper’s happy, and it stays out there for a wholenews cycle. So what if it’s popcorn?”

“In the face of this,” Umansky continues, “onlyone White House reporter, Dana Milbank of thePost, regularly employs skepticism and irrever-ence in his coverage of the Bush Administration– he is said to dodge the threats because he isregarded as an especially engaging character. It

is more mysterious that only the tiniest handfulof liberal commentators ever manage to irritateanyone in the government: there is Paul Krug-man in The New York Times, Molly Ivins down inTexas and, after that, you have to scratch yourhead.”

Scratching your head won’t necessarily fill itwith the information you need to stay informed.That’s why news like that offered on Globalvi-sion News network or critiques like the onesoffered on Mediachannel.org are trying to fill thegrowing gap between news and truth ●

THE MEDIA WAR AND THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENTNEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 2003 – In the run upto the massive February 15th protest in NewYork, a group of media activists proposed to theorganizers of the anti-war rally that the head-quarters of media organizations also be tar-geted, since it was likely that not all who wantedto join could do so. They suggested that all thatopposition energy be channeled against the com-panies that, more often than not, are misinform-ing the American people about the issues.

The small group, calling itself “The Informa-tion Liberation Front,” an offshoot of the IndyMedia movement, argued that the movement’sgoal should not only be to get a few seconds ofepisodic airtime for an event – but also to pres-sure media outlets to offer more balanced cover-age all the time.

Their argument is that media is not a sideissue, but a central one. Most activists acknowl-edge the problem, but do little about it. They

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seem to want to be in the media more than theyseem to be concerned with transforming it. Oneorganizer, who like many militants uses a nomde guerre, “War Cry,” makes this complaint:“Going to empty government buildings like theU.N. and City Hall is a waste of time – sort of ahollow symbolic gesture. But going to theMEDIA and DEMANDING a national platform isNOT symbolic. It might be worthwhile both interms of opposing the war effectively by gettingthe public support we need, and asserting ourbasic rights of freedom of speech and assembly.(Rapidly eroding rights I might add).”

Protest organizers, understandably caught upin testy negotiations with police, city officials andmembers of their own coalitions jockeying forplatform time, were unwilling to entertain amore multi-dimensional approach. They werebent on orchestrating the one big photo op –showing sizable and significant protest.

Undeterred, the Information Liberation Fronttried to mount a side protest anyway. CNN wasthe target. The police proved less receptive thanthe mainstream-oriented movement. An intra-First Amendment conflict resulted, with copsdefending CNN’s “freedom” of the press overprotesters’ freedom of speech.

Here’s what they say happened: “A few dozenpeople showed up with signs at CNN HQ in NYC.However the cops managed to cut off a contin-gent headed to CNN and detained them (basedon what we don’t know) until people had dis-persed from CNN to join the larger marches.Also, the ILF had received a last minute emailfrom UFPJ saying that CNN was going to coverthe rally and that we should not antagonizethem. They said our protest was only organizedin a week and a half time, and that’s not enough

time to do adequate outreach and build orexpress the kind of pressure it takes to makecorporate giants acknowledge our demands.”

Within this conflict are the seeds of a largerchallenge. Should protest movements adapt apassive hands-off attitude towards media institu-tions in hopes of getting coverage?

The ILF people think this strategy aimed atgetting on some show here or there is fated tofail. Cries War Cry: “After witnessing F15 andsubsequent corporate media coverage (TV andprint), it’s clear that most of it was superficialand not in depth about the issues we were outthere for. When they didn’t ignore us, they eitherdistorted our numbers and/or downplayed ourintelligence (almost never saw an interview ormeaningful soundbite from a protester), how-ever, this is not surprising.”

A protest against CNN does not a strategyagainst media myopia make. Clearly media playsa central role in defining issues and the politicalenvironment. This point was made in The NewYork Times, which ought to know, by Paul Krug-man who explained that the massive Europeanrejection of U.S. policy occurred in part becauseof a supportive media there, while our mediadownplays and undercuts opposition.

Krugman approvingly cited The Nation colum-nist Eric Alterman’s new book, “What LiberalMedia?” to argue, yes, it is the media, stupid,writing, “At least compared with their foreigncounterparts, the liberal‚ U.S. media are strik-ingly conservative and in this case hawkish. . .For months both major U.S. cable news networkshave acted as if the decision to invade Iraq hasalready been made, and have in effect seen it astheir job to prepare the American public for thecoming war.”

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This is an issue that protest movements ignoreat their peril. While a Nation editor may pop upon a talk show, usually “balanced” by a bullyingneo-con and conservative anchor, most of thenews and analysis that shapes the activistagenda is not reaching the mass audience. Is thisnot a political challenge?

Putting anti-war ads on TV is important butinsufficient. We need to sharpen our own under-standing of the way media works and doesn’t.How can we believe that government will beresponsive to pressure, protest and lobbying butthat the media isn’t? The far right targeted theso-called liberal media and took it over. Pressureworks. It’s time to press the press to make mediacoverage an issue, not just a complaint to cryabout. ●

MARCH 10: HOW TO KEEPTHE MEDIA ON MESSAGE IMAGINE the scenario. It is Saturday night at theState Department and more is stirring than a fewmice. The Sunday New York Times has arrived.In it, that newspaper’s first editorial against thewar. “If it comes down to a question of yes or noto invasion without broad international support,our answer is no. Even though Hans Blix, thechief weapons inspector, said that Saddam Hus-sein was not in complete compliance with UnitedNations orders to disarm, the report of theinspectors on Friday was generally devastatingto the American position.”

You can just hear one of their media spinnersexclaim: “We are losing New York!” As they ram-bled through the Op-ed page, it got worse. Jimmy

Carter, our other Born-Again President, says thewar will not be just. Tom Friedman seems to besliding into the anti-war camp since no one inpower seems to be listening to his complaintsthat “We” will need international support torebuild Iraq, so let’s not piss off the whole world.And the coup de grace: Maureen Dowd callsBush “The Xanax” President, commenting on hiss-l-o-w performance last week at that WhiteHouse press conference that seemed to suggesthe was on drugs. She came right out and said itwhile others spoke of his sedate manner.“Sedated” was her conclusion.

Orchestrating a story

WHAT to do? Since the propaganda war is asimportant as the real war in the wings, theywould have to find something to keep theiragenda as the main frame of the debate. Theyneeded to find something to give Secretary ofState Powell a “smoking gun” to reveal/expose,and to take the offensive during the Sunday TVtalk shows – on which he seems to have becomea permanent fixture. And sure enough, there itwas on page 169 of a 176 U.N. inspector’s technicalreport. Iraq may have rockets suitable for deliv-ering chemical or biological weapons.

Gotcha

On Sunday, on Fox, the homeland network, Pow-ell cited the existence of drone aircraft that couldunleash black rain on our boys. He hinted atwhat was to come: “That’s the kind of thing we’regoing to be making some news about in thecourse of the week,” he said. “And there areother things that have been found that I think

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more can be made of.” Underscore the thought:“MORE CAN BE MADE OF.”

The big leak

FAST forward, to Fox News this morning. Themessage of the day: Blast Blix for covering thisup. It is on all the networks, too. And The NewYork Times. Take that, Howell Raines. Theadministration leaked the story to The Times toundercut the editorial direction of the paper.And where did The Times play it? Why, pageone, of course. It is today’s BIG story:

“U.S. Says Iraq Retools Rockets for Illicit Uses” By John Cushman with Steven R Weisman “Weapons inspectors recently discovered

rockets configured to disperse chemical or bio-logical agents, U.S. officials say . . . ”

Check the source.Note the reference to the U.S. recently discov-

ering the issue. That was not played up on theTV channels that reported Washington’s claimsas fact. Actually The Times story traces this“new” disclosure back to 1996. But, never mind.The fact is that this story, played up by all the TVchannels, is another item of which “more can bemade.” It is an allegation from officialdom, notsome revelation that Times reporters investi-gated on their own. No inspectors are quoted inthe story. Not one Washington official is cited.And all sources are unnamed.

More telling, there is no reference in the arti-cle to the report last week that DISCOUNTED,challenged and debunked earlier U.S. claimsabout aluminum tubes, magnets and uraniumfrom Africa. That latter issue was, it wasrevealed, based on phony documents.

So here you have it, the newspaper of record,

out to prove its impartiality, prominently report-ing a claim by only one side in the world debate– on the pro-war side – with no skepticism orcontext that would help readers evaluate itscredibility.

Remembering the Pentagon Papers

THIS is how the propaganda war is fought. Onebombshell after another that later proves bogus.If you wanted some background on all of this, allyou had to do was to watch the excellent TVmovie on Daniel Ellsberg and the PentagonPapers that aired on, of all places, FX, one of Mr.Murdoch’s channels. (Did you know he wascalled “Red Rupert” back in his college dayswhen he kept a bust of Lenin next to his bed?Honest!) Anyway, the film explained how thePentagon Papers, a secret history of the VietnamWar, showed how the public was being told onething about the war, while the President wasbeing told the truth. And this took place duringFOUR administrations – Republican and Democ-ratic.

Ellsberg was pictured as a hawk who became adove when he discovered the truth and felt hehad a duty to inform the public. It was powerfultelevision and timely. Its finale reminded us ofthe Supreme Court decision that affirmed thepress could publish documents like these. Thatwas The New York Times’s finest hour. I wish theeditors of The Times had read their paper’s ownpositive review and watched it before they gaveover their front page again to the claims of anadministration lacking in all credibility in mat-ters involving “evidence.”

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Unofficial leaker in trouble

MEANWHILE, in England, another PentagonPapers case may be brewing. You will recall thatObserver article a week back that exposed U.S.spying on members of the Security Council. (U.S.buying of Security Council members is far moreopen.)

At the time, few U.S. newspapers picked it upand White House spokesman Ari Fleischerdeclined to comment on it. It was DOA , as far asmost U.S. news outlets were concerned. TheWashington Times challenged its authenticity, asdid Matt Drudge. Well now, Ed Vulliamy, one ofthe reporters who broke the story, tells us:

“This is to inform you that there has just beenan arrest at the British Government’s Communi-cations Headquarters (GCHQ – equivalent of theNSA) in connection with the leak of the memo. Ifcharges are made, they will be serious – Britainis far more severe in these matters than the U.S.(So far!).

“They could result in a major trial and a longprison sentence for the alleged mole. It is also acriminal offence to receive such information inBritain (some of you may recall the ‘ABC’ trial ofthe 1970s), and this may also become an issue ofpress freedom. The authors of the piece will defyany attempt by the government to discuss oursources.

“It is important that maximum international –as well as domestic British – pressure bebrought to bear on the Blair government overthis impending case, the prosecution of whichwill inevitably have a political agenda, and toprotect this prospective defendant all we can.Pleading motive will be impossible becausethere is no defense of justification in Britain.”

That U.N. vote

MEANWHILE, all the media is buzzing withreports that Washington wants the SecurityCouncil to vote tomorrow on the new resolutionthat would sanction war after St. Patrick’s Day.The Times speaks of “urgent diplomacy” andsays it has so far failed. What is “urgent diplo-macy”? It seems that translates into moneychanging hands, with promises of new U.S. Aidprojects to come. The U.S. may succeed in turn-ing the votes of many nations who want to be onthe side of a winner.

“It is a good time to be a Ghanaian,” said JoeKlein on ABC yesterday morning, apparently notknowing the difference between Ghana andGuinea unless I heard him wrong. CNN reportedthat French President Jacques Chirac and Ger-man Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder might flyover to cast their countries votes personally. WillBush? Times agit-propster Maureen Dowd’s“Xanax Cowboy” might show up, too. CNN alsosaid that we will we see which cards fall where, adirect steal of President Bush’s language whichcompared the Security Council’s deliberations toa card game. Interesting how a presidentialmetaphor quickly finds its way into ‘objective’news language.

As for the President’s presence at the U.N., hemay like the showdown aspects of it, and see it asa new chance to grandstand. We will see. TheDaily Mirror in Britain tells us about anotherrecent invite that the Commander-in-Chiefturned down:

“George Bush pulled out of a speech to theEuropean Parliament when MEPs wouldn’t guar-antee a standing ovation.

“Senior White House officials said the Presi-

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dent would only go to Strasbourg to talk aboutIraq if he had a stage-managed welcome.

“A source close to negotiations said last night:“President Bush agreed to a speech but insistedhe get a standing ovation like at the State of theUnion address.

“His people also insisted there were noprotests, or heckling” since reception of U.S. warplans is worsening fast – this won’t help.”

Where are the humanitarian aid supplies?

TO its credit, CNN did feature a report fromKuwait by Richard Blystone, who spoke of thehumanitarian disaster that is predicted to followthe war. He interviewed a U.S. official who waf-fled on whether humanitarian supplies havebeen shipped in the high-priority way thebombers have been shipped. He gave the distinctimpression they had not. The Mail and Guardianof South Africa also takes up this question, not-ing, “With a war against Iraq perhaps days away,the world’s richest governments have given theUnited Nations barely a quarter of the funds itsagencies have asked for to deal with theexpected humanitarian catastrophe.”

Can the U.N. still do anything to stop the war?

WHY, I wonder is a U.S declared war not consid-ered a violation of the U.N. charter? WriterJeremy Brecher has done some research andbelieves there is one possibility left: “If the U.S.attacks Iraq without support of the U.N. SecurityCouncil, will the world be powerless to stop it?The answer is no. Under a procedure called

“Uniting for Peace,” the U.N. General Assemblycan demand an immediate cease-fire and with-drawal. The global peace movement should con-sider demanding such an action. Resolution 377provides that, if there is a threat to peace, breachof the peace, or act of aggression and the per-manent members of the Security Council do notagree on action, the General Assembly can meetimmediately and recommend collective meas-ures to U.N. members to maintain or restoreinternational peace and security.” ●

MARCH 11: KEEPING THE CARDS BELOW THE TABLE THE White House blinked, at least for theminute. All last week, we were hearing how theU.N. Security Council had to vote on the new res-olution giving Saddam until the day of the lep-rechauns to get out of Dodge. Show your cards,said the President with a sedated but unmovableresolve at what passed for a press conference. Inthe media echo chamber at TIME, an old friend,Joe Klein, all but cheered him on:

“George W. Bush abandoned his studied air ofmild sedation only once during his prime-timepress conference last week. His eyes lighted upwhen he was asked if he would call for anotherU.N. vote on Iraq. A poker metaphor escapedfrom his Inner Cowboy. ‘It’s time for people toshow their cards,’ he said, as if he actuallyenjoyed the prospect of a confrontation withFrance, Russia and the others. The tactic wasunexpected; the belligerence, revealing.”

You heard Colin Powell say that today is theday, the moment of truth, during the showdown

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at Turtle Bay. Win or lose, the President hadcalled the bets – until, sometime yesterday,when the mother of all votes was surprisinglyPOSTPONED, not because of rain, but becauseRussia has joined France in vowing to veto. Theadministration took a small step backwards.Why? What happened?

Daddy to Junior: Don’t Diss the U.N.

FIRST, it appears as if Daddy Bush has weighedin with a strong recommendation that the admin-istration do all it can to rally the U.N. (Even asthe polls and the press keep lambasting the insti-tution.) “More Americans now faulting U.N. onIraq, Poll Finds,” reports The New York Timeson its front page. There is no suggestion in thearticle that all the U.N. bashing on TV mighthave anything to do with this shift in public opin-ion. For that matter, next to that article wasanother: “US SAYS UN COULD REPEATERRORS OF 90s.” The U.N. has become the lat-est target for Bush supporters to beat up on, withanalysts like George Will and his crowd labelingthe international organization a bad idea andcalling for its demise.

These nattering nabobs of anti-U.N. negativity,to borrow a Spiro Agnew-ism, are of course dis-tressed whenever the U.S. cannot bully or bribeits way into a hegemonic role. The lack of mediaattention for the U.N. contributes to misconcep-tions, which led the ultra-paranoid right to fear“black helicopters” from the U.N. invadingAmerica. A report by Media Tenor, published inmy book, “Media Wars” showed that the majormedia largely ignore U.N. activities, except whenit is politically advantageous not to.

Militainment: What’s next?

IT may be that war is not quite ready to roll yet.I am hearing from informed sources close tosomeone high up in the network news hierarchy,who is privy to informed sources, (how’s that forpretty typical sourcing?) that our militarymavens are expressing fears that their “E-BOMB” – designed to knock out all communica-tions – is not up to par. But beyond that, in thisage of Millitainment, the set is not ready yet. Theset, you ask? Yes, the set is being built, as theNew York Post reported today:

“March 11, 2003 – CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar– The Pentagon has enlisted Hollywood to pres-ent its daily briefings to the world.

“Fresh from the latest Michael Douglas film,one of Tinsel town’s top art directors has beenhired to create a $200,000 set for Gen. TommyFranks and other U.S. commanders to give dailyupdates.

“George Allison, 43, who has designed WhiteHouse backdrops for President Bush and workedwith the illusionist David Blaine, has been flowninto the U.S. Central Command base in Qatar aspart of a reputed $1 million conversion of a stor-age hangar into a high-tech hub for the interna-tional media. Allison’s credits include the set for“Good Morning America,” as well as Hollywoodproductions for MGM and Disney, such as theKirk and Michael Douglas film, “It Runs in theFamily,” due to be released next month.

“His work in Qatar reflects the Pentagon’srealization that it needs to look good on prime-time television. Gone are the easel and chart,solitary television and VCR machine with whichGen. Norman Schwarzkopf showed fuzzy imagesof smart-bomb raids during the 1991 Gulf War.”

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The media is the illusion

I LOVE the reference to illusionists, don’t you?That is because the idea of a real press corps isitself becoming an illusion. Columnist James O.Goldsborough writes about the media ABDICAT-ING its role in the pages of The San Diego Union-Tribune, once one of the most conservativenewspapers in America. Why is the public buy-ing the war? His answer:

“I think the media deserve most of the blame.Bush officials have explained in detail their rea-sons for war, and the media have not sufficientlychallenged those reasons. They are endorsingBush’s war by default. The public is confusedbecause its gut feeling is that the government/media reasoning doesn’t add up.

“Television is Bush’s ally in war because it is avisual medium. It shows pretty pictures of shipssailing, flags waving, troops landing. Televisionloves Bush photo-ops and shrugs off anti-warprotests. C-SPAN and PBS alone present fair pic-tures because they don’t depend on advertising.

“Unlike television, newspapers are not a pic-ture show. Unlike television, newspapers haveeditorial and opinion pages whose job it is toanalyze, endorse or refute official policy. Thesepages have ties to their communities, not tosome multinational news machine in New Jersey.Reporters report what Bush and Donald Rums-feld say or do, but the job of opinion pages is crit-ical analysis. Short of that, we are useless.”

In a nation bitterly divided, this editorialenthusiasm for Bush’s war amounts to profes-sional crime. The media, led by cable television(which wasn’t there) has forgotten the lessons ofVietnam. Soon we will be remembering thewords of Tacitus, referring to the Romans: “They

make a desert and call it peace.”

Missing in action

THAT is the first time I have seen a leading jour-nalist call his colleagues criminal. Peter Bart ofVariety offers his own spin, using a militarymetaphor. He asks, “Are journalists missing inaction? Where is that magic mix of interpretivejournalism that lends both vitality and credibilityto a free press?

“Ask working journalists about all this andthey’ll explain their woes in reporting on thepresidency. TV newsmen tell you the numberscrunchers have eviscerated their staffs. Somealso hint there’s been a subtle shift to the rightas a result of the ascension of Fox News. Maga-zine writers complain about corporate con-straints at a time when ad revenues are plung-ing. The right is very well organized, they say,and not inhibited about complaining.

“Probably there’s a germ of truth in all theseexplanations. The bottom line, however, is thatjournalists already seem to be missing in action.And the war hasn’t even started yet.

Blair blows it

“WITH journalists out there hyping the build upor in there cozying up to the powerful,” he con-tinues, “politicians continue to try to use thepress. Our own correspondent Garry Nash sendsthis report along from London. Sometimes eventhe best plans backfire:

“On prime time TV, and still smarting fromone of his Cabinet, Clare Short, naming himreckless over his new Iraqi war, Prime MinisterBlair faced thirty Iraqi and British women,

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including Gulf War veterans and two who hadlost sons in 9/11, and tried to convert even one ofthem to his view. He failed dismally. After nearlyan hour of frustration from his audience, the endarrived and clapping began. Mr. Blair’s noblebrow began to rise but lowered immediately. Itwas a slow handclap from about ten of thewomen, while the rest remained stonily silent.

“A reprise clip played on the 22.00 ITV mainnetwork news immediately after, was suddenlycut short – and apologized for by the newsanchor. WHY? Well, some editor had made amistake. Over cut clips of the women’s faces onephrase was repeated ad nauseam. It was Mr.Blair’s own voice – and his repetitive phraseduring the entire confrontation, “I am workingflat out for a second resolution . . . I am workingflat out for a second resolution . . . ”

Axis of Evil Film Fest

SEARCHING for other perspectives, some stu-dents at Duke University are studying filmsmade by the other side. The New York Post callsthis “the cinematic cream of the Axis of Evil.”

“Reel Evil,” a film festival that runs into nextmonth, is featuring movies from Iraq, Iran andNorth Korea, as well as from a trio of countriesdesignated by the State Department as “roguestates” – Cuba, Libya and Syria.

“Organizers said they wanted to provideinsight into a world sharply different from Amer-ica’s.

“We know how Bush sees ‘the Axis of Evil,’”said Professor Negar Mottahedeh, the series’ co-curator. “How does someone from the Axis seeeveryday life? The screening drew a lot of mediaattention and both positive and negative e-mails

– but no protests, he said. “But the next screening, of the 1985 North

Korean film “Pulgasari,” could be the biggestdraw. It was produced by Dictator Kim Jong II,who kidnapped a South Korean director to filmthe tale of a metal-eating monster who helps anarmy of farmers overcome a tyrannical king.

Funny, just last night, I was talking with someItalian filmmakers about why a science fictionfilm might be the best way to capture the crazi-ness in U.S. culture. They smiled and agreed.Maybe North Korea’s “Dear Leader” is availableto direct it.

Is PBS sanitizing a new series on war and peace?

GETTING hard-hitting programming on the air inthe U.S. is getting harder by the moment. I havebeen chatting with Chris Koch, a veteran jour-nalist and filmmaker. He found himself abruptlyfired as the executive producer of a TV docu-mentary series on weapons of mass destructionproduced by Ted Turner’s company for WETA,the PBS station in Washington, D.C. He saysWETA has taken over the film and is sanitizing itand softening its content.

Chris was understandably perplexed and tornup about this one more sign of how PBS is notimmune to the tendency to ‘KISS,’ keep it simpleand stupid. By the way, his background is impres-sive. He was executive producer of NPR’s nightlynews program, “All Things Considered,” andwon many awards, including a Peabody, theOverseas Press Club’s Edward R. MurrowAward, a Cable Ace and five national Emmys. Hesent me a copy of a letter he has sent to TedTurner – who is unlikely to intervene. It points

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to the problems facing journalists who want toget edgier stories on the air.

“A statement prepared by WETA-TV and SafeWorld Productions praised me for the work I haddone to date, then said: As the production pro-gressed, particularly in light of changing worldevents, we felt we needed to install a new teamto bring the project to completion. Frank Sesnoand Chris Guarino are respected news produc-ers and journalists.

“Less than an hour after I was fired, MarleneAdler, Walter Cronkite’s personal assistant,called me. Mr. Cronkite wanted to speak to me. Iexplained that I’d been fired. Adler was shocked.Mr. Cronkite wanted to tell you himself howmuch he liked the scripts. He didn’t even feel theneed to have his own editorial review. It has beenmy experience that the person delivering thewords on camera is usually the most criticalbecause it is their [sic] reputation and face thatis out there,” Koch said.

Amy Goodman charms the WashPost

MEANWHILE, in the center of U.S. power, theWashington Post, accused of boosting the warwhile ignoring critics, has discovered Amy Good-man and the Democracy Now! show on Pacificaand other stations. Michael Powell writes:

“Its politics can veer toward communion for theprogressive choir. But in this age of corporatemedia conglomeration, when National PublicRadio sounds as safe as a glass of warm milk, Dem-ocracy Now! retains a jagged and intriguing edge.

“Goodman is the show’s center, a slight 45-year-old in a pullover vest, jeans and sneakers.Her unruly brown hair is streaked with gray. Shecan break out a playful smile, and punctuate an

interview by opening a hatch in her office floorand sliding down a fire pole to the floor below.

“More often, though, her intensity burnsthrough. Her eye sockets look a bit hollowed out.It’s hard to leave phone messages for herbecause her voice mail keeps filling up.

“She doesn’t say ‘no’ very well,” says MichaelRatner, a friend and an attorney and president ofthe Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Sleep? Her friend, Elizabeth Benjamin, headof the Legal Aid Society’s Health Law Unit,chuckles. “I wish she got more of it. Amy has somuch passion to right the wrongs of the world.”

Perle calls Hersh a terrorist

WHAT happens to reporters who don’t buy theadministration position line hook and sinker?They get called terrorists. This shocking emailfrom Kathy Sampson of Cambridge, Mass.,deserves to be printed in full.

“I am writing to you to inform you of an eventthat is deeply disturbing and frightening. Yester-day on Late Edition on CNN, Wolf Blitzer askedRichard Perle what he thought of an article writ-ten by Seymour Hersh in the 17 March issue ofThe New Yorker magazine. According to Mr.Blitzer, Mr. Hersh explores the question ofwhether Mr. Perle may have a conflict of interestdue to his role with the administration and hisinvestments in Homeland Security-related com-panies. Mr. Perle then stated that Mr. Hersh isthe closest thing American journalism has to aterrorist.

“Mr. Blitzer seemed quite surprised at thisresponse and asked, “Why do you say that? Aterrorist?

“Mr. Perle: Because he’s widely irresponsible.”

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“Mr. Blitzer asked, “But I don’t understand.Why do you accuse him of being a terrorist?

“Perle: Because he sets out to do damage andhe will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever dis-tortion he can – look, he hasn’t written a seriouspiece since Maylie (sic)”. (DS: This may be refer-ence to the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam thatHersh reported. He had to use a small news serv-ice to distribute it because most newspapersrefused to print it. ●

THE MEDIA WAR MIRRORS THE COMING WAR THE juxtaposition of stories on the front page ofThe New York Times captures a fault line inAmerican politics. On one side of the page, thereis a report on Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Peace prizeaddress with his call to avert war. Two columnsto the right, there’s the report that the BushAdministration will “respond with all of ouroptions to any use of weapons of mass destruc-tion aimed at soldiers in the U.S.-organized coali-tion.” That sentiment, downplayed for elite read-ers, was translated for the masses by RupertMurdoch’s New York Post as “We’ll Nuke You.”

The conflict within the American media is mir-roring the larger conflict in the world as opinionpolarizes and positions harden. Anti-war organ-izers have placed three full-page ads in The NewYork Times to promote support for a multi-lat-eral diplomatic solution, not pre-emptive strikes.Over a hundred Hollywood celebrities havesigned on to one such call. The groups placingthe ads say that paying for pricey ads is the onlyway to get heard in a media system filled with

programs structured around “showdowns” and“countdowns” with Iraq. Many say the media ispreparing the public for war. Conservatives chal-lenge that, saying that President Bush is alreadydoing what they want, even if the tone of theadministration’s rhetoric seems extreme.

That may be because the U.N. Security Coun-cil seems to be stage managed by the U.S. StateDepartment. Secretary General Annan, for one,has just mildly criticized a U.S. decision to con-trol the distribution to council members of Iraq’sweapons declaration document and only share itwith fellow big powers. At the same time, one ofthe potentially juiciest disclosures in the docu-ment dealing with which nations supplied Iraqwith weapons making material is not beingreleased – ostensibly because the weaponsinspectors may need the data.

Earlier reports naming names seems to havedisappeared down the media memory hole. Forexample, last September’s report in Glasgow’sSunday Herald by Neil Mackay and FelicityArbuthnot asked, “How did Iraq get its weapons?”Their answer “ We sold them.” Their conclusion:

“The U.S. and Britain sold Saddam Hussein thetechnology and materials Iraq needed to developnuclear, chemical and biological weapons ofmass destruction.

“Reports by the U.S. Senate’s committee onbanking, housing and urban affairs – whichoversees American exports policy – reveal thatthe U.S., under the successive administrations ofRonald Reagan and George Bush Sr., sold mate-rials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nilefever germs and botulism to Iraq right up untilMarch 1992, as well as germs similar to tubercu-losis and pneumonia. Other bacteria soldincluded brucella melitensis, which damages

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major organs, and clostridium perfringens,which causes gas gangrene.”

Also missing in many news accounts world-wide is any analysis about the motives for thewar. Mainstream journalists and more radicalcritics seem to agree that there is more at playthan meets the eye. Rolling Stone magazinegathered a group of top journalists and policymakers to kick this question around. Among theparticipants was veteran journalist, YoussefIbrahim of The New York Times.

He says: “In my 30 years covering the MiddleEast for The Wall Street Journal and the N.Y.Times, I have not seen a bigger group of imbe-ciles than the current administration in theWhite House . . .Our war on terrorism has beena miserable failure. . .The moment we distractourselves with Iraq, al Qaeda will see its goldenmoment has arrived.”

Like many critics, he opines that oil andenergy strategies are what is behind the ratchet-ing up of war talk. Already Iraq’s Tariq Aziz iscontending that “region change, not regimechange” is what is motivating U.S. strategists.Says the well-informed Ibrahim: “I firmly believeour oil interests are driving this war. . .Their atti-tude [people in the Administration] is: This is ourbig chance to make Iraq into a pumping stationfor America.”

On the other hand, a radical critic, who youwould expect to have a similar economic-cen-tered analysis, has a more political one. Authorand anti-war icon Noam Chomsky told the BBCearlier today, that the current war fever is anextension of the policy established during theReagan Administration (whose members nowhold key posts in the second Bush Administra-tion). He believes they push international con-

flicts to distract the American public from thenegative things happening inside the UnitedStates.

Whatever the motive – and there could bemany – most of the U.S. media may be the lastplace to turn to learn about them. ●

MARCH 12: PARTYING WITH MSNBC.COM FIRST there were the chads of Florida. And nowthere is the Chad of CNN, the early morninghappy-talk weather-wonder, telling us about heatrising in the deserts awaiting devastation, with aforecast for Baghdad and Basra and the rest ofthe neighborhood. He warned New Yorkers likeme that it would reach the 50s today, beforesnows hit tomorrow. This is how it’s been – sharpups-and-downs, expected U.N. votes demandedwith great sanctimony and righteousnessallowed to slip slide away.

This ying-yanging weather mirrors the volatil-ity of the times. Just look at Tony Blair, alreadyreeling from the defection of most of his countryfrom policies that inspire websites like Poodleoc-ity.com. He finds himself under attack frommotor-mouth Donald Rumsfeld who dissed theidea of British troops on the front line. TheBritish Parliament will be asking its PM somequestions about that any minute now, as Rummymounts a rhetorical retreat.

Bomb away

MEANWHILE, Bush has had to back down for afew days, even as his military shows off the new

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“mother of all bombs,” the 2,500-pound MOABthat is being called operation “Desert Stun.” Thisis the closest thing the Pentagon has to a non-nuclear nuclear bomb. It even leaves its ownmushroom cloud for effect, and threatens massdestruction with the power to flatten everythingin its path for one mile around its epicenter.Including people. The New York Post sings itspraises this morning. It is being used as aweapon of intimidation before it sees action.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the BBC’s John Simpsonwas asked about Iraqi soldiers expected to sur-render to get out of the way of the onslaught ofwhat’s to come. Simpson who covered Gulf WarI reminded his viewers that many Iraq soldierswere mowed down by U.S. troops as they tried togive up. He called it a “tragedy.” He expressedthe hope that it won’t happen again. File thisaway for future reference.

As for the U.N., The New York Times reports:“The White House also said President Bushwould force a vote by the end of the week on anAmerican-backed resolution.” Over on Fox, wehad the assurance this morning that the U.S. hadevery right to do whatever it will in Iraq, and thatthe law was with us. Da Judge, who started as aguest on the News Channel, may soon be tradedto Comedy Central, as he mocks internationallaw and cites as the rationale for attack, the stan-dard of self-defense. And never mind, he adds, anation doesn’t have to be attacked to defenditself. It can act before such an attack occurs.Never mind that there has been not even athreat of such an attack or any serious evidencelinking Saddam to the attacks of 9/11.

Finally, but perhaps\ too late, Kofi Annan isspeaking up in defense of the U.N. and its char-ter – which has all but been ignored. (The argu-

ment is that the Gulf War resolution of 1991 is stillin effect and permits U.S. unilateral action.Huh?). Annan is saying if the Security Councilfails to come to an agreement, “and action istaken without the authority of the SecurityCouncil, the legitimacy and support for any suchaction would be seriously impaired.”

As I pondered all the talk of the Council andthe hostility being directed towards France forthreatening a veto, (You know, French fries to bereplaced by “freedom fries,” even as the frieswere always of Belgian origin, never French, butno matter) I flashed back to an earlier momentfrom the annals of that august body in light of allthe denunications of threatened vetoes that floutthe majority’s supposed desires. The year was1988, and the Security Council was debating sanc-tions against South Africa. Ten members votedyea, a few abstained but two vetoed. At a timewhen the people of South Africa were being ter-rorized by the thugs upholding apartheid, TheU.S. and Great Britain cast vetoes. The U.S. dele-gate said sanctions would hurt the people theywere intended to help. Ah, what we forget inthese United States of Amnesia. Have you seenthis referenced anywhere on TV?

Under assault

FORGET facts. America is under ideologicalassault from within, from the Fog machine andthe whole echo chamber that resonates with thesame arguments around the clock, 24 hours aday, just shoveling it out, with know-it-all pretty-boy anchors and sarcastic mini-skirted blondesand military experts and selective polls. I am lessupset about Fox, which has repackaged Murdo-chitis while hiding behind a claim of “real jour-

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nalism.” The problem is that absent a real alter-native; the rest of the media essentially adoptsedits Fox’s worldview, even if it does cool downsome of rhetoric and arrogance.

At the center of it all are a group of smartmedia strategists led by Roger Ailes, loyal ser-vant of Republican politics, and aided and abet-ted by the neo-con intellectuals led by WilliamKristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, Rupert’sloss leader into influence and power in Washing-ton. Some of the left websites spend timedenouncing them, but most of these critics arenot trying to come up with competitors or sup-port alternatives. They see them as fools notfanatics who must be taken seriously. Example:

“Who are these idiots? From talk radio andright-wing chatter to national policy – anti-U.N.,unilateral, finger in your eye foreign policy –aggressive military – and see what we have – thecountry weaker not stronger, poorer not richer,more despised, more fractured, GREAT WORKGUYS! We have found the Homebase, the nest ofvipers of the Brilliant Fools who have made a newrecord – never have so few done so much damageto so many so quickly – Fox News Channel analystWilliam Kristol is the center of the ring of evil.”

Evil is no faceless stranger

THINKING about evil, may I share this versefrom the “Book of Counted Sorrows? I like it bet-ter than the rhetoric of denigration.

“Evil is no faceless stranger Living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.” ●

MARCH 13: MESSIAHS AND MORE MEDIA MISHIGAS TONY BLAIR was defiant yesterday in Parlia-ment. I watched some of his Question Time inParliament on CSPAN last night. It seemed thathis supporters were lined up in advance to pitchsoftballs that he could hit out of the proverbialpark. His new proposal, with its cheeky “bench-marks” was rejected by Iraq, which called it apretext for war, by the U.S., which said nothing,and by France, which called it a non-starter. Sowe are back to square one, except for one devel-opment.

It seems that the U.S. full court press hasground down resistance from more members ofthe Security Council who have been bribed andbullied for weeks. Some have apparently capitu-lated, but not enough to give the U.S. the nine outof the 15 votes it demands. My hunch is that sev-eral presidents in other countries have agreed togive the U.S. anything it wants as long as theydon’t have to take another phone call from Pres-ident Bush. When newscasters say he is “work-ing the phones,” I can’t help wondering what itwould be like to be on the other side of one ofthose Saddam-is-evil rants. How much could youtake?

The final daze

AS for the religious not so subtle subtext in all ofthis back and forth, Tarif Abboushi offers a viewon Counterpunch.org that takes seriously all thereligious mumbo jumbo that seems to be driving

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the jihad and its mirror image. “For Christian fundamentalists, the notion of

Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction isnot in and of itself an anathema; it’s the timingthat is bad. Armageddon can’t happen withoutforces of evil, presumably bearing nuclear arms,to fight the forces of good. But scripture dictatesthat the Jewish temple must first be rebuilt, andsince that hasn’t happened, it cannot be SaddamHussein, the incarnation-of-evil-du-jour, thatbears those arms. What better argument to dis-arm him? After the temple is built, then we willfind evil and arm it.

“For American empire-builders, the religiousfanatics can proselytize till the messiah comes orreturns; what matters today is less Deuteronomythan hegemony. American hegemony, as in con-trol of the Middle East’s oil and natural gasresources, and hence the world’s economy. Howbetter to get there than by turning Iraq, withproven oil reserves second only to Saudi Ara-bia’s, into the overseas address of the XVIII Air-borne Corps? Fort Braggdad has an irresistiblering to it.”

Legitimate fears?

THERE may be another wrinkle in why Britain isso gung-ho for a new resolution – which otherssee as not needed or irrelevant. TomDispatch.com, noticed a revealing paragraph buried deepin the bowels of the Washington Post:

“The Washington Post today in the penulti-mate paragraph – oh, those final paragraphs ofnews stories in the imperial press – of a pieceentitled “Bush Lobbies for Deal on Iraq,” offeredthis:

“British officials also expressed fresh concern

that failure to obtain a resolution authorizingwar against Iraq would expose them to potentialprosecution by a newly established InternationalCriminal Court with jurisdiction over warcrimes. Britain is a signatory to the treaty estab-lishing the tribunal, but the United States is not.Blair was advised by his attorney general lastOctober that military action to force ‘regimechange’ in Baghdad would violate internationallaw”

The death of TV news (again)

NOW let’s move into the media landscape. Ibegin today with some comments from AvWestin, a man who was a mentor to me and aboss I frequently quarreled with at ABC News.He ran 20/20 until the late Roone Arledgebecame convinced he was gunning for his job. Iwrote about what it was like to work for him inmy book, “The More You Watch the Less YouKnow.” When I knew him, he was a defender ofnetwork power. Today, he like many, has becomea critic. The Pioneer Press picked up a talk hegave to students in Minneapolis. Av says:

“I think we’re on the death spiral of TV news.Everywhere you look, the bottom line hastrumped [quality journalism]. The profit expec-tations of conglomerate news are such that ifyou’re running a local newsroom, the only wayyou’re going to meet your objectives is by goingdown-market and cutting staff. You look around,and you see men and women today runningnewsrooms who got all their training in the past10 years. They don’t know any other environ-ment. And as for great journalism, I seriouslydoubt either Mel Karamazin [president and COOof CBS’ parent company, Viacom] or Sumner

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Redstone [chairman, CEO, Viacom] have anyidea who Ed Murrow was.”

Av was also specific when asked about the per-formance of the White House press corps: “Since9/11, the press corps has allowed the administra-tion to wrap itself in the flag. The press, it seemsto me, has been watching the public opinion pollsalmost as much as the administration, whichexplains why it has taken quite a while for it toresume the kind of normal adversarial relation-ship, much less the kind that was rampant dur-ing the Clinton years and the Nixon years.”

Beat the press?

AV’S comments were mild compared to MattTaibbi’s analysis in New York Press. He writesabout the performance of the press at the eighthpress conference that Bush has held since takingoffice. (Clinton had 30 by the same time in hispresidency.)

“After watching George W. Bush’s press con-ference last Thursday night, I’m more convincedthan ever: The entire White House press corpsshould be herded into a cargo plane, flown to analtitude of 30,000 feet, and pushed out, kickingand screaming, over the North Atlantic.

“Any remaining staff at the Washingtonbureaus should be rounded up for summary jus-tice. The Russians used to use bakery trucks, biggray panel trucks marked “Bread” on the sides;victims would be rounded up in the middle of thenight and taken for one last ride through thedarkened streets.

“The war would almost be worth it just to seeWolf Blitzer pounding away at the inside of aPepperidge Farm truck, tearfully confessing andvowing to ‘take it all back.’

“The Bush press conference to me was like amini-Alamo for American journalism, a finalannouncement that the press no longer per-forms anything akin to a real function. Particu-larly revolting was the spectacle of the cream ofthe national press corps submitting politely tothe indignity of obviously pre-approved ques-tions, with Bush not even bothering to concealthat the affair was scripted.”

Perle is pissed

RICHARD PERLE says he will sue SeymourHersh and The New Yorker for the story thisweek reporting that Perle has business intereststhat conflict with his policy role. Perle also, it hasbeen revealed, is a director of Hollinger Interna-tional Inc., an investor in The New York Sun,which uncritically backs Ariel Sharon, andbaited anti-war marchers as traitors. As youwould expect, the paper also supports Perle’spolices. It broke the story of the lawsuit quotingPerle thusly:

“I intend to launch legal action in the UnitedKingdom. I’m talking to Queen’s Counsel rightnow, Mr. Perle, who chairs the Pentagon’sDefense Policy Board, a non-paying position, toldThe New York Sun last night. He said he is suingin Britain because it is easier to win such casesthere, where the burden on plaintiffs is muchless.”

Last weekend Perle went over the topdenouncing Sy Hersh as a terrorist during aninterview on CNN, as we have reported. Hersh,up at Harvard to get a prize for his work, criti-cized the Bush Administration, according to theHarvard Crimson: “It’s scary,” he said. “I wish Icould say something optimistic. I think this guy

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will do what he wants to do.” He said of the attor-ney general: “(John) Ashcroft seems to be con-fusing his personal definition of God with theConstitution. He’s the least knowledgeable andmost dangerous attorney general we’ve had.” Asfor his colleagues, he added: “I have never seenmy peers as frightened as they are now.”

On the brink

IF you watch American television, it feels likeNew Year’s Eve with clocks counting down theminutes before the big ball drops in TimesSquare. Only this time, the big ball is likely to bea big bomb and the target is Baghdad, but theanticipation, even excitement is the same. That isespecially so at the news networks that are plan-ning to share footage from Baghdad and, whomay push their top shows onto cable outlets toclear time for wall to wall coverage.

With threat levels escalated in the U.S., jour-nalists are feeling them in the field. The propa-ganda war has already moved into high gear. TheBush Administration strategy for managing newsand spinning perception is well in place withmore than 500 reporters embedded in militaryunits, with coverage restrictions to guide them.Their emphasis will be story telling, focusing onour soldiers. Human interest, not political inter-ests, is their focus.

Andrew Tyndall studied network news in theweek leading up the President’s Declaration ofWar. What did he find? “ABC’s Peter Jennings,who anchored from the Gulf region on threedays, told us that his network has almost 30reporters‚ up close and personal with U.S.troops: “These young men know there is tremen-dous pressure on them to do well – and in a

hurry. America expects them to win, even eas-ily,” Jennings said. The big story there was sand-storm season, the oldest enemy in the desert,blinding, disorienting, even painful, according toCBS‚ Lee Cowam, enough to peel off paint, grind-ing its way into machinery and weapons. Thewinds carry a mixture of chemicals, microbesand nutrients across oceans at a height of10,000ft, ABC’s Ned Potter explained: “If you seea very colorful sunset, thank the dust from a dis-tant desert,” Tyndall said of the networks‚ cover-age of the heat and dust.

There will be no dust in the Pentagon’s newmillion-dollar state of the art high-tech mediacenter, built to Hollywood specifications in Qatarso that Supreme Commander Tommy Frankscan be all that he can be. Trustworthy formermilitary officers are in place inside the networksto offer the kind of analysis the Pentagon wouldapprove of.

Elizabeth Jensen of the Los Angeles Timessays these TV generals are shaping news cover-age: “When a tip comes in, some of the ex-mili-tary men will get on the phone – in private, outof the open-desk chaos of a standard newsroom– to chase it down, calling sources, oftentimesold buddies, whom even the most-plugged in cor-respondents can’t reach. Gen. Barry McCaffreylikes his NBC job because it lets him maintaininfluence on policy, being able to speak to theseissues.”

Reporters have been warned to leave the Iraqicapital, guaranteeing there will be fewer eyes onthe shock and awe to come. The BBC’s veteranwar reporter Katie Aidie says she has been toldthat journalists operating on their own, the so-called unilaterals, are being warned the invadingarmy will target them.

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And what about Arab news outlets with theirown sources? They will be targeted, says mediawar expert, Harper’s Magazine publisher JohnMacArthur. He told Editor and Publisher hethinks Al-Jazeera, whose office was “acciden-tally” bombed in Kabul, Afghanistan, may facesimilar treatment in Iraq. MacArthur predictsAl-Jazeera will be “knocked out in the first 48hours, like what happened in Kabul.” He toldBarbara Bedway: “The Pentagon is expecting akind of Panama-style war, over in three days.Nobody has time to see or ask any questions. Ithink if embedded reporters see anything impor-tant – or bloody – the Pentagon will interfere.Same result, different tactic: the truth gets dis-torted.”

But that’s not all. Network news managershave effectively accepted the administration’srationale for war. Its pundits and experts tend tofunction as cheerleaders with few dissentingvoices given voice.

A study by FAIR, the media watchdog group,found that anti-war views were conspicuous bytheir absence: “Looking at two weeks of cover-age (1/30/03 to 2/12/03), FAIR examined the 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly newsstories about Iraq on ABC World News Tonight,CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS’sNewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

“The study began one week before and endedone week after Secretary of State Colin Powell’sFeb. 5 presentation at the U.N., a time that sawparticularly intense debate about the idea of awar against Iraq on the national and interna-tional level.

“More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of theguests featured were from the United States. Ofthe U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were

either current or former government or militaryofficials. Only one of the official U.S. sources –Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.Mass.) – expressedskepticism or opposition to the war.

Even this was couched in vague terms: “Oncewe get in there, how are we going to get out,what’s the loss for American troops going to be,how long we’re going to be stationed there,what’s the cost going to be,” said Kennedy onNBC Nightly News on Feb. 5.

Similarly, when both U.S. and non-U.S. guestswere included, 76 percent (297 of 393) were eithercurrent or retired officials. Such a predominanceof official sources virtually assures that inde-pendent and grassroots perspectives will beunderrepresented.

The reporting will be closely managed. RobertFisk of The Independent points to “a new CNNsystem of script approval‚” the iniquitous instruc-tion to reporters that they have to send all theircopy to anonymous officials in Atlanta to ensureit is suitably sanitized – suggests that the Penta-gon and the Department of State have nothing toworry about. Nor do the Israelis.

“CNN, of course, is not alone in this paranoidform of reporting. Other U.S. networks operateequally anti-journalistic systems. And it’s not thefault of the reporters. CNN’s teams may useclichés and don military costumes – you will seethem do this in the next war – but they try to getsomething of the truth out. Next time, though,they’re going to have even less chance.”

That was Fisk before the countdown to combatwas approved. Now he advises us to move a Warof Words watch up to an elevated level. Morerecently, Fisk issues a language alert now mov-ing to an elevated level. His clichés to counter:

“Inevitable revenge” – for the executions of

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Saddam’s Baath party officials which no oneactually said was inevitable.

“Stubborn” or “suicidal’ – to be used whenIraqi forces fight rather than retreat.

“Allegedly” – for all carnage caused by West-ern forces.

“At last, the damning evidence” –- used whenreporters enter old torture chambers.

“Officials here are not giving us much access”

– a clear sign that reporters in Baghdad are con-fined to their hotels.

“Life goes on” – for any pictures of Iraq’s poormaking tea.

“What went wrong?’ – to accompany picturesillustrating the growing anarchy in Iraq as if itwere not predicted.” So says Fisk.

The War is with us. The reporting will fan itsflames as surely as the fires of the oil wells. ●

“[A] NEW and subtler instrument must weldthousands and thousands and even millions ofhuman brings into one amalgamated mass of hate,will and hope. A new will must burn out the cankerof dissent and temper the steel of bellicoseenthusiasm. The name of this new hammer andanvil of social solidarity is propaganda. Talk musttake the place of drill; print must supply the dance.War dances live in literature, and at the fringes ofthe modern earth; war propaganda breathes andfumes in the capitals and provinces of the world. –HAROLD LASSWELL, Propaganda Techniquesin the World War, 1927.

“PERSONALLY, I was shocked while in the UnitedStates by how unquestioning the broadcast newsmedia was during this war.” – GREG DYKE, BBCDirector General, 2003.

“HE’S a warmonger. He promoted it.” – TEDTURNER on Rupert Murdoch.

“THERE were horrors that were completely left outof this war. So was this journalism? Or was thiscoverage…As a journalist, I have been ostracizedjust from going on television and saying, ‘Here’swhat the leaders of Hizbollah, a radical Moslemgroup, are telling me about what is needed to bringpeace to Israel.’ And, ‘Here’s what the Lebanese aresaying.’ Like it or lump it, don’t shoot themessenger, but that’s what they do.” – ASHLEIGHBANFIELD, MSNBC.

“Watching war on TV from a distance, is pulsepounding entertainment That’s damn goodentertainment. We need to show people theconsequences of war. People die in war.” — TED KOPPEL, ABC Nightline.

“THERE is something deeply corrupt consumingthis craft of mine. It is not a recent phenomenon;look back on the “coverage” of the First WorldWar by journalists who were subsequentlyknighted for their services to the concealment ofthe truth of that great slaughter. What makes thedifference today is the technology that producesan avalanche of repetitive information, which inthe United States has been the source of arguablythe most vociferous brainwashing in thatcountry’s history. A war that was hardly a war, thatwas so one-sided it ought to be dispatched withshame in the military annals, was reported like aFormula One race...” – JOHN PILGER, columnistand TV producer, U.K.

“AFTER September 11, the country wants moreoptimism and benefit of the doubt, it’s about beingpositive instead of negative.” –– ERIC SORENSON,MSNBC.

“YOU couldn’t hire actors to do as good a job as the press has ‘done’ from the Pentagon’s pointof view.” – FFoorrmmeerr PPeennttaaggoonn MMeeddiiaa ssppookkeess--ppeerrssoonn KKEENNNNEETTHH BBAACCOONN,, iinn TThhee WWaallll SSttrreeeettJJoouurrnnaall..

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WORDS FROM THE WISE

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C H A P T E R T H R E E

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commented on charges that our president is acowboy. Sayeth the veep: “I think that is not nec-essarily a bad idea.” So saddle up, gang, asAmerica gallops to war, and media camp follow-ers tag along.

Inspectors: Get out!

THIS morning the U.S. ordered U.N. inspectorsout of Iraq. The pretense of consultation andeven respect for any nations questioning U.S.policy has ended. The U.N. meets today torespond to this resolution, which boils down tomight defines right. What can they do? Itreminds me of Stalin’s dismissal of an appealfrom the Pope when he asked how many divi-sions the Vatican had. Chairman Mao’s ghostmust be looking on approvingly — he always saidpolitical power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

After a weekend of escalating rhetoric, thepublic opinion polls, which always reflect whatAmericans see and hear on the boob tube, show64 percent in favor of war and growing hostilitytowards France and any other chicken shitnation that dares question the Messiah fromMidland. Bush’s two main speechwriters, KarenHughes and Michael Gerson, accompanied himon Air Force One and were reported to be draft-ing a speech to the nation that could come assoon as tonight.

Ultimatum

AT the Socialist Scholars conference yesterday,where I first heard about the mandate from theAzores, from the U.S. and the leaders of threeformer colonial powers, a French delegate

N E W Y O R K , M A R C H 1 7, 2 0 0 3

WASHINGTON DEMANDS U.N. INSPECTORS LEAVE IRAQHigh Noon as Bush team insists it will find WMDs

ACK in pre-history, in the 1970s, a headline writer at New York’s Daily News captured thespirit of the then-President’s unwillingness to help New York through a financial crisis withthe headline: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” Today we should be seeing another one in asimilar vein: “BUSH TO U.N.: DROP DEAD.”

It is ultimatum time on the Potomac, as the much planned for and feared “Moment ofTruth” arrives on the day that diplomacy died. (Some truth would be welcome, especially in thismoment of mounting propaganda.) Dick Cheney rattled his spurs on Meet the Press Sunday, as he

described it as a dual ultimatum. Yesterday, noneof the U.S. media outlets I watched described itthat way. (Today the New York Post does. WhenCNN rebroadcast the press conference in theafternoon, they called it a “replay” as if was justa game which many columnists believe it was.)

Washington talks about “disarmament,” acode word for its real intentions. The closestFrance’s President Chirac can get to talking withthe U.S. is through 60 Minutes. And what’sworse, the U.S. government seems to welcomeits isolation, wrapping it in the rhetoric of right-eousness and unflinching resolve. The WallStreet Journal carries documents that showWashington is planning to bypass the U.N. onreconstruction plans, giving the work to U.S. cor-porations. There’s gold in them thar deserts.

Protests downplayed

I STOPPED by one of the vigils last night, onemore protest in a week that saw more demon-strations around the world, with more than700,000 marching in Spain alone. You wouldthink that the emergence of this global move-ment would be big news. And yes, there was TVcoverage in the form of collages of images. But tothe top-down worldview of The New York Times,they are a treated as a nuisance. The lead storyon Sunday devoted one line in the 13th paragraphon the jump page, page 14, to the demonstrations:“Around the world, including in Washington, pro-testers assembled to demonstrate against theimpending war.” A story about the demosappeared on page 15 under a large photo of Iraqismarching with a photo of Saddam Hussein. Theheadline refers to the marchers as “throngs.”

The Times, predictably, was more worried

about the warnings that Al Qaeda is using thewar on Iraq to step up its recruiting. One of themore bizarre media moments occurred during aLos Angeles Times- sponsored debate aired liveon CSPAN Saturday night. Just as columnistRobert Scheer was speaking, CSPAN reportedthey were having technical difficulties. Thescreen went black, and within seconds we werebeing treated to a prerecorded urgent warfareexercise from Fort Polk hosted by a soldier. Arebroadcast of the ANSWER anti-war rallypromised for midnight was never shown, at leastnot in the East. Huh ???????

The threat to journalists

WHAT happens now? U.S. dependents and per-sonnel are being withdrawn throughout theregion, including Israel. There’s a heightenedpolice presence in the streets of our cities.National Guardsmen carry M16s in the subways.And there are new difficulties for members ofthe press who are being counseled to get out ofBaghdad.

A Gulf region website is reporting that inde-pendent reporting may be impossible. “Shouldwar in the Gulf commence, the Pentagon pro-poses to take radical new steps in media rela-tions – ‘unauthorized’ journalists will be shot at.Speaking on The Sunday Show on Ireland’s RTE1last Sunday, veteran BBC war reporter Kate Adiesaid a senior Pentagon official had warned herthat uplinks, i.e. TV broadcasts or satellitephones, that are detected by U.S. aircraft arelikely to be fired on.

Bush Sr.’s Iraq war featured tight control of themedia, but the current administration intends togo further. According to BBC superstar Adie

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(who, overseas readers should be aware, is effec-tively a saint in the U.K.), the Pentagon is vettingjournalists who propose to cover the war, and istaking control of their equipment. This presum-ably will ease the logistics of managing the hacksquite considerably, because if the U.S. has con-trol of all the gear, then any gear it doesn’t knowabout that starts broadcasting is presumably atarget.

Adie’s remarks were delivered as part of a dis-cussion of war reporting and media freedom,along with author Phillip Knightley, New YorkTimes war correspondent Chris Hedges and for-mer Irish Times editor Connor Brady. The wholediscussion is well worth listening to, and we par-ticularly liked Hedges’ put-down of CNN: “CNNsurvives from war to war; as soon as the warstarts, they become part of the problem.”

Protesting the media

NOW back to the media. Clearly, a bad situationis likely to get worse as an “embedded presscorps” brings us Pentagon-sanitized news of theconflict to come. To date, the anti-war movementhas tried with occasional success to get into thepress, but not to confront it, not to challenge itsbias towards war as the only real option. Cananything be done about this?

A group of activists in Los Angeles is launch-ing a drive to call the media bosses. I was sent anemail outline of the effort. They charge: “Sup-port for a war and for police state actions by tensof millions of Americans can be directly tracedto the misinformation, lack of information andwildly unbalanced commentary they get fromGeneral Electric (NBC), News Corp (Fox), Disney(ABC), AOL-Time Warner(CNN) and Viacom

(CBS). “If democracy is to have any true meaning, it

must be based on a well-informed public. Thesecompanies must be compelled to provide realjournalism and commentary balance. Their rolesas propaganda arms of the Administration mustend. We encourage you to join the mass phone-in to the TV News bosses. Ask for investigativereporting, not drum-beating; for balanced cover-age and commentary, not cover-ups of govern-ment misinformation and of potential civiliandeaths and injuries. Call every time you seesomething on the tube you know is propagandaand not news.” ●

MARCH 18: LIBERATION BY DEVASTATIONIT was a speech that the Liberation Theologian-in-chief has been practicing for nearly two years– and perhaps longer. George Bush delivered hisdeclaration of war with eyes unblinking, lockedlike radar on the teleprompter, a mono-trackmind conjuring up images of the lock box, a longforgotten Al Gore-ism. That is it, U.N.! Au revoir,Paree! Saddam, you are out of here and takeyour boys with you. Evil dictators, be warned, thefirst Air Cav, with CNN in tow, is coming to getya! In the aftermath of THE SPEECH we all knewwas coming, reaction was so muted that the net-works for the most part didn’t bother to go afterit. The only criticism I saw as I scanned the dialscame from Senator Joe Lieberman, a hawk wholamented the failure of diplomacy. I had to waitfor the morning to hear Tom Daschle say, “I amsaddened, saddened that this President failed so

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miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced towar.” Now, I don’t know about the forced part,but the failure is there for all to see. (Daschlehimself was no profile in courage; he said hewould vote for war all over again if he had to.)

The problem is that for many of the ideologueswho think for this President – who pushed forthis war before they were in power and contin-ued to press now that they are in – this was nota failure, but a success. Their cabal has pre-vailed, steering the United States on to whatamounts to a Superpower dominates all, pre-emptive power rules, imperial relationship to theworld. In New York, a town where reality isspelled realty, I can believe that there are bro-kers ready to start converting the U.N. Secre-tariat Building into East River condos.

Dissecting the speech

ON MSNBC (“NBC ON CABLE”) this morning,after a jam forced the network to rerack thetape, one analyst spoke of the President’s speechas grounded in fact. Not one network subjectedthe speech’s claims and assertions to any analy-sis, much less criticism or refutation.

Assertion No. 1: “The only way to reduce harmand duration of war is apply full force.” The onlyway? Surely someone might point out that themajority of the Security Council and the GeneralAssembly, if polled, would disagree. Were thereno journalists who could assess this claim and atleast point to the specific alternatives that havebeen proposed?

Assertion No. 2: “In a free Iraq, there will be nomore wars of aggression against your neigh-bors.” Couldn’t have anyone pointed out that theU.S. government supported and encouraged Sad-

dam’s war on Iran, and told him that they wouldnot object to his “solving” his longstanding dis-pute with Kuwait. (The films by Frontline airingon PBS carried the scene in which the foremerU.S. Ambassador to Iraq signaled no objection toSaddam. It also showed that the U.S. governmentaided his rise to power.)

Assertion No. 3: “War criminals will be pun-ished.” No reference to the U.S. refusal to sup-port the International Criminal Court.

Assertion No. 4: “The United States of Amer-ica has the sovereign authority to use force.”

Says who? Couldn’t the networks have askedsome law professors about this and noted thatKofi Annan clearly challenged this notion?

Generals in residence

ON and on, it went, assertions that went unex-amined, while anchors endlessly recapped andwent to their reporters in the field to see how thesoldiers felt or what the military analysts in thefield thought. Like NBC’s General in residenceBarry McCaffrey, the ex-Drug Czar who Sey-mour Hersh exposed as a war criminal in a doc-umentation of his unit’s massacre of Iraqis dur-ing Gulf War I. Speaking of General M, ElizabethJenson reports in the Los Angeles Times thatthese military men are helping to shape the arcof coverage: “When a tip comes in, some of theex-military men will get on the phone – in pri-vate, out of the open-desk chaos of a standardnewsroom – to chase it down, calling sources,oftentimes old buddies, whom even the most-plugged in correspondents can’t reach. Gen.Barry McCaffrey likes his NBC job because it letshim maintain influence on policy, being able tospeak to these issues,” Jensen wrote.

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PBS to the Rescue

SURELY there were journalists who could havebeen found to question all of these assertions andassumptions? Bill Moyers found one in WalterIsaacsFon, the ex CNN chief who in his middle-of-the-road fashion said he believed another out-come was possible. That was on PBS after HOURSof reprises of Frontline documentaries (more onthem in a moment) and some fine reporting byRoberta Baskin. PBS was clearly better in itsreporting than the nets. Earlier the NewsHourhad an excellent report by Elizabeth Farnsworthfrom northern Iraq who interviewed humanrights lawyers detailing abuses by Turkey.Ankara appears likely to shift positions to let theU.S. military roll through its borders while it con-tains Kurdish demands for self-determination.

Krugman in print, not on the air

THIS morning, Paul Krugman was his usual inci-sive self on the op-ed page of The Times, but itwas not his voice we heard on Charlie Rose butthat of another Times reporter who seemedagnostic on the war and its likely aftermath.Krugman did not get the same platform, but hiswords bear repeating: “What frightens me is theaftermath and I’m not just talking about theproblems of postwar occupation. I’m worriedabout what will happen beyond Iraq in the worldat large, and here at home.

“The members of the Bush team don’t seembothered by the enormous ill- will they have gen-erated in the rest of the world. They seem tobelieve that other countries will change theirminds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our

troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe thewhole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what theworld thinks doesn’t matter. They’re wrong on allcounts.”

The PR firm behind the war

WELCOMING the onslaught is former leftist-turned-conservative Richard Perle and Paul Wol-fowitz protégé, the Iraqi dissident Keyan Makiya,who was interviewed by Bill Moyers. Makiya waspictured as an idealist with suggestions thathopes for democracy are likely to be dashed. (Hecited a report in the Los Angeles Times lastweek of a State Department document thatmade clear that democracy is not a likely out-come.) A PR firm, Benador Associates, whichplaces pro-administration speakers on TVshows, represents Makiya. They say they are“proud to present a highly qualified cadre ofinspiring, knowledgeable speakers who are avail-able to address your group or broadcast audi-ence. Each of our experts is nationally and inter-nationally recognized on issues of the MiddleEast and national security, among others.”

Their list of clients reads like an A to Z of theright. Here are a few of their big guns:

James Woolsey Richard Perle A..M. Rosenthal Charles Krauthammer Michael A.. Ledeen Dennis Prager Frank Gaffney Jr. Amir Taheri Keyan Makiya Richard Pipes So the next time you see a member of this

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“crew of the cantankerous” on the air, as you doalmost nightly, think of the PR pluggers atBenador “working the phones” to spin mediacoverage. Makiya, incidentally, was at the Amer-ican Enterprise Institute where President Bushmade his most recent policy speech reinforcinghis commitment to regime change over disarma-ment.

Baiting Chomsky

ON Moyers’ NOW program, Makiya typically dis-missed critics like Noam Chomsky and EdwardSaid (who, of course, were not interviewed any-where on the air last night). Writing in TheGuardian last May, Nik Cohen explained that:“He dates the schism between supporters of uni-versal human rights and those on the Left andRight who regard any Western intervention asimperialism to the moment when the opponentsof Saddam were denounced. Israel was built onthe destruction of 400 Palestinian villages,Makiya says; Saddam destroyed at least 3,000Kurdish villages. Makiya, like every other Iraqidemocrat you meet in London, has lost patiencewith those who will oppose the former but notthe latter and is desperate for America to sup-port a democratic revolution.”

Richard Perle, another Benador bookee,looked tired and worn on CNBC last night. Ear-lier on Frontline, he was well made up with thekind of Hollywood lighting that many marvelover. That was on video. Live, his eyes haveblackened, his hair has thinned and his pompos-ity seemed more strained. Watching all theFrontline shows last night certainly offered thecontext, history and background missing on thenews shows and networks.

It was a march down memory lane to cast lighton the origins of the crisis, but was I wrong tofeel that it was drenched with middle of the roadexperts, mostly policy wonks, and in effectrationalized the administration’s course. It wasstrong in showing how Wolfowitz’s doctrine ofpre-emptive bullying went from a minority viewto become policy, but otherwise, I came way feel-ing that it was showing the logic for war as theconsequence of U.N. failures and Iraqi belliger-ence. It took some shots at the right but treatedits arguments with reverence. Moyers was cer-tainly better and Charlie Rose, was, well, veryCharlie Rose-ish. Maybe Kissinger was busy lastnight.

Missing in the media

FAIR reports: “Despite daily reports about theshowdown with Iraq, Americans hear very littlefrom mainstream media about the most basicfact of war: People will be killed and civilianinfrastructure will be destroyed, with devastat-ing consequences for public health long after thefighting stops. Since the beginning of the year,according to a search of the Nexis database(1/1/03-3/12/03), none of the three major televisionnetworks’ nightly national newscasts – ABCWorld News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBCNightly News – has examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian con-ditions in Iraq. They’ve also downplayed theimmediate civilian deaths that will be caused bya U.S. attack.”

Pharmaceutical calmatives

DEBORAH STERLING, a journalist writes: “What

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can we do here? 1) Rumsfeld has already toldCongress that the U.S. will use ‘pharmaceuticalcalmatives‚’ (i.e. gas) on Iraqi civilians(www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/02/21/120.html), yet I am not aware of any mainstreammedia picking up on this story. This gas will bedeployed using both an unmanned ‘loiteringvehicle’ – which hovers in the air and sprays –and by mortar shell loaded with chemicals. Butthe use of any chemical weapon against peoplein wartime – no matter how supposedly non-lethal it might be – is expressly forbidden by anumber of international treaties, all signed bythe United States.

“Not only that, the very production of suchcombat weapons is prohibited – which is suppos-edly why Bush/Rumsfeld quietly shifted fundingauthority for ‘calmative’ research from Pentagoncoffers to Ashcroft’s Justice Department – togive ‘domestic’ cover to the military program. Atthe same time that we risk killing countless Iraqicivilians with OUR chemical weapons, the WhiteHouse keeps saying, and our mainstream pressis reinforcing, the notion that Saddam will gashis own people and blame it on us. We are beingset up MASSIVELY, I think, to hear: ‘SEE? Justlike we said. Will that madman stop at NOTH-ING?’ Will these embedded journalists be able toreport what really happens – which side is lob-bing artillery shells to gas civilians?”

Sterling continues: “I am, incidentally, a profes-sional journalist, and it’s very hard to be sidelinedand sitting on my hands. I am very frightened thatwith the notable exception of Newsweek (whoseinvestigative digging appeared in sidebars), theonly place I can go for the truth is the internet. Itdoesn’t help much to know that there’ll be someinteresting books written about the takeover role

of the internet – not when it (make that We, ThePeople) rushed in to fill the vacuum left by a main-stream Fourth Estate with a lamentable yellowstreak down its back.”

CSPAN interrupts

BRENT BUICE writes: “Hi, Danny, my wife and Iwere watching the debate on CSPAN Saturdaynight, and we were very disturbed to see RobertScheer’s comments cut off by a frankly ‘fake’looking technical difficulty.

“It was a snow effect, the audio gradually dim-ming – and when the pleasantly throatedannouncer said that C-SPAN was experiencing‘technical difficulties,’ we were immediatelyswitched to a ‘press conference’ with a youngcrewcut explaining the chills and thrills of urbancombat in the 21st century. His presentation hadplenty of splash and the very best multi-mediagimmicks a pentagon budget can buy, but itlooked like there were 3 folks in the audience(besides the C-SPAN crew).

“We watched this surreal switcharoo for 10minutes and never found out if Mr. Scheer’s com-ments were re-broadcast or just lost in a digitalblizzard. Did anyone else notice this, and are wethe only ones who found it suspicious? . . . Thisadministration and its media lapdogs make mefear that my suspicions are not entirelyunfounded? That CSPAN debate was repeatedlast night. I didn’t see if it aired in full this time.”Overall CSPAN deserves to be commended forthe diversity of its coverage which included anti-war protest and foreign news coverage.

It turns out that Nature intervened on this one– I later heard that there had been a storm thatknocked the program off the air. ●

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BByy DDAAVVIIDD MMIILLLLEERR ((FFRREEEE PPRREESSSS,, UUKK))

EMBEDDED journalists are the greatest PRcoup of this war. Dreamt up by the Pentagonand Donald Rumsfeld the ‘embeds’, as they arenow routinely described, are almost completelycontrolled by the military. Embeds agree togive up most of their autonomy in exchange foraccess to the fighting on military terms.

They also gain the advantage the use of facil-ities such as transport and accommodation.Reporters who are not embedded are pointedlyand denied such facilities. Most importantly,embeds are afforded protection from physicalharm by the military. So far in this war, themain danger for journalists has come fromwestern military. So the protection on offer ismore of a threat than a reassurance for inde-pendent reporters.

Each embedded reporter has to sign a con-tract with the military and is governed by a 50-point plan issued by the Pentagon detailingwhat they can and cannot report. The list ofwhat they can report is significantly shorterthan the list of what they cannot.

According to reports, there are 903 embed-ded reporters including 136 with UK forces.There are none embedded with the small con-tingents of other nations such as the Australianmilitary.

Only 20 percent of reporters embedded withthe US are from outside the US and 128 of theembed with UK forces are from the UK.

Even countries with military involvement

such as Australia have very little access to theembedding system with only two reportersembedded with US forces.

French journalists in particular have com-plained about being excluded.

The Anglo American dominance of thereporters is no accident, but a key part of thestrategy.

The PR genius of the embed system is that itdoes allow unprecedented access to the fight-ing and, also, unprecedented identification bythe reporters with the military.

British minister of Defence Geoff Hoon hasclaimed: “I think the coverage is more graphic,more real, than any other coverage we haveever seen of a conflict in our history. For thefirst time it is possible with technology for jour-nalists to report in real time on events in thebattlefield.”

It is certainly true to say that it is new to seefootage of war so up-close, but, it is a key partof the propaganda war to claim that this makesit “real.”

In fact, the aim of the embedding system is tocontrol what is reported by encouraging jour-nalists to identify with their units. To eat anddrink together, to risk danger and to share thesame values.

Ted Koppel of US network ABC, told TheWashington Post that his feelings towards thesoldiers were “very, very warm”.

This identification with the soldiers works toensure self censorship is generally effective.

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EMBED WITH THE MILITARY

Phillip Rochot, a respected reporter for France2, currently working independently in Iraq,said, “Embedded journalists do a fair amountof voluntary self-censorship, controlling whatthey say. In any case their views are closelyaligned with the Anglo-American position. Theyare soldiers of information, marching with thetroops and the political direction of their coun-try. They won’t say anything wrong, they feelduty-bound to defend the anglo-americancause in this war.”

Christina Lamb of the London Times agreesthat embedded journalists are: “Giving a morepositive side, because they’re with the troopsand they’re not out in the streets or out in thecountryside seeing what’s actually happeningthere.”

Hoon has himself acknowledged the effect ofthis reporting in appearing to reduce opposi-tion to the war in the first days: “The imagerythey broadcast is at least partially responsiblefor the public’s change of mood.”

But toward the end of the first week of thewar, U.S. and U.K. officials started to mutterabout too much access and claimed that it wasthe pressure of 24-hour coverage that was cir-culating misinformation. Both U.S. and U.K.military sources blamed embedded reportersand the pressure of 24-hour news cycles forcirculating misinformation. This is a straight-forward propaganda manoeuvre designed todistract attention from the fact that the falsestories have all been authorised by militarycommand structures and also to warn journal-ists not to get out of line. The proof that this ispropaganda is that they are not proposing tochange the embed system which has servedthem very well.

Some embedded reporters fell over them-selves to explain that they only reported whatthe military allow them to.

Late at night with very few people watching,Richard Gaisford, an embedded BBC reporter,said, “If we ran everything that we heard in thecamp, then certainly there would be a lot ofmisinformation going around. We have tocheck each story we have with them. And ifthey’re not sure at the immediate level aboveus – that’s the Captain who’s our media liaisonofficer – he will check with the Colonel who isobviously above him and then they will checkwith Brigade headquarters as well.”

This open acknowledgement of the system ofcontrol is rare and was provoked by official crit-icism.

It illustrates the tight censorship imposed bythe military, but not acknowledged in U.S. orU.K. reporting. News bulletins in the U.K. arefull of warnings about Iraqi ‘monitoring’ and‘restrictions’ on movement in reports fromBaghdad. The closest that they get to this onthe U.K./U.S. side is to note that journalistscannot report on where they are and othersecurity details. In fact the embed controls are,if anything, stricter than the system imposed bythe Iraqi regime.

Gaisford’s comment is also interesting for theacknowledgement it makes that reporters areactually fully integrated into military com-mands structures.

This complements the identification revealedby phrases such as “we” and ‘our” in reports ofmilitary action. Reference to the “level above”as the press officer does, indicate a fundamen-tal subordination to military propagandaneeds. But this is hardly surprising since the

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contract that reporters sign explicitly requiresreporters to ‘follow the direction and orders ofthe Government” and prohibits them fromsuing for injury or death even where this “iscaused or contributed to” by the military.

Unprecedented access is the carrot, but thestick is always on hand. Two embedded jour-nalists who have allegedly strayed over the linehave been expelled and during the secondweekend of the war “many embedded reportersfound their satellite phones blocked for unex-plained reasons”.

In addition, some embeds are, according toChristian Lowe of US military magazine ArmyTimes, being “hounded by military publicaffairs officers who follow their every move andlook over their shoulders as they interview avi-ators, sailors, and maintainers for their sto-ries.”

Each military division in the gulf has 40 to 60embedded journalists, and between five andsix public affairs officers “behind the scenes”.

They report up to the Coalition Press Infor-mation Center (CPIC) in Kuwait and the $1 mil-lion press centre at CentCom in Doha. Fromthere the message is co-ordinated by the Officeof Global Communications in the White-housein consort with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’stop spin doctor in Downing Street.

The fanciful notion that the misinformationof the first weeks of the campaign were beendue to journalists having conversations with “asquaddie who’s shining his boots”, as a BritishMoD official spun it, is itself a key part of thepropaganda war.

All of the myriad misinformation coming outof Iraq in the first two weeks has been fed outby the U.S./U.K. global media operation. As one

reporter in Doha noted, “At General TommyFranks’s headquarters, it is easy to work outwhether the day’s news is good or bad. Whenthere are positive developments, press officersprowl the corridors of the press centre dis-pensing upbeat reports from pre-preparedscripts, declaring Iraqi towns have been liber-ated and that humanitarian aid is about to bedelivered.

“Yet if American and British troops have suf-fered any sort of battlefield reverse, the spindoctors retreat into their officers at press cen-tre and await instructions from London andWashington.”

If the embeds have been an opportunity, thePentagon and British military have seen inde-pendent journalists as a threat. There havebeen a stream of reports of hostility, threatsand violence against independent reporters.UNESCO, The International Federation of Jour-nalists, Reporters Sans Frontieres and theBritish National Union of Journalists have allcondemned these threats.

Some have been subtle and others less so.On the ground and away from the cameras thethreats are pointed and can include violence,as several journalists have already found out.

The subtle threats include those made byBritish Ministers such as Defence SecretaryGeoff Hoon, “One of the reasons for havingjournalists [embedded] is to prevent preciselythe kind of tragedy that occurred to an ITN crewvery recently when a well known, hard working,courageous journalist was killed, essentiallybecause he was not part of a military organisa-tion. Because he was trying to get a story. Andin those circumstances we can’t look after allthose journalists on this kind of fast moving

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battlefield. So having journalists have the pro-tection, in fact, of our armed forces is bothgood for journalism, [and] it’s also very goodfor people watching.”

Here, Hoon takes on all the charm andauthority of a Mafia boss explaining the bene-

fits of a protection racket. The message isclear: stay embedded and report what you aretold or face the consequences. ●

David Miller is a member of the Stirling MediaResearch Institute, Scotland. Contact him atDavid.miller@stir.ac.uk.

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signal the fog of war is swirling. In electronicform, you can see that every hour on TV.

Journalism of death

IN the “official media,” led by the New York Post,Saddam poses in uniform under a headline thatscreams “DEAD MAN.” Under the photo, thewags of war add this never-subtle thought:“Butcher tells US come and get me.” It works asagit prop, not journalism and reminds me of aheadline in Boston back on the day U.S. bombersbrought a Christmas present to the citizens ofHanoi. That one had another point of view:“ENEMY BOMBS HANOI.” (I thought of thatafter visiting shows by Vietnamese artists inNew York, a completely normal affair that wouldhave been unthinkable back then, when theircountry was demonized.)

The fatal mistake

WAR is the news these days. Our TV screens arefilled with images from the front and blusterfrom Ari Fleischer in the White House. He saidyesterday that Saddam Hussein made his “finalmistake” by rejecting the Bush ultimatum order-ing him to leave Iraq. Meanwhile, The New YorkTimes’s Judith Miller reports: “The plan is torapidly find, secure and ultimately destroy thecaches of chemical, biological and other uncon-ventional weapons.”

I have heard many suspicions raised about thepossibility that U.S. troops might plant suchweapons and then dramatically “discover them”in the manner of so many drug busts in America.Let’s hope that the military has outsiders with

N E W Y O R K , M A R C H 1 9 , 2 0 0 3

RIGHT WING LIBERATION THEOLOGY DRIVES SPEECHLiberation by devastation is Bush’s ultimatum to Iraq

BEGIN writing with nearly twelve hours left on President’s Bush’s arbitrary deadline to war. Ahigher force may be speaking even if no one is listening. The desert storms in Kuwait are gum-ming up the helicopters and cutting visibility to near zero. As Saddam expresses hopes that Bagh-dad will resist the Americans as Stalingrad did the Nazis, one must be reminded that it was theweather, oft named “General Winter,” which slowed Hitler’s blitzkrieg. Today, sandstorms repre-

sent the first threat facing the coalition of the willing. For a cautionary note, read today’s Wall StreetJournal on the obstacles that colonial armies faced in subjugating Arab nations. In physical form, they

them to verify what they claim to find. One of the inspectors who was charged with

finding such weapons is now speaking out.Aftenposten in Norway reports a story I have yetto see on American TV:

“A U.S.-based Norwegian weapons inspectoraccuses the USA and Secretary of State ColinPowell with providing the United Nations Secu-rity Council with incorrect and misleading infor-mation about Iraq’s possession of weapons ofmass destruction (WMD), newspaper Dagbladetreports.

“Joern Siljeholm, Ph.D. in environmentalchemistry, risk analysis and toxicology, said thatthe USA’s basis for going to war is thin indeed,and called it a slap in the face to the UnitedNations weapons inspectors.

“Siljeholm told Dagbladet that Colin Powell’sreport to the Security Council on how Iraq cam-ouflaged their WMD program was full of holes.Much of what he said was wrong. It did notmatch up at all with our information. The entirespeech was misleading, Siljeholm said.

“We received much incomplete and poor intel-ligence information from the Americans, and ourcooperation developed accordingly. Much ofwhat has been claimed about WMDs has provento be sheer nonsense. From what I have seenthey are going to war on very little, Siljeholmtold Dagbladet. I strongly doubt that the Ameri-can will find anything at all. In any case I doubtthat they will find WMDs that constitute a mili-tary threat, Siljeholm said.”

Peace programming: the wrong demo

REPORTING on alternatives to war is verboten.Case in point: Yesterday I was told about Jon

Alpert’s new project filming conversationsbetween Iraqi high school students and theirAmerican counterparts in Iraq. He had totalaccess, no minders and no censorship. I am toldthe final film is moving and timely. Reportedly hefunded it himself. A top indy TV company triedto place it, sending it from network to network,channel to channel.

There were, as of yesterday, NO, repeat NO,BUYERS. Jon has won more Emmy Awards thananyone I know, except perhaps Bill Moyers. He isa gutsy reporter who alone got into Baghdad inthe aftermath of Gulf War I. At the time, he wasworking for NBC. His own network did not air hisreport and canned him for an unauthorized actof enterprise journalism.

Now it is happening again. I am told fromsomeone in the know that one three-initialednews network “passed” because the subjects ofthe film were “not in our demo.” They said theywould prefer to save the money for their warcoverage. (The Nets say today they expect tolose $200 million in revenue to bring us their ver-sions of the war. Watch for stepped up post-warlobbying so they can win new concessions fromthe FCC that will allow them to recoup.)

Peter Arnett is back

THE networks have decided to share their footagefrom Baghdad. Peter Arnett, no stranger to wars –he seems to live for their oxygen – is staying put.And NBC has him this time. As we must recall, hewas fired from CNN for reporting on a storyrevealing that the U.S. used biological warfare inVietnam. The network canned several producerswho sued, charging censorship and insisted thecontroversial Operation Tailwind report was true.

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CNN later quietly settled with them. They werepaid off with silence bought in the process. Arnettoriginally was brought back from forced retire-ment and into action by Camera Planet, a gutsyindependent company aligned with BroadcastNews Networks. He did reports for National Geo-graphic and MSNBC. Now NBC seems to havebought his services. He couldn’t be happier. He isback on the air. So much for independent journal-ists competing with the big guys in an age ofmedia concentration.

The newspapers are not much better

THE newspapers are not much better, arguesTomDispatch.com: “Except for the WSJ, thepapers all quoted some version of Bush’s‘Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world’line somewhere in the lead paragraphs of theirlead stories on the “summit meeting” in theAzores. Only the Times described the three lead-ers’ joint statements (the Portuguese Prime Min-ister being clearly a no-account tag-along) quiteappropriately as an ‘ultimatum to the UnitedNations,’ preceding tonight’s final, final ultima-tum to Saddam. (Bush, in the joint news confer-ence, resorted to his normal ‘musts,’ which isinvariably the way he, in his imperial guise,addresses the world – ‘and now they [the nationsof the Security Council] must demonstrate thatcommitment to peace and security in the onlyeffective way’), The Financial Times offered thestrongest description of how he gave the ‘Tomor-row the world’ quote – ‘said a belligerent Mr.Bush’ – though the NY Times in a variant line,described ‘his voice rising and his jaw clenchedas he punched the air with his fist.’”

“In its lead editorial, ‘Moment of Truth,’ the St.

Louis Post Dispatch called the less than two hourmeeting, ‘one of the more bizarre summits in his-tory’ and had this pungent description of itsnature: ‘Mr. Bush left a capital where tens ofthousands of demonstrators marched againstthe war on Saturday. Mr. Blair traveled from Lon-don where thousands more protested an unpop-ular war. And Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar left anation where an estimated 800,000 peopledemonstrated in Madrid and Barcelona. No won-der the leaders decided to get together on anisland.’”

What we will see (and see not)

ROBERT FISK of the Independent is makingsome guesses of how the coverage of the war willgo: “American and British forces use thousandsof depleted uranium (DU) shells – widelyregarded by 1991 veterans as the cause of GulfWar syndrome as well as thousands of child can-cers in present day Iraq – to batter their wayacross the Kuwaiti-Iraqi frontier. Within hours,they will enter the city of Basra, to be greeted byits Shia Muslim inhabitants as liberators. US andBritish troops will be given roses and pelted withrice – a traditional Arab greeting – as they drive‘victoriously’ through the streets. The first newspictures of the war will warm the hearts ofMessrs. Bush and Blair. There will be virtuallyno mention by reporters of the use of DU muni-tions.

“But in Baghdad, reporters will be covering thebombing raids that are killing civilians by thescore and then by the hundreds. These journal-ists, as usual, will be accused of giving ‘comfortto the enemy while British troops are fighting fortheir lives’. By now, in Basra and other ‘liberated’

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cities south of the capital, Iraqis are taking theirfearful revenge on Saddam Hussein’s Baathparty officials. Men are hanged from lampposts.Much television footage of these scenes will haveto be cut to sanitize the extent of the violence.

“Far better for the US and British governmentswill be the macabre discovery of torture cham-bers and ‘rape-rooms’ and prisoners with per-sonal accounts of the most terrible suffering atthe hands of Saddam’s secret police. This will‘prove‚ how right’ we are to liberate these poorpeople. Then the US will have to find the‘weapons of mass destruction’ that supposedlyprovoked this bloody war. In the journalistic huntfor these weapons, any old rocket will do for themoment.”

Letter to the AP

I WAS sent a letter that Chris Krom, director ofthe Institute for Southern Studies, sent to TheAssociated Press. I don’t know if the world’s topwire service responded although I will say, par-tially in their defense, that newspapers oftencome up with their own headlines for wire sto-ries. They are often in conflict with the storiesbecause editors don’t read them carefullyenough.

“Dear Associated Press, Today, the AP filed astory with the following headline: ‘Poll: Bush HasSolid Support for War.’ Many readers, of course,will read only that headline, taking with it themessage that the U.S. public overwhelminglysupports the Bush Administration’s drive to warin Iraq. However, after wading through reporterWill Lester’s spin to actually read the pollresults, one finds the exact opposite to be true.

“Buried in paragraph six, we find the relevant

numbers: The poll found that about half ofadults, 47 percent, say they support militaryaction to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hus-sein from power and disarm Iraq, even withoutthe support of the United Nations Security Coun-cil. Almost four in 10, 37 percent, said the UnitedStates should do that only with full support ofthe Security Council; 13 percent said the UnitedStates should not take military action even if theSecurity Council agrees.

“President Bush has resolutely stated he willprosecute a war against Iraq without the ‘fullsupport of the [UN] Security Council’ – andappears poised to do so. This means that fully 50percent (37 percent + 13 percent) of those polledOPPOSE the Bush Administration policy on Iraq,as compared to 47 percent in favor.

“Why is The Associated Press afraid to hon-estly report the poll’s findings? What can justifysuch an astonishingly misleading headline, fol-lowed by reporting from Mr. Lester with a simi-larly suspect message – when the actual factspresented in the article point to precisely theopposite conclusion? I await an explanation, andhopefully, a very public correction.” ●

WAR DANCESAND MEDIA COMPLAINTSGORE VIDAL, the American essayist and novelistwho lives in Rome was in the USA recentlywhere he was overdosing on the media coverageof the coming war. It ignited a passionate denun-ciation: “The media [have] never been more dis-gusting, every lie out of Washington – they’re outthere doing war dances.”

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War dances or not, there clearly is a pattern ofcoverage that is beginning to attract more dis-section and complaint. Andrew Tyndall, whoanalyzes every U.S. TV newscast, has been keep-ing track of the tilt in the coverage. USA TODAYfound his research newsworthy, reporting:

“Of 414 stories on the Iraqi question that airedon NBC, ABC and CBS from Sept. 14 to Feb. 7,[Andrew] Tyndall says that the vast majorityoriginated from the White House, Pentagon andState Department. Only 34 stories originatedfrom elsewhere in the country, he says.

“Similarly, a check of major newspapersaround the country from September to Februaryfound only 268 stories devoted to peace initia-tives or to opposition to the war, a small fractionof the total number. ‘Most editors and reportersthink the diplomatic story – the great power nar-rative – is more real,’ NYU’s [Jay] Rosen says.‘And people who move into the White Houseknow how to dominate the news agenda.’”

But could they dominate the agenda withoutthe willing cooperation and the promotion ofwhat most media pundits see as the “inevitable.”Village Voice media critic Cynthia Cotts, who fol-lows coverage closely, noted, “Last week, jour-nalists were still using phrases like ‘a possiblewar,’ ‘in the event of war,’ ‘if war breaks out’ and‘assuming there is a war.’ Events were unfoldingso quickly behind the scenes that results wereimpossible to predict. But by press time, the sub-text that was previously embedded in everynewspaper, Internet, and TV war story hadbecome the main thesis: The U.S. is going toattack Iraq. Case closed.”

The case seems to be closing against the qual-ity of journalism we are seeing and reading aswell. More than two dozen journalism school

deans and professors, independent editors, jour-nalists, producers and reporters have signed aletter to the major media indicting the tendencyof many media organizations to become a mega-phone for the Bush Administration. Their lettercites six specific complaints over the nature ofthe coverage:

1. The Horserace Syndrome & HighlightingTactics Over Political Analysis: Endlesslyrepeated news features with titles like ‘Show-down with Saddam’ present a grave matter asthough it were a high-stakes sports contest,” theletter says. It goes on to highlight major newsstories the media has failed to cover adequatelyas they obsess over military tactics.

2. Failing to Protest Government Control ofInformation: The government has frozen out themedia and carefully controlled their access toinformation. Newspapers and TV news haveunderreported this freeze out, and failed to con-test it aggressively.

3. Failing to Maintain an Arms-Length Rela-tionship with Government: “State-controlledmedia comes in many garbs,” warns the letter,noting the over-reliance of TV news in particularupon government-approved retired military andintelligence consultants.

4. Failing to Question the Official Story: Themedia should never confuse patriotism withobeisance and a rubber-stamp mentality.

5. Failing to Present a Diversity of Viewpoints:There is a duty to seek out and quote the manyexperts who express skepticism about claims bythe state, rather than simply to rely on the samepundits repeatedly,” the letter states. It calls aswell on “editors, publishers and producers to seethat their op-ed pages, letters-to-the-editor sec-tions and talk shows are open to a vigorous

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diversity of viewpoints.” 6. Radio: Years ago, radio actually acknowl-

edged the concept of orderly debates withwidely varying viewpoints. It should do so again.

Influential newspapers like the WashingtonPost seem to be leading the charge to war.Columnists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weiss-man surveyed Post coverage, concluding: “Wewould say that the Post editorial pages havebecome an outpost of the Defense Department –except that there is probably more dissent aboutthe pending war in Iraq in the Pentagon thanthere is on the Post editorial pages.

“In February alone, the Post editorialized ninetimes in favor of war, the last of those a full twocolumns of text, arguing against the considerablecritical reader response the page had received forpounding the drums of war. Over the six-monthperiod from September through February, theleading newspaper in the nation’s capital has edi-torialized 26 times in favor of war. It has some-times been critical of the Bush administration, ithas sometimes commented on developments inthe drive to war without offering an opinion onthe case for war itself, but it has never offered apeep against military action in Iraq . . The op-edpage, which might offer some balance, has alsobeen heavily slanted in favor of war.”

Even as it appears the bulk of the coverage hasjoined the march towards war, the public still hasnot fully enlisted, suggesting a growing gapbetween what the polls are showing about popu-lar attitudes, and even support for anti-warviews, and the mainstream media’s enchantmentwith the spin of the Washington consensus. In anintensifying media war, alternative sources floodthe internet as anti war articles from Europeanmedia circulate in the American heartland.

This battle within the media, between new andold, alternative and independent voices andmainstream pundits is also heating up. At thesame time, a culture war is erupting as popularmusicians, actors and even athletes take sides.“It’s ‘Law and Order’ versus ‘West Wing’” is howone commentator put it. Stay tuned. ●

MEDIA JUMPS ABOARD THE PRESIDENT’S WAR EXPRESSTHEIR pagers are at the ready with new batteriesinstalled. Newsrooms are on higher than highalert. Journalists are at the front. The newsindustry is as ready to roll as is the military withthe specter of war more and more imminent.

The sense of excitement is barely contained inthis internal memo sent to a few radio stationsby media powerhouse Clearchannel communica-tions. These are the people who sent out an advi-sory to music DJs after September 11, 2001, sug-gesting the stations play more patriotic music.(John Lennon’s “Imagine” was on a list of songsto avoid.) This new internal memo posted on aninternet site shows that many media companiesare gearing up while branding war coverage.

“Our Coverage will be called America’s Warwith Iraq. In writing copy please call our cover-age, ‘LIVE In-Depth Team Coverage of America’sWar with Iraq.’ Branding liners have been pro-duced and are in the system. Mike also make cer-tain that our cross promos on the FMs alladdress Live in-depth team coverage of the Warwith Iraq on Newstalk 1530 KFBK,

“Editors, producers get to work on a ‘war list’immediately. Make sure it includes local experts,

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sources, military types, other CC newsroomsaround the country, network contacts etc.

“As soon as something happens, notify every-one. As it becomes evident something isapproaching, the entire news staff will be placedon standby, even when you’re not working. Inyour off hours listen to KFBK, KGO, and KCBS,watch CNN, MSNBC. Not only will this help keepyou posted on war and possible attacks you willfind some terrific story ideas. News immersion.Watch, listen, and read! Remember, we ARE orabout to be at WAR.”

This reference to “news immersion” essen-tially insures that these stations will just be recy-cling what their staffers hear and see. No inde-pendent analysis. No critical coverage.

Higher up in the media food chain, some mediamoguls are abandoning all pretense of neutrality.Rupert Murdoch has now openly praised TonyBlair for his courage and endorsed the war as hewould a political candidate. Not surprisingly, hisnewspapers and news troops fall in line andsalute. “I think Bush is acting morally,” Murdochtold Newsweek.

His Fox News Channel was just acting on Feb-ruary 13 when a reporter in Kuwait staged anurban warfare exercise for viewers back homewith heavily armed solders showing how theyintend to achieve “dominance” door to door inBaghdad. Unfortunately, the soldiers didn’t hearthe first command to enter the room so the Foxcorrespondent had to cue him, giving the wholeexercise the aura of obvious staging. He prom-ised his next dispatch would allow viewers to fol-low the action through “really cool” night visionglasses. This is millitainment in action.

CNN is offering up the same kind of coverage, atleast in the USA. They are “outfoxing Fox” says

Robert Wiener, the producer who led CNN’s cov-erage of the Gulf War I back in l991. He told the SaltLake Tribune: “The guiding philosophy behindCNN had changed, that the news was no longer thestar, and the network became more personality-driven. The people from AOL are not news peopleand don’t give a damn about news. They are reallyconcerned about demographics, ratings.” Com-mented Vince Horiuchi, the columnist who spokewith him: “Sour grapes? Far from it.”

The networks can’t contain their joy at beingencouraged to show some blood and gore thistime around. Reuters reports “U.S. televisionnetworks are generally enthusiastic about plansto “embed” American and foreign journalistswith the U.S. military’s air, sea and land units,saying it marks a big step forward in relationsbetween the Pentagon and news media.”

Critics note that this letting the viewers seesoldiers in all their glory is not the same asgranting total and free access as during the Viet-nam War. The embedding idea makes mediaanalysts wary, too. “I think the verb itself isenough to make journalists uncomfortable,” saysSyracuse University TV scholar Robert Thomp-son. “It implies becoming part and parcel, andreally implies in a more glib way going to bedwith.”

The Pentagon also admits it is seeking toundercut independent journalists in the Arabworld. Reports Steve Gorman: “Mindful the pub-lic remains deeply skeptical about going to war,Pentagon officials have said it is in their intereststo provide Western news media access to com-bat zones to counteract the potential for Iraqidisinformation that could be distributed by Arabnews outlets.”

When reference is made to “Arab news chan-

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nels,” officials usually mean the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. After 9/ll U.S. government officialsasked U.S. networks not to broadcast the videosthey aired by Osama bin Laden. But earlier thisweek, in a move that scooped that network’s lat-est scoop, Secretary of State Powell announcedthat Al-Jazeera would report their latest BinLaden tape before they actually had done so. Ofcourse, all news organizations picked it up. TheScotsman reported that Powell did so for politi-cal reasons, to rally NATO. So much for consis-tency. That ploy failed.

Meanwhile, the London-based Middle EastBroadcasting Corporation (MBC) launches acompetitor to Al-Jazeera this month. Varietyreports that $200 million has been poured into anew 24 hour Arabic language satellite channelcalled Al-Arabiya. The magazine did not reportwho is funding it, but did add: “MBC promises itschannel will be perceived by the Western Worldas more balanced. Variety ran a photo from a BinLaden monologue under the item, in case thepoint was missed.

Some media critics in New York plan to picketnetwork headquarters if the police permit. A new“Information Liberation Front” says, “The Corpo-rate Media is the Megaphone for the Bush Admin-istration. The media is the reason this war is goingto happen, or haven’t you noticed Peter Jenning’snew show titled “Are we ready for war?”

Others in the media are speaking out too, TheNew Yorker magazine’s award winning cartoon-ist Art Spiegelman resigned when his editor sup-ported the war. He told the Italian newspaperCorriere della Sera that he opposes “the wide-spread conformism of the mass media in theBush era. I no longer feel in tune with Americanculture, especially now that the entire media has

become conservative and tremendously timid.Unfortunately, even The New Yorker has notescaped this trend.” ●

MARCH 20: WHEN JINGOISMREPLACES JOURNALISMNEW YORK – I have never seen North KoreanTV but I have been told that all it offers is oneunending commercial for the government, fea-turing three channels showing the same pro-gramming. We had a dose of that last night asevery channel locked on to the same stationarypictures of Baghdad and followed the same for-mat, if not script.

Anchor update. Breaking News. Cut to WhiteHouse announcement. Anchor update. Militaryexpert. Cut to Presidential message about theongoing armed “disarmament” of Iraq —whichbegan with the most expensive assassinationplot in history: Thirty-six Cruise missiles and twomega bombs at a cost David Martin of CBS esti-mated at $50 million. The Iraqis claim one civil-ian was killed, 40 wounded. Of course,we don’tknow the truth. The New York Post reports“Allies Take Over Iraqi Radio.” But this morning,CNN reported that that their correspondent inBaghdad was listening to the radio and nothinghad changed.

Waiting to be shocked

THEY tried what they called a “decapitationstrike” against a “target of opportunity,” latersaid to be a bunker that Saddam and crew wereholed up in. The information came from the CIA,

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which missed the signals for 9/11. When thestrike was reported, all the network guys – andso many look the same, sound the same, andmake the same points – were surprised sincethey had clearly been told when the “real” warwould begin. Many seemed disappointed not tobe able to see the pictures of Baghdad (theyagreed to share) turn into an apocalypse. Tom,Peter, Dan, et. al. were all waiting for the fire-works, the videogame, the promised “shock andawe.” On Fox News, Britt Hume stumbled aftercalling Iraq Al Qaeda and quickly corrected him-self. All of the bad guys seem to have mergedinto one as the crusade for freedom, liberationand more defense spending steps into high gearjust like the terror alert that preceded it.

Critic-free coverage

NEEDLESS to say, I saw NO war critics on the air.None. No Iraqis, No Arab journalists.

No one who felt any duty to report the otherside, even the multi-sides of the other side. Theonly critical voices I heard were callers onCSPAN. CBC (Canada) did feature commentaryfrom Eric Margolis, the Toronto Star columnistwho explained that the use of the missilesstemmed from an incident in the Afghan Warwhen the U.S. had Mullah Omar in its bomb-sights but did not press the button. The one-eyedepitome of Evil lived and the government vowednever to pass up another such “opportunity.”

You could just imagine the scene at the after-noon planning meeting at the White House whenthese boys with war toys gleefully projected ascenario in which the war could be over before itbegan with one fatal surgical strike. For weeksnow they have been deploying psychological

operations to divide Saddam from his gang, andscare the Iraqis into surrender. And scare us atthe same time. We have armed National Guards-man in the bus terminal here in New York andone of our staff members said it felt like 9-11 allover again, and that she was near tears.

What is missing?

AFTER watching this wall-to-wall war room forhours, with its videophones, and reportersstanding by at the Pentagon, at the White House,in Qatar, in the desert, with the troops, on theships, I felt a sense of my own decapitation. Myown brain was being bombarded with blusterbombs and BS. Needless to say, there was no onestanding by with the humanitarian groups, likeDoctors Without Borders, which has yet to fleeIraq like the U.N., or for that matter, with theorganizers of the anti-war march slated for thisSaturday.

These other voices do not exist in the gunsights of the TV cameras. The Bigs are on an end-less clock, counting down to war, and, at the sametime, counting all the overtime. For them the restof the world, its crises and issues, seemed to havedisappeared into the hole of the ONE BIG STORY,like OJ and Monica before it. For example, therewas an escalation in the Afghan War last nightthat is noted in the press but I did not see cov-ered. Jeanette, my editor, says she saw someCNN and Fox coverage at about 4 a.m.

The commentators seemed to delight in recy-cling all the Baathist bombast to arouse us all themore. John Burns of The Times reported: “Sad-dam Hussein exhorted his people to ‘draw yourswords’ against invaders and referred to the U.S.government as ‘criminals’ and ‘Zionists.’ But

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what of the key role of Israel in all this? That wasunreported. We saw U.S. troops putting on gasmasks, and heard that Israelis have been pre-pared to do the same. There was no mention ofthis complaint relayed in the Palestinian Moni-tor: “Palestinians point out that while Israel isensuring that its own citizens are provided withgas masks and other equipment in the event ofan attack on the region, no such provisions havebeen made for Palestinians in the Occupied Ter-ritories, in contravention of Israel’s clear obliga-tions under the Geneva Conventions.” On theother hand, Israel says that the PalestinianAuthority is in charge of the Palestinian citizenryand its infrastructure and services. It was thePAs choice not to provide for its citizens.”

Radio stations rally fans for the war

AS much of the media becomes an outpost forPentagon pronouncements, some media outletshave stepped outside a broadcast role and areactually ORGANIZING support in the streets.Tim Jones reported in the Chicago Tribune:“Some of the biggest rallies this month haveendorsed President Bush’s strategy against Sad-dam Hussein, and the common thread linkingmost of them is Clear Channel Worldwide Inc.,the nation’s largest owner of radio stations.”

Have you seen any reports on this connection inthe rest of the converged and consolidatedmedia? Clearchannel are the folks who circulateda memo to DJs after 9/11 to watch their playlists –as in ‘Don’t play John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Media interests go unscrutinized

JEFF CHESTER of the Center for Digital Democ-

racy warns us that “even as the outlets report onthe war, their corporate bosses are seeking polit-ical favors from the Bush Administration – andthe media executives know it.

“The Big Four TV networks, other large broad-casting companies, and most major newspaperchains are currently lobbying the Bush-domi-nated Federal Communications Commission fornew policies designed to promote their corpo-rate interests. They want to end critical rulesthat limit the number of outlets a single companycan control, both at the local and national level.These media giants stand to make untold billionsof dollars in profits if the FCC safeguards areeliminated or weakened.

“While the absence of critical analysis, includ-ing dissenting voices, on TV news programs, forexample, can be attributed to the narrow, com-mercial mind-set of the U.S. media, viewers andreaders should also be aware that these newsorganizations also have a serious conflict ofinterest what it comes to reporting on the poli-cies of the Bush Administration. News organiza-tions like to claim that their reporting and com-mentary are independent of the profit-orientedgoals of their parent companies. But it is likelythat decisions about how to cover the war onIraq – especially on television – may be temperedby a concern not to alienate the White House.More so since the FCC is nearing a late springruling that may dramatically change the land-scape of media ownership in the United States.

“The public deserves to know exactly what theindustry is asking for. Here’s a thumbnail guideto the lobbying aims by some of the newsmedia’s most important companies with regardto the upcoming FCC decision. It doesn’t includethe many other political favors that the cable and

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broadcast industry are now seeking, includingrules that will determine the future of broadbandand the Internet.”

The scene at the U.N.

I WAS back at the U.N. yesterday, covering thecoverage of the Security Council as it occurred,watching the many TV crews from all over thehold their “stake outs” to catch the 20 seconds ittook for Kofi Annan to leave the elevator. Therewas chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reportingon his work plan, when everyone knew that hismoment – and perhaps the U.N.’s moment – hascome and gone, at least for now.

“Europe is on Venus, the U.S. is on Mars, andthe U.N. is over the moon” is how one Britishjournalist put it to me. Another spoke of the“buzz” and sense of possibility that existedmonths ago, when the arms inspection processgot underway. The U.N. was created to fosterpeace. It did not fail so much as it too was“decapitated” by the world’s No. 1 superpower,which took its marbles and went home. Onewatched with disbelief as various diplomatstalked to themselves and none condemned whatis likely to occur, or the U.S. role.

Ian Williams reported: “Reality intruded,briefly, in the form of U.N. Secretary GeneralKofi Annan, who addressed the Security Councilto remind belligerents of their responsibility forthe protection of civilians. “Without in any wayassuming or diminishing that ultimate responsi-bility, we in the United Nations will do whateverwe can to help,” Annan said. The Iraqi Ambas-sador sensed the “tragic irony of people talkingabout reconstruction aid for a country that theyare in effect, allowing to be blown apart.”

J’accuse

THE French Ambassador, the smooth-talking sil-ver-haired Dominique came out to make nicewith the press. All the U.N. correspondentsstarted shouting at once, hurling questions hisway. “Do you think the criticisms of France areunfair?” Duh. Yes, of course, he does, etc., etc. Icaught the eye of a U.N. man picking the ques-tioners. My hand shot up, and to my surprise, Iwas called upon. I asked him what it means forthe U.N. if one nation can make war against theU.N. Charter. He paused, sidestepped the adver-sarial nature of the question, but then expressed,in most passionate terms, why the U.N. matters.I thought at that moment of how little coveragethere is of the U.N. in the U.S., except whenWashington is using it or denouncing it.

Why did the U.N. cave?

MANY in the peace movement had put their faithin the U.N., and its inspection process. But whenthe U.S. demanded that the inspectors leave, theU.N. deferred in a quick second, without anyresistance, even verbal, all in the name of staffsafety. Could it have done more? Jan Oberg ofthe TFF in Sweden thought so:

“Thus, it seems that one member issues anultimatum recommendation and the U.N. obeysand leaves the Iraqi people behind to be intimi-dated, humiliated, killed, wounded and, in a fewweeks, starve. Article 99 of the U.N. Charterstates that the Secretary-General may bring tothe attention of the Security Council any matterthat in his opinion may threaten the mainte-nance of international peace and security.

“Is that not exactly what the U.S. ultimatum did

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– threatening Iraq and threatening the worldorganization in Iraq?

“Article 100 of the U.N. Charter states that inthe performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receiveinstructions from any government... Well, ofcourse, it was not termed an instruction, it was arecommendation. But what the Secretary-Gen-eral did on March 17, 2003, was to accept aninstruction.”

So what happens now? Even before a missile isfired, the U.N. has become the first casualty ofthis war. ●

MARCH 24: “FICTITIOUS TIMES” ARE HERE AGAIN WE live in “fictitious times,” filmmaker MichaelMoore said at the Oscars last night, an event cel-ebrating the dream factory of American culture.To his credit, he took other documentary mak-ers with him to the podium for a collective 15seconds of fame, to contrast the reality theirwork is concerned with and the surreal atmos-phere that surrounded them and the rest of us.He said, “We love non-fiction but we live in ficti-tious times, with a fictitious president, providingfictitious reasons for a false war.”

A night earlier, he rehearsed these same linesat the Indy Spirit awards on BRAVO when theytoo honored his movie, “Bowling for Columbine.”There, he more directly confronted the mediacoverage by demanding the withdrawal of theU.S. military in the form of all those militaryexperts from our TV studios where they seem tobe an occupying force. TV newsrooms were

invaded long before Baghdad.

TV helped lead to war, critics say

THE disgraceful TV media coverage is finallymeriting some discussion in the mainstreammedia. The New York Times reported in its low-circulation Saturday edition: “Critics Say Cover-age Helped Lead to War.” Reporters Jim Ruten-berg and Robin Toner wrote:

“Critics of the war against Iraq are not reserv-ing their anger exclusively for President Bush.Some also blame the news media, asserting thatthey failed to challenge the administrationaggressively enough as it made a shaky case forwar. In an interview, Eric Alterman, liberalmedia critic and author of “What LiberalMedia?”(Basic Books, 2003) argued, “Support forthis war is in part a reflection that the media hasallowed the Bush administration to get awaywith misleading the American people.”

“The strongest indictment of the press, manyof these critics argue, are recent polls that sug-gest many Americans see Iraq as being respon-sible for the Sept. 11 attacks,” the Timesreporters said.

The war is finally on

WHILE the media war and the “war” over themedia continues, the shooting war is finally on,as President Bush acknowledged on the WhiteHouse lawn yesterday. That means both sidesare fighting.

All the rest has been prelude and a romp withthe weapons fetishists and their media cheer-leaders making the U.S. invasion “the” storywhile leaving the Iraqis, civilian casualties and

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most of the rest of the world out of it. The media frame seems to be changing. For

days the TV air war was selling the real one,preparing us gleefully for the bombs away“shock and awe” campaign. Even the conserva-tive Washington Times noted this on Friday:“Some correspondents acted as if they werewaiting for Fourth of July fireworks, while othersseemed giddy as they donned gas masks.” Oneestimate claimed more than $500,000 was spenton the fireworks.”

Now it is the U.S. viewers who are shockedand awed by the cruelty of the war, by thegraphic images of U.S. soldiers in captivity andworse, on the floor of an Iraqi morgue. BillCarter and Jane Perlez report in The New YorkTimes that “the networks were in possession ofa videotape of captured and killed American sol-diers, first aired on the Arab satellite news chan-nel Al-Jazeera.” They waited for Al-Jazeera toair it first and for the families to be notified. AnAl-Jazeera editor, speaking in English on CNN,told Aaron Brown that they were showing thereality of war and that American-owned net-works in Europe, including CNN, were not. Theyalso said they stopped showing the footage afterthe Pentagon asked them to wait.

The NY Post’s “SAVAGES”

“SAVAGES” is the headline on the New YorkPost, which shows the photo that much of therest of the U.S. media is censoring, along withother footage being carried by Al-Jazeera, anoutlet now being denounced by Donald Rums-feld and others. (Please note that just last week,The New York Times carried a report quotingAmerican officials praising the channel.) No

sooner had Rumsfeld denounced the footagethan CNN announced that it was taking it off theair. To its credit, CNN did briefly show photos ofIraqi casualties, but the network did not shootthem. The Associated Press supplied them. In amedia environment where updates seem to becarried every few minutes, I did not see thosephotos again.

The Post seems to have become an officialarm of the Pentagon Propaganda Campaign.Today it carries a column by Harlan K. Ullman,military analyst, described as a distinguishednational security expert and a principal authorof the military doctrine of “shock and awe.”Needless to say, he was given prominence in thepaper, which ran 17 pages of pro-war boosterism.

POWs in hell

YESTERDAY, war as a TV game became war ashell. In rapid succession, we heard of a U.S. sol-dier rolling grenades into the tents of his officersand fellow soldiers. And then screw-ups werereported from what we were being told was aclean mean fighting machine wedded to preci-sion targeting. One of our Patriot missiles shotdown a British plane. Two hit Turkey. Oneblasted a bus in Syria. Another landed in Iran.And soon the casualties started to mount.(Although the number of dead civilians does notseem to be tallied with the same urgency as thenumber of “coalition” dead and wounded.)

And then we saw some POWs. Last night onABC radio, Matt Drudge was saying they hadbeen sexually humiliated, a story line no one elsehas picked up on. Contrast the humility of oneAmerican soldier with the hubris of the generalsand political leaders who keep saying that “we

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are on plan,” the plan is working. He told his cap-tors: “I only came to fix broke stuff.” He wasasked if he came to shoot Iraqis. “No I come toshoot only if I am shot at,” he said. “They (Iraqis)don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.”

As for POWs and their treatment, the U.S. mili-tary was sending around footage to media outletsof Iraqi soldiers surrendering. Many outlets ran itunverified. That was not a violation of the GenevaConvention, apparently. One of our readers,Catherine Kenward, reminded me about how con-troversial U.S. treatment of prisoners has been inAfghanistan (the Mazar-I-Sharif prison revolt andthe more recent reports of prisoners who sud-denly died in U.S. custody). Am I the only one whofinds it ironic to hear Donald Rumsfeld talkingabout the Geneva Convention? Don’t we still haveAfghan prisoners living in cages at Guantanamo?Aren’t we the ones talking about how convenientit would be if we could use torture? Haven’t webroken every international accord and treaty thathindered us from doing exactly as we please? Andsuddenly Rumsfeld is talking about the GenevaConvention.

A week ago, the Village Voice reported on theU.S. military shipping prisoners to other countriesthat routinely practice torture. It makes for ‘plau-sible deniability.’

That chemical plant?

AND then there was the sudden discovery of achemical plant. To the frat pack on Fox, this wasthe smoking gun. The GOTCHA! But then the net-work brought in an ex-weapons inspector whosaid he doubted it because it was too far south. Hewas British. An American, David Kay, who doubledips as a TV analyst on MSNBC while working for

the Uranium Institute of the nuclear industry, wasless skeptical. He says that Iraq never declared theplant. We still don’t know what is in that plant orwhat he suddenly discovered there. TheJerusalem Post this morning was saying that U.S.officials confirmed to them that the plant wasmaking weapons. NBC later reported that it wasindeed a chemical weapons plant, with huge tanksfilled with chemicals. The Iraqi generals and offi-cers in the plant all surrendered.

Please remember that this war, these “seriousconsequences” as Colin Powell used to call whatwe are now seeing, were designed to disarm Iraq,to find those alleged weapons of mass destruction.Recall how many times the U.S. governmentclaimed to know where they were, rarely sharingtheir “intelligence” with the U.N. inspectors. Well,so far – and this could change – we have yet to seethis occur. I certainly do not trust Saddam’sclaims, but it is not surprising that he didn’tdestroy all his weapons, if that is the case, knowingthat nothing he could do would ever satisfy anadministration hell bent on invading.

Chemistry lesson

IN the meantime, let’s get chemical. Join me inthe time machine. Let’s go back to 1983 when Iraqused bio-chem weapons 195 times against the Ira-nians in a war in which the U.S. sided with Sad-dam. Iran said Iraq killed or wounded 50,000 peo-ple, soldiers and civilians.

This is 10 times as many people as in the north-ern Kurdish area in and around Halabja, a hor-rific gassing that has been cited repeatedly.(There are some experts who say the Iraniansdid that, not the Iraqis.) What is of interest is this:How did the United States government react at

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the time? According to Samantha Power in herbrilliant book, ‘A Problem From Hell: America inan Age of Genocide’:

“The State Department and even the Congresslargely let the Iraqi attacks slide. Reports ofIraq’s chemical use against Iran first reachedSecretary of State Shultz in late l983. It was notuntil March 5, l984, that the State Departmentspokesman issue a condemnation. It took the UNthree more years to “deplore” chemical weaponsuse. It was this type of response, Power argues,that encouraged Hussein to do it again and tothink he could “get away with it.”

Even though no chemical weapons have beenused yet in this war, we keep seeing reporters inchemical suits. News World reports: A veteranHong Kong journalist was severely lambasted forhis “absurd” TV reports from Kuwait City. Ray-mond Wong, an assistant director at English-lan-guage TV channel TVB, came under fire fromviewers about his pieces to camera, including athree-minute stint in which he donned a gasmask and protective goggles. The segment wassupposed to show how the Kuwaitis might besubjected to chemical or biological attacks in theadvent of a war with Iraq.

Censorship on the rise

CENSORSHIP is rearing its ugly head across theworld. Globalvision News Network editor TimKarr reports: “Danny, Some interesting move-ments for and against global independent mediaand their coverage of the War in Iraq:

“Erich Marquardt, the editor of the Amster-dam-based YellowTimes.org. (www/yellowtimes.org) is fighting a shutdown attempt by its hostingprovider. The site was temporarily shut down

Sunday night after it posted graphic images ofIraqi victims of the war. YellowTimes.org also onSunday published images of the five capturedAmerican soldiers and of dead GIs.

“Without any prior warning YellowTimes.org’shosting provider sent a letter stating: ‘Youraccount has been suspended because of inappro-priate graphic material.’ Over the weekend, Yel-lowTimes.org acquired several pictures of Iraqicivilian casualties. Since few to none in the main-stream Western media had reported on the civil-ian toll, Yellow Times posted the images at thesite. Marquardt also chose to publish images ofcaptured and killed GIs at a time, on Sunday,when most mainstream American news outletswere reluctant to air these images.”

No more anti-war news

MEDIA Guardian reports: “Sir Ray Tindle, theeditor-in-chief of over 100 weekly newspapersacross Britain, has informed all his editors thatthey can no longer report any anti-war stories intheir newspapers. Sir Ray, who has beenknighted for his services to the newspaperindustry, wrote: “Everyone knows that Tindle fam-ily newspapers have no political bias. Our columnsare free. When British troops come under fire,however, as now seems probable, I ask you toensure that nothing appears in the columns ofyour newspapers which attacks the decision toconduct the war in which those men are involved,nor, of course, anything which attacks the troopsthemselves.”

The armchair general

MARK LAWSON writes: “We belong to a genera-

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tion which has largely ceased to be surprised bytelevision, but think about this: those whowanted to, were able to watch an enemy opera-tion live from the banks of the Tigris. This week-end’s pictures have widened the eyes like noth-ing since the moon landings, though with rathergreater moral complications. The essential prob-lem is that in seeming to know everything, weknow nothing. There are wise old journalistswho will tell you that the word “raw” is usually awarning. It is unwise to eat raw meat or smellraw sewage and it may be equally foolish to con-sume raw news coverage.

“In the triptych of examples given above, whathad vividly seemed to be an assassinationattempt on General Franks was down-gradedlater to a gas canister exploding at a car plantover the road. During the Tigris reed-shoot, thewestern rolling news shows all reported in goodfaith that the coalition claimed to have no planesmissing until Defense Secretary Donald Rums-feld murmured on NBC that, in fact, the countwas short.

“Because we must always doubt the meaningof the scenes we’re seeing, following this war ontelevision is like walking around an art gallery inwhich the pictures dissolve and the captionsscramble shortly after you’ve been admiringthem for 20 minutes.”

Readers share their media views:

I WAS delighted that my daughter, SarahSchechter is dissecting your dissector and themedia: “I was struck this morning, listening toNPR and the networks, by a couple things. NPRactually cut to CNN which was interviewing a

New York Times reporter who is embedded witha military troop to get his feelings about whatwas happening around him. NPR cutting to CNNseemed strange to me, and trying to understandtheir justification, I rationalized that theythought it was okay because CNN was inter-viewing The New York Times. That while CNNmay not share the same branding with NPR, TheNew York Times does. Essentially saying, “don’tthink we’re lazy or just like them but this is TheNew York Times guys so it’s okay.”

“As I continued to watch and listen to coverage,I couldn’t help noticing that every mainstreammedia outlet was using the same expressionwhen introducing their correspondents in theMiddle East – they all used the word that CNN,NPR and The New York Times had used –‘embedded.’ It was almost as if a memo had goneout to everyone instructing them to use theword, it popped up too frequently to be coinci-dence. I looked up the word embedded thismorning and this is what I found:

“1.To fix firmly in a surrounding mass: embed apost in concrete; fossils embedded in shale.

“2.To enclose snugly or firmly. “3.To cause to be an integral part of a sur-

rounding whole: ‘a minor accuracy embedded ina larger untruth’ (Ian Jack).

“While they may think of it terms of the first def-inition, I couldn’t help but feel the third was mostappropriate. These guys are honorary members –and have in fact become an integral part of thewhole of the military complex. What happened toobjectivity? How can a journalist remain objectivewhen they are embedded within the very thingthey are to report on? How can they remainimpartial, and therefore accurate?” ●

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BByy GGRREEGG MMIITTCCHHEELLLL

THE war is only a week old and already the mediahas gotten at least 15 stories wrong or misreporteda sliver of fact into a major event. Television newsprograms, of course, have been the prime culprits.Newspapers, while they have often gone along forthe ride, have been much more nuanced and care-ful. Newspaper coverage has not been faultless, asphotos and headlines often seem shock-and-awe-struck but, compared with TV, newspapers seemmore editorially – and mentally – balanced. Somehave actually displayed a degree of skepticism ofclaims made by the military and the White House– what used to be known as “journalism.”

On Monday, I received a call from a producer of amajor network’s prime time news program. He saidthey wanted to interview me for a piece on how thepublic’s expectation of a quick victory somehowwas too high. “But,” he hastened to add, “we don’twant to focus on the media.” I asked him where hethought the public might have received the infor-mation that falsely raised their hopes. In chatrooms, perhaps? The problem, I suggested, is thatmost of the TV commentators on the home frontappear to be just as “embedded” with the militaryas the far braver reporters now in the Iraqi desert.

Surely this is a bipartisan issue. While many onthe antiwar side complain about the media’salleged “pro-war bias,” those who support the warhave also been ill served by overly-positive cover-age that now has millions of Americans reelingfrom diminished expectations.

Here, then, is a list of stories that have beenwidely misreported or poorly reported so far: 1. Saddam may well have been killed in the firstnight’s surprise attack (March 20). 2. Even if he wasn’t killed, Iraqi command andcontrol was no doubt “decapitated” (March 22). 3. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 22). 4. Most Iraqis soldiers will not fight for Saddamand instead are surrendering in droves (March 22). 5. Iraqi citizens are greeting Americans asliberators (March 22). 6. An entire division of 8,000 Iraqi soldierssurrendered en masse near Basra (March 23). 7. Several Scud missiles, banned weapons, have been launched against U.S. forces in Kuwait(March 23). 8. Saddam’s Fedayeen militia are few in numberand do not pose a serious threat (March 23). 9. Basra has been taken (March 23). 10. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 23). 11. A captured chemical plant likely producedchemical weapons (March 23). 12. Nassiriya has been taken (March 23). 13. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 24). 14. The Iraqi government faces a “major rebellion” of anti-Saddam citizens in Basra (March 24). 15. A convoy of 1,000 Iraqi vehicles andRepublican Guards are speeding south fromBaghdad to engage U.S. troops (March 25).

– From Editor & Publisher Online.

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This is the week of the Q word, the week thatmedia is mesmerized by the Quagmire parallel.

It’s true; the war appears, for the moment, tobe turning into a quagmire as others have donein the past. You can’t abolish history, even whenyou ignore it. The difficulties are now overshad-owing the successes and the Pentagon/Adminis-tration is becoming more defensive.

All the focus on Saddam’s whereabouts seemsto have shifted. We are getting more and morestories like this one from Joseph Galloway ofKnight Ridder:

“WASHINGTON – Five days into the war, theoptimistic assumptions of the Pentagon’s civilianwar planners have yet to be realized, the risks ofthe campaign are becoming increasingly appar-ent and some current and retired military offi-cials are warning that there may be a mismatchbetween Secretary of Defense Donald H.

Rumsfeld’s strategy and the force he’s sent to carry it out.

“The outcome of the war isn’t in doubt: Iraq’sforces are no match for America and its allies.But, so far, defeating them is proving to beharder, and it could prove to be longer and cost-lier in American and Iraqi lives.”

On the tube

ON the TV nets, the generals are working over-time to explain, and explain away, why the Iraqiuprising has not yet occurred, with the prover-bial fat lady yet to sing songs of welcome. It ishard to believe that we are getting the full storydespite all the embeds and all the expertise. It’shard to know whom to believe.

Last night, CSPAN brought us the Canadian

N E W Y O R K , M A R C H 2 5 , 2 0 0 3

IS THE INVASION BOGGEDDOWN IN A NEW QUAGMIRE?The view from Mesopotamia is that trouble’s in store

N Day 6, the rubber is hitting the road, and the road is hitting back. It may be that the spe-cial Oscar to Peter O’Toole – the man who played Lawrence of Arabia at the lowest-ratedAcademy Awards show in recent history – was an attempt to remind us of the joys of thecolonial era when British overlords would sip tea at the palaces in Baghdad. Despite the

heaviest pounding in history from the air, from the shock and awe that was admittedly AWE-ful, the Iraqis are holding on, fighting back and throwing a curve ball at the Pentagon and forcing arewrite of the media scripts that forecast a quick rout, with kebab for all.

news from CBC’s ‘The National’, and for the firsttime, I felt I was back in the land of real informa-tion. There was a critically inflected report onthe war, with Iraqi voices. There was a feature onan anti-war organizer in Ottawa. There was areport on the debate about Canadian policy,which has, to date, stayed out of the fray. Therewas a commentary predicting the U.S. would winbut worrying about the costs and consequences.In short, there was the kind of TV news Ameri-cans used to watch in the age of Cronkite andChancellor.

Many Americans are turning away from thetube even as ratings soar. What I mean is thatthey/we are synthesizing our own news input,drawing from many sources including websitesoverseas. The New York Observer called me yes-terday for a comment for a story they arepreparing on how many of us are becoming ourown editors and personalizing our mediachoices. For example, as we watch TV news caststhat seem more and more like CIA-sponsoredbriefings, with continuing reports on weaponryand the “wow” factor as expressed by reportersriding in tanks, other news is getting out.

Russian Intelligence vs. Ours

I CAN’T vouch for the accuracy, but it is inter-esting to find Russian intelligence reports car-ried on the mediawar.info website about therecent battles that have been portrayed as a bigwin for the red, white and blue. They quote fromIraqwar.ru:

“The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was cre-ated recently by a group of journalists and mili-tary experts from Russia to provide accurate andup-to-date news and analysis of the war against

Iraq. The following is the English translation ofthe IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russianmilitary intelligence reports. Here is an excerptfrom the March 24, 2003, 0800hrs report:

“Other Americans have failed in trying to usetheir momentum in capturing An-Nasiriya andattempted to encircle the town from the west,where they encountered strong layered Iraqidefenses and were forced to withdraw. The Iraqiforces used this opportunity to attack the U.S.flanks with two brigades, breaking the U.S. com-bat orders and causing panic among the U.S.troops. The U.S. command was forced to halt theadvance of its forces toward An Najaf and onceagain redirect several tank battalions to supportthe attacked units. Nearly six hours were neededfor the U.S. aviation to stop the Iraqi attack andrestore combat order of the U.S. forces.

“During the past day the coalition aviation flewmore than 2,000 close support missions in thisarea [An-Nasiriya]. “We can only thank God forhaving air dominance,” said the commander ofthe U.S. 15th Marines Exp. Corps Col. ThomasWaldhauser in a private conversation with one ofthe CNN reporters. Later the CNN journalistcited the Colonel in a phone conversation withhis editor. The conversation was intercepted.

“According to the intercepted radio traffic, theU.S. forces have sustained up to 40 killed, up to 10captured and up to 200 wounded during thefighting near An-Nasiriya. There is confirmedinformation about one lost attack helicopter andan unconfirmed report about a lost groundattack plane. The U.S. forces have also lost up to40 armored vehicles, including no less than 10tanks. Several intercepted reports by the U.S.field commanders stated that their troops areunable to advance due to their soldiers being

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demoralized by the enemy’s fierce resistanceand high losses.”

Again, I am not accepting all this as fact, justshowing how other authoritative accounts canbe offered up to challenge all the “authoritative”reports we are hearing. Meanwhile, a debateabout the war rages in Russia too. Eurasianetreports: “While most in Moscow believe that anIraq war will damage Russian interests, a split isdeveloping among Russia’s policy-making eliteover how to respond to the outbreak of war. Oneside is ready to continue its opposition to war,while the other says that Russia ought to coop-erate with the inevitable.”

My point is that even the blow by blow of warreporting can be distorted. That happened inVietnam with U.S. forces under pressure to exag-gerate “enemy kills” and downplay their losses.Last night, former Nixon and Reagan aide Gen.Alexander “I am in charge here” Haig was backon Fox News where he called for “more vio-lence.” Honestly, that is what he told Sean Han-nity, who sat by approvingly. It was anotherbloodthirsty performance on the War network.

Better dying through chemistry

LAST night the airwaves crackled with reportsthat the Iraqi forces may have chemicalweapons. According to CNN at 10:46 this morn-ing, Iraqi troops in Baghdad were issued gas-car-rying artillery shells and gas masks, and wereordered to use those weapons if the allied troopscrossed into the city. No evidence was producedto substantiate the fear, but it appeared in all thepromos. Remember, the goal of this war,allegedly, is to disarm Iraq and divest it of itsweapons of mass destruction. The seizure of

what was described as a chemical plant was citedinitially as PROOF. Former inspector and nowNBC consultant David Kay suggested he believedthat was what the plant was and said the Iraqishave never declared it. The Jerusalem Post alsoclaimed it as a smoking gun. Slowly, some infor-mation is trickling out to encourage us to bemore cautious. Remember, the initial reportswere not making the claims we later heard onNBC or Fox:

“WASHINGTON (CNN) – Pentagon officials onSunday said the U.S. military has secured a facil-ity in southern Iraq that may have been used toproduce chemical weapons. The officials cau-tioned that it was not clear what suspected mate-rials may still be at the plant, which is located inNajaf, some 90 miles south of Baghdad.”

This can be just in a war where propaganda ispervasive. (Digression: Quote of the day fromNewsweek’s Jonathan Alter: “The popularity ofthis war so far is at least partly due to the humanface of the coverage, a brilliant PR contrast to theantiseptic briefing-room videogames of what isnow called Gulf War I.” End of Digression.) LeithElder writes:

“The discovery of the huge chemical weaponsfactory in Najaf is not a discovery. This facilityhas been known since about 1991 (documentbelow).

“. . . Summary: [deleted] Several sites in Iraqwith the capability to produce and store BWweapons. Although the capability exists, no evi-dence of current production or storage wasfound. Enclosures. Text 1. Background [deleted]suspected biological warfare sites. Among thesites were the Al-Kindi company, An-Najaf, Taji,the Serum and Vaccine institute, the AgricultureResearch and Water Resources Center, and the

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Ibn Haithan institute . . .” The Washington Post reports: “A very impor-

tant political component is if you find thesethings, how do you establish the proof of that tothe satisfaction of 35 foreign ministries and thoseof you in the media?” said Jay Davis, who led theDefense Threat Reduction Agency until 2001 andhas continued to consult on the Iraqi disarma-ment plan. “A large number of conspiracy theo-rists all over the world will say the U.S. govern-ment has planted all that stuff.”

POW Coverage

WITH two more U.S. airmen in Iraqi custody, thePOW issue is back on the news. CNN defied thegovernment this time and did show Al-Jazeeracoverage of Iraqi TV pictures. Meanwhile, inEngland, Guardian columnist George Monbiotchallenged what he called double standards bythe U.S. government:

“Suddenly, the government of the UnitedStates has discovered the virtues of internationallaw. It may be waging an illegal war against a sov-ereign state; it may be seeking to destroy everytreaty which impedes its attempts to run theworld, but when five of its captured soldierswere paraded in front of the Iraqi television cam-eras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S.defense secretary, immediately complained thatit is against the Geneva Convention to show pho-tographs of prisoners of war in a manner that ishumiliating for them.

“He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of thethird convention, concerning the treatment ofprisoners, insists that they must at all times beprotected ... against insults and public curiosity.

“This may number among the less heinous of

the possible infringements of the laws of war, butthe conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expectto be prosecuted for war crimes

“This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch hisback. For this enthusiastic convert to the causeof legal warfare is, as head of the defense depart-ment, responsible for a series of crimes suffi-cient, were he ever to be tried, to put him awayfor the rest of his natural life.”

Official news

THE media reporting came under fire byTomDispatch.com:

“I caught a fair amount of CNN and MSNBCthis afternoon, and NBC Prime Time news fol-lowed by the Lehrer NewsHour tonight. Whatstruck me was how much of our periodic 24/7 warextravaganzas are taken up with official andsemi-official events. I caught, for instance, anextended performance by Gen. Tommy Franksand various supporting actors and supportingscreens at the elaborate Centcom set (sorry,headquarters) in Qatar. I also caught a perform-ance (sorry, news conference) by Ari Fleischer(with a few tough questions from reporters,reflecting perhaps a slight shift in mood) andthen a glimpse of Tariq Aziz defiant in Baghdad.

“Each of these four channels also had theirsemi-official events involving military consult-ants whose expertise usually lies largely in hav-ing directed some aspect of America’s last wars.(No former Somalian warlords to offer somevaunted “balance,” no less a French or Russiangeneral. Only former American military men orintelligence officers are considered expertenough to comment on an American war.) Gen-

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eral Wesley Clark, former supreme allied com-mander in Europe, NATO commander for theKosovo campaign, with all his we did this or thattoday‚ on I-forget-which-channel sounded dis-tinctly like he was actively engaged in fightingthis war as well.

“Of the channels I watched today, most rivetedon American casualties and prisoners (andwhether or not, or how, or when to show picturesof POWs or dead Americans) – only PBS showedsignificant footage of Iraqi casualties. Given allthose Washington officials, active generals,retired generals, former officials, and anchorsand journalists used to negotiating such headycrowds, American television tends to chew overmainly issues of concern to the Bush administra-tion and the Pentagon.”

Al-Jazeera in the hot seat

THE love-hate relationship with Al-Jazeera con-tinues. First, the Qatar-based satellite newschannel was denounced for carrying Osamatapes. The U.S. networks were urged not to showthem by U.S. government officials. Then, Wash-ington decided to try to use the network ratherthan denounce it and it placed many officials onthe channel. Just last week, the U.S. governmentpraised its coverage. This week it is back in thedoghouse with the New York Stock Exchangenow banning its reporters. Reports theGuardian: “A reporter for al-Jazeera, which hasbeen criticized by the U.S. military for its cover-age of conflict, has been barred from enteringthe exchange while another has been ordered toreturn his press card. A spokesman for theNYSE said it was limiting access to “responsible”broadcasters and insisted other broadcasters

had also been affected.” On the weekend, Jihad Ballout, an Al-Jazeera

spokesperson, responded angrily to criticismfrom Donald Rumsfeld: “Look who’s talkingabout international law and regulations. We did-n’t make the pictures; the pictures are there,” hecontinued. “It’s a facet of the war. Our duty is toshow the war from all angles.”

Meanwhile, Joe Belden of Asia Times Onlinereports approvingly of Al-Jazeera coverage fromJordan: “CNN’s war coverage had been mockedand overtaken by images that showed the trueface of war in all its madness and horror –images that almost invariably bore the label “Al-Jazeera exclusive”. These were not scrollingmaps or armchair generals – these were scenesof a 12-year-old child with half her head blown offin Basra. This was the sound and fury of the rel-atives of victims of Tomahawk cruise missilestrikes in northern Iraq loudly promising theirrevenge. This was live coverage of a hundreds-strong posse of armed and delighted Iraqis set-ting fire to the bulrushes of the Tigris River insearch of a Western pilot presumed hidingwithin.

“This was a guided tour of a roomful of U.S.soldiers in a morgue. This was the fear in theeyes of a captured U.S. soldier as he was askedby an off-screen voice in broken English why hecame all the way from Texas just to kill Iraqis. “Ifollow orders,” he answered, a strain in his voice.These were images of war.”

And while Western sensibilities might havebeen spared the trauma of exposure to theseimages, they went straight into the homes andhearts of 300 million viewers in the Middle Easton Sunday. The effect was immediate, andstrong.

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Protesting media coverage

AS I reported on Sunday, anti-war groups arechallenging some media outlets. CNN was pick-eted in New York and Los Angeles on Saturday,although the network that claims to be the mosttrusted did not report on its own critics, at leastnot that I saw. There was a report in the LA Newsby Rachel Uranga:

“Protesting what they called the broadcastmedia’s uncritical coverage of the Iraq war, thou-sands of anti-war protesters streamed throughthe streets of Hollywood on Saturday, on theirway to CNN’s Los Angeles high-rise.

“Nearly 80 people who sat in the middle of ablocked-off intersection, defying police orders todisperse, were arrested in the demonstration,one of the largest in four days of Southlandprotests. No injuries were reported.

“Protesters gathered at the 24-hour newsagency’s Sunset Boulevard office buildingdecried the Bush administration’s policy of pre-emptive strikes in Iraq and railed against themedia’s ‘cheerleading coverage.’ ‘We feel thatCNN and all the major broadcasters act as theinformation ministry for the government,’ saidJames Lafferty, a lead organizer and executivedirector of the National Lawyers Guild. Calls toCNN offices in Los Angeles and Atlanta were notimmediately returned Saturday.” ●

MARCH 26: THE NETWORKJIHAD ON JOURNALISM IF you want to get on top of the news, watch the

BBC. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ll take thatback. There is little I can’t believe after watchingthe war on TV. Here’s CNN reporting from thePentagon on precision bombing – “authoritieshere tell us how proud they are of their targetingcapabilities,” etc. At that very minute, BBC aireda report of two missiles striking a market inBaghdad with a minimum of 15 dead and count-less other casualties. BBC did not air any of theirmore graphic pictures, so we heard about thedeath of people out shopping but didn’t seethem, but at least it was reported. Some 15 min-utes later, CNN had “new” pictures in from theIraqi capital. We are not sure what we are show-ing you,” said anchor Carol Costello . . .

MSNBC asks for blessing from on high

TV war coverage in America is becoming rou-tinized, predictable and, at least on the ComedyChannel, a big joke. MSNBC was running newpromos to support the troops with an animated“GOD BLESS AMERICA.” Fox News has a logowith a plane and an eagle coming out of it. Andeven as the charade continues, of anchors turn-ing to military generals and approved experts forthe interpretation of the war, something is hap-pening and Mr. Jones doesn’t seem to knowwhat it is. The answer, my friend, is blowing inthe sand. . .

All that sand may be nature’s way of singingDylan’s song:

“How many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky? Yes, and how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry?” To learn more about the people crying and

dying, check this Iraqi Body count website:

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www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

“Yes, and how many deaths will it take till heknows that too many people have died? – BobDylan

With experts like these

HERE’S one on those obscene “experts.”TomDispatch.com reports on an exchange heardon CNN. I think it must have been NBC becausethat’s where the ex-Drug Czar is busting ballsthese days, but you can’t blame him for confus-ing the channels because they all tend to meldtogether.

“I turned on CNN briefly this afternoon andcaught their military expert, General BarryMcCaffrey (U.S. Army, ret.) answering questionsabout war strategy from a CNN anchor in a dis-tinctly belligerent tone to interspersed clips ofconvoys and American foot soldiers movingthrough blowing sand. Here are a few phrases Imanaged to jot down: When asked about ‘thebattle for Baghdad,’ he said, ‘We gotta get intotown, bust their chops, and get outta there.’ Anda little later he asked rhetorically, ‘Do you bust inthere, take them down, or do you end up in a 90-day stand-off?’ On the subject of sand stormsgrounding planes, he commented, ‘But thankGod for the U.S. artillery. Without that we’d be introuble out there.’

“And so on and so forth, his face perched on ared (and orange lettered) graphic ‘OperationIRAQI FREEDOM.’ Here, on the other hand, is atelegraphic private note to a friend of mine froma Brit reporter, who in a few well-chosen words ,offers a distinctly more realistic vision of thiswar as it’s unfolding: ‘had a hairy weekend insouthern Iraq since last I messaged. the south,

which was supposed to hate Saddam, has turnedout not to be very welcoming.’”

U.N. to meet. Who knew?

THE U.N. Security Council meets today to dis-cuss concerns about the war by the Non-AlignedMovement and Arab League. They will also dis-cuss the need for humanitarian aid, which hasyet to flow into Iraq. I found out about this in arather circuitous manner, while listening to newson the South African Broadcasting Corporation,during an interview with me about media cover-age. I had just spent two hours flipping fromchannel to channel but had not seen any men-tion of it, a clear sign that the networks have nointerest in covering, much less encouraging,efforts to resolve this conflict peacefully.

There doesn’t seem to be an embed in with thehumanitarian crowd. Kofi Annan has beenenraged by the way this issue is treated. Secre-tary of State Powell was on CBS last night brag-ging about how “we” now have most of the watersupply running again in Basra. The BBCreported that it is the International Red Crosswhich is trying to fix the water works, which wasapparently bombed in one of those precise tar-getings. The water was, in fact, still off.

At least one CNNer experienced her ownshock and awe. Anchor Connie Chung, who hadbeen brought in to tabloidize the network’s pro-gramming with a steady diet of child kidnap-pings and sex scandals, is out. Collateral damage.Fired! And that, despite a $2 million contractwith one year to run. Reports the Times, “Shewas very shocked and extremely disappointed,”the associate said. “She did the show she wasasked to do even though she argued that she

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wanted to do a different kind of show. But themanagement changed, and the new managementsaid, ‘We don’t want that kind of show.’ She wasnot given a chance to do something different forthem.” I am sure Ted Turner, who made clear hisdistaste for the show, is a bit happier tonight.What’s another million dollars after all themoney AOL Time Warner has pissed away?

(My favorite play on the shock and awful sce-nario was on comedian John Stewart’s brilliantnooze show on Comedy Channel where hecoined the phrase “stock and awe” to report onthe decline in the market in the wake of all thesetbacks in Iraq.)

The media war through Arab eyes

HERE’S how Gulf News, one Arab media outlet isreporting on this media war: “The images shownon Arab TV have an explosive impact on Arabpublic opinion, much to the dismay of U.S. andBritish officials.

“Western channels, notably CNN, have comeunder fire for not only following, but also pro-moting American policy, serving as ‘apologists‚for a unilateral war on Iraq waged without a UNmandate, and censoring graphic images of thecivilian carnage. ’

“And then there is the matter of journalistsstealing the show.

“No sooner did the U.S. wage their offensive onBaghdad on March 19, ‘daredevil’ journalists,mainly from the West, had copped a greedyshare of the limelight.

“First person accounts of journalists’ ownexperiences in war zones have long been thebane of sober political analysts, who regret thatsensationalized tales of adventure should eclipse

the reality on the ground. “As such, critics would argue foreign corre-

spondents reporting on the war in Iraq have bro-ken a cardinal rule of journalism by becoming apart of the story they are sent to cover.

“Their confrontations with the big bad Iraqis,and their subsequent expulsion from the coun-try, have generated more news coverage than thesuffering of innocent civilians, including womenand very young children.”

Back to the drawing board

HOW many times have we heard about thePLAN? The plan is working. We are on plan.Today The New York Times makes it official: Theplan is being changed. Why? It didn’t work. Theunexpected fierce resistance has put a wrinkle inthe plan to spend Arabian nights in the Iraqi cap-ital. Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, a main-stream media writer, is now blaming mediaaccounts for misleading viewers and the admin-istration:

Kurtz writes: “Why did so many people thinkthis would be a cakewalk? You’d have to say themedia played a key role. The pre-war buildupwas so overwhelming that it seemed like the warshould be called off as a horrible mismatch.There were hundreds of stories about America’ssuperior weaponry, the Bradleys and Apachesand Mother of All Bombs, the superbly trainedforces. There were so many ‘shock and awe’ sto-ries that Americans could be forgiven for think-ing they were in for another video-game conflict.There were stories about how Iraqi units wouldquickly surrender, how Iraqi citizens would hailthe advancing Americans and British as libera-tors. Some of this was driven by the more than

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500 embedded reporters, who naturally reflectedthe confidence of the commanders and troopsthey were covering.”

Ernie Pyle meets Franz Kafka

JASON VEST picks up on this theme in thisweek’s New York Observer: “With each newreport comes a new, contradictory theory. Weare conquering. We are not conquering. We arenot conquering as fast was we’d expected. Thetroops are confident. The troops are nervous.

“It is Ernie Pyle meets Franz Kafka. What youare seeing is not the war in Iraq, Donald Rums-feld said. What you are seeing are slices of thewar in Iraq.

“The spectacle was thrilling and clear at first.Those videophoned images of tanks rollingthrough the desert were stunning – Nintendo ofArabia. Talking to a plucky embedded corre-spondent in the field named Ted Koppel as theThird Infantry Division rumbled by in the back-ground, ABC’s Peter Jennings called the tech-nology astonishing.

“It was only natural that with this astonishingtechnology came an unvarnished kind of exuber-ance. Here was our military – live, just likeJimmy Kimmel – and it appeared not only formi-dable, but also unmolested. Mr. Koppel wouldlater go up in a high-ranking officer’s helicopter,and the steel phalanxes he and his cameramansaw below looked invincible. There were pic-tures of surrendering Iraqis, too. People startedgetting carried away. Shortly after talking to hisnetwork’s embed, Fox News’ Shepard Smithhailed the forthcoming “liberation of Kuwait.” Hesaid it again, before finally correcting himself.”

What drives war reporters?

YES, what of the reporters themselves? Veteranwar correspondent Sidney Schanberg, PulitzerPrize winner for his reporting on the killingfields of Cambodia and later purged from TheNew York Times for his politics, discusses whyso many media people are drawn to war, in thisweek’s Village Voice.

“It is a paradox of war that some people whohave lived through its slaughter and madnessnever lose the itch to go back and live through itagain. Some soldiers feel the pull, lured by mem-ories of the intense bonding. Medical profession-als and relief workers feel it too, still carryingthe images of the wounded they saved and lost.And some reporters also have the cravingbecause war is life’s most primal story. I, for one,still hear the siren call.

“One modifying remark: Most people whohave survived war have little or no or minusdesire to relive the experience. Second, I reallycan speak only about reporters, for it’s the onlyskin I have.

“Why have I chosen to write about this phe-nomenon of attraction to war? We journalists sorarely explain ourselves to our audience per-haps in fear of letting you see, heaven forbid, ourfallibility that a gulf has widened between thepublic and us. I thought a little self-examinationmight help people better understand what they’llbe seeing and reading in the days of war ahead.

“First though, you probably already know thata lot of the people reporting on the war have nofirsthand experience with it, especially thoseworking from air-conditioned television studiosan ocean and continent away from the fighting.Probably they should begin their reports with

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some kind of ignorance acknowledgment, but nomatter, they are harmless if you hit the mute but-ton. Reporters in the war zones are, for the mostpart, quite different. Some are new at it, as we allwere, but they won’t be innocent for long. Warvastly speeds up the initiation process. Clearsthe mind of flotsam too. Journalists are alreadyamong the allied casualties.”

Robot reporters in the wings?

SOON we may be able to dispense with humanreporters and replace them with robots (if this isnot what we have in no short supply.) The APreports: “Frustrated by what he considers adearth of solid news from the Afghan conflict, aMassachusetts Institute of Technology resear-cher has set about trying to build a roving, mul-timedia reporter. A remote-controlled robotcould help journalists troll for news in theworld’s hot spots, witnessing battles at closerange and even conducting interviews, saysChris Csikszentmihalyi, director of the Comput-ing Culture group at MIT’s Media Lab. The inven-tion, modeled on NASA’s Mars Explorer, wouldnot only help keep reporters out of the line offire, but could also help overcome the U.S. mili-tary’s restrictions on press access, theresearcher thinks.”

Meanwhile, back in a very White House

WE have embeds all over Iraq, but as I havenoted, none with Iraqi families. We also havenone really in the White House where, never-theless, some revealing insights are emerging onthe Emperor without clothes. Some revealing

moments have now come to light. TIME reportsthe President’s nuanced view of his adversaryabout whom we are not hearing all that muchthese days: “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking himout,” said President George W. Bush in March2002, after poking his head into the office ofNational Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,TIME reports. More recently Knight Ridderreported: “Minutes before the speech, an inter-nal television monitor showed the presidentpumping his fist. “Feels good,” he said. FeelsGOOD?

Village Voice columnist Richard Goldstein bril-liantly takes us deeper in this morass: “As thefirst bombs fell on Baghdad, George Bush wasgetting his hair done. We know this because arogue technician broke protocol by beaming acandid image from the Oval Office to the BBC.Millions of people around the world saw thepresident primping and squirming, his eyes dart-ing to and fro, for a minute and a half before hishere-comes-the-war address. The White Housewas up in arms. ‘This kind of thing has happenedmore than once,’ fumed a senior aide, vowingthat it would never happen again.

“It’s evident why Bush’s hairspray momentwas taken so seriously. The blooper must haveplayed like a clip from America’s Funniest HomeVideos dropped into the middle of Monday NightFootball. Not only did the President seem vainand prissy; he looked uncertain, a real blow tothe mastery that the White House is determinedto project.

“Not to worry: The American networks neverpicked up the subversive footage. Nothing wasallowed to intrude on the spectacle of bombsfalling on Baghdad that unfolded before our eyeslast Wednesday night.”

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Put this warning on your TV set

FINAL note on the media coverage. It can beharmful to YOU, reports The Wall Street Jour-nal. I hope the New York Post columnist, whotold readers how “addicted” he has become,reads this:

“Studies show regular television exposure totraumatic events can increase risk for stress anddepression and it can even weaken our immunesystems. Doctors think excessive war viewingbefore bedtime can cause stress-induced night-time snacking and interfere with sleep. Evenyoung children who seem oblivious to events onthe screen may suffer ill effects simply as a resultof leaving the television on throughout the day.

“If you start watching it at 6 p.m. and the nextthing you know it’s 8:30 and you feel like you’vebeen on the battlefield, then get away from it,”says Joseph C. Piscatella, author of ‘Take a LoadOff Your Heart’. “Excessive watching of TV dur-ing these kinds of events can be a major stressor,and it’s just as unhealthy as if you spent 2 1/2hours at a smorgasbord or never exercised.” ●

PERSONALITIES TARGETED AS PROBLEMS EMERGEON the 7th day, the Lord rested. But the U.S. mil-itary can’t catch a break. After a week of tri-umphant coverage, something is bogging downthe hoped-for quickie war.

And it’s not just the sandstorms, which makeIraq look like the lunar surface. Some of the cov-erage is over the moon. It is hard not to feelsome compassion for all the media embeds who

were telling us how swimmingly everything wasgoing until a real war got in their way. If you hadread their clips and watched their coverage, ourliberators should have been by now welcomedinto the Casbahs by the belly dancers of Bagh-dad. It was in the plan.

Over and over the “coalition” media has beenreporting on the plan, the plan, the plan. Youhave heard and seen it a million times. “We areon plan . . . The plan is working.” But now realityhas intruded. The New York Times tells us theplan that could do no wrong is being changed. Asevery psychologist knows, frustration leads toaggression and now there seems to be morebombing of the “non precise” kind. There weremore civilian casualties in the Iraqi capitalWednesday morning. We didn’t see them but wewere told they were there, and that the peoplewho have yet to stage an uprising are “angry.” Nokidding.

Howard Kurtz, a mainstream media watcher, atthe Washington Post is turning critical of mediacoverage, as are many analysts around theworld. Others, including Kenneth Bacon, formerPentagon media chief, says the media is now themilitary’s biggest asset. “The Wall Street Journalrevealed that Tori Clark, the military’s mediaczarina, is modeling her operation on the wayshe used to run media campaigns.

In some ways, the past was prologue in termsof the coverage we are seeing. Back in l991,much-quoted Republican strategist MichaelDeaver, President Reagan’s PR spinner, prefig-ured Bacon with words to the same effect: “If youwere to hire a public relations firm to do themedia relations for an international event,” hesaid, “it couldn’t be done any better than this isbeing done” At the time, Democrat Hodding

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Carter, who handled media for President Carter,said pretty much the same thing: “If I were thegovernment, I would be paying the press for thecoverage it is getting.”

That was a decade ago. Since then, manybelieve the situation has deteriorated despite thenew technologies, embedded reporters and pro-liferation of new 24-hour news networks. RichardGoldstein sees almost a merging of interests inan era of media mergers:

“There’s more to the collusion between thenetworks and the Pentagon than ideology. Bothparties have an interest in creating a drama, onethat draws viewers into a web of associations,producing thrills, chills, and secret delight.These feelings are heightened by the belief thatthey convey the real meaning of actual events.The French, those weaselly surrender monkeys,call this confluence of the virtual and the véritéhyper-reality. It’s the grand illusion of our time.

“Hyper-reality is a fiction that presents itself asfact. Its power is enhanced by churning Chyronsand rolling ribbons of text. These signifiers of“breaking news” are also a landscape that keepsthe eye alert and moving. Meanwhile anchors spinthe narrative thread. War wipes the usual smilesfrom their faces, and they must maintain a tone ofreverent gravity however mesmerizing theimagery. But every now and then, a burst from theid lights up the commentary”

Lighting up is what U.S. bombs are doing toIraqi TV, as many news anchors ask, “Why havewe waited so long” to “take out” what they see asa propaganda outlet. Journalists in Arab mediaoutlets feel the same way about U.S. stations andand have begun lecturing their western counter-parts on what constitutes “real” journalism. (Sig-nificantly the right-wing Fox News Channel in

America has appropriated that very phrase,“real journalism” as a branding device. Its com-petitor MSNBC now runs promos saluting thetroops with the slogan, “God Bless America.” ●

MARCH 27: “A PREPOSTEROUSFACSIMILE OF JOURNALISM” FIRST, we were shocked but not always awed,now we are getting bored. As TV news appearsmore and more routine, on a “loop,” as one com-mentator put it with appropriate sarcasm lastnight, a tune-out is threatening. TV news is upagainst the very condition that it has fosteredover the years – a short attention span.

Perhaps that’s why the three U.S. cable newsnetworks this morning took in the feed of anicely staged press conference with threewounded soldiers from Germany where they arehospitalized. U.S. revenge against German oppo-sition to the war did not include closing thisbase. So for over a half hour in what is usually afrenetic and well-formatted dash to offer morenews in less time, we heard all the details of howthey were shot. Being shot “sucks,” said one sol-dier from Long Island who also revealed that heand his unit watched videotapes of HBO’s “Bandof Brothers” before their work of liberation.Maybe they should have watched “The Sopra-nos” for a lesson on unconventional warfare.

Up close and personal

FOX NEWS predictably gushed that they were all“profiles in courage” for defending that bridge theway they did. This is a clue that more human

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interest up close and personal stories are on theway, as a means of sustaining interest. This isanother dip into the Hollywood playbook, inwhich narrative storytelling calls for strong char-acters. After the press conference, one of thoseever-present military experts beamed with pride.As we now know, there seems to be a great dealmore that “sucks” about a war plan that keepsbeing cited but is rarely explained. Another 30,000troops are being rushed to the front as 1,000 para-troopers “invade” northern Iraq. (Actually theylanded in friendly Kurdish territory.)

The BBC did not indulge the drama of thewounded men, and instead did some hardreporting on the shortage of humanitarian aidand the anger in Iraq with the UN which pulledout its western aid workers before the war andleft inadequate staffs to cope with what may bethe largest humanitarian crisis in history. Whilethere still do not seem to be reporters “embed-ded” with the humanitarian teams, perhapsbecause covering the work of peace is not assexy as reporting on the sands of war, you couldsee that horror with that snatch of pictures ofdesperate people clawing for food and water.BBC’s correspondent in Baghdad reported thatauthorities there say their hospitals are wellstocked and that are sending a convoy of foodand medicines to the south. Such a caravan islikely to be a target, just as the British ship withfood aid has been stopped because of mines inthe port.

Media war under scrutiny

THE media war is being escalated too, as LucienTruscott, the Vietnam war vet and authorexplained in The New York Times: “From the

first moments of the war, television screens andnewspaper pages around the world have shownand described it with images of explodingpalaces and an armored phalanx rolling rapidlytoward Baghdad. Reports from the ThirdInfantry Division do everything but cite highwaymile-markers of their progress. Reporters areembedded so deep into the war that they aresubsisting on the same dreadful rations eaten bythe troops.

“The Pentagon may have been dragged kick-ing and screaming into its current embrace ofthe news media. But it is making the most of it.Planners must have contemplated advances inmedia technology and decided that if they can’tcontrol the press, they may as well use it.”

Power worshipping

AND use it they are, as Matt Taibbi explains inthis week’s New York Press: “The preposterousfacsimile of journalism that had marked themonths leading up to the war vanished, replacedon every network by a veritable blizzard of videogadgetry and power-worshipping bullshit.

“There were so many video effects that it wassometimes hard to see the actual people whowere reading the news. Many of the channels (inparticular Fox and MSNBC) adopted a two-boxformat in which the newsreader occupied asmallish hole on the left side of the screen, whilethe other side contained a live shot of the subjectlocation (Baghdad, Kuwait City). Surroundingthe two boxes: a dizzying array of crawls andlogos, which from time to time would morph intocutesy, 3-D-rendered graphics of deadly weaponsthat would literally fly in from the edge of thescreen and then stop to rotate proudly in the

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middle of the video showroom, like the new caron The Price is Right.

“And meanwhile, every network news set wastransformed into a boozy officers’ club, with a suc-cession of current and former military guest ana-lysts who lined up to be gently fellated on air.”

Producers challenged

ON the air, The New York Times reports thatproducers are struggling to keep up. Jim Ruten-berg and Bill Carter are far less critical thanTaibbi and portray the TV journalists as sincere,if challenged: “This up-close-and-personal viewof the war, including injuries, captures and casu-alties along with fierce fighting, has given whatbroadcasters see is a contradiction of the posi-tive progress reports provided in Pentagon brief-ings. How, then, can they deliver the news fast(and first) without either under- or over-estimat-ing the challenges at hand? ‘The process of try-ing to get it right is weighing heavily on all of us,’said Steve Capus of NBC Nightly News. ‘We wantto get it right; we don’t want to be spun.’ Othercorrespondents blame the military for failing toprovide context for the limited yet astonishingimages viewers see.”

The totality: Missing

CRITICS, on the other hand, blame the TV net-works, which have seemed to have merged withthe military. Nancy Franklin writes about this inThe New Yorker, a magazine published twoblocks away from The New York Times bunker:“The totality of the war is bigger than its front-line details, newsworthy though those detailsare. That totality is something that the news

organizations have so far given scant attentionto. We’ve seen little coverage of the war’s oppo-nents or of the global political ramifications, andeven after Friday’s strikes there was almost nomention of Iraqi casualties. (On Friday night,CNN did show footage of protests around theworld and followed it with a segment called“Decapitation 101.”) In the days and weeks tocome, reporters will have to try not to becomeintoxicated by the unprecedented access theyhave been granted, and the organizations theywork for are going to have to try to rememberthat patriotism has nothing to do with slappingan image of the American flag on the screenalongside their logos, and that freedom of thepress is ultimately something that can’t be takenaway or given by the Pentagon.”

BBC chief seeks truth

ARE we at least getting the facts? Not necessar-ily, says the head of the BBC, according to areport carried by the European Journalism Cen-ter: “BBC director of news Richard Sambrookhas admitted it is proving difficult for correspon-dents in Iraq to distinguish the truth from falsereports, after a series of media claims about theprogress of coalition forces turned out to be pre-mature. Nobody, including the media, has the fullpicture of what’s going on. Reporting the war isabout putting together fragments of information.We’re all trying to work out this jigsaw and whatthe overall picture is, Mr. Sambrook said. Sam-brook is bringing an honesty to this discussionthat we have so far NOT heard from U.S. mediaexecutives.” (Americans do keep hearing fromPentagon briefers with rare challenges from thepress corps..)

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Reporting or distorting?

HOW do we evaluate the reports we are getting?Are there others we may not be getting? Likethis one: “Sanwa ata Mosahra reporting. A filmcrew from al-Minar TV, a television network ofLebanon, stumbled across the bodies of about 40U.S. soldiers scattered in the desert outsideNaseriah. Ali Fawsua, a cameraman for al-Minar,said, “It was obvious the soldiers had been in amajor battle as there were empty ammunitioncasing everywhere.

“We searched around but could not find anydead Iraqi soldiers and must be thinking theytook their dead and injured away from the bat-tle,” he added. “We called on our satellite phoneto our base camp and told them what we hadfound and they told the Americans where wewere located.

“Soon some American helicopters came to usand the Americans took all our camera andrecording equipment and smashed it. They toldus to leave the area and say nothing of this find-ing. When we arrived back at our base to thesouth there were American military policeeverywhere and they destroyed all of our equip-ment and told us to leave Iraq immediately.”

“Al-Minar has lodged a complaint with theIJCO and U.S. with a claim for compensation forthe many thousand dollars of destroyed equip-ment.”

I haven’t seen this report anywhere. Is it true? We need more dissecting. Yes, I am willing to

share the role. We have yet to see anything onTV like what The Guardian is doing to analyzethe claims and counter claims of what is actuallyhappening in Iraq. This is an important contribu-tion to journalists. Others can do it. Why don’t

they? Check this out on The Guardian website,MediaGuardian.co.uk.

Sorting claims and counter-claims

THE feature is called “When are facts, facts? Notin a war,” by Chris Tryhorn. “ ‘Fog’” is beginningto be the watchword of this war, with the linesbetween fact and propaganda being blurred on adaily basis. The demands of round-the-clocknews means military claims are being relayedinstantly to millions without being confirmed orverified. Only to be refuted later by reporters onthe ground or by fresh military updates.

“In due course, questions will be asked aboutthe clashing interests of the military and themedia and the role of war propaganda in the pur-suit of a swift victory against Saddam’s regime.

“The worst example of false claims relates tothe battle to take control of Umm Qasr, thesouthern Iraqi deep-sea port and one of the keytargets in the early war. On Sunday afternoon, ithad been “taken” nine times. By Sunday nightthere were still ugly skirmishes between coali-tion forces and irregulars loyal to Saddam oper-ating out of the old town. Umm Qasr was not, infact, taken until Tuesday.”

Chemical weapons factory: Now you see it, now you don’t

“MONDAY, March 24, 1:33 am. Reports surfacethat U.S. forces find first cache of Saddam’schemical and biological weapons, seizing a sus-pected chemical factory in An Najaf. This wouldbe a significant PR coup for Messrs Bush andBlair who justified their launch of war on thegrounds that Saddam had weapons of mass

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destruction. “Fox News and the Jerusalem Post, which had

a reporter traveling with U.S. troops, both quoteunidentified Pentagon officials who said the facil-ity was seized by U.S. forces. About 30 Iraqitroops and their commanding general surren-dered as American forces took the installation,apparently used to produce chemical weapons,according to the Jerusalem Post. It was notimmediately clear what chemicals were beingproduced at the facility. Officials caution it is toopremature to conclude that forbidden weaponshad been discovered but U.S. central commandsays it is examining several sites of interest.

“Monday, March 24, 2.42 a.m. General RichardMyers, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimsU.S. commandos found documents along withmillions of rounds of ammunition on Saturday,saying the discovery “might save thousands oflives if we can find out exactly what they have.”

“We’re not sure”

MONDAY, March 24, 2.44 p.m. General TommyFranks, head of the coalition forces, claims he“wasn’t entirely sure” that it was a chemical fac-tory after all. Fox News forced to back away fromthe story. Iraq denies it has chemical or biologi-cal weapons. Etc.

White House wants to dominate coverage

EVEN as the administration seems to be gettinga free ride, it is planning to step up its PR offen-sive. Douglas Quenqua reports in PR Week,“The eruption of war in Iraq last week set inmotion a massive global PR network, cultivated

by the Bush administration during the months-long buildup of forces. The network is intendednot only to disseminate, but also to dominatenews of the conflict around the world.

“Before the attacks began, Suzy DeFrancis,deputy assistant to President Bush for communi-cations, outlined the daily media relations hand-offthat was about to begin. ‘When Americans wakeup in the morning, they will first hear from the(Persian Gulf) region, maybe from General TommyFranks,’ she said. ‘Then later in the day, they’ll hearfrom the Pentagon, then the State Department,then later on the White House will brief.’

“The OGC, an office born out of post-Septem-ber-11 efforts to combat anti-American news sto-ries emerging from Arab countries, will be key inkeeping all U.S. spokespeople on message. Eachnight, U.S. embassies around the world, alongwith all federal departments in DC, will receive a‘Global Messenger’ email containing talkingpoints and ready-to-use quotes. While an obvi-ous benefit to having communicators spreadacross time zones is the ability to dominate the24-hour news cycle.”

We are under bombardment

WHAT is the effect of all this? I was struck by acogent critique on a blog called Dave’s Web:

“After immersing myself for several days in theworld of cable ‘news’ – an activity that I usuallyavoid at all costs – I have come to the conclusionthat anyone who can watch this parade of foolsand not know that they are being lied to has tobe a few Freedom Fries short of a Happy Meal.

“A pattern to the coverage of the Iraq war isridiculously easy to discern: first, a recklesslytransparent lie is told; then, it is repeated end-

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lessly by a stable of resident ‘experts,’ apparentlyin an attempt to bolster its credibility; this contin-ues until the initial claim is irrefutably revealed asa lie; at which time another layer of spin and liesis added, with no acknowledgment that the initialclaim was entirely fraudulent; with the new lies inplace, the process begins again.”

FAIR demands verification

AND as it does, FAIR has been analyzing its con-tent. It looks at the claims of surgical precisionweapons in one analysis at Fair.org. (Interestingin light of the climbing death toll from the bomb-ing of a market in Baghdad, which the NY Postsays the Pentagon suspects was planted by theIraqis. The government there claims 400 deadand 4,000 casualties.”

Writes FAIR: “The Pentagon can be expectedto claim that its bombing campaign against Iraqis accurate. But without independent verifica-tion, reporters should be skeptical about theseclaims about ‘precision’ bombing.

“Recent reports on NBC News illustrate theopposite tendency. Correspondent Bob Faw(3/20/03) described a Florida town as ‘a commu-nity, which very much endorses that surgicalstrike against Saddam Hussein.’

“Anchor Katie Couric (3/21/03) also referred to‘a series of surgical strikes focusing on Iraq’s keyleadership’ during the first two nights of bomb-ing. Anchor Matt Lauer (3/21/03) agreed: ‘Thepeople in that city have endured two nights ofsurgical air strikes and they’ve no idea whatcould come tonight.’

“Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski(3/21/03) took it a step further, reporting that‘every weapon is precision guided – deadly accu-

racy designed to kill only the targets, not inno-cent civilians.’ On the Today show the nextmorning (3/22/03), Miklaszewski reiterated hispoint: ‘More than a thousand bombs and missileswere dropped on Baghdad, three times the num-ber from the entire Gulf War. And this time,they’re all precision-guided, deadly accurate,designed to kill only the targets, not innocentcivilians.’

“That same day, reporter Chris Jansing sizedup ‘the first daylight pictures of severe damagefrom yesterday’s massive and incredibly preciseair assault on the Iraqi capital.’ But on-the-ground reports from the scene of the bombingswould be necessary before making any definitiveclaims about “surgical strikes.”

From media suiteto protest in the streets

WHILE I am up here in my “suite.” protesters areout in the streets, just a block away, at Rocke-feller Center, home of NBC and parent companyGE. Propelled by the slogan “NO BUSINESS ASUSUAL,” an ad-hoc coalition of anti-war groupsis planning massive civil disobedience tomorrowMarch 27, at 8 a.m. in and around RockefellerCenter. “We target corporate war profiteers andthe media/corporate/government collusion thatis promoting this war.” Note to protesters: Mediaoutlets are being advised that covering protest isbad for business. I kid you not. Harry Jessellwrites in Broadcasting and Cable:

“Covering war protesters may be bad for busi-ness. That’s among the findings of new researchfrom Frank N. Magid Associates, the influentialnews consulting firm. In a survey of 6,400 viewerson their attitudes regarding Iraq and the media,

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the news-consulting firm found that the viewershad little interest in anti-war protests. Magiddoesn’t tell news directors to avoid protests. Itjust says viewers tend to hate seeing them.“Obviously, you have to give both sides of thestory,’’ says Senior Vice President Brian Greif.“But how much time you devote to [protests] andwhere you place it in your newscast becomes anissue.” ●

MARCH 27: WHAT IS THE “VALUE PROPOSITION?” WHAT is real? What isn’t ? When is telling actu-ally selling? Watch the TV coverage of thishuman disaster in the desert and tell me. Thecomplaints about managed media coverage seemto have started trickling back into media-land.MSNBC, which can, in a nano-second, go live toDoha, can’t seem to capture the same immediacyin the streets of New York where anti-war (andincreasingly anti-media) protests continued thismorning with more arrests.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was, for the first timethat I have seen last night, acknowledging thatthere is a legitimate dispute about the reliabilityof the coverage and its impact. Nic Robertson ofCNN, reporting now from Jordan also acknowl-edged that journalists from other countries viewdevelopments differently than our merry bandof Embeds.

The pulse of propaganda

THE propa-news reached a new low this morningwith NBC’s Bob Arnot salting the troops by say-

ing they are so much more motivated, brave andpatriotic than the actors who play soldiers in themovies. It was almost as bad as a Fox TV special,The Pulse, featuring Bill O’Reilly. It airs on cableand on Fox News savaging Saddam’s son with somuch rhetorical overkill and bad music that itlooked like a World War II propaganda filmhatched in Dr. Goebbel’s ministry of misinforma-tion. (The word “rape” must have been cited athousand times, just in case you missed it thefirst 999 times. When will O’Reilly do a similartrash job on the U.S. Air Force Academy – atwhich there has been testimony that virtuallyevery female student has been raped?)

After an hour of news that seemed as if it wascoming straight out of official military briefings,including detailed descriptions of humongousbunker buster bombs that left a mushroom cloudover Baghdad, no attempt was made to explainWHY these bombs were necessary, or what theirimpacts were.

Listen to Robert Fisk of The Independent onthe bombing of that market in Baghdad that theU.S. government is implying was caused by Iraqidefense missiles. Ask yourself why we neverhear anything approaching this angry tone inU.S. journalism.

Outrage journalism

“IT was an outrage, an obscenity. The severedhand on the metal door, the swamp of blood andmud across the road, the human brains inside agarage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of anIraqi mother and her three small children intheir still-smoldering car.

“Two missiles from an American jet killedthem all by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civil-

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ians, torn to pieces before they could be ‘liber-ated’ by the nation that destroyed their lives.Who dares, I ask myself, to call this ‘collateraldamage’? Abu Taleb Street was packed withpedestrians and motorists when the Americanpilot approached through the dense sandstormthat covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of redand yellow dust and rain yesterday morning.

“We may put on the hair shirt of morality inexplaining why these people should die. Theydied because of 11 September, we may say,because of President Saddam’s weapons of massdestruction, because of human rights abuses,because of our desperate desire to liberate themall. Let us not confuse the issue with oil. Eitherway, I’ll bet we are told President Saddam is ulti-mately responsible for their deaths. We shan’tmention the pilot.

“Are we seeing the death and destruction?Word of it is rarely heard at the briefings that getwall-to-wall coverage with all the talk of how weare ‘on plan.’

Briefing-based journalism is a joke. Tomdis-patch.com explains why: “Let’s start with a touchof irony. For thirty years, the men (and lonewoman) now running our country have also beenrunning away from Vietnam. In this war, it onlytook six days for Vietnam to catch up to them. Lastnight, for instance, here’s what I noticed on theCBS and ABC national news, followed by the JimLehrer NewsHour. CBS led off with word that theU.S. military in Iraq, where all was going accordingto plan and on schedule, had nonetheless calledfor reinforcements from the States to guardexposed supply lines and 700 soldiers from anarmored unit were being shipped out immediately.

“As the Vietnam War went on, of course, themilitary was always offering public reassurances

about how splendidly things were going andthen asking the President for more men. (DS: thelatest is that another 100,000 are being flown in.All according to plan, of course.) PBS also airedclips of the daily Centcom briefing in Qatar. Theuniformed briefer seemed distinctly on thedefensive! A Canadian reporter was shown com-plaining that the military never displayed videosof missiles that missed their targets or hit wrongtargets and demanded to know when somewould be available.

“Then, to my surprise, a CBS correspondentrose to complain fairly vehemently that, while“embedded” reporters were offering many tinypictures, the “big picture” was supposed to comefrom Centcom; instead, he commented, all thatwas being offered were videos of micro-airstrikes. In fact, all the Pentagon news conferencesof the day managed to look both ridiculous anduntrustworthy as spokesmen tried to pin theblame for civilian casualties from the missile-in-the-Baghdad-market on the Iraqis.”

Why are we here?

I WAS struck by a question that was raised atyesterday’s CENTCOM briefing, which focusedon what is happening in the “theater,” a greatword that explains why we are seeing so manyperformances. Michael Wolff of New York maga-zine had the chutzpah to get up and challengethe whole ritual by asking about its value propo-sition. “Why are we even here, in this milliondollar media center?” was his question. Itseemed to piss off the briefer because it was a bitpissy, even though he offered it “with respect.”Wolff is not a journalist to be messed with.

In many ways the corridor correspondents of

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Kuwait are practicing stenography rather thanjournalism. This mecca of media managementalso offered up images of some happy kids wel-coming the troops and referenced the presenceof 500 “Free Iraqi” soldiers who are assigned tocivil affairs units, not combat ones. (i.e. talkingrather than shooting their way into Iraq.)

RE: The bombing of TV stations

EARLIER, my sometime-bud, Michael Massingpopped up to challenge the bombing of the IraqiTV station, which is prohibited by the GenevaConventions. We were then told that the bomb-ing was not against the TV station, even thoughthat is how it was described by all the U.S. net-works, but against some ‘command and control’facility hidden there in some undescribed ‘node.’Reader Jackie Newberry, has a point about this:“It is my understanding that bombing a TV sta-tion, even though it is state controlled, is againstthe Geneva conventions. It is still a civilian instal-lation. I heard from sources other than majormedia that civilians inside the station were killedand injured. That has not been reported here.

“Tonight the U.S. dropped a huge bomb on theinformation ministry in Baghdad. Despite thereassurance that bombing is precision and surgi-cal, I have heard a number of non-major mediareports that there are a number of civilian casu-alties. All of this bears investigation by the press.I want to know the truth.”

Take-out squad

IT is not just the absence of facts that is distress-ing. It is the gleeful way the news of the destruc-tion of a TV station was treated by U.S. TV sta-

tions. (On Fox this morning, there was a winkand a nod discussion by the morning zoo teamabout how U.S. programming is likely to bebeamed in soon via the hi-tech SOLO aircraftthat broadcasts from the sky). That is alreadyhappening in Basra, according to this report inThe Guardian: “British forces have taken Iraqistate radio and television off the air in Basra,according to unconfirmed reports from theBBC’s correspondent in southern Iraq. Thereport, published today on the BBC’s website,claimed transmitters in Basra were destroyed inovernight air raids and coalition forces havetaken over a number of radio frequencies. Theallied military is now broadcasting its own mes-sages to the people of Basra, effectively isolatingBasra from any communication with Baghdad.”

The media watchers of FAIR (Fairness andAccuracy in Media) are denouncing the report-ing of the bombing of TV and radio stations:“When Iraqi TV offices in Baghdad were hit by aU.S. missile strike on March 25, the targeting ofmedia was strongly criticized by press andhuman rights groups. The general secretary ofthe International Federation of Journalists,Aidan White, suggested that, ‘there should be aclear international investigation into whether ornot this bombing violates the Geneva Conven-tions.’ White told Reuters (3/26/03), “Once again,we see military and political commanders fromthe democratic world targeting a television net-work simply because they don’t like the messageit gives out.’”

The Geneva Conventions forbid the targetingof civilian installations – whether state-owned ornot – unless they are being used for military pur-poses. Amnesty International warned (3/26/03)that the attack may have been a “war crime” and

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emphasized that bombing a television station“simply because it is being used for the purposesof propaganda” is illegal under internationalhumanitarian law. “The onus,” said Amnesty, ison “coalition forces” to prove “the military use ofthe TV station and, if that is indeed the case, toshow that the attack took into account the risk tocivilian lives.”

Likewise, Human Rights Watch affirmed(3/26/03) that it would be illegal to target Iraqi TVbased on its propaganda value. “Although stop-ping enemy propaganda may serve to demoral-ize the Iraqi population and to undermine thegovernment’s political support,” said HRW, “nei-ther purpose offers the ‘concrete and direct’ mil-itary advantage necessary under internationallaw to make civilian broadcast facilities a legiti-mate military target.”

Some U.S. journalists, however, have not shownmuch concern about the targeting of Iraqi jour-nalists. Prior to the bombing, some even seemedanxious to know why the broadcast facilities had-n’t been attacked yet. Fox News Channel’s JohnGibson wondered (3/24/03): “Should we take IraqiTV off the air? Should we put one down the stovepipe there?” Fox’s Bill O’Reilly (3/24/03) agreed: “Ithink they should have taken out the television,the Iraqi television. . .Why haven’t they taken outthe Iraqi television towers?”

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster offered:“A lot of questions about why state-run televisionis allowed to continue broadcasting. After all, thecoalition forces know where those broadcasttowers are located.” On CNBC, Forrest Sawyeroffered tactical alternatives to bombing (3/24/03):“There are operatives in there. You could go inwith sabotage, take out the building, you couldtake out the tower.”

They call it intelligence

NEVER mind thinking about how these toughguys in the “take out” squad would feel if, godforbid, Iraq had the capacity to “take out” theirpulpits? What is worse than the showboatingand macho messaging is the lack of real per-spective on the war itself. It seems as if U.S. intel-ligence was anything but, just as intelligence onthe air is so often missing. Even Murdoch’s Lon-don Times realizes that the neocons who havebeen pumping a war for years before Bush waselected, got it wrong. Richard Beeston and TomBaldwin report:

“British and American intelligence badly mis-calculated the level of resistance that coalitionforces would encounter in Iraq, with analystspredicting that troops would reach Baghdad indays and defeat President Saddam Hussein in amatter of weeks. As thousands more U.S. sol-diers began deploying in the Gulf for what couldbe a campaign lasting months, there were grow-ing questions in London and Washington overthe failure to anticipate the stubborn resistancebeing encountered.

“At the start of the war, British military offi-cers were confident that the southern city ofBasra would fall quickly, that the Shia Muslims inthe south would rise up against Saddam and thatthere would be token resistance on the road toBaghdad. ‘The intelligence assessment seriouslyunderestimated what to expect,’ one Whitehallsource, who briefed Downing Street on the dan-gers before the war, said. His advice was largelyignored, even though Saddam was openly mak-ing careful preparations to defend himself. Hearmed and trained irregular forces, bribed triballeaders and used propaganda to portray the

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looming war as an attempt by America to con-quer the country and steal its oil.”

This is the old garbage-in-garbage-out prob-lem. The war game exercises that prepared thetroops were also fake-outs, as Julian Borgerreported last August in The Guardian:

“The biggest war game in U.S. military history,staged this month at a cost of £165m with 13,000troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americansbeat their ‘Middle Eastern’ adversaries, accord-ing to one of the main participants. General PaulVan Riper, a retired marine lieutenant general,told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were‘almost entirely scripted to ensure a [U.S.] vic-tory.’”

Embedded sales force

THE embedding-of-journalist policy is also help-ing the ‘coalition’ sell the war. The Guardianreports today that “the defense secretary, GeoffHoon, has claimed a PR victory over the war inIraq, saying the practice of “embedding” journal-ists with troops has helped turn around publicopinion. Mr. Hoon said TV images from journal-ists accompanying the British troops were “atleast partially responsible‚ for the swing in pub-lic opinion in favor of the war.”

Does this policy lead us closer to the truth,despite the glitzy footage that gives the war somuch immediacy on TV? Even neocons CokieRoberts and husband Steve Roberts see a poten-tial problem, stating:

“This is a war for truth,” insists Pentagonspokesman Bryan Whitman. “The goal is to haveaccurate, truthful reporting from the battlefield.”We agree. But that means the bad news along

with the good, the victims as well as the victo-ries. As ABC’s Ted Koppel put it: “I feel we dohave an obligation to remind people in the mostgraphic way that war is a dreadful thing. YoungAmericans are dying. Young Iraqis are dying. Tosanitize it too much is a dreadful mistake.”

The contrast is breath-taking

EMBEDDING does lead to many dreadful mis-takes, as we hear some reporters recycling mili-tary lingo like “the enemy.” Here’s a report onhow Martin Savidge, a CNN- embed, covered onebattle and then how the same confrontation wasreported in The Age, a newspaper in Australia.First CNN:

“There is a lookout there, a hill referred to asSafwan Hill, on the Iraqi side of the border. It wasfilled with Iraqi intelligence gathering. From thatvantage point, they could look out over all ofnorthern Kuwait.

“It is now estimated the hill was hit so badly bymissiles, artillery and by the Air Force, that theyshaved a couple of feet off it. And anything thatwas up there that was left after all the explosionswas then hit with napalm. And that pretty muchput an end to any Iraqi operations up on that hill.”

The focus, as you can see, is on how the mili-tary saw it. Here’s The Australian newspaper:

“About six hours after marines and their 155-millimeter howitzers pulled up at the border,they opened fire. Safwan Hill went up in a hugefireball and the Iraqi observation post was oblit-erated.”

“I pity anybody who’s in there, a marine ser-geant said. We told them to surrender.”

“The destruction of Safwan Hill was a priorityfor the attacking forces because it had sophisti-

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cated surveillance equipment and is near themain highway that runs from Kuwait to Basraand Baghdad. U.S. and British forces could notattempt to cross the border unless it wasdestroyed.”

“Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hell-fire missiles then swept in low from the south.”

‘Over the next eight hours, the marines openedfire with their howitzers, which have a range of30 kilometers. They were supported by U.S. Navyaircraft, which dropped napalm.”

“The Pentagon has since denied that napalmwas used in the attack. A navy spokesman inWashington, Lieutenant Commander DannyHernandez, denied that napalm – which wasbanned by a United Nations convention in 1980 -was used.”

Embed ex-bedded

ONE of the CNN embeds has been tossed out ofIraq and CNN is pissed. The Christian ScienceMonitor reports, “Philip Smucker, a contractreporter for the Monitor and The Daily Tele-graph of London, was escorted by the U.S.Marines from the front lines of the war in IraqThursday. He is being taken to Kuwait, the Pen-tagon says, because of information Smuckerreported in a broadcast appearance with CNNearly Wednesday.

“My understanding of the facts at this pointfrom the commander on the ground is that thisreporter was reporting, in real time, positions,locations, and activities of units engaged in com-bat,” says Bryan Whitman, deputy assistant sec-retary of defense for public affairs. “The com-mander felt it was necessary and appropriate toremove [Smucker] from his immediate battle

space in order not to compromise his mission orendanger personnel of his unit.”

“Smucker’s work in the Monitor is not at issue,but we have read the transcript of the CNN inter-view and it does not appear to us that he dis-closed anything that wasn’t already widely avail-able in maps and in U.S. and British radio, news-paper, and television reports in that same newscycle. Of course, the Pentagon has the final say inthe field about any threat the informationreported might pose.”

The skewering of Safire

TOMPAINE.COM features a piece by former CBS60 Minutes producer Barry Lando vivisecting arecent column by William Safire of The NewYork Times:

“ ‘France, China and Syria all have a commonreason for keeping American and British troopsout of Iraq: the three nations may not want theworld to discover that their nationals have beenillicitly supplying Saddam Hussein with materi-als used in building long-range surface-to sur-face missiles.’

‘That was the lead of William Safire’s recenttwo part series ‘The French Connection’ in TheNew York Times, reprinted in the InternationalHerald Tribune. With the Times’ august impri-matur, Safire’s charges have been relayedaround the globe, in newspapers, magazines andWeb sites, fueling the rising storm of outrageagainst the French.

“But Safire’s double broadside is more Franco-phobia than fact. He is way off-beam; his articlesare filled with error and innuendo. What makesmatters worse is that editors at both The NewYork Times and the International Herald Tri-

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bune knew there were serious questions aboutSafire’s charges, yet the papers went ahead andpublished the second part of his series.” Landoshows the many errors. See Tompaine.com.

Why we know what we do

THE ultimate test of the coverage is: Is it makingus more informed. Editor and Publisher reportsthe opposite is occurring:

“Somehow, despite the U.S. media’s exhaus-tive Iraq coverage, a very large segment of theAmerican public remained under-informedabout key issues related to the Iraqi crisis. In aJanuary poll, 44 percent of respondents said theythought most or some of the September 11, 2001,hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17 percent ofthose polled offered the correct answer: none.This was remarkable in light of the fact that, inthe weeks after the terrorist attacks, few Ameri-cans identified Iraqis among the culprits. So thelevel of awareness on this issue actuallydecreased as time passed. In the same sample, 41percent said that Iraq already possessed nuclearweapons, which not even the Bush administra-tion claimed. Despite being far off base in crucialareas, 66 percent of respondents claimed to havea good understanding of the arguments for andagainst going to war with Iraq.” ●

MEDIA SHAKEDOWN AND BREAKDOWN THERE is a media shakedown underway thatmay portend a media breakdown as the mediawar begins to veer “off plan.”

While critics on the left can’t fulminate enoughabout the use of media outlets as echo chambersfor Pentagon spin-meisters, the administrationhas been smug and secure with its million-dollarmedia center in Doha and legion of embeddedjournalists staying on message.

But now that there are bumps in the road, withmore reported casualties and atrocities, newstrains are emerging in what has been a military-media mutual appreciation society until now.

First, there have been high profile media casu-alties that have sparked new controversieswhere few existed in the past. The right-wing FoxNews began to bait MSNBC’s Peter Arnett as atraitor. Arnett, apparently unaware of the mine-field he was navigating, then appeared on IraqiTV, saying pretty much what other have beensaying about U.S. military strategy across thespectrum. He was axed for being on the wrongvenue.

The minions at Murdochville didn’t have timeto do much gloating because they had their owntempest in this nasty teapot. Star reporter Ger-aldo Rivera, who vowed to march triumphantlyinto Baghdad, has had to turn tail and slither outof the appropriately named war “theater.” Hiscrime, according to the Pentagon – revealingtroop locations. His future among the war boost-ers at the Fox News Channel is uncertain.

Next, the high command began to lob someshells at the TV generals who had been master-fully offering pro-war analysis and doing morereporting than most of the war reporters. Theregiment was skewered by the man at the top, asthe New York Post reported in a piece dramati-cally titled “Fists of Fury.” He didn’t like whatmany have been saying.

“An angry Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard

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Myers yesterday blasted critics of the Iraq warplan, charging they are spreading ‘bogus’ infor-mation that is ‘not helpful’ at a time when U.S.troops are in combat.

“In an astonishing display of emotion at thePentagon news briefing, the normally reservedAir Force general delivered an impassionedresponse to the barrage of media reports ofinternecine warfare at the Pentagon over whetherthere are enough troops on the ground in Iraq.

“Myers, who didn’t name names, said the high-profile carping that’s produced a media feedingfrenzy may be ‘good sport inside the Beltway,’but it is ‘not helpful. . . ’”

With military problems emerging and politicalfrustration surfacing in a White House whosechief executive is reportedly glued to the tube,the Pentagon is tightening control over itsembedded journalists while doing its best tofreeze out reporters operating outside the sys-tem.

PR Week reports that military spinners arealso being embedded to keep their eyes on thespin-ees. “They may not get as much attention astheir media counterparts, but dozens of Penta-gon public affairs officers are ‘embedded’ rightalongside the reporters in Iraq,” PR Weekreports. “The Pentagon also maintains the Coali-tion Press Information Center (CPIC) in Kuwait,a base of operations for public affairs officers nottraveling with troops. A 24-hour operationdesigned to keep up with news cycles in everytime zone . . . one of the CPIC’s most vital roles isto discourage ‘rogue’ journalists from venturinginto dangerous areas by providing the informa-tion they might otherwise attempt to get on theirown.”

A revolt against these briefers is beginning to

find expression too, Michael Wolff of New Yorkmagazine, who says he embedded himself at thePress Center in Doha, is disgusted with the qual-ity of information he’s been bombarded with.

“It takes about 48 hours to understand thatinformation is probably more freely available atany other place in the world than it is here. Even-tually you realize that you know significantlyless than when you arrived, and that you are los-ing more sense of the larger picture by the hour.At some point you will know nothing.

“This may be the plan, of course. There aretwo kinds of forward reporters: the officialembeds with units on the ground in Iraq, whoknow only the details of the action they see, andthose posted to military press centers in Kuwaitor Qatar (as close to Franks, the presumptiveconqueror of Baghdad, as it’s possible to get),who know only what they are told.

“Which happens to be nothing much at all” These are just the first signs of a polarization

and a new fault line in the media war – dissentinside the media and more protest against somemedia outlets.

Protesters confronted Fox News in New York.Richard Cowen reported on what happened in astory carried on Common Dreams.org. One mes-sage reads:

“The news ticker rimming Fox’s headquarterson Sixth Avenue wasn’t carrying war updates asthe protest began. Instead, it poked fun at thedemonstrators, chiding them. “War protesterauditions here today . . . thanks for coming!”“Who won your right to show up here today?”another questioned. “Protesters or soldiers?Said a third: “How do you keep a war protester insuspense? Ignore them.”

It is not doubtful that the protests over the

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media and in the media can be ignored muchlonger. ●

MARCH 31: ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS ANYONE remember that anthem about praising

the lord and passing the ammunition? As Mus-lims praise their most Merciful and BeneficentGod, “whom we forever thank,” American sol-diers are being advised to praise HE who praisesthe most holy every time we see Him, to the tuneof “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” In fact, yester-day was “pray for the President day” in Iraq, afact I saw reported on nowhere on TV.

ABC is reporting on its web site that “U.S. sol-diers in Iraq are being asked to pray for Presi-dent George W. Bush. Thousands of marineshave been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’sDuty,” a mini-prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White Housepledging the soldier who sends it in has beenpraying for Bush.

In touch

“I HAVE committed to pray for you, your family,your staff and our troops during this time ofuncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace beyour guide,” says the pledge, according to a jour-nalist embedded with coalition forces. The pam-phlet, produced by a group called In Touch Min-istries, offers a daily prayer to be made for theU.S. President, a born-again Christian who likesto invoke his God in speeches.

I’ll bet Christian Broadcasting is heavily

reporting on this angle of the story. Actually, TheNew York Times did mention yesterday that thewar itself was hatched with evangelic passion.The foregone decision to go to war was made ina formal way, by a President conscious of the his-tory of the moment, in the Situation Room on themorning of March 19. With his closest adviserssurrounding him, Mr. Bush spoke to Gen. Franksand the other commanders in the field by video-conference and asked each if they had every-thing they needed to win. Then the presidentgave the order, an administration official said,concluding with, “May God bless the troops.”

“May God bless America,” Gen. Franks replied,as Mr. Powell, the chairman of the joint chiefs dur-ing the first Gulf War, reached out and lightlytouched the President’s hand, said a senioradministration official who recounted the scene,“because he’s been on the battlefield before.”

Hersh roasts Rummy

THAT battlefield remains contested, with U.S. TVfocusing on the debate over whether moretroops are needed, while the administrationregurgitates the mantra that we are on plan.How far we have come from the days of Vietnamwhen the press challenged the escalation oftroop levels. Now the armchair generals on theSunday talk shows call for more, more and more.Seymour Hersh says that the problem is not withthe warriors but with their boss, the Don ofDefense, Mr. Rumsfeld.

He writes: “As the ground campaign againstSaddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenu-ated supply lines and a lack of immediate rein-forcements, there was anger in the Pentagon.Several senior war planners complained to me in

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interviews that Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers,who had been chiefly responsible for persuadingPresident Bush to lead the country into war, hadinsisted on micromanaging the war’s operationaldetails. Rumsfeld’s team took over crucialaspects of the day-to-day logistical planning tra-ditionally, an area in which the uniformed mili-tary excels and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruledthe senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff,the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”He thought he knew better,’ one senior plannersaid. ‘He was the decision-maker at every turn.’”

Al-Jazeera roasts U.S. media

GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS has raised Hersh’spoint with Rumsfeld on ABC’s This Week, whichseems even more hawkish than its competitorsthis week. Rumsfeld denied it, and that was that.No follow-up. And so it goes, as TV shifted tomore pictures of Baghdad burning and the lightshow resulting from a stepped-up bombing cam-paign. Commentators prattled on about how theMinistry of Information was under assault, andthat Iraqi TV had been taken off the air. Imaginemy surprise then to click on CNN this morningto see none other than Iraqi Foreign MinisterSabri holding forth from the Ministry of Informa-tion, claiming that the foreign invaders werebeing defeated. An earlier report on the “mosttrusted” TV news net showed that what you sawdepended on where you lived and which TV sta-tions you relied on. The Arab World is watchingAl-Jazeera.

And Al-Jazeera,whose website is back inaction, says it’s doing a better job than its west-ern counterparts. Faisal Bodi offers the station’s

rationale in The Guardian: “I do not mean tobrag – people are turning to us simply becausethe western media coverage has been so poor.For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive fromcentral command, the view of events from herecould not be more different. Of all the majorglobal networks, Al-Jazeera has been alone inproceeding from the premise that this warshould be viewed as an illegal enterprise. It hasbroadcast the horror of the bombing campaign,the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pave-ments, the screaming infants and the corpses. Itsteam of on-the-ground, unembedded correspon-dents has provided a corrective to the officialline that the campaign is, barring occasionalresistance, going to plan.

“Last Tuesday, while western channels werecelebrating a Basra ‘uprising’ which none of themcould have witnessed since they don’t havereporters in the city, our correspondent in theSheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of‘uneventful’ – a view confirmed shortly after-wards by a spokesman for the oppositionSupreme Council for the Islamic Revolution inIraq. By reporting propaganda as fact, the main-stream media had simply mirrored the Blair/Bushfantasy that the people who have been starved byU.N. sanctions and deformed by depleted ura-nium since 1991 will greet them as saviors.”

Peter Arnett back on the hot seat

AS the Arab media challenges western media,some in the western media are targeting one oftheir own. The New York Post, part of the Mur-doch media empire (owners of Fox News) nowhas Peter Arnett to kick around some more.Arnett, who was the right’s favorite target during

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Gulf War I for merely reporting from Baghdad,has aroused their ire again for saying U.S. warplanners have misjudged the situation, and forthanking Iraqi officials for “the degree of free-dom” that U.S. journalists enjoyed. Arnett hasnow rejoined their axis of evil.

While the NY Post trashed him today, yester-day The New York Times wrote about him sym-pathetically. Frank Rich quoted him: “It’s déjà vuall over again, the idea that this would be awalkover, the idea that the people of Basra wouldthrow flowers at the Marines,” he said fromBaghdad when I spoke with him by phone lastweek. Unlike many of his peers, he had beenthere to see the early burst of optimism in Per-sian Gulf War I, which he covered for CNN. “Thisis going to be tough,” he said just before itbecame tough. “When I interviewed Tariq Aziztwo weeks ago, it was not put on the network, hesaid: “You’ll have a hard time tearing us down.We’re ready to be martyrs. Whatever you thinkabout Saddam Hussein, there is a sense ofnationalism here. The Iraqis like American cul-ture and American movies and pop songs. Butare they really going to like American tanks?”

For sentiments like this, Arnett is likely to betargeted even more. The Guardian predictedthat his comments “are likely to make Arnett arenewed target of Republican lawmakers, manyof whom already contend that his reporting isslanted in favor of the Iraqis.”

“Nauseating”

IRAQI TV showed the interview at least twice onSunday afternoon. CNN and Fox News Channelshowed excerpts of it last night. RepublicanIleana Ros-Lehtinen told Fox News Channel she

found the interview “nauseating.” She added,“It’s incredible he would be kow-towing to whatclearly is the enemy in this way.” So far, MNBC issticking with their free lancer.

As for Fox News, I just loved watching con-victed perjurer, Ollie North, reporting for Foxfrom the field. The man who lied to Congress,who sold arranged arms to Iran during the badold days of Iran Contra, is a correspondent in thefield. Fox anchors referred to him reverentiallyas “Colonel” and “Sir.”

Wolff shows no mercy

LAST week I reported on the question raised atthe CENTCOM briefing in Doha by New Yorkmagazine media columnist Michael Wolff whoasked briefer General Brooks why anyoneshould even go to these briefings. Now Wolff haswritten about his experiences. The Guardianpicked up his report, which will probably alsoappear in New York, although they don’t say so.Wolff calls himself an embed:

“I have embedded myself in the million-dollarpress center at General Tommy Franks’ centralcommand (CentCom) forward headquarters inDoha, Qatar. Camp as-Sayliya, where the presscenter is safely stowed, is far enough from thecenter of Doha that you get a clear and eeriesense of what Qatar was like before it became oilrich and development-happy two generationsago.

“It’s pure moonscape. Not a tree, not a bush.Hardly a structure. Just a horizon of flat lime-stone. And then you come upon the U.S. base –really just a ring of wire and then a no man’sland behind which there is the base.

“It takes about 48 hours to understand that

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information is probably more freely available atany other place in the world than it is here. Even-tually you realize that you know significantlyless than when you arrived, and that you are los-ing more sense of the larger picture by the hour.At some point you will know nothing.

“This may be the plan, of course. There aretwo kinds of forward reporters: the officialembeds with units on the ground in Iraq, whoknow only the details of the action they see, andthose posted to military press centers in Kuwaitor Qatar (as close to Franks, the presumptiveconqueror of Baghdad, as it’s possible to get),who know only what they are told.

“Which happens to be nothing much at all.”

Reality is too unsettling

CRITICISM of U.S. coverage is not restricted tothe Arab World or the contrarian worldview ofMichael Wolff. Roger Franklin writes in The Agein Australia that “America sees no evil.”

“What we’re seeing in the U.S. are networkanchors posing heroically in ruggedly tailoredcamouflage fatigues as legions of lesserreporters peer over sand dunes to catch thewhump of artillery with the microphones of theirsatellite-phone cameras. That and the Penta-gon’s greatest hits, each clip featuring a tank orbuilding vanishing in a spout of grainy flamebeneath the bombsight’s crosshairs.

“The hard stuff – the stone-cold close-ups ofthe reaper’s latest recruits – well, as a talkinghead on CNN said only the other night, thoseimages are just ‘too unsettling for public con-sumption.’ Yes, we viewers get the wide-eyedkids in their hospital bandages and briefly, everynow and then, the roadside piles of slumped and

crumpled uniforms that contain what once wereSaddam’s soldiers.

“But those casualties are our side’s doing, sothat’s OK. On the non-commercial PBS network,the closest America gets to a government net-work, the clips are apt to be followed by sober,serious chats with experts from institutes orthink tanks, the talking heads who offer a sound-bite or two about the mood in the Arab street orthe difficulties of moving a mechanized columnthrough a hostile desert. It’s fine, so far as thecoverage goes. But sadly, given that death is whatwar is all about, that isn’t very far at all.”

Media debate heats up

THE debate over media coverage is now joined atthe hip to the debate over the war. AllessandraStanley reports in The New York Times: “As theconflict in Iraq deepens, so has the debate abouttelevision coverage. Secretary of Defense Don-ald H. Rumsfeld complained on Friday that‘media mood swings’ were distorting the depic-tion of American military strategy. Actually, themovement was less up and down than across theideological spectrum.

“In the initial phase, the loudest complaintsabout bias were lodged by anti-war groups frus-trated that television gave scant attention totheir protests. As casualties mounted, so did con-servatives’ laments about a liberal bias at thenetworks. Fox News led the charge. Bill O’Reilly,the network’s most popular commentator andmost fervent France basher, described the ABCNews anchor, Peter Jennings, as an ‘internation-alist,’ which he defined as someone ‘who putsforeign countries on the same plane as theUnited States in the war on terror.’

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“On the left, antiwar activists argued that theconsolidation of media ownership by corporategiants has led to a ‘foxification’ of Americannews shows.”

At least the media role in all of this is finallybeing scrutinized even as Times reporters followtheir ‘on the one hand, on the other‚’ middle ofthe road coverage pattern, which appears neu-tral, but rarely is.

Media watching – glossary update

IT is not just the images, or the lack of them, thatdefine the coverage. It is also the language. Maywe praise The Guardian as well for updating ourgrowing glossary of deadening war terminologysuch as: “Speed bump – Anything that slows downthe progress of war – including skirmishes. Theresistance at Basra and the protracted resistanceat Umm Qasr were nasty speed bumps.

“Effects-based warfare – A nuanced approachto war, combining strategic firepower (‘gradu-ated destruction’) and psychological operations(or “psyops”) – such as leaflet dropping and

interfering with TV or radio broadcasts. SomeIraqi commanders have even made ‘capitulationagreements’ already. The effects-based approachis backed up by the provision of humanitarianaid to create a ‘benign campaign.’

“Digital battlefield – The U.S. Army’s 4th divi-sion is equipped with command and control sys-tems that allow tank movements to be monitoredon computers, seen as a first step towards a ‘dig-ital battlefield’ that involves ‘total situationalawareness,’ i.e., everyone can tell where every-one else is. The idea is to dispel the ‘fog of war’that leads to deaths from ‘friendly fire.’

“Hammer time – A U.S. admiral was showninvoking the spirit of 90s Christian rapper MCHammer – albums include ‘Let’s Get It Started’and ‘Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em’ – when hedeclared to his fist-pumping troops that ‘hammertime was upon us.”

Dissector addendum: Before Gulf War 1, the realHammer participated in the remake of the song“Give Peace A Chance.” The song was suppressed,and Hammer’s career was later hammered. Nowhe’s singing in support of the troops. ●

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GEN. BUZZ MOSELEY of Texas, commanderof coalition air forces, on retired militarycritics of ‘the plan,’ "None of them had seenit, he said, or digested all the considerationsthat went into its choreography. Theircriticism was like "listening to a cow pee ona flat rock."

LAURA INGRAM (on Imus): "Hans Blixcouldn't find a stretch-mark on RosieO'Donnell."

JAY LENO: "War continues in Iraq. They'recalling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. Theywere going to call it Operation IraqiLiberation until they realized that spells'OIL.'"

JON STEWART (Comedy Channel)"Yesterday, the president met with a grouphe calls the coalition of the willing. Or, asthe rest of the world calls them, Britain andSpain."

CRAIG KILBORN: "President Bush spent last

night calling world leaders to support thewar with Iraq – it is sad when the mostpowerful man on earth is yelling, 'I knowyou're there, pick up, pick up.'"

JAY LENO: “President Bush spent the daycalling names he couldn't pronounce incountries he never knew existed."

DAVID LETTERMAN: "President Bush hassaid that he does not need approval fromthe UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well,hell, he didn't need the approval of theAmerican voters to become president,either."

JAY LENO: "In a speech earlier todayPresident Bush said if Iraq gets rid ofSaddam Hussein, he will help the Iraqipeople with food, medicine, supplies,housing, and education, anything that'sneeded. Isn't that amazing? He finallycomes up with a domestic agenda and it'sfor Iraq. Maybe we could bring that here if itworks out." ●

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C H A P T E R S I X

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question remains, if supplies are short and themost vital supply of all is water, are our peoplegoing to face massive dehydration?

“And, what CNN didn’t include, however –weather satellites say sandstorms are returningto the area in (you guessed it), 3 days or so. Alsodidn’t include a nugget that came to me from apal that used to work in oil exploration – April ismosquito season south of Baghdad (swamps). Inhis words, ‘they’re thicker than carpets’. In theirhaste to win before the thermometer hits 120 by4/15, the ground forces hauled ass faster thantheir vehicles could carry supplies to them.”

Why the surprise?

IT should be noted that asymmetrical warfarechallenging conventional forces with unconven-tional ones is what armies at a disadvantage usu-

ally rely on. That was Ho Chi Minh’s approach inVietnam. Writing in Slate, Fred Kapan says:“Much has been made of Thursday’s remark byLt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of U.S.Army forces in the Persian Gulf. Talking aboutthe fierce and guerrilla-style resistance of Iraqimilitia groups, Wallace said, “The enemy we’refighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against.”

“In fact, however, militia fighters did play a cru-cial role in a major war game designed to simu-late combat in Iraq but the Pentagon officialswho managed the game simply disregarded oroverruled the militias’ most devastating moves.”

So none of what we are seeing should be sur-prising including the announcement that moremartyr (we call them suicide) bombers are onthe way. Iraq created more news with an explod-

N E W Y O R K , M A R C H 2 5 , 2 0 0 3

INVADERS FACE SANDSTORMS,BUGS AND CITIZEN SOLDIERSInvasion slows down as resistance emerges

n the war front itself, it is slow-mo time with ground forces digging in around Baghdad.Marc Crispin Miller passes on two items of interest from a friends overseas: “Yesterday theHungarian news wire (MTI) carried a story quoting a number of US soldiers who wishedto remain anonymous to the effect that the ground war was on hold until the supply prob-

lems were solved. They had had their field rations reduced by 1/3 until further notice. Iwatched CNN, but they didn’t report it, just the non-specific denial from the Pentagon.” He then sentan update: “The cut ration story did make it (later) onto CNN, as did the “4-6 day delay” story. The

ing taxicab than the US did with some of its airraids.

Those oh, so ‘precise’ bombs

THE NEW YORK TIMES devotes an editorialtoday praising precision bombing, noting “It isalways possible, as American military leaderssuggest, that damage was caused by Iraqi airdefense missiles falling back to earth or byexplosives set off by the Iraqis themselves forpropaganda purposes. But whatever the case,the widely publicized civilian deaths have gener-ated anger at the United States and sympathy forIraq in many nations. The incidents inevitablyraise the question: How precise are our much-touted precision weapons?”

Who done it? The irrepressible Mr. Fisk ofLondon’s Independent was actually on the sceneand reported what he found: “The missile wasguided by computers and that vital shard of fuse-lage was computer-coded. It can be easily veri-fied and checked by the Americans – if theychoose to do so. It reads: 30003-704ASB 7492. Theletter “B” is scratched and could be an “H”. Thisis believed to be the serial number. It is followedby a further code which arms manufacturersusually refer to as the weapon’s “Lot” number. Itreads: MFR 96214 09. The piece of metal bearingthe codings was retrieved only minutes after themissile exploded on Friday evening, by an oldman whose home is only 100 yards from the sixfoot crater. Even the Iraqi authorities do notknow that it exists. The missile sprayed hunks ofmetal through the crowds – mainly women andchildren – and through the cheap brick walls oflocal homes, amputating limbs and heads.”

As for what is in those weapons, The Sunday

Herald in Glasgow is reporting what I have yet tosee in the American press the use of depleteduranium in U.S. ordinance: Neil Mackay reports:“British and American coalition forces are usingdepleted uranium (DU) shells in the war againstIraq and deliberately flouting a United Nationsresolution which classifies the munitions as ille-gal weapons of mass destruction.”

As you can see, making sense of the news inAmerica requires that you leave America, if onlythrough the Internet to seek out information andperspectives missing in the TV News accounts.This daily column is one dissector’s attempt atreporting back on what is out there. Happily,your letters and items are fleshing out the pic-ture further. ●

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY: THE FALLAND RISE OF PETER ARNETTTHIS patriotic or excitement enhancing musicand promotional marketing echoes the advice ofradio consultants who are advising clients to gored white and blue all the way. Reports theWashington Post: “Now, apparently, is the timefor all good radio and TV stations to come to theaid of their country’s war. That is the messagepushed by broadcast news consultants, who’vebeen advising news and talk stations across thenation to wave the flag and downplay protestagainst the war.

“Get the following production pieces in thestudio NOW . . . Patriotic music that makes youcry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion,”advised McKay Media, a Cleveland-based con-sultant, in a ‘War Manual’ memo to its station

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clients. “Air the National Anthem at a specifiedtime each day as long as the USA is at war.”

“The company, which describes itself as thelargest radio consultant in the world, also hasbeen counseling talk show stations to ‘Make sureyour hosts aren’t “over the top.”’ Polarizing dis-cussions are shaky ground. This is not the timeto take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not whenour young men and women are “in harm’s way.”

Translation: Keep anti-war voices off the air.

The Phraselator

WHILE the media outlets parade their technol-ogy, US soldiers proudly display theirs including,as TIME’s Tony Karon explains in his weblog, thePhraselator, a hand-held device used by Marinesto communicate with the locals. The userchooses from a menu of about 1,000 stockphrases (“come out with your hands up”, “I needto search your car”, that sort of thing), and anamplified voice chip barks them out in tinny Ara-bic. Only problem, as anyone who has ever useda phrase book would know, is that it can’t trans-late the reply. I have the feeling this may be thegadget that best captures the spirit of “OperationIraqi Freedom.” Could there have been a phrase-lator miscommunication yesterday at that bridgewhere US forces opened up on Iraqi civiliansincluding women and children.

That Penatgonian CENTCOM spin was imme-diate. They wouldn’t stop their minivan. Theywouldn’t follow orders. We had no choice. It wasnot our fault. The Times of London carried thekind of vivid account you didn’t see on TV.

Shot by the shell-shocked

“AMID the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians,lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All hadbeen trying to leave this southern townovernight, probably for fear of being killed by UShelicopter attacks and heavy artillery.

“Their mistake had been to flee over a bridgethat is crucial to the coalition’s supply lines andto run into a group of shell-shocked young Amer-ican marines with orders to shoot anything thatmoved. “One man’s body was still in flames. Itgave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in hisbreast pocket, thick wads of banknotes wereturning to ashes. His savings, perhaps.

“Down the road, a little girl, no older than fiveand dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress,lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man whomay have been her father. Half his head wasmissing.

“Nearby, in a battered old Volga, pepperedwith ammunition holes, an Iraqi woman – per-haps the girl’s mother – was dead, slumped inthe back seat. A US Abrams tank nicknamedGhetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.

“This was not the only family who had takenwhat they thought was a last chance for safety. Afather, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave.On the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay nextto the carcass of a donkey.

“As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin,whose third child, Isabella, was born while hewas on board ship en route to the Gulf, appearedbeside me.

“‘Did you see all that?’” he asked, his eyesfilled with tears. “Did you see that little babygirl? I carried her body and buried it as best Icould but I had no time. It really gets to me to see

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children being killed like this, but we had nochoice.”

Past is not past

IT was in search for context that I reached backinto a book on my shelf, “The Powers That Be,”by the great Vietnam War reporter David Hal-berstam. In it, he writes of two incidents. Thefirst occurred in the spring of l965, a spring likethe one we are living with. Two journalists forthe Associated Press, a wire service that special-izes in playing it straight down the middle,reported that the US was using poison gas. Thereporters had multiple sources. There was a bigflap. President Lyndon Johnson personally wenton TV to deny it. The Military was enraged.Another story appeared by one of the samereporters on the bombing of a village with agreat cost of civilian lives. The military wasreally pissed off by that one because it quoted anAmerican lieutenant who said, famously, “webombed the village in order to save it.”

“That quote in many ways defined the war, andis its defining epitaph. The reporter on both sto-ries was one Peter Arnett.

Halberstam wrote that reporters like Arnettwere never invited on the Sunday talk showsbecause networks like CBS considered them-selves a consensus medium. “In the early days,much of the film seemed to center on actionrather than the more substantitive qualities ofthe war. An emphasis on what the television cor-respondents for CBS themselves called ‘bloody’or ‘bang-bang.’ There was a group of youngercorrespondents who felt that that somehow thenetwork was always managing to sanitize thewar.”

How far have we come? By l991, Peter Arnettsaid he had covered 17 wars. Now, he is fightingone of his own.

The resurrection and crucifixion of Peter Arnett

LAST week, TV Guide ran a column on the res-urrection of Peter Arnett. It discussed how thisPulitzer Prize winning one-time AP reporter out-raged the American right-wing for his reportingduring Gulf War I but was getting it right thistime. No sooner had the piece appeared thanPeter’s resurrection imploded, turning intoanother crucifixion, perhaps a self-crucifixion.One minute the man was on top, reporting everyother minute from Baghdad, the envy of all thenetworks who couldn’t or wouldn’t have theirown man in the hot spot. The next minute, hewas being run out of town on a rail, fired, dis-graced, and apologizing all over the TODAYshow for his “misjudgment.” (He has since beenhired by the Daily Mirror in London, which fea-tures as its headline today: “Fired By Americafor Telling the Truth.” Arnett writes he has notapologized for what he said.)

What Arnett says now

WRITING in the Mirror, Arnett explains hisstance: “I am still in shock and awe at being fired.There is enormous sensitivity within the US gov-ernment to reports coming out from Baghdad.

“They don’t want credible news organizationsreporting from here because it presents themwith enormous problems . . .

“I’m not angry. I’m not crying. But I’m alsoawed by this media phenomenon.

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“The right-wing media and politicians arelooking for any opportunity to be critical of thereporters who are here, whatever their national-ity. I made the misjudgment, which gave themthe opportunity to do so.

“I gave an impromptu interview to Iraqi televi-sion feeling that after four months of interview-ing hundreds of them it was only professionalcourtesy to give them a few comments.

“That was my Waterloo – bang! “ . . . I’m not here to be a superstar. I have been

there in 1991 and could never be bigger than that. “Some reporters make judgments but that is

not my style. I present both sides and reportwhat I see with my own eyes.

“I don’t blame NBC for their decision becausethey came under great commercial pressurefrom the outside.

“And I certainly don’t believe the White Housewas responsible for my sacking.

“But I want to tell the story as best as I can,which makes it so disappointing to be fired.”

Crime and punishment

WHAT was Peter’s crime? Speaking what hebelieved to be true on Iraq TV. NBC’s not justpunishing him. The network is punishing usbecause his reporting is needed now more thanever. NBC recently canned Phil Donahue, in partproducers said, for having on too many anti-warguests and it was not about to put up with morecorporate unappreciated unauthorized points ofview like Peter’s. Especially when their competi-tor Fox News, whom they are trying to clone andbeat in the ratings, began bombing Arnett withideological ordnance of its own.

Once NBC canned him, most of the US media

fell in line praising the decision and, as TheGuardian put it, “rounding” on him. Doug Ire-land offers an assessment on TomPaine.com:

“What provoked Arnett’s defenestration? In aninterview he accorded on Sunday to Iraqi televi-sion (which an MSNBC spokesperson initiallydescribed as a ‘professional courtesy’), Arnettallowed as how media reports of civilian casual-ties in Iraq ‘help’ the ‘growing challenge to Pres-ident Bush about the conduct of the war and alsoopposition to the war. The first war plan hasfailed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they aretrying to write another plan.’

“The Americans don’t want the independentjournalists in Iraq.”

Of course, these are rather common senseobservations of the sort that can be read daily inthe pages of our newspapers, and which evenfind their way onto U.S. television. Yet when NBCsnatched the mike from Arnett’s hands, on Mon-day morning CNN’s Jeff Greenfield rushed toendorse the veteran war correspondent’s firing.Greenfield dismissed the notion of an anti-warmovement whose challenge was ‘growing’ – as ifthe millions who have taken to the streets ofmajor U.S. cities and the some 5,000 Americancivil disobedients who have so far been volun-tarily arrested in ‘die-ins’ and other nonviolentforms of political action – part of the risingcrescendo of protest on a scale not seen sincethe Vietnam war – were not energized by theheart- rending accounts of civilians shredded byAmerican bombs and bullets in an unnecessaryand obtusely run war.

Greenfield accused Arnett of pro-Iraqi “propa-ganda.” That was sad to me in light of my oncetight ‘pal-ship’ with Jeff, and the way in whichthis view seems to be shared by so many in the

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media mainstream. Yesterday I parried on theissue with Bill Himmelfarb of the WashingtonTimes on Keano’s interview program on CapeTalk Radio in South Africa. (I seem to get on theair in South Africa more than in South Jersey.)Bill was blasting Arnett for what he called anti-American coverage during Gulf War I.

Arnett’s bias

TO refute this canard, I cited some of my ownresearch based on a book by Major GeneralPerry Smith’s, “How CNN fought the War.” Smithwho now comments for CBS said he originallycame on board, in his mind, to counter-balanceArnett’s “misleading coverage. I was trying tofigure out Peter Arnett,” he writes. “Was hebiased in favor of the Iraqi government? Was hean anti-war advocate? Was he fundamentallyanti-American?”

This TV General for hire decided that he wasnot ideological after all, “The more I watched theArnett coverage, the more I talked to people whoknew him well, the more I came to believe hewas a ‘feeler.’ In other words, Arnett is someonewho empathizes with the people around him.”

First the sentencing, then the trial

LEWIS CARROL must be laughing in his grave.Fired for feeling, is it? Actually, Arnett was com-plimentary of the courtesies extended to him bythe Iraqis. He complimented them for it, and wasroasted for doing so. Yet the other night on Char-lie Rose, John Burns of the NY Times was alsopraising his minders for treating him courte-ously as a professional. He said it straight out.No one accused him of treason. It seems that the

NBC brass had bought some its own demoniza-tion hype of Saddam. Reports the NY Timestoday:

“Another NBC executive said that Mr. Shapirohad hoped that the Iraqis pressured Mr. Arnettin the interview and that he would say, ‘Therewas a guy behind this orange curtain with anAK-47.’

“But during a phone call, Mr. Arnett told Mr.Shapiro that he felt no such pressure, a spokes-woman said.

“NBC’s decision prompted some debate withinjournalism circles.

“ ‘It’s regrettable that a news organization feelscompelled to fire a journalist for essentiallydoing journalism,’ said Bill Kovach, chairman ofthe Committee of Concerned Journalists.

“But many others said they supported NBC. ‘Iwould have done the same,’ said Alex S. Jones,director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on thePress, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. ‘Itwould have been to me a very fundamental judg-ment that you would not go on their state-con-trolled television.’”

Writing in the New York Times today, WalterCronkite echoes this view: His argument: “Jour-nalists might recognize a motivation in PeterArnett’s acceptance of an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV, but they should not excuseit.”

Irony: Fired, but never hired

CORPORATE controlled television tethered tothe Pentagon is apparently above much criti-cism, candid disclosure, or self-criticism. MSNBCdidn’t even have the guts to hire Arnett in thefirst place, even though he was as good a war

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reporter as they come. They used a ruse, retain-ing his services through National GeographicExplorer, which produced his first reports withCamera Planet, the indy news organization. Thatgave them plausible deniability, or so theybelieved. NBC later wanted him so bad that theyrode roughshod over Camera Planet’s contractwith Arnett who was all too happy to be back onthe air after years of forced exile from CNN.

Do you remember the circumstances of hisaxing there? The network repudiated a storythey investigated alleging the use of nerve gasagainst US military deserters in Vietnam after aton of bricks fell on them from the Pentagon.After all the top brass approved the story, theyhung some producers and Arnett out to dry. Theproducers later sued for false dismissal, andCNN, which was so righteous in distancingthemselves from the story, gave them big cashpayoffs rather than have the issue publicly adju-dicated. Arnett embarrassed the network byadmitting he had not checked out all the detailsof the story himself, a common practice amongbusy network correspondents who rely on pro-ducers for most of their reporting. He becamethe fall guy.

“Outstanding reporting” speaks for itself

AFTER Arnett was targeted this time, NBC atfirst made positive noises. A spokesperson saidthat his TV comments “were analytical in natureand were not intended to be anything more,”according to a news story on MSBNC.com. “Hisoutstanding reporting on the war speaks foritself,” she added. NBC then decided otherwise.

Journalists are debating the ethics of what

Arnett did, not what ABC did. There is a discus-sion between Bob Steele, Kelly McBride and AlyColu on the Poynter.org web site:

Aly: “I wonder what the reaction from the pub-lic, the U.S. government and journalists wouldhave been if Arnett had said on Iraqi TV that theU.S. military had succeeded in its battle plansand that the Iraqi resistance was having noimpact on those who oppose the war in the U.S.or on the U.S. government itself. I wonder if thecriticism cascading about Arnett now wouldhave been as virulent.”

Kelly: “My hope is that journalists as well asthe general public will use this conversation toreally examine what it is Arnett did wrong.Because his sins, if you will, are common. Herevealed his personal viewpoints. He madedeclarative statements that were beyond hisauthority to make. He crossed the line that sepa-rates reporters from opinion writers. Yet, I’mhearing people call him a traitor for giving aidand comfort to the enemy. That is hardly thecase.”

Bob: “Peter Arnett had a unique and importantvantage point for covering the war in Iraq. Hewas one of the few reporters remaining in Bagh-dad. He had the ability – and journalistic duty –to report on what was happening in Baghdad. Hecould tell meaningful stories. It’s a shame that hehas wasted this vantage point by stepping out ofhis reporter’s role to express his personal viewson how the war is going in Iraq and how it is play-ing out in the United States . . .”

The de-bedding of Geraldo

ARNETT is not the only correspondent in deepdoo-doo. Fox’s mighty Geraldo Rivera appears

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to have stepped on a land mine of his own mak-ing. The man who would single-handedly liber-ate Iraq, if only Roger Ailes at Fox News wouldgive him the nod, may be on his way back toBrooklyn where he went to law school. Geraldohad been talking about the glory that would behis, motor-mouthing: “I intend to march intoBaghdad alongside [101st Airborne].” JasonDeans reports in the Guardian, that the G-MANmay be sidelined like Yankee shortstop DerekJeter who broke a shoulder yesterday: “The USmilitary says that gung-ho Fox News correspon-dent Geraldo Rivera will be kicked out of Iraqtoday despite his defiant insistence that he willbe staying in the country and marching on Bagh-dad. He is expected to leave Iraq today after giv-ing away allied troop movements in a TV report,according to US military officials.

“Rivera was still inside Iraq yesterday despitereports – gleefully picked up by Fox News’ rivalsCNN and MSNBC – that he had already left.”

Independent journalists at risk

THE story about the de-embedding of Geraldo inthe Guardian was accompanied by a report onwhat is happening to independent reporters whotry to operate outside the warm embrace of themilitary: “The international press watchdogReporters Sans Frontiers has accused US andBritish coalition forces in Iraq of displaying “con-tempt” for journalists covering the conflict whoare not embedded with troops.

“The criticism comes after a group of four ‘uni-lateral’ or roving reporters revealed how theywere arrested by US military police as they sleptnear an American unit 100 miles south of Bagh-dad and held overnight.

“They described their ordeal as ‘the worst 48hours in our lives.’

“Many journalists have come under fire, othershave been detained and questioned for severalhours and some have been mistreated, beatenand humiliated by coalition forces,” said the RSFsecretary general, Robert Menard. ●

APRIL 2: PENTAGON TURNS ON ARMCHAIR GENERALSYOU expect soldiers to refer to their adversariesas the enemy. But now that war term is a mediaterm, increasingly popping up across the dial asjournalists, embedded or not, can’t contain theirenthusiasm for the Battle of Baghdad. It’s as if weare moving into the final act of the movie, Act 3,in the mother of all showdowns. It’s on. It’s noton yet. We ping-pong between military analystsrelaying speculation as if it was received truth—all the while shedding a tear that the mighty Ger-aldo will not be leading the charge. It’s official:he’s out of there.

The Pentagon is getting testier by the minutein response to criticism within its own ranks,even from the regiment of military officers whohave been born again as TV analysts and whomade the mistake of offering opinions notcleared by the office of Rumsfeldian reality. I amsure Iraqis may see it as a “degrading” of the USconsensus even as the bombs keep falling. Thealways “feared” Medina Division of the Republi-can Guard is said to have lost two thirds of itscapacity to resist. The Pentagon is no longerwagging the dog. It is wagging the kennel.

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Their Master’s Voice

YEARS ago, RCA Victor had a little dog as its cor-porate mascot. “His Master’s Voice” was itsmotto. Today the New York Post plays that rolein the media war. Along with Fox, it acts like theofficial rottweiler on the ideological front. Todaythe big news is that the news is unfair and thatthe TV generals have overstepped their boundsand must be spanked publicly. Gen. Richard B.Myers, the nation’s highest-ranking military offi-cer, has taken on these “whiners” and complain-ers. They are hurting the war effort, he says.

The Post Ministry of Misinformation reported:“In an astonishing display of emotion at the Pen-tagon news briefing, the normally reserved AirForce general delivered an impassionedresponse to the barrage of media reports ofinternecine warfare at the Pentagon overwhether there are enough troops on the groundin Iraq.

“Myers, who didn’t name names, said the high-profile carping that’s produced a media feedingfrenzy may be ‘good sport inside the Beltway,’ butit is ‘not helpful’ when tens of thousands of troopsare engaged in dangerous combat missions.

“My view of those reports is that they’rebogus. First of all they’re false, they’re absolutelywrong, they bear no resemblance to the truth,and it’s just harmful to our troops that are outthere fighting very bravely and very coura-geously.” The newspaper than devoted a fullpage to pictures and summaries of who all the‘armchair generals’ are.

Military, reporters, switch roles

IN a sense this is a delayed reaction to the phe-

nomenon reported by Michael Ryan on TomPaine.com where he noted that, “As the wargrinds on, a strange transformation hasoccurred: Many of the generals have becomemore objective and reality-based than the jour-nalists ‘embedded’ with the troops. GarryTrudeau summed up the problem with [embed-ded] journalists perfectly in Doonesbury, whenhis fictional reporter Roland Burton Hedleyturned to a company commander and said, “Cap-tain, would you describe our outfit as ‘magnifi-cent’ or ‘mythic?’ ‘Report it as you see it, sir,’ theofficer replied. ‘It’s possible to be objective andstill be loyal to the people and organizations thatyou love.’”

Shhh!

THE military baiting in the media reflects theaggressive putdowns of War Secretary Rumsfeldwho Matt Taibbi captures perfectly in The NewYork Press: “Up until last week, Donald Rums-feld’s press conferences were the hottest ticketin Washington, and the defense secretary wassomehow credited by journalists with having a‘charming,’ even Wildean, wit. For instance,Rumsfeld has a thing about being interrupted orbeing asked follow-up questions, and his pissytakedowns of journalists who break his “rules”are often met with warm, approving laughter. Atypical exchange:

“Rumsfeld: And we can’t tell you if you can’ttell how long it’s going to last, you sure can’t tellwhat it’s going to cost. But now…

“Q: But that budget was based on the war plan “Rumsfeld: (hissing, raising finger to mouth)

Shhh! (laughter) Shhh! (laughter)”

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Mugger mugs TV coverage, too

EVEN Taibbi’s conservative NY Pressmate RussSmith, aka “Mugger,” a longtime Bush Booster,sees the pro-war TV coverage as over the top:“Maybe you saw the March 28 Pew ResearchCenter poll showing 42 percent of Americans aresuffering from “war fatigue” by watching toomuch television about the rapidly unfoldingevents in Iraq. In addition, 58 percent find thecoverage “frightening.” Nevertheless, an over-whelming majority of those surveyed by FoxNews claim they tune in at least two hours daily,a certain sign of masochism that one hopes willabate quickly.

“The media’s blitz of sensationalizing the Iraqiinvasion which obviously boosts ratings and sellsnewspapers, even more than an abducted childnot unexpectedly and crosses ideological lines.But with the exception of MSNBC’s Lester Holt,I’ve lost all patience with the cable stations andjust can’t stomach the sight of Aaron Brown,Shepard Smith, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, WolfBlitzer, Bill O’Reilly, Larry King, and the hun-dreds of retired generals and colonels who popoff with conflicting analyses.”

Propaganda war misfires

ONE of the leading analysts of war propagandaposing as journalism, Philip Knightly (author of“The First Casualty”) writes in The Guardiantoday that the “coalition’s propaganda war is amess. Iraq is winning the propaganda waragainst the coalition. The British governmentadmits it. David Blunkett, the home secretary,says we are regarded as the villains. The gov-ernment’s spin specialist Alastair Campbell has

called for a media shake-up, and in Kuwait thecoalition’s Psychological Operations TacticalGroup for Special Ground Forces Command(Psyops) is working on an emergency plan toregain the propaganda initiative.

“Everything has gone wrong on the propa-ganda front. The widespread coverage of thedeaths of British servicemen at the hands oftheir US allies, the shooting by US troops of Iraqiwomen and children, horrific TV footage from al-Jazeera of Iraqi civilians killed in bombing raidson Baghdad, the contradictory statements fromthe military briefers, and the failure of Iraqis toturn out to welcome their ‘liberators.’”

But the most devastating assessment of thecoalition’s propaganda failure came in a recentRussian-intercepted secret Psyops report ana-lyzing the effectiveness of the coalition’s cam-paign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis.Using Iraqi TV broadcasts, intercepted radiocommunications, interrogations of Iraqi POWsand summaries of British and US media cover-age, Psyops concluded that Iraqis were more sta-ble and confident than they were in the last daysbefore the war. The report said that the coalitionhad little time to change this attitude before whatPsyops people call “a resistance ideology” devel-oped, making an eventual coalition victory evenmore difficult. You have to read this one.

Media worries

MORE controls are being imposed on the embed-ded reporters. PR Week reports that the Penta-gon is embedding staffers among the embeds:“They may not get as much attention as theirmedia counterparts, but dozens of Pentagonpublic affairs officers are ‘embedded’ right

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alongside the reporters in Iraq,” PR Weekreports. “The Pentagon also maintains the Coali-tion Press Information Center (CPIC) in Kuwait,a base of operations for public affairs officers nottraveling with troops. A 24-hour operationdesigned to keep up with news cycles in everytime zone . . . one of the CPIC’s most vital roles isto discourage ‘rogue’ journalists from venturinginto dangerous areas by providing the informa-tion they might otherwise attempt to get on theirown.”

The Wall Street Journal praised the DefenseDepartment’s PR Strategy. “The embeddedreporters will continue to be a brilliant strategyby the Pentagon – one that should echo in therules of corporate communications,” the Jour-nal’s Clark S. Judge writes.

Dehumanization: Order of the day

AS for the content of the coverage, I usuallyquote the big city press but Pierre Tristam of theNews-Journal in Florida has some brilliantinsights: “The American war effort is a study intotal control, too, of a war positively dehuman-ized at every level: Politicians, military leadersand their media lackeys, in bed with the militaryrather than embedded within it, are daily pro-ducing a scripted war of advances and virtuemore divorced from reality than Max’s dream in‘Where the Wild Things Are.’

“News stories from the front (for the most part)are clips for the military’s ‘Army of One’ ads – pro-duced in a void of analytical perspective andbrimming with self-important reminders ofinflated secrecy (‘I can’t tell you where we are,’ ‘Ican’t tell you where we’re going’).” Of course not!

“These reporters have not only been embed-

ded, they’ve been captured. A picture is sup-posed to be worth a thousand words. In this war,a picture is worth a thousand veils. At home thenetworks’ anchored news streams have beenclosest in kind to porno movies: A little mean-ingless chatter sets things up, and then moneyshots of bomb blasts over Baghdad or the Penta-gon’s latest dirty videos of things being blownup. The human and emotional cost is an after-thought. There is purpose behind the veil. Whenwar is so positively dehumanized, the possibilityof defeat is eliminated. Setbacks become narra-tive devices, stepping tombstones for America’smoral superiority. It is war as magical realism.But it isn’t real.”

Freedom of expression at risk

FROM Canada comes this report: “As the war inIraq enters its third week, several IFEX mem-bers have raised concerns over free-expressionviolations committed by United States-led coali-tion forces, including the bombing of an Iraqi tel-evision station and the expulsion of four foreignjournalists accused of being spies.

“The International Federation of Journalists(IFJ), Reporters Without Borders (Reporterssans Frontiers (RSF), the Committee to ProtectJournalists (CPJ), the International Press Insti-tute (IPI), and Canadian Journalists for FreeExpression (CJFE) have expressed alarm at theUS bombing of Iraqi state television facilities on26 March in Baghdad. Although US military offi-cials claimed the facility was part of a command-and-control center, IPI and CPJ say the bombingcould be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

“Broadcast media are protected from attackand cannot be targeted unless they are used for

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military purposes. The broadcast of propagandadoes not constitute a military function,” CPJargued. “The attack knocked out the Iraqi sta-tion’s 24-hour satellite channel, which broadcastsoutside the country, for several hours.”

What should protesters demand

WHAT should anti-media protesters be demand-ing? Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democ-racy, addresses this issue on Alternet.org. “Therising tide of protest against U.S. media coverageof the war should also signal the need for a newprogressive strategy about the future of themedia system. Recent marches across the coun-try protesting the networks, and a new focus byMoveon.org on media issues are vitally impor-tant. But they don’t address the need to takeadvantage of fundamental changes taking placeand alter how our media system is structured.The time is ripe, given all the activism and com-mitment now in place, to direct our energytowards achieving long-term positive changesfor our media system.

“A major transformation that is underway isreshaping broadcasting, cable, and the Internet.The TV system in the U.S. is being reorganizedbecause of digital technology, which should pro-vide new opportunities for progressives todirectly offer channels and program services tothe vast majority of television households. Butunless progressives and their allies pursue aproactive strategy, they will continue to be asmarginalized as we are today.”

Attention US networks

WHY not follow the example of BBC News Chief

Richard Sambrook who solicits comments fromviewers, and responds publicly in the Guardian?Among the questions he is tackling: “Is the BBCbiased towards the pro- or anti-war camps?Should the corporation give equal weight toclaims by Iraqi and allied military and politicalsources? Does 24-hour news provide the full pic-ture of what’s going on in Iraq? Does ‘embed-ding’ reporters with UK and US forces compro-mise their independence? How safe is it for jour-nalists working in the war zone?” How about it?Which US media execs have the guts to do thesame? Also, Anna Kaca, a Mediachannel advisor,writes from Finland that TV channels there areraising questions about the media coverage. Wehope to have more from Helsinki soon. ●

APRIL 3: BAGHDADBRACES, SAY TV FACESO’ SAY can they see Baghdad in the springtime,rising mirage-like from the desert where thetemperature is also rising and the media and thegovernment seem to be getting more and moreeager to get “it” over with? American forces arereportedly near the airport, liberating the sub-urbs and getting in position for a “final” push.The bulls on Wall Street are bullish and the IrishStudies professors in the Mission District of SanFrancisco are laying odds of a cease-fire within 1-3 weeks. The Iraqis are fighting furiously, eventaking down a plane here and helicopter therebut the technology-and-weapons divide is sohuge that it makes this one of the most lopsidedwars in history. Roll on, O’ Roman Legions. SailOn, O’ Ship of Fate.

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What are we seeing? Last night Aaron Brownof CNN had former Times war reporter SidneySchanberg on to discuss coverage. He wroteabout that last week in The Village Voice. Thisweek he offers a “dissection” of government lies.He told Brown that the structure of constantlyupdated TV News scrambles all understanding.He compared the coverage to keeping score of asports event. (The BBC’s news chief apologizedfor a similar comment that aired there) Brownpraised Schanberg as a journo great andacknowledged that it is challenging to keep up.Over on Nightline, at the same time, General TedKoppel was war-gaming his marine division’snext moves.

Murdoch: get it done!

THE GUARDIAN reports: “Referring to theAmerican people as ‘we,’ Mr. Murdoch said thepublic was far too worried about what the rest ofthe world thought of the US’s declaration of waron Iraq. He said he believed Americans had an‘inferiority complex’ about world opinion andthat Iraqis would eventually welcome US troopsas liberators.

“Mr. Murdoch told a conference in California itwould be “better to get war done now” ratherthan have a longer conflict that could prove moredamaging to the world economy. “We worryabout what people think about us too much inthis country. We have an inferiority complex, itseems,” he said at the Milken Institute GlobalConference yesterday.” Michael Milken, the con-victed stock fraudster who funded the Institute,was one of the financiers of the Murdoch Empireand a key advisor until a federal court orderedhim to cease and desist. He later paid millions in

fines for dealing with/advising Rupert, contraryto a court order . . .

War fatigue claims TV viewers

THE Networks are hoping to get the war overwith. In England, it is being reported that view-ers show signs of war fatigue. “Audience figuresfor the BBC1 and ITV late evening news bulletinsdipped yesterday,” according to the Guardian.The Onion jokes about this with a simple head-line: “NBC Moves War To Thursdays AfterFriends.” The networks have already bailed outof wall-to-wall coverage and now report warnews mostly on less watched cable networks.

Even as the volume of network coveragedeclines, the level of media bashing is going up.Yesterday, I reported on the denunciations ofmedia skepticism by the top brass at the Penta-gon. Today, there is a report that Tony Blair’shome secretary Mr. Blunkett has been tasked torein in the reporters in Baghdad because “pro-gressive and liberal” opinion believes them. Ear-lier in the week, Blair’s spin-doctor in chief, Alas-tair Campbell, was even nastier.

“Saddam Hussein can go up and do a broad-cast, and how many of our media then stand upand say what an amazing propaganda coup thatwas. (Osama) Bin Laden can sit in his cave andthrow out a video and you get BBC, CNN, allthese other guys, saying ‘What a propagandacoup’.”

He’s mad at the media, too

BEHIND all of these attacks on the press seemsto be growing anxiety in the White House. Unfor-tunately we have no real embeds there (You have

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to give big political contributions to get into bedin the Lincoln Bedroom). USA Today gave us arare portrait yesterday of a President who is los-ing it. “News coverage of the war often irritateshim. He’s infuriated by reporters and retiredgenerals who publicly question the tactics of thewar plan. Bush let senior Pentagon officials knowthat he was peeved when Lt. Gen. William Wal-lace, the army’s senior ground commander inIraq, said last week that guerrilla fighting, Iraqiresistance, and sandstorms have made a longerwar more likely.” He has a special epithet formembers of his own staff who worry aloud. Hecalls them “hand-wringers.”

And then there was this: “He can be impatientand imperious. On March 17, before he delivereda 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam, Bush sum-moned congressional leaders to the WhiteHouse. They expected a detailed briefing, but thepresident told them he was notifying them onlybecause he was legally required to do so andthen left the room. They were taken aback, andsome were annoyed. Bush copes with anxiety ashe always has. He prays and exercises.”

The media massage

OVER at the Pentagon, Tori Clarke has to keepthe Pentagon press corps in line. According totoday’s New York Times, now that the newsmedia has better access to the troops, she isbeing peppered almost hourly with queries fromthe battlefield about topics as varied as check-points, rations, rescues, and killings of civilians.More troubling, she faces a growing chorus,including several retired generals, questioningwhether the war plan of Mr. Rumsfeld and hislieutenants was ill advised and whether the

administration fueled unrealistic expectationsthat Iraqis would welcome American troops withopen arms.

Episodes like the news briefing on Tuesday arepart of the most difficult trial yet for Ms. Clarke,43, who has devoted her career in politics andpublic relations to working with clients in trickysituations. As a campaign aide, she defended thefirst President Bush as his popularity evaporatedin the polls. She later represented the cableindustry when it infuriated consumers with ris-ing rates and poor service.

This article goes on to report how well she isdoing in winning hearts and minds from themedia and the military. Maybe it is her colorfulclothes, which rated a fashion spread in the Postthe other day.

Iraq mistreats reporters

YESTERDAY two Newsday reporters freed fromprison in Iraq discussed their harrowing experi-ence at a press conference in Jordan. Theirnewspaper reports: “Newsday staffers MoisesSaman and Matthew McAllester were recentlyheld in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison for eight dayswith two other Western journalists and an Amer-ican peace activist. They described seeing a manbeing beaten: ‘Journalists are meant to bear wit-ness. That’s rather the point of our job. We watchand record and tell other people what we haveseen, perhaps in the hope that an account, a wit-nessing, could eke away at badness. But I turnedaway and chose not to see a thing.’

“Eventually the beating stopped, and the manwas dumped into his cell. The big guard seemedto have exhausted his fury. The block echoed as italways did when the iron bars of the prisoner’s

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cell door was closed and the click of its padlockconfirmed that he would not be leaving his 6- by10-foot room that night. With each breath he madea sort of crying sound. Sometimes he broke thatrhythm to exhale his pain with more force, andthe otherwise silent block filled up with what Iwondered might be the man’s last gasp.”

U.S. mistreats reporters

THIS tearful and horrific account was given lotsof airtime on all the channels, as it should. Aninterview with non-embedded foreign journal-ists detained by U.S. military forces was aired onAmy Goodman’s Democracy Now yesterday, butnot, as far as I know, picked up by any of themajors. It involved the experience of four so-called unilaterals. I reported on this last week.

One of them was Dan Semama who describesmeeting some U.S. soldiers who suspected theywere spies. “They took away our cameras. Theytook away our ID cards. They took away ourmoney. They took our phones. They put theirguns towards us. They forced us to lie down onthe floor. To take our shirts up to make sure wedidn’t have any explosives on our bodies andwere arrested.”

At that point a Portuguese reporter asked thesoldiers to phone home and tell his wife he wasok. Semama continues, “Five soldiers went outof the camp, jumped on him and started to beathim and to kick him. We ran to his direction.They all put bullets inside the cannons of theirguns, and they said if we move forward theyshoot at us. We were standing like stupid guys.We saw our friend lying on the ground crying,hurting. They tied his hand behind his back.They took him into the camp. And after half-an-

hour, they let him go, and came back to us allcrying. And then came this Lieutenant Scholl.And he told us, ‘Don’t mess with my soldiers.Don’t mess with them because they are trainedlike dogs to kill. And they will kill you if you tryagain.” They were held for 36 hours.

Reporting on the content of the coverage

THE Project On Excellence in Journalism hasissued a report on the embedded journalists.Here’s what they report: “The embedded cover-age, the research found, is largely anecdotal. It’sboth exciting and dull, combat focused, andmostly live and unedited. Much of it lacks con-text but it is usually rich in detail. It has all thevirtues and vices of reporting only what you cansee.”

In an age when the press is often criticized forbeing too interpretive, the overwhelming major-ity of the embedded stories studied, 94 percent,were primarily factual in nature. Most of theembedded reports studied were live andunedited accounts. Viewers were hearing mostlyfrom reporters, not directly from soldiers orother sources. In eight out of ten stories weheard from reporters only.

This is battle coverage. Nearly half of theembedded reports (47 percent) described mili-tary action or the results. “While dramatic, thecoverage is not graphic. Not a single story exam-ined showed pictures of people being hit by firedweapons.

“Over the course of reviewing the coverage,project analysts also developed a series of moresubjective impressions of embedding. Often thebest reports were those that were carefully writ-

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ten and edited. Some were essentially radioreporting on TV. Technology made some reportsstand out but got in the way when it was used forits own sake. Too often the rush to get informa-tion on air live created confusion, errors, andeven led journalists to play the game of tele-phone in which partial accounts become dis-torted and exaggerated in the retelling.”

Roy: “Taking revenge”

INDIAN author Arundhati Roy comments on theembeds in her most recent essay: “On March 21,the day after American and British troops begantheir illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, anembedded CNN correspondent interviewed anAmerican soldier. ‘I wanna get in there and getmy nose dirty,’ Private AJ said. ‘I wanna take

revenge for 9/11.’“To be fair to the correspondent, even though

he was ‘embedded,’ he did sort of weakly suggestthat so far there was no real evidence that linkedthe Iraqi government to the September 11attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue outall the way down to the end of his chin. ‘Yeah,well that stuff’s way over my head, he said.’

“According to a New York Times/CBS Newssurvey, 42 per cent of the American publicbelieves that Saddam Hussein is directly respon-sible for the September 11 attacks on the WorldTrade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABCnews poll says that 55 per cent of Americansbelieve that Saddam Hussein directly supportsal-Qaeda. What percentage of America’s armedforces believe these fabrications is anybody’sguess.” ●

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“Just as weapons have gotten ‘smarter,’ so toohas the military gotten more sophisticated abouthow to use the media to meet militaryobjectives.” – LLTT.. CCOOLL.. JJEERRRRYY BBRROOEECCKKEERRTT,public affairs, U.S. Marine Corps.

“A chill wind is blowing in this nation. Journalistscan insist that they not be used as publicists bythis administration…You have, whether you likeit or not, an awesome responsibility and anawesome power: the fate of discourse, the healthof this republic is in your hands, whether youwrite on the left or the right. This is your time,and the destiny you have chosen.” – TIMROBINS, National Press Club, April 15, 2003

“There’s an entertainment factor that’s huge intelevision in creating this drama. It’s about them.”– PHIL BRONSTEIN, editor, San FranciscoChronicle

“Within six months of the end of the first GulfWar, Iraq disappeared from the daily coverage.The Tyndall Report shows 1,177 minutes ofnetwork reporting on Iraq in January 1991, whenthe war started, but just 48 minutes in August1991. The war in Afghanistan received 306

minutes of coverage on the newscasts inNovember 2001, but that dropped to 28 minutesby February 2002, and last month it was oneminute. – ANDREW TYNDALL, Media Monitor,April 16, 2003

“While the Inquirer ran 20 stories a day duringthe war – about a third more than usual forforeign news—when that statue [of Hussein]came down, the space began to contract prettyrapidly. Given the brutal nature of the combat,people are wanting to hunker down and get asfar away from it as they can. I was hearingreaders say, ‘Enough! Enough!’ – NEDWARWICK, foreign editor, the PhiladelphiaInquirer.

“The buildup to this war was so exhausting, thecoverage of the dash to Baghdad so telegenic,and the climax of the toppling of Saddam’s statueso dramatic, that everyone who went through itseems to prefer that the story just end there. TheU.S. networks changed the subject after the fallof Baghdad as fast as you can say “LaciPeterson,” and President Bush did the same asfast as you can say “tax cuts.” – THOMASFRIEDMAN, columnist, New York Times ●

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nalists are known to have died then.Death lurks everywhere on today’s battlefield,

It can take the form of auto accident like the onethat took the life of editor-columnist MichaelKelly who was overconfident that he would sur-vive a conflict that he boosted in print. It couldtake the form of a friendly fire incident like thebombing of a military convoy that pulverizedBBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamedand wounded the BBC’s star correspondent JohnSimpson. Terry Lloyd of Britain’s ITN died insimilar circumstances after being shot by “Coali-tion” gunfire near Basra on March 22.

NBC’s David Bloom was struck down by a pul-monary embolism that could have been linked tothe vehicle he created that allowed him to broad-cast while barreling across the desert. Theaction shots of him were captivating, but he maynot have paid attention to his immobilized legs,

which were attacked by a blood clot.Australian freelance cameraman Paul Moran,

was on the scene of suicide bombing by peoplewho make little distinction between embeddedjournalists and the armies they travel with.Kaveh Golestan, another freelance cameraman,an Iranian, was on assignment for the BBC. Hestepped on a landmine.

A German and a Spanish journalist were at aUS base when it was rocketed by Iraqi forces.

Others suffered accidents, like Gaby Rado ofBritain’s Channel 4 News, while two more col-leagues are missing: Fred Nerac, and translatorHussein Othman, both part of Terry Lloyd’screw, disappeared. And there are others. A Ger-man and Spanish journalist died April 7 duringan Iraqi missile attack on a US base. Gone alsoare Wael Awad, a Syrian reporter working for

N E W Y O R K , A P R I L 3 , 2 0 0 3

DEATH TOLL MOUNTS AS WARTRAGEDY INVADES NEWSROOMSHorror of war comes home as journalists become part of story

t has been a week when the horror of war came home to the media – home to stay. Suddenly thewar was not just another big assignment, or an adventure, or a chance to score points. Suddenlyit was not a game of action and reaction, or mission and maneuver. It became a real world hor-ror show as journalists who traditionally seek distance from the news they report became partof the story.

In just three weeks, the war in Iraq (or on Iraq, if you serve many outlets in the Arab world) hasalready claimed more than the number of journalists killed during Gulf War I in l991. Only four jour-

the Dubai Arabic TV station al-Arabiya and hispartner Talal Fawzi al-Masri, a Lebanese cam-eraman and Ali Hassan Safa, a technician.

Add the captured to the list including: PeterWilson, London correspondent for The Aus-tralian, his photographer John Feder and theirtranslator Stewart Innes. And let’s not forgetMarcin Firlej, Polish journalist with news chan-nel TVN 24, captured south of Baghdad, or JacekKaczmarek, journalist with Polish public radio.

I am not sure this is whole roster but they alldeserve our support. Unfortunately, protectingjournalists is higher on the media agenda thanprotecting journalism. And journalism is rarelyas equally outraged by the deaths of civilians andeven the massacring of combatants.

Everyone who knows Gulf War I remembersthe “turkey shoot” on the road out of Kuwaitwhen US jets strafed and slaughtered fleeing sol-diers. Many remember the bulldozers that wereused to bury “enemy” soldiers alive. We won thewar but lost the peace. When the parades ended,Saddam was left standing. Could it happenagain? Don’t bet against it. Let us not forget thatthe war we fight today has been underway for atleast a decade. This is only the latest phase.What will be its legacy?

Will there be a resurgence of Gulf War syn-drome that was denied for years by the Pentagonbut caused so much pain and misery for all thosewho were inflicted? You barely hear any refer-ence made to the sanctions that went on for tenyears, robbing so many Iraqi children of theirfutures, even if the regime was complicit as wellin their deaths.

Remember, too, the use of depleted uranium in“coalition” weapons that defiled a land that is thecradle of western civilization. Remember also

how the gassing of the Kurds, so widely cited asgrounds for invasion today, barely rated a con-demnation in its immediate aftermath, even by aRepublican Administration.

We forget this history at our peril.We didn’t see many of Iraq’s faces then, and we

are not seeing them now. Iraq became a geopolit-ical abstraction for most Americans until thisAdministration decided to wage war there. Beforeshock and awe, only 13% of the young people nowfighting could even find it on a world map, accord-ing to a National Geographic survey.

War may kill but it also desensitizes. When weget into them, they get into us. We may escapealive or even prevail but the images and theexperience stamp our lives forever. For many, thetrauma will lead to sleepless nights for the restof their lives. And that goes for journalists too, ashard-nosed as many of us believe we are.

As NY Times journalist Chris Hedgesexplained to Editor and Publisher: “The real‘shock and awe’ may be that we’ve been lulledinto a belief that we can wage war cost-free. Wefeel we can fight wars and others will die and wewon’t. We lose track of what war is and what itcan do to a society. The military had a great dis-quiet about the war plans, as far back as last fall.The press did not chase down that story.”

I cite all of this not to score some cheap politi-cal points because war is always a tragedy, usu-ally a lose-lose proposition even when you “win.”

Journalists are mourning for their own thisweek as you do when you lose a member of yourfamily. But we can’t turn our back on all theother families in pain and in grief because of thiswar. Journalism without compassion, withoutempathy, and without consciousness is but ste-nography by another name. ●

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APRIL 4: WHAT WOULD DR. KINGSAY ABOUT ALL OF THIS?IRONIC isn’t it, that the anniversary of the deathof Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that apostle of non-violence, is being commemorated in a countrymesmerized by all the violence all the time.Peace coalitions of the kind that Dr. King oncemarched with will be devoting this weekend to arange of anti-war activism. While they march forpeace, military units continue their march onBaghdad, the first target in what many believe isa crusade for “region change,” even globalchange. (The term regime change is likely to bedropped now that John Kerry is using it in refer-ence to the Bush Administration.)

All flights out of Baghdad’s Saddam Hussein(oops, strike that name) airport have been can-celled due to invasion. The city is being spooked.The lights are out. The US military may soon bein. Bear in mind that what you are watching onboth sides is less a military campaign than a psy-ops operation. Already Washington is broadcast-ing into Baghdad while its soldiers mow down afar more poorly equipped Iraqi force. The Arabpress now speaks of the country as a “killingfield.” You know this is real because Ted Koppelis among those checking in (but not out) fromthe airfield. Unlike US airports, security therewas, shall we say, light.

It would be wrong to see this Psyops dimen-sion only in military terms. It is also beingdirected at the American people and world pub-lic opinion with constant events staged for mediaconsumption.

Yesterday, President Bush did one more photo-op and tough-guy speech with thousands of sol-diers saluting like synchronized swimmersbehind him at Camp LeJeune. It had a certainNuremberg feel to it. These events are held tofortify the President’s mental health as well asconvince us that he is still presidential andactively commander-in-chiefish. The networksdutifully carry them.

On TV there is as much competitive sniping asthere is on the battlefield, with dueling promosbetween Fox and MSNBC and the NY Post tar-geting The New York Times in an ideological bat-tle aimed at further polarizing our politics bydelegitimizing the center.

What are we fighting for?

REUTERS reports that the priorities, they are ashifting: “When Defense Secretary DonaldRumsfeld spelled out the eight U.S. objectives inIraq on day two of the war, he said the first wasto topple Saddam Hussein and the second tolocate and destroy Iraq’s alleged weapons ofmass destruction.”

On day 10 of the war, Pentagon spokeswomanVictoria Clarke restated those eight objectives:Ending the Iraqi president’s rule remained top ofthe list, but finding Saddam’s suspected chemicaland biological weapons had slipped to fourthplace, while destroying them dropped to fifth.Have you see this widely reported?

What’s in store? World War IV!

CNN reports that the Bush Administration isnow talking about fighting World War IV. “For-mer CIA Director James Woolsey said Wednes-

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day the United States is engaged in World WarIV, and that it could continue for years. In theaddress to a group of college students, Woolseydescribed the Cold War as the third world warand said, ‘This fourth world war, I think, will lastconsiderably longer than either World Wars I orII did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plusdecades of the Cold War.’ Woolsey has beennamed in news reports as a possible candidatefor a key position in the reconstruction of a post-war Iraq.”

Woolsey’s worldview spiced with threatstowards Syria and even US ally Egypt echoes theimperial ambitions of the takeover-the-worldcabal around Bush. They convinced themselvesthat they, and they alone, have been appointedby history. Now they are trying to convince us –with lots of media support.

TomDispatch.com notes: “Our present ideo-logues spent the last decade mustering strength(academic as well as governmental) and convinc-ing themselves as much as anyone else that onlyone country was capable of creating a ‘newworld order,’ that it would have to dismantle theold international order (of which the UN is but ahated symbol) to do so, and that it could bringuntold benefits to the very region that most hadto be remade and so controlled, the world’s eco-nomic lifeline, the source of its energy blood-stream, the Middle East. If we are now dealingwith a regime of true believers, in their years outof or at the edges of power, they managed, firstand foremost, to indoctrinate themselves.”

Chomsky: Iraq is a trial run

NOAM CHOMSKY, in an interview with theIndian publication Frontline, says that what we

are watching is far MORE than a pre-emptivewar: “This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq isseen as an extremely easy and totally defense-less target. It is assumed, probably correctly, thatthe society will collapse, that the soldiers will goin and that the U.S. will be in control, and willestablish the regime of its choice and militarybases. They will then go on to the harder casesthat will follow. The next case could be theAndean region, it could be Iran, it could be oth-ers.

“The trial run is to try and establish what theU.S. calls a ‘new norm’ in international relations.The new norm is ‘preventive war.’ Notice thatnew norms are established only by the UnitedStates. So, for example, when India invaded EastPakistan to terminate horrendous massacres, itdid not establish a new norm of humanitarianintervention, because India is the wrong country,and besides, the U.S. was strenuously opposed tothat action.”

Words of war

EVERY day seems to bring a new term, a newword, and another stab at media spin. The mili-tary has taken the term ‘attrition,’ as in peoplewhose jobs are abolished or never filled whenthey are laid off and fired, and turned it into awar word. They are now talking of soldiers being“attrited,” another way of saying killed, or evenevaporated. Antonia Zeribisas of the TorontoStar wrote yesterday about neo-con pundits onUS TV (are there any other kind?) defending car-pet-bombing as humane.

She writes: “For a few interesting – at least fornews junkies – days over the weekend, when thewar seemed bogged down by unexpected resist-

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ance, bad weather and vulnerable supply lines,the right was on the run, defending the Penta-gon’s ‘humane’ bombardments, even as civiliansgoing to market were being blown tosmithereens.”

Ashamed of being a journalist

ACROSS the globe, veteran Israeli journalist UriAvnery is sounding the same alarm. He, too, hascoined a word, but you won’t hear it on TV. It is“presstitute.” He explains: “In the Middle Ages,armies were accompanied by large numbers ofprostitutes. In the Iraq war, the American andBritish armies are accompanied by large num-bers of journalists. I coined the Hebrew equiva-lent of “presstitution” when I was the editor ofan Israeli newsmagazine, to denote the journal-ists who turn the media into whores. Physiciansare bound by the Hippocratic oath to save life asfar as possible. Journalists are bound by profes-sional honor to tell the truth, as they see it.

“Never before have so many journalistsbetrayed their duty as in this war. Their originalsin was their agreement to be “embedded” inarmy units. This American term sounds likebeing put to bed, and that is what it amounts toin practice.”

He says he is ashamed to be a journalist: “I amashamed when I see a large group of journalistsfrom all over the world sitting in front of a many-starred general, listening eagerly to what iscalled a “briefing” and not posing the simplestrelevant question. And when a courageousreporter does stand up and ask a real question,no one protests when the general responds withbanal propaganda slogans instead of giving areal answer.”

Oh, the horror

LET’S go back to that whole issue of civilian casu-alties, hardly a subject of much media focus. Yes-terday, I noted that reference is made to the useof cluster bombs without any descriptions beingoffered of these lethal weapons. We have all seenthe graphics detailing the various planes andtheir specs. But what about the bombs and theirconsequences? As it turns out, Pepe Escobarwrote about this yesterday on Asia Times Online(not The New York Times off-line.)

He writes: “Reports from the Hilla region ofIraq, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad, say thatscores of civilians, many of them children, havebeen killed and hundreds more injured by clus-ter bombs. Gruesome images of mutilated bodiesare being shown on Arab television stations. Butfor Western viewers, this ugly side to the warhas been sanitized.

“Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, a spokesman forthe International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) in Iraq, describes what happened in Hillaas ‘a horror, dozens of severed bodies and scat-tered limbs.’ Initially, Murtada Abbas, the direc-tor of Hilla hospital, was questioned about thebombing only by Iraqi journalists – and onlyArab cameramen working for Reuters and Asso-ciated Press were allowed on site. What theyfilmed is horror itself – the first images shot byWestern news agencies of what is also happeningon the Iraqi frontlines: babies cut in half, ampu-tated limbs, kids without their faces, a web ofdeep cuts caused by American shellfire and clus-ter bombs. Nobody in the West will ever seethese images because they were censored byeditors in Baghdad: only a ‘soft’ version made itto worldwide TV distribution.”

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What Europe reads

SOURCES like these are being believed morethan US TV news reports, according to USAToday: “Channel-surf from Britain’s BBC to Ger-many’s ZDF, or flip through newspapers fromSpain to Bangkok, and one finds stories that tiltnoticeably against the war and in favor ofbesieged Iraqi civilians. Often, these are emo-tional first-person accounts of visiting hospitalsor bombed-out apartments, accompanied bygraphic photos of the dead and dying that wouldnever appear in U.S. outlets.

“ ‘Most Europeans do not support this war, andso the coverage is simply a reflection of that,’says Giuseppe Zaffuto, project director at theEuropean Journalism Centre in Maastricht, theNetherlands. For now, it seems much of theworld’s media still need to be convinced of Wash-ington’s position.”

We still don’t know why al-Jazeera was bootedfrom Baghdad and according to them, at leastofficially, they don’t either. An official statementsays: “The Iraqi Information Ministry told al-Jazeera office in Baghdad its decision to banDiar al-Omari, al-Jazeera’s Baghdad correspon-dent, from practicing his journalistic duties. Thedecision also said that Tayseer Allouni shouldleave Iraq as soon as possible. The ministry didnot provide any reasons for that decision. Al-Jazeera network is sorry for this unpredictableand unreasonable decision by the ministry.”

It helps to have friends in high place

GUESS who is going back to the front? The wellpolitically connected Faux News Network seemsto have made a few calls and Geraldo Rivera is

going back. Reports the NY Post: “The Pentagonsays Geraldo Rivera is welcome to go back intoIraq with U.S. troops now that he’s ‘learned hislesson.’

“It was a stunning turn-around for Geraldo,who appeared just 24 hours ago to be on theverge of a career meltdown. Rivera’s latest gaffeinfuriated U.S. war commanders who – at onepoint Tuesday – threatened to remove him phys-ically from the battle zone if he did not “volun-tarily” agree to leave.” There were anti-war, anti-media protests yesterday at Fox News HQ in SanFrancisco.

What the polls show depends on what polls you read

HOW does the public feel about the war cover-age? TV Guide’s Max Robins cites a poll that saysthey can’t get enough. The Gallup people mean-while offer an opposite conclusion: “A poll showsa sharp decrease in the percentage of Americanswho rate media coverage as “excellent” since thewargasm coverage began. Say the pollsters:

“Interestingly, those Americans who supportthe war with Iraq are most likely to rate themedia coverage positively.

“At the same time, war supporters are also themost likely to have downgraded their views ofnews coverage since the war began, suggestingthat this group is most sensitive to how the waris being portrayed.”

What should we call it?

ON the Language Front, Larry Piltz from Austin,Texas, offers his own lexicon to differ with theconventional view.

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It’s an invasion, not a war.It’s fomenting terror, not fighting terror.It’s using weapons of mass destruction, not

suppressing them.It’s using uranium ammunition, not suppress-

ing uranium weapons.It’s practicing fascism, not promoting democ-

racy.It’s Anglo-American colonialism, not a willing

coalition.It’s classic hegemony, not charity.It’s backwards logic, not forward defense.It’s another racist hate crime, not a noble just

war.It’s an organized lynch mob, not leadership

decapitation.They’re homicide bombs, not guided bombs.They’re the natives, we’re the cavalry.Déjà vu all over the place. ●

APRIL 5: TV IS BOMBED TO CURE THEIR PROPAGANDAIF we ever needed a clearer demonstration ofthe power of media, we have it now. The battlefor media control has moved into the center ofthe war. Despite the violation of internationallaw associated with bombing a television station,the US forces continue to try to do it in Iraq. Sud-denly we are back in the Romania of l989, or theRussia of 1991 as a fight against a TV stationbecomes a centerpiece in the campaign to dele-gitimize a regime.

US forces have been targeting the TV towers inBaghdad the way they did in Belgrade. And theystill haven’t taken it off the air, despite all the

cruise missiles, smart bombs, bunker busters,(JDAMs) and who knows what else, they havethrown at them. At the CENTCOM briefing thismorning, comfortably televised from the million-dollar air conditioned media center in Doha byanother type of controlled TV, there were sug-gestions that the Iraqis had built redundant sys-tems anticipating just such an attack. They havealso leased time on satellites.

Propaganda front and center

THE media war has moved centerstage withbriefers describing their own propaganda initia-tives, i.e. taking over Channel 3, and launchingradio stations that Clear Channel Communica-tions are likely to pick up for a song when thewar ends. Meanwhile, the American TV com-mentators buzz about whether or not that wasthe “real” Saddam we saw in the streets withcheering supporters yesterday.

(As for the briefings, here’s a disturbing sidebar. Last week we cited NY Magazine columnistMichael Wolff’s report lambasting the phoninessof the whole Doha disinformation enterprise.When he returned to New York, he reportedlydiscovered that radio talk show host Rush Lim-baugh had been blasting him on the air and call-ing on his listeners to bombard him with emails.Rush gave out his email address and his dittoheads dutifully overloaded his computer. Somuch for freedom of expression.)

No one commented on the contrast betweenPresident Bush flanked by cheering soldiers inNorth Carolina and the Iraqi leaders beingembraced by his people in the streets. The Iraqisare showing tapes of what they call martyrs –most recently women with rifles calling for more

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resistance. Our media calls them suicidebombers as if they are ending their lives for per-sonal, not political reasons. At CENTCOM brief-ings, the Major General of the moment charac-terizes the entire Iraqi resistance as suicidalbecause of the disparity in firepower.

He, along with most US TV, sees the war onlyin military terms. The Iraqis and much of theworld view it politically. Oddly enough, the USadministration views it politically too but inmuch more self-interested terms as The NewYork Times reports today: “The invasion of Iraqhas accelerated with stunning speed in less thana week, taking some of the political heat off Pres-ident Bush.” He knows that “winning” the war isa key to winning reelection.

CNN and Al-Jazeera cover different wars

THIS contrast of images is also seen on TV whenyou compare CNN’s antiseptic and sanitized cov-erage to Al Jazeera’s depiction of a far bloodierconflict. (Al Jazeera is now back in Baghdadafter shutting down when a reporter wasousted.) The Wall Street Journal led with a storyabout this media war yesterday. Emily Nelsonreports:

“The two networks, with unprecedentedaccess to the battlefields of Iraq, are playing apowerful role in shaping perceptions of the war.The gulf between the two views could even havean impact on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Alook at 24 consecutive hours of programming onCNN and al-Jazeera reveals the many differ-ences, both dramatic and subtle.

“CNN offers human-interest features with thefamilies of U.S. POWs. Al-Jazeera keeps updating

the war’s death toll. CNN refers to ‘coalitionforces,’ al-Jazeera to ‘invading Americans.’ CNNviewers expect the latest technology, such as lip-stick cameras and night vision, and they get it.Al-Jazeera has had unusual access in placessuch as Baghdad and Basra, so it could offer itsaudience a street-level view of the war’s impacton Iraqis. CNN’s correspondents were all eitherpulled out or kicked out of Baghdad.

“Many Arabs and Americans believe the otheraudience is being fed propaganda. But there ismore than ideology at work at the two networks.Both are business operations competing forviewers and advertisers against increasinglyaggressive rivals and avidly seeking to pleasetheir target audiences.”

Arab world unconvinced by the US ‘Sellathon’

THE NY Times is reporting that US propagandato win over the Arab world is not working. At thesame time, the Times op-ed page yesterdayshowed some news papers in the Arab worldalong with a piece by Lebanese journalist RamiG. Khouri who argued that “the Arab press,while predominantly in opposition to the alliedattack on Iraq, is neither monolithic nor uni-formly anti-American.” (The Times did not carryhis reporting. The Globalvision News Network(gvnews.net) actually ran the full story that isreferenced three days earlier. The prominentconservative columnist and magazine editorMichael Kelly who called for the war wasclaimed by it yesterday, killed in a Humvee acci-dent. He edited the Atlantic Monthly. The WhiteHouse offered its condolences, as did many col-leagues.

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Arnett back on the air

PETER ARNETT is also back on the air fromBaghdad. AP reports on its former staffer:“Within days of being fired by the U.S. networkNBC, Arnett found an unlikely new audienceThursday: the Dutch-speaking and hopefullyEnglish-comprehending citizens of northern Bel-gium. ‘Thanks Peter Arnett, we are proud tohave you on our team,’ said VTM news anchorDany Verstraeten after Arnett finished his firstreport for the private Belgian TV network.

“VTN said it will have daily reports from oneof the world’s most famous reporters until theend of the war. Also Thursday, a state-run TVchannel in Greece said Arnett would soon beproviding nightly dispatches for it, too. ‘Thisstory also shows how TV networks around theworld do not share the values and viewpoints ofthe US based cable news networks.’

“Arnett, who apologized for his ‘misjudgment,’told VTM he was a casualty of the informationwar. ‘There are two wars taking place. You havethe war of bullets and bombs, then you have theinformation war,’ he said. He complained he wasmaking ‘just obvious statements’ about the warthat should not have backfired the way they did.‘This caused a firestorm in America. I was calleda traitor,’ he said, adding NBC ‘let me crash andburn.’”

Pro-war media relentless

ON the pro-war side of the media war, we havean assessment to share from Steve Johnson ofthe Chicago Tribune, who explains what FoxNews is doing right. (I used that word know-ingly.)

“They report. We deride. “We deride Fox News Channel for saying ‘us’

and ‘our’ in talking about the American wareffort, a strategy that conjures images of gung-hoanchor Shepard Smith, like Slim Pickens in ‘Dr.Strangelove,’ riding a Tomahawk straight intoBaghdad.

“We deride Fox for playing ratings politics withthe news, turning Joint Chiefs Chairman RichardMyers’ public call Tuesday for media to be ‘fairand balanced’ into a back-door endorsement,pointing out frequently afterward that the gen-eral had echoed a Fox News marketing slogan.

“This, the folks in the bunker at Fox wouldargue, is due to the rest of the media’s liberalagenda, an agenda Fox News slyly re-alleges withevery repetition of ‘fair and balanced’ (the oth-ers aren’t) and ‘we report; you decide’ (‘they’don’t give you that chance).

“A less calculatedly paranoid worldview wouldrecognize that scrutiny is the price of success, ofthe channel becoming, in a sense, the Scud studof this Persian Gulf conflict. Ratings during thewar have confirmed that Roger Ailes’ and RupertMurdoch’s upstart operation has become theclear leader in cable news popularity.” (Shouldthat be ’cheer leader?’)

“Fox News has held the lead it built in peace-time by following its well-established and fairlysimple recipe: dollops of news reported bycomely anchors and correspondents tossed atopa main dish of attitude and argument led bycharismatic and right-leaning hosts.”

This piece is worth studying because Steve isright. Knocking Fox or dismissing it is too easy.We need to study its formula and understand itsappeal.

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Breaking news is hard to believe

FOX is not the only offender of journalistic prac-tice, as FAIR points out in a dissection of oneincident in which subsequent accounts in news-papers that I cited in an earier column contra-dicted the initial TV report and the impression itfostered.

“A recent Washington Post article describingthe killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers at a check-point outside the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that‘embedded’ journalists do have the ability toreport on war in all its horror. But the rejectionby some U.S. outlets of Post correspondentWilliam Branigin’s eyewitness account in favorof the Pentagon’s sanitized version suggests thatsome journalists prefer not to report the harshreality of war.

“The Pentagon version was the one firstreported in U.S. media sometimes in terms thatassumed that the official account was factual.‘What happened there, the van with a number ofindividuals in it . . . approached the checkpoint,’reported MSNBC’s Carl Rochelle (3/31/03). ‘Theywere told to stop by the members of the 3rdInfantry Division. They did not stop, warningshots were fired. Still they came on. They firedinto the engine of the van. Still it came on, sothey began opening fire on the van itself.’

“Fox’s John Gibson (3/31/03) presented thestory in similar terms: ‘We warn these cars tostop. If they don’t stop, fire warning shots. If theydon’t stop then, fire into the engine. If they don’tstop then, fire into the cab. And today some guyskilled some civilians after going through allthose steps.’ But later on the night of March 31,the Post released its story on the shooting thatwould appear in the April 1 edition of the paper.

Branigin’s report described U.S. Army Capt.Ronny Johnson’s attempts to avoid the incidentas he directed his troops via radio from thecheckpoint:

“ ‘Fire a warning shot,’ he ordered as the vehi-cle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency,he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. ‘Stop [messing]around!’ Johnson yelled into the company radionetwork when he still saw no action being taken.Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Stophim, Red 1, stop him!’”

In short what happened, according to closeobservers is not quite what was first reportedand rationalized.

Clear Channel has no agenda.Repeat, none

MEANWHILE on the radio front, Clear ChannelCommunications continues to organize rallies tosupport the troops. I went to the ABC news web-site and did a search “Pro troop rally” and gotthe link about who is organizing this, ClearChannel Radio stations, across the country. Keepin mind that our local peace rallies are not spon-sored or paid for by anyone. My understanding isthe various local peace rallies (which also sup-port the troops) are a grassroots movement ris-ing directly from the people, church groups, vet-erans for peace, and various groups interested insocial justice such as United Voices for Peace . . .A reader sends this from an unidentified localnewspaper:

“Clear Channel has a reporter embedded witha Marine unit in Iraq, leading one expert to ques-tion whether the company’s support for the ral-lies creates at least the perception that its news

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report is compromised.”“When a media company takes an advocacy

position on a significant public policy issue, itcan certainly undermine the credibility of thatmedia company’s journalists,” said Bob Steele,director of the journalism ethics program at thePoynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

But Ami Forester, a spokeswoman for ClearChannel subsidiary Premiere Radio Networks,whcih syndicates their shows, said, “There is nohidden agenda here.” . . .

She’s right: it is not hidden and she was alsocorrect to note that some of their competitorsare now staging similar events. ●

APRIL 7: DECAPITATION STRIKES TARGET SADDAM SURPRISES, “strategic” and otherwise, seem tobe the order of the day as spring takes hold. InBaghdad, US Marines staged one of their raidsinto the center of town because it was there, andso were they. Its point: to demonstrate the weak-ness of the town’s defenses, to prod and to probe,and to score more psychological warfare pointsby strutting through one of the palaces and hang-ing out on the lawn. Sadly eight died in thisdemonstration. A soldier called Flip told hisbuddy Greg of Fox News that it “showed we arehere to stay.”

Eyewitness to hell

LIFE, like war, is chaotic and sometimes it is hardto tell friends from foes. Sometimes friends arefoes. I was watching Michelle Martin on ABC’s

This Week mentioning that 25% of the US casual-ties in Gulf War l came from friendly fire. Itseems to be happening again. BBC warhorseJohn Simpson and team were traveling with Kur-dish fighters and US Special Ops troops whenthe skies exploded overhead. He described thehellish scene on BBC online:

“I saw two F-15 American planes circling quitelow overhead and I had a bad feeling, becausethey seemed to be closer to us than they were tothe tank. As I was looking at them – this mustsound extraordinary but I assure you it is true, Isaw the bomb coming out of one of the planes –and I saw it as it came down beside me. It waspainted white and red. It crashed into the groundabout 10 or 12 meters from where I was standing.

“It took the lower legs off Kamaran, our trans-lator, I got shrapnel in parts of my body. I wouldhave got a chunk of shrapnel in my spine had Inot been wearing a flak jacket, and it was burieddeep in the Kevlar when I checked it. Our pro-ducer had a piece of shrapnel an inch long takenout of his foot.

“The planes circled round. I shouted out at theAmerican special forces, ‘Tell them to go away –tell them it’s us – don’t let them drop anotherbomb.’ It was a mistake. They were so apologeticafterwards.”

News addiction

INCIDENTS like these were observed andreported on. But the full extent of other casual-ties, including the US war toll, is buried (somesay deliberately in that ever present fog of war.)CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks brags:“We don’t do body counts.” IraqBodyCount.netdoes. They claim there is a maximum of l,050

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civilian dead, but that has to understate the over-all carnage which is psychologically traumatizinga population as well as the men fighting. Thepsychological drama here is just being noted. ANew York Times report on viewers who can’tsleep because of their addiction to the coverageresonates with my own experience:

“Mr. Angelo, the sleep-deprived telephoneworker, said he had given up reading about thewar in his favorite newspapers, including ThePhiladelphia Inquirer, because he has oftenfound that much of the news compiled the previ-ous day has gone stale by the following morning.

“In place of the printed page, he says, he hasbecome addicted to the news crawls that streamacross the bottom of his 27-inch Sony when he iswatching CNN or Fox News.

“In contrast, J. C. Alonsoperez, 55, a molder ata glass factory off Main, says he has sworn off thevery news channels on which Mr. Angelo relies.He says he craves the more ‘in-depth’ analysis ofthe war that he finds in The Inquirer, as well ason National Public Radio and the BBC.

“After being captivated at first by the war, MarkRoszkowski, 49, a financial planner from nearbyWildwood Crest, said he now permitted himself towatch only a few minutes of television coverage –‘til I get the gist of what happened today’ –because, he explained, ‘I don’t really like to dwellon it.’ “His reasons are at least partly political. ‘It’supsetting to watch,’ he said, ‘because the more thewar goes on, the bleaker our future becomes.We’re getting into something as a country that’sgoing to be hard to get out of.’ ”

Remembering ‘The Bloomster’

REPORTS of the death of two more western jour-

nalists are coming in. Fox says one is German,the other French. Others report they are Russ-ian . . . NBC is still mourning the loss of its mediastar David Bloom, a.k.a “The Bloomster.” Every-one watching the US coverage was impressed byhis inventiveness and conversational reportingstyle. His Today Show training served him well,but his own enterprise may have sealed his fate.According to his colleague Tim Russert, he hadbuilt that open-air platform he rode, like a mod-ern day Lawrence of Arabia across the desert.He has even made sure that the people who engi-neered it for him would not make another onefor a competitor.

Colleagues like John Simpson admired hispluck and style: “During this war he had fre-quently pushed the line dividing news from showbusiness, ducking rocket fire and broadcastinglive from a specially adapted M-88 tank retrieverknown to colleagues as the ‘Bloom mobile,’ whiletroops fought northwards. Bloom and his cam-eraman were able to produce ‘jiggle-free’ videoeven while racing through the desert, by using agyrostabilized camera.”

The Steadicam effect made him look great butit also immobilized his legs, perhaps contribut-ing to the pulmonary embolism that was to claimhis life at age 39. He left a wife and three kids.

Michael Kelly, the conservative commentatorwho perished in a Humvee accident left two kids.All of their colleagues spoke about these chil-dren as they should. As a father myself, I canunderstand, and feel for both of their families.Yet it made me sad to think of all the Iraqi chil-dren being victimized in this war – half of Iraq’spopulation is under l8 – who are all but forgottenby a media focus on the US military.

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Red Cross horrified

IT was in the Canadian press that I found a RedCross report I have yet to see referenced onAmerican TV: “Red Cross doctors who visitedsouthern Iraq this week saw ‘incredible’ levels ofcivilian casualties including a truckload of dis-membered women and children, a spokesmansaid Thursday from Baghdad. Roland Huguenin,one of six International Red Cross workers in theIraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by thecasualties they found in the hospital in Hilla,about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad.

“ ‘There has been an incredible number ofcasualties with very, very serious wounds in theregion of Hilla,’ Huguenin said in an interview bysatellite telephone. ‘We saw that a truck wasdelivering dozens of totally dismembered deadbodies of women and children. It was an awfulsight. It was really very difficult to believe thiswas happening.’”

Also unbelievable was this quote in the USTimes re-quoted in The Guardian: “from aMarine who had shot at an Iraqi soldier in a civil-ian crowd and watched a woman fall instead. ‘I’msorry’, said the Marine, ‘but the chick got in theway.’ Now, how does that make you feel?”

Questions about casualities

WHAT about military casualties? Wayne StateUniversity professor David Fasenfast raisesquestions about the coverage on this score, ques-tions you rarely see or hear being raised by theanchors or correspondents:

“It strikes me as people discuss this war noone mentions the strange nature of the reportingon casualties. I saw a report the other night that

lists total deaths about 71 with about a third dueto friendly fire. On the same day I saw a reportthat ‘enemy’ dead from one engagement was upto 2,000 and the daily numbers are always reallarge.

“Old enough to remember, I am skeptical.First, during Vietnam the US regularly inflatedthe numbers engaged and killed. Second, it turnsout that many of the dead “combatants” endedup being civilians presumed to be combatantsfor the simple reason that they were killed dur-ing the battle (much later the reports of atroci-ties tempered those estimates). Why is there nocommentary on what is now easily (by thereports) tens of thousands dead. Even if they areall soldiers, there is something obscene about(alright, even more obscene than) this war.Where is the sense of more than battle testingweapons – but rather testing them in a kill zoneenvironment.”

Conflicting reports

HERE is an example of the problem. Followingare two reports from AP, the first on April 2, thesecond three days later:

“U.S. Marines describe ambush outsideNasiriyah that wounded 31 troops.

“ . . . The Marines are among 221 combatwounded who have been treated at Landstuhl, insouthwestern Germany, since the war beganMarch 19. Ninety-four troops and a civilianremain at the hospital, the American military’slargest hospital outside the United States, Land-stuhl spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.”

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US war toll rises to 75

“APRIL 5 – The number of U.S. service memberskilled in action since the war began March 20stands at 75, U.S. officials said Saturday. Sevenservice members had been captured, seven weremissing and 154 had been wounded.”

Where are the Iraq defenses?

ALSO confusing is just what the Iraqis are doingand not doing to defend Baghdad. Erudite com-mentator George Will, who usually claims toknow everything about everything, admitted todoubts and confusion on ABC Sunday. (He alsoapprovingly read us a quote from Michael Kellyurging pundits on TV to shut up. Clearly he did-n’t realize that he is among the most offensive ofthe chattering classes.) So what is happening?During the Vietnam War analysts used to saythat the US was playing the western game ofchess while the Vietnamese were playing theAsian game of GO. What goeth on?

Mark Crispin Miller passes along a provocativeanalysis by Mark Gery, an independent Iraq ana-lyst of the non-armchair-general variety. Hewrites: “Saddam and most of the RepublicanGuard will probably lay low in Baghdad and else-where and let the Fedayeen and other paramili-tary units harass us as we try to move about thecity. (We have yet to secure even one major cityin Iraq). The Guards have already discardedtheir combat uniforms and apparently dispersedinto several locales.

“At some point, when temps near 100 and thesandstorms begin again, thousands of Iraqitroops now in hiding will strike in mass at a fewchoke points in our supply lines, which extend all

the way into Kuwait. They may even still blowthe bridges over the rivers. Our forces willbecome isolated from each other, and within afew weeks will be short on water, food, and gaso-line. Vehicles and men will have to come intoIraqi cities for clean water, and again be subjectto commando attack. In short, weather and logis-tics will win the war for Saddam.”

Dubya: “Good”

“MR. BUSH smiled a moment at the latest exam-ple of Mr. Rumsfeld’s brazenness, recalled theaide. Then he said one word – ‘Good’ – and wentback to work,” reports the Independent.

“It was a small but telling moment on the side-lines of the war. For a year now, the presidentand many in his team have privately describedthe confrontation with Saddam Hussein as some-thing of a demonstration conflict, an experimentin forcible disarmament. It is also the first warconducted under a new national security strat-egy, which explicitly calls for intervening beforea potential enemy can strike.”

This war is also a selling exercise – a way toshowcase and field-test US weaponry. During theGulf War, Guy Trebay called CNN a “home shop-ping channel” for military recruitment officerswho are watching with checkbooks at the ready. Itis happening again. Sir Timothy Garden, a Britishexpert wrote about this in March in The Guardian:“With war seemingly inevitable, weapon design-ers will be looking forward to another opportunityfor field-testing new products.”

Media hatred

AS for the media war being fought alongside the

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military conflict, it is getting uglier by theminute. As Peter Preston writes in today’sGuardian: “So, who’s winning the loathing cam-paign? The lower echelons of the empire Rupertbuilt produced some wonderful haters. The Posthates The New York Times. It dissected a Timesfront page, story by story, and labeled the result‘News by Saddam.’ It hates the ‘vermin’ of Iraq,the ‘euro-weasels’ of Brussels, and the failed,‘irrelevant’ UN. It even quite despises Murdoch’sLondon Times for printing damp little piecesabout British public opinion based on one inter-view with a ‘market gardener.’

“Some of the vituperation, though, reachespitches of bitterness, which can only betoken sin-cerity. See Matthew Parris in the Times diagnos-ing ‘the Madness of King Tony’ in grim clinicaldetail. See Nick Cohen (of this parish) taking aNew Statesman cleaver to Andrew Murray of theStop the War Alliance: ‘A living fossil from theage of European dictators is heading the biggestprotest of the new century.’ See our greatfarceur, Tom Sharpe, writing an incensed openletter to Tony Blair, which ends ‘yours in despair,and disillusionment.’ ”

The word “Coalition:” how true?

WRITING from Baghdad, The Independent’sRobert Fisk blasts the BBC for speaking of“coalition” troops: “Why do we aid and abet thelies and propaganda of this filthy war? Howcome, for example, it’s now BBC ‘style’ todescribe the Anglo-American invaders as the‘coalition.’ This is a lie. The ‘coalition’ that we’reobviously supposed to remember is the oneforged to drive Iraqi occupation troops fromKuwait in 1991, an alliance involving dozens of

countries almost all of whom now condemn Pres-ident George Bush Junior’s adventure in Iraq.There are a few Australian special forces swan-ning about in the desert, courtesy of the coun-try’s eccentric prime minister, John Howard; butthat’s it. So who at the BBC decreed this dishon-est word ‘coalition?’ True, there’s a ‘coalition ofthe willing,” to use Bush’s weird phrase but thisis a reference to those nations which have givenover flying rights to the United States or havegiven political but not military support. So thephrase ‘coalition forces” remains a lie.” ●

APRIL 8: COMICS MAKE FUN OF THE CONFLICTWHAT was billed as the war of liberation beganwith an attempted decapitation and remainedfocused on execution in all realms. This time,thanks to an intelligence intercept and a tip onthe ground, a B-1 bomber was dispatched to fin-ish the real job – the annihilation of Saddam andcompany, one of the most expensive assassina-tions in history – that is, if it was as successful asthe gleeful TV anchors and their “high-level”sources were hoping. Three “bunker buster”bombs were used this time to leave an enormouscrater in a residential Neighborhood. Reportedlyit happened at 6 a.m. our time yesterday but thenews was withheld for over twelve hours.

Throughout it all, the demonization continues;“Butcher and evil sons may have died plottingescape,” reads one headline in today’s New YorkPost, a facsimile of a newspaper published inNew York. As I tuned in for the latest this morn-ing, before the briefers showed up to tell us what

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to report, the news nets were still recycling thebig story. The Post must not have heard orbelieve the banter about who is supposed to becontrolling Iraq when it captioned a photo of USsoldiers having a smoke yesterday in one of Sad-dam’s palaces. “MEET THE NEW OWNERS,” itsays. Funny, how reality creeps through the fogof “journalism.”

The latest: Bush doesn’t know

AS of 8 a.m. EDT today, CNN was reporting: Bushsaid “Saddam Hussein will be gone. It might havebeen yesterday, I don’t know.”

“Central Command: Marines attack, seizeRasheed military airfield in southeastern Bagh-dad.

“Abu Dhabi TV: Firefight near presidentialcompound in Baghdad; Coalition tanks take upposition on nearby bridge.”

Al-Jazeera bombed (again!)

THE war against Al Jazeera has claimed a life,CNN reports. “Al-Jazeera TV says one of itsjournalists was killed Tuesday when a U.S. airstrike hit a building housing Arab media, theArab network said. The reporter, identified asTariq Ayoub, was carried along the street in ablanket before being placed in the back of anAbu Dhabi TV vehicle and being rushed off formedical treatment.

“An Al-Jazeera reporter on-air said he felt, asdid his colleagues, the U.S. strike was a deliber-ate attack against the network, since two missileshit the building, not one, and that the raid hap-pened at about the same time Abu Dhabi TVoffices were hit.” A US missile also previously hit

al-Jazeera offices in Afghanistan by “mistake.” A media freedom group in Jordan condemned

the attack and “criticized the US expression ofregret and excuses over its attacks on journalistsand media, describing what took place as a“crime against humanity and a clear violation ofinternational law,” adding that those who com-mitted them should not be allowed to avoid pun-ishment.

“The organization demanded the internationalcommunity and international bodies defendinghuman rights to establish committees to investi-gate into those violations.

“In the same context, CDFJ criticized themedia coverage carried out by some of the USmedia outlets describing it as being “biased” andfailing to respect objectivity and ethics whileturning into entities that advocates for war aswell as defending violations that U.S. and Britishtroops are committing against innocent victims.”

More journalists targeted

ALSO this morning, Ann Garrels of NPRreported from the Palestine Hotel, the mediaheadquarters in Baghdad, that a US tank shellwas fired into the 15th floor, with at least fourmedia colleagues wounded. This is preliminaryinformation phoned into the Media Channel. AUS soldier reportedly said he saw people withbinoculars in the hotel and thought they werebeing fired on. Garrels said she heard no gunfire,but noted that many reporters were watchingthe battle with binoculars.

Is this a a war?

HERE’S Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker to

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offer a useful framework to integrate all the“Breaking News” that keeps pouring in: “Thereis one way in which it is misleading to classifywhat is happening in Iraq as a war at all. LikeDunkirk, Midway, and the Bulge, it is only part ofa larger enterprise. That is how it has been justi-fied; that is how it must be judged. The aim ofthat larger enterprise is not to overthrow theIraqi regime, however devoutly that is to bewished; it is to minimize the chances of anotherSeptember 11th. The success of what might moreproperly be called the Battle of Iraq must ulti-mately be measured by whether it brings uscloser to that larger aim or leaves us fartheraway from it. The longer the fighting continues,the greater the suffering inflicted upon Iraqicivilians, the solider Arab and Muslim (and Euro-pean and Asian) anger toward the United Statesbecomes, the bigger the pool of possible terror-ist recruits grows – the more these things hap-pen, the higher becomes the cost of victory, until,at some unknowable point, victory becomesdefeat.”

The WMDs: Missing in action

WHAT happened to the hunt for Weapons ofMass Destruction, as in the prime rationale forthe war? Agence France-Press is reporting: “Afacility near Baghdad that a US officer hadclaimed might finally be ‘smoking gun’ evidenceof Iraqi chemical weapons production turned outto contain pesticide, not sarin gas as originallythought.

“A military intelligence officer for the US 101stAirborne Division’s aviation brigade, CaptainAdam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensivetests Monday determined the presence of the

pesticide compounds. Initial tests had reportedlydetected traces of sarin – a powerful toxin thatquickly affects the nervous system – after US sol-diers guarding the facility near Hindiyah, 100kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, becameill.

Mastrianni said: “They thought it was a nerveagent. That’s what it tested. But it is pesticide.”

Where is the chemical war?

WRITING on this issue, George Monbiot notestoday in The Guardian, “When Saddam Husseinso pig-headedly failed to shower US troops withchemical weapons as they entered Iraq, thusdepriving them of a retrospective justificationfor this war, the American generals explainedthat he would do so as soon as they crossed the‘red line’ around Baghdad. Beyond that point, thedesperate dictator would lash out with everyweapon he possessed.

“Well, the line has been crossed and recrossed,and not a whiff of mustard gas or VX has so farbeen detected. This could mean one of threethings. Saddam’s command system may havebroken down (he may be dead, or his troopsmight have failed to receive or respond to hisorders); he is refraining, so far, from using them;or he does not possess them.

“The special forces sent to seize Iraq’sweapons of mass destruction have found no hardevidence at any of the 12 sites (identified by thePentagon as the most likely places) they haveexamined so far. As Newsweek revealed in Feb-ruary, there may be a reason for this: in 1995,General Hussein Kamel, the defector whose evi-dence George Bush, Tony Blair, and Colin Powellhave cited as justification for their invasion, told

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the UN that the Iraqi armed forces, acting on hisinstructions, had destroyed the last of theirbanned munitions. But, whether Saddam Hus-sein is able to use such weapons or not, theirdeployment in Iraq appears to be imminent, forthe Americans seem determined to do so.”

Depleted uranium: Words we never hear

AMONG the weapons being used are anti-tankshells coated with depleted uranium. The USinsists they are safe. Critics contest that. The LATimes, a winner of yesterday’s Pulitzer Prize,noted on March 30th:

“Although the potential human cost of the warwith Iraq is obvious, not many people are awareof a hidden risk that may haunt us for years.

“Of the 504,047 eligible veterans of the 1991 Per-sian Gulf War, about 29% are now considereddisabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs,the highest rate of disability for any modern war.And most are not disabled because of wounds.

“These guys were rough, tough, buff 20-year-olds a decade ago. The vast majority is illbecause of a complex of debilities known as theGulf War Syndrome.

“These vets were exposed to toxic materialfrom both sides, including numerous chemicals,fumes, and weird experimental vaccines. But thelargest number of the more than half a milliontroops eligible for VA benefits – 436,000 – lived formonths in areas of the Middle Eastern desert thathad been contaminated with depleted uranium.”

“We kicked the crap out of them”

TOMDISPATCH.COM writes on this issue, too: “It

is worth remembering that the army of 100,000-plus young men and women who will occupyIraq for who knows how long – and of course theIraqis who have nowhere else to go – will all beputting their health on the line so that we cancreate a certain degree of greater target pene-tration with our weaponry. As the LA Timespiece suggests, the famed epitaph for the PunicWars might apply: “They made a desolation andcalled it Peace.”

Our response? According to Col. JamesNaughton, director of munitions for the U.S.Army Material Command, as quoted in a recentArticle in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “TheIraqis tell us terrible things happened to our peo-ple because you used it last time . . . They want itto go away because we kicked the crap out ofthem – OK? There’s no doubt that DU gave us ahuge advantage over their tanks.”

You can check in,but you can’t check out

SOME embeds want out, as Joe Strupp reportsin Editor and Publisher: “At least 10 embeddedjournalists have left their assigned slots with U.S.military units in Iraq, according to a Pentagonspokesman, who said twice as many people haverequested to leave but chose to stay after beingtold their news organizations would lose theslots for good if they departed. Meanwhile, thePentagon says they ‘won’t change the rules thatbar news organizations from replacing embedswho leave or switching them from one militaryunit to another.’

“Col. Jay DeFrank, director of press operationsfor the Department of Defense, said he under-stood that some newspapers may need to move

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reporters and photographers out of their embedassignments, especially if the war takes morethan a few weeks, but stressed that the rule stillstands. “When our forces are engaged in groundcombat, it is no time to bring in a new journalistto the environment,” he said this week. “Havinga journalist there complicates the situationalready. Having a new person does it more so.”

Follow the money

SOME new information about political donationsby US media companies has come out. Where?In England, not in the US. You haven’t seen thison Fox or CNN. The Guardian reports: “Politicaldonations by U.S. television and radio stationshave almost doubled in the last year, researchhas shown.

“And the Bush family’s association with manymedia organizations runs deep and is reflectedby the hefty handouts from the likes of NBC net-work owner General Electric and Rupert Mur-doch’s News Corporation, both trenchant sup-porters of the war.

“The amount of money ploughed into partycoffers by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV, NBC, andradio giant Clear Channel (among others) hasgone up to £7.56m in 2001/2002, compared withjust £4.6m in 2000, the latest figures reveal.”

Press reunion

THEY have been talking about the press up atYale as the Yale Daily News celebrates its 75thanniversary. Former Media Channel ManagingEditor Larry Bensky, an alumnus of that venera-ble organization, is on hand. The newspaperreports that “panelists discussed the changes

necessitated by the 24-hour news cycle, wherecable news can provide up-to-the-minute accessand print journalists scramble to compete.Washington Post White House correspondentDana Milbank said the Bush administration hasbeen especially clever in using this demand forimmediate news by sending out small bits ofinformation.

“There’s no time to question it, or Fox orMSNBC are going to have it,” Milbank said. “Bythe time we catch up and say, ‘Maybe that’s nottrue,’ we’re already on to something else.”

Can you trust the polls?

CNN trotted out new polls showing 80 percent ofthe people see President Bush as a strong leader(what other leader are they seeing?) 65 percentof the people think that he “cares about peoplelike them.” The LA times reports “Some 95 per-cent of Americans say they are following newscoverage closely and 61 percent approve of thecoverage,” says a Los Angeles Times poll. In hisbook, ‘The New Crusade,’ Rahul Mahajan saysmost polling is deceptive. He writes: “Polls arenotoriously volatile – they vary greatly on thebackground information given, on the way ques-tions are phrased, and on the alternatives given.Responses also have no requirement of logicalconsistency. So to draw on very specific conclu-sions from these numbers would be a mistake.”There is no doubt that public opinion is affectedby what people see – and don’t see – on televi-sion.” ●

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APRIL 9: AMNESIA STALKS THE AIRWAVESTHIS week the horror of war came home to themedia, home to stay. Suddenly the war was notjust another big assignment, or an adventure, ora chance to score points, or get ratings. Suddenlyit was not a game of action and reaction or mis-sion and maneuver. It became a real world hor-ror show as journalists who traditionally seekdistance from the news they report became partof the story.

In just three weeks, the war in Iraq (or “onIraq,” if you serve outlets in the Arab world) hasalready claimed more journalists than the num-ber killed during Gulf War l in l991. Only fourjournalists are known to have died then.

Death for media people lurks everywhere ontoday’s battlefield – even when you are not on it.Al Jazeera’s offices and the Arab Media Centerin Baghdad were bombed yesterday, clearly not amove that will endear the US war to the Arabworld, which relies on the reporting from there.One Al Jazeera correspondent was killed. US sol-diers reportedly rocketed the Palestine Hotel,home to most correspondents in Baghdad. As Iwrite, the toll of dead and injured is not known.It seems like it’s open season on journalists.

The way death comes

DEATH can take the form of an auto accident, likethe one that took the life of editor-columnistMichael Kelly who was overconfident that hewould survive a conflict that he boosted in print. It

could take the form of a friendly-fire incident, likethe bombing of a military convoy that pulverizedBBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamedand wounded the BBC’s star correspondent JohnSimpson. Terry Lloyd of Britain’s ITN died in sim-ilar circumstances after being shot by “Coalition”gunfire near Basra on March 22.

NBC’s David Bloom was struck down by a pul-monary embolism that could have been linked tothe vehicle he created that allowed him to broad-cast while barreling across the desert. Theaction shots of him were captivating, but he maynot have paid attention to his immobilized legs,which were attacked by a blood clot.

Australian freelance cameraman Paul Moranwas on the scene of a suicide bombing by peoplewho make little distinction between embeddedjournalists and the armies they travel with.Kaveh Golestan, another freelance cameraman,an Iranian, was on assignment for the BBC. Hestepped on a landmine.

A German and a Spanish journalist were at aUS base when it was rocketed by Iraqi forces.

Others suffered accidents, like Gaby Rado ofBritain’s Channel 4 News, while two more col-leagues are missing: Fred Nerac and translatorHussein Othman, both part of Terry Lloyd’s crew.

Missing and captured

AND there are still others. A German and Span-ish journalist died April 7 during an Iraqi missileattack on a US base. Missing are Wael Awad, aSyrian reporter working for the Dubai ArabicTV station al-Arabiya; his partner Talal Fawzi al-Masri, a Lebanese cameraman; and Ali HassanSafa, technician.

Add the captured to the list, which includes

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Peter Wilson, London correspondent for theAustralian, his photographer John Feder andtheir translator Stewart Innes. And let’s not for-get Marcin Firlej, a Polish journalist with newschannel TVN 24, captured south of Baghdad, oreven Jacek Kaczmarek, a journalist with Polishpublic radio. I am not sure this is the whole ros-ter but they all deserve our support.

Memories and amnesia

EVERYONE who knows Gulf War l remembersthe “turkey shoot” on the road out of Kuwaitwhen US jets strafed and slaughtered fleeing sol-diers. Many remember the bulldozers that wereused to bury “enemy” soldiers alive. Amnesiaseems to have taken hold because these inci-dents are rarely mentioned. We won the war butlost the peace. When the parades ended, Sad-dam was left standing. Could it happen again?Don’t bet against it.

Let us not forget that the war we fight today hasbeen underway for at least a decade. This is onlythe latest phase. What will be its legacy? Willthere be a resurgence of Gulf War Syndrome thatwas denied for years by the Pentagon but causedso much pain and misery for all those who wereafflicted. You also barely hear any reference madeto the sanctions that went on for ten years, rob-bing so many Iraqi children of their futures, evenif the regime was complicit in their deaths.

Remember, too, the use of depleted uranium in“coalition” weapons that defiled a land that is thecradle of western civilization. Remember alsohow the gassing of the Kurds, so widely cited asgrounds for invasion today, barely rated a con-demnation in its immediate aftermath, even by aRepublican administration.

Will we repeat history?

WE forget this history at our peril. We didn’t seemany of Iraq’s faces then, and we are not seeingthem now. Iraq became a geopolitical abstractionfor most Americans until this administrationdecided to wage war there. Before shock andawe, only 13% of the young people now fightingcould even find it on a world map.

War may kill but it also desensitizes. When weget into them, they get into us. We may escapealive or even prevail, but the images and theexperience stamps our lives forever. For many,the trauma will lead to sleepless nights for therest of their lives. And that goes for journaliststoo, as hard-nosed as many of us believe we are.

We lose track of what war is

AS NY Times journalist Chris Hedges explainedto Editor and Publisher: “The real ‘shock andawe’ may be that we’ve been lulled into a beliefthat we can wage war cost-free . . . We feel we canfight wars and others will die and we won’t. Welose track of what war is and what it can do to asociety. The military had a great disquiet aboutthe war plans, as far back as last fall. The pressdid not chase down that story.”

I cite all of this not to score some cheap politicalpoints because war is always a tragedy, usually alose-lose proposition even for the “winners.”

Journalists are mourning for their own thisweek as one does upon losing a member of yourfamily. But we can’t turn our back to all the otherfamilies in pain and grief because of this war.Journalism without compassion, without empa-thy, and without consciousness is but stenogra-phy by another name. ●

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THE Terror Era has not only radicalized our domes-tic politics and foreign policies, but it has infectedour language. Our vocabulary has undergone aparadigm shift along with government policies.Academics call it “social construction.”

Conversations are now peppered with terms werarely heard or thought much about before 9/11.(Before 9/11, no one even marked dates that way.Sure there was 24/7 but that’s not the same.) Fewof our “new” words are new – but the frequency ofusage certainly is. Words are weapons or theirextensions and often used as such. Many are thelethal offspring of an alphabet of anguish, a lexiconof slanted war speak. Orwell would have been rightat home, but for the rest of us, it is often uncom-fortable finding these terms bubbling up almostinvoluntarily from within. “News language” has away of fusing with our own language in the sameway that babies absorb the lingo, accents andphrasing of their parents. What we hear again andagain in the media embeds itself in the inner voice.We recycle what is repeated. Pavlov understoodthis more than Orwell, but never mind.

So here is an armchair linguist and news dissec-tor’s A-Z in progress. Help me fill in the blanks.

AA – Allah, Axis, Assets, Alert; ABC-Atomic Bio-logical Chemical, Anthrax, Aluminum Tubes, AlSamud Missiles; Al-Jazeera, AAR (after actionreport), amphetamines, (supplied to exhaustedpilots who bomb Canadian allies in friendly fireincidents in Afghanistan).

BB – Breaking News, Bio-Terror, Baghdad, Basra,“Black Hawk Down,” Box Cutter, Botchilinum,Burka, Ba’ath Party, Bush “Doctrine”.

CC – Caves, Condoleeza, cells (of the sleeper andawake varieties), CC (Central Command); Cen-triguges, Clash of Civilizations, Crusade, CNN-effect, Collateral Language (or damage, collat-eral), Combatants, illegal, Chicken Hawk, C2 -command and control, Civil Liberties (Huh?).

DD – Duct Tape, Desert Spring, Delta Force,Detainees, Dirty Bomb, Democracy (in Iraq, notthe U.S.), Drones, Daisy Cutters, (not be confusedwith the country called Cutter but spelled Qatar),Dead or Alive, Disarmament (them, not us).

EE – Embed, Embedded, Evil, Evildoer, Evil, Axisof, E-bomb.

FF –– Fundamentalism, Foreign Fighters, Friend-lies (the soldiers we like), Fights Back (as inAmerica), Franks (Tommy), Food for Oil, FreedomFries (in lieu of French fries).

GG – Ground Zero, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay,Geneva Conventions (now irrelevant), Geraldo(see force of nature).

HH – Homeland, Homicide Bombers, Hamas,Hizbollah, Holy War, House to House, HinduKush,Hazmats, Haj, Halliburton (rarely mentioned),Human Rights (no longer relevant).

II – Infidel, Inspections, IAEA, IO (InformationOperations as in “Information is the Currency ofVictory”), IDF, Imam, Interrogate, Interrogation,Islamabad, ISI ( Pakistan Intelligence), Intifada(again), Infant Mortality, Imperialism (word not

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used on television).JJ – Jihad, Jihad Junkie, Journalists (endan-

gered species), “Just War” (no longer in quotes).KK – Kurds, Kurdistan, Kabul, Kunduz, Kandahar,

Kashmir, KC-10A Extender jets.LL – Likud, Laconic, Liberation (of Iraq, not U.S.),

Love (forget it).MM – Muslim World, Madrassa, Mullah, one-

eyed, Mastermind, Material Breach, Mobile Labs,Mustard Gas, Mazer I-Sharif, Mujahadeen, Mecca,Mistake (not used).

NN – Northern Alliance, No Blood for Oil, Not inMy Name, Non-permanent members.

OO – OBL, Omar, Operation Mountain Lion, Oper-ation Anaconda, Operation Infinite Justice, Opera-tion Enduring Freedom, Old Europe (as opposedto New).

PP – Perception Management, Profiling, P5 orPerm 5 (once the Big Five on the Security Coun-cil), Patriot Act, Patriotically Correct, Pens(Demonstration Areas), Preemptive War, Preemp-tive Strike, Proxies, Poodle (see Blair, Tony), Pris-oners of War (quaint term, seldom used), Peace(term no longer used), “Power of the Blood”(Hymn often cited).

QQ – Qaeda, Al; Quran, Queasy.RR – Regime Change, Rummy, Radiological

Weapon, “Real” Journalism (Fox News slogan),Republican Guards (Special), Racin, Ro-Ro (Roll-on and Roll-off transport ship), The Raven (Bush’sfavorite book about fellow Texan Sam Houston).

SS – Sarin, Sheikh, Saddam (as in Showdownwith Saddam), Soft Targets, State Sponsored, Sui-

cide Bombers, Satellite channels, Security Alerts(High, Elevated, Highest, Yellow, Orange, Red),Settlements, Smart Bombs, Smallpox, Smoke ‘emout, Stealth (B2 bombers, fighters, technology),Spin Cycles, Sunni, Shiite, Shock and Awe, Subs,SecDef (Secretary of Defense), Sanctions, Impactof (rarely mentioned in media).

TT – Tape, Duct (again), Terror, Terrorist, Terror-ism, Taliban, Terminators (anti-Taliban), Tora Bora,(as opposed to Japanese War cry “Tora” and notto be confused with the Israeli Hora), TIA (TotalInformation Awareness), Twin Towers, Tribunal,Traitors (Whoever Fox News Disagrees With), Tor-ture (word never used on television), This Just In(now used interchangeably by CNN with BreakingNews), Truth (first casualty of war).

UU – UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), UNMOVIC,UNSCOM, U-2 (sans Bono), Urban Warfare,USCINCCENT (Commander-in-Chief, United StatesCentral Command).

VV –– Veto, VX, Vigilance, Virgins, as in 70 or 99or the magical number of maidens waiting in Par-adise to reward martyrs, Virtual March.

WW –– Warlords (ours and theirs), Weaponize,WTC, WMD, WUF (Weapons Unaccounted For),War on Terror, War on Iraq, Willing (our friends incoalition).

XX – Exterminate, X-filtrate, X-journalist.YY – You Decide (They Distort).ZZ –– Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. envoy to Kurdish

opposition, was U.S. envoy to Afghan opposition,was U.S. oil company envoy to Taliban; Zerbisias,Antonia, media columnist, Toronto Star, who dis-

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N E W Y O R K , A P R I L 1 0 , 2 0 0 3 :

LOOTING ERUPTS, BAGHDAD IN CHAOS AS SOLDIERS WATCH Questions arise as law and order collapses

VER,” proclaims the NY Daily News. “Liberty” counters the New York Post. “US ForcesTake Control in Baghdad,” explains The New York Times. Each of these headlines is for themost part wrong, as is the new promo on that news channel MSNBC, copping Dr. King’sphrase, “Let Freedom Ring.” So far, the only freedom in Iraq is the freedom to loot and cre-

ate chaos. Even Donald Rumsfeld is saying that it’s not over yet and – ‘deploying’ my favoritesound bite of the day – “there’s still more killing to do.” The continuing resistance proves how un-overthis war is. Yes, a statue was pulled down as we saw over and over again on television as some Iraqis

“

danced for the cameras, a scene that could nothave been more perfect had it been scripted.Having shed no tears for Saddam myself, I amsure much of the joy is genuine. His ouster isoverdue. But there is a sense of foreboding aboutwhat happens next.

Oh say, does that Star SpangledBanner still wave?POOR Cpl. Edward Chin is straight ‘outta’ theRepublic of Brooklyn, NYC. He’s the soldier whowiped Saddam Hussein’s concrete face with anAmerican flag, a flag that reportedly was flown atthe World Trade Center. He (and the administra-tion) was trying to make a connection betweenthe fall of the twin towers and the fall of Bagh-dad. (Many blame 9/11 on Iraq, despite the lack ofevidence). Today there will be a victory rally at

the World Trade Towers site to celebrate thepayback, real or invented. (It will not be mas-sively attended!)

Osama bin Laden and much of the Arab worldwas delighted to seize on the symbolism of thatU.S. flag going up. Many Arab newspapers ranthat photo to suggest that occupation, not libera-tion is the real agenda. (The NY Post ran it witha caption calling the flag a “Burqa for theButcher.”) Someone must have told Cpl. Chin toknock it off because an Iraqi flag convenientlymaterialized to replace Old Glory, that is, untilthey drove the statue down. Arab journalistsinterviewed on U.S. TV made the point that wewere only seeing one part of Baghdad. Shortlyafterwards, there were major fire fights at a uni-versity and a mosque. Last night Colonel OllieNorth was exulting on Fox News that some

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Ba’ath Party officials were being hung fromlampposts in Baghdad. Much of this sounds as ifit is straight out of a Special Forces play book.(One soldier interviewed on CNN last nightexpressed disappointment that the Iraqi armyhad disappeared and “didn’t want to play,” as ifthis is all a game.)

Freedom to loot

THE Red Cross and aid workers are demandingthat the U.S. and the Brits restore law and orderto let humanitarian supplies through. (CNN’snewly “dis-embedded reporter” Walter Rodgersarrived in Baghdad and quickly announced, onthe basis of a few chats with residents, that thereis plenty of food and water in the city, and noth-ing like the crisis many fear.) That was hardly thecase, but typical of the way a reporter’s impres-sion is projected as fact.

This morning BBC showed a confrontationbetween a group of Iraqi professionals andBritish soldiers in Basra. the Iraquis were plead-ing for protection from the thugs who are men-acing their homes and offices. The RoyalMarines said they are there to fight a war, not topolice the area. Could it be that restoring orderis just not part of the much-vaunted plan – orcould that be the plan? Let chaos ring for a fewdays so that the international community andthe Iraqis will clamor for the new U.S. adminis-tration to step in to restore order? (Ironically, theTaliban was initially welcomed in Kabul becauseof its promise to restore order.)

What next?

THE oil fields around Kirkuk have been seized as

the Iraqi military “melts away.” Could this be amaneuver to regroup or a “rope-a-dope” strat-egy like the one Muhammad Ali used in the ringto confuse his opponents? And what, if anything,will the Turkish army do as the Kurds consoli-date their power in Kirkuk and Mosul? Moreimportantly, will the war spread to Syria, asmany analysts are now suggesting with the argu-ment that “region change,” not regime change,has always been the Bush plan. Already MSNBCis telling us that the massive 21,000-ton MOABbomb is now in the region and ready to bedropped. Let’s see. Where will it be field-tested?Tirkut? Damascas? Fill in the blank. Strap in.This is not over by a long shot.

TomDispatch.com wrote yesterday: “So weare, it seems, at the moment of ‘liberation’ (theword ‘occupation’ having been declared taboo) –really the moment of victory, of triumph, not forthe Iraqis but for the men of this administrationand for the president himself. It’s the momentthey have long awaited for beginning the cleans-ing of the Middle East. Syria, as a start, is nowlike meat in a sandwich, and who plans to takethe first bite . . . Only today John Bolton, under-secretary of state for arms control and interna-tional security, promptly warned countries [theU.S.] has accused of pursuing weapons of massdestruction, including Iran, Syria and NorthKorea, to ‘draw the appropriate lesson fromIraq.’”

For many Iraqis released from decades ofoppression, how could there not be somethingeuphoric in this moment, whatever the state oftheir homes and country, however it was broughtto them? For them, post-liberation tristesse islikely to come soon enough. The problems to befaced in Iraq are monumental, if not insur-

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mountable, under the present circumstances.

Was this even a war?

THE ever skeptical Mick Hume of Spiked On-lineasks, “Was there a war at all? There were cer-tainly plenty of bombs dropped, guns fired andIraqis killed by the American and British forces.But there has not been one single clash withIraqi forces that could remotely be described asa battle. Compared to the major wars of the past,the entire campaign adds up to little more thanan extended skirmish. The Big Battle to Comewas always the one just around the corner – inBasra, or Baghdad, or Tikrit – that somehownever quite came.

“The ‘surprisingly stiff resistance’ that coali-tion forces claimed to be facing from a few irreg-ulars at various times over the past three weekshas been largely a product of their own anxiousimagination. By the time of the first armored raidinto Baghdad last weekend, the coalition seemedto be wildly exaggerating the scale of Iraqi mili-tary casualties, almost as if to prove that therereally had been a proper fight. ‘One thousand’killed in a three-hour shooting trip along aBaghdad boulevard quickly became ‘two thou-sand’ or more. Who was counting?

“But then, remember, this was supposed to bea war against a dictator who held the world toransom, a regime the like of which, according tothe Pentagon only last week, ‘the world has notever seen before.’ Having launched a war on therisible basis that Saddam the tin-pot dictator wasa bigger monster than Stalin and Hitler, theycould hardly afford to admit that he had turnedout to be a pantomime villain with a cardboardarmy . . .”

An Iraqi voice

SOMEONE forwarded a letter to me from anIraqi woman named Yasmin who says that hercountry now has to pick up the pieces, as TVNews celebrates the great victory. She writes: “InBasra, I saw kids throwing rocks on soldiers andtanks . . . does it bring any memories to yourmind?

“Palestine, perhaps? So . . . no dancing . . . noflowers!

“The hospitals are suffering severe shortagesin medical supplies, and doctors have also com-plained, of not having clean water, to wash theirhands before handling the patients . . . ”

Exploding ordnance

ESSAM AL-GHALIB, Arab News War Correspon-dent, reports that unexploded ordnance littersthe landscape: “Six days after the “liberation” ofNajaf, Iraqis of all ages continue to pack the cor-ridors of Saddam Hussein General Hospital.They are mostly victims of unexploded muni-tions that are strewn throughout various resi-dential neighborhoods, along streets, in familyhomes, in school playgrounds, in the fieldsbelonging to farms . . .

“U.S. forces have been using cluster bombsagainst Iraqi soldiers, but the majority of the vic-tims are civilians, mostly children curious aboutthe small shiny objects which are the same sizeas a child’s hand. Cluster bombs have beendropped by the hundreds, explained an adminis-trator at the hospital.” They are supposed toexplode on impact. However, many do not, andlie on the street exposed to the elements.

“A young Iraqi in Najaf told Arab News yester-

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day: ‘They are everywhere, and they are goingoff periodically. We don’t even have to touchthem – they just go off by themselves, especiallyas the temperature rises throughout the day.’”

Why do Iraqis resist?

WHY would some Iraqis not be jubilant, or putanother way, why has there been continuedresistance despite reports and rumors of Sad-dam’s demise by decapitation strike. UnitedPress International (UPI) carries this reportfrom an Indian businessman who knows Iraqwell. File this report in the department of unex-plored news angles: “Why should the Iraqi peo-ple feel any gratitude or loyalty to PresidentSaddam Hussein? You would not know it fromanything that has been written in the U.S. orBritish media, but there are very good reasons.

“I was commercial counselor and deputy chiefof mission at the Indian Embassy in Baghdadfrom 1976 to 1978. During the interregnumbetween two ambassadors, I was also for a whilethe Indian charge d’affaires. This explains why Ihad more than one occasion to stare into Sad-dam’s expressionless grey-green eyes – straightout of ‘The Day of the Jackal’ – while shaking hishand at various official banquets and other cere-monial occasions.

“Saddam ran a brutal dictatorship. That, how-ever, caused no concern to the hordes of West-ern businessmen who descended in droves onIraq to siphon what they could of Iraq’s new-found oil wealth through lucrative contracts foreverything. Everything – from eggs to nuclearplants. Because technically, from the end of theTurkish Empire over Iraq in 1919 through theBritish mandate, which lasted till 1932, and the

effete monarchy masterminded by AnthonyEden’s buddy, Nuri es-Said, right up to the BaathParty coup of 1968, there was virtually noprogress at all.

“It was Saddam’s revolution that ended Iraqibackwardness. Education, including higher andtechnological education, became the top priority.More important, centuries of vicious discrimina-tion against girls and women were ended by onestroke of the modernizing dictator’s pen.” Etc.Etc.

Were journalists murdered?

JOURNALISTS in Iraq continue to steam at theU.S. officials who expressed “regret” at thekillings of reporters and cameramen and thenmoved on. Robert Fisk asks: “Was it possible tobelieve this was an accident? Or was it possiblethat the right word for these killings – the firstwith a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1Abrams tank – was murder? These were not, ofcourse, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

“The U.S. jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera’soffice on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45 am localtime yesterday. The television station’s chief cor-respondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordan-ian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his secondcameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting apitched battle near the bureau between Ameri-can and Iraqi troops. Mr. Ayoub’s colleagueMaher Abdullah recalled afterwards that bothmen saw the plane fire the rocket as it swoopedtoward their building, which is close to the-Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two Americantanks had just appeared.

“On the screen, there was this battle and we

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could see bullets flying and then we heard theaircraft,” Mr. Abdullah said.

“The plane was flying so low that those of usdownstairs thought it would land on the roof –that’s how close it was. We actually heard therocket being launched. It was a direct hit – themissile actually exploded against our electricalgenerator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir wasinjured.

“Now for America’s problems in explainingthis little saga: Back in 2001, the United Statesfired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera’s office inKabul – from which tapes of Osama bin Ladenhad been broadcast around the world. No expla-nation was ever given for this extraordinaryattack on the night before the city’s ‘liberation.’The Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, wasunhurt. By the strange coincidence of journal-ism, Mr. Alouni was in the Baghdad office yester-day to endure the USAF’s second attack on al-Jazeera.

“Far more disturbing, however, is the fact thatthe al-Jazeera network – the freest Arab televi-sion station, which has incurred the fury of boththe Americans and the Iraqi authorities for itslive coverage of the war – gave the Pentagon theco-ordinates of its Baghdad office two monthsago and received assurances that the bureauwould not be attacked . . .”

Press freedom groups demand investigation

PRESS freedom groups are pressing for aninvestigation. The Committee to Protect Journal-ists comments: “While U.S. officials haveexpressed regret for the loss of life in theseattacks and stated that they do not target jour-

nalists, they have left the impression that theybear no responsibility for protecting journalistsoperating independently in Iraq. We remind youthat journalists are civilians and are protectedunder international humanitarian law and can-not be deliberately targeted.”

This comment from Reporters Without Bor-ders: “We are appalled at what happenedbecause it was known that both places containedjournalists. Film shot by the French TV stationFrance 3 and descriptions by journalists showthat the neighborhood was very quiet at thathour and that the U.S. tank crew took their time,waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting itsgun before opening fire.

“This evidence does not match the U.S. versionof an attack in self-defense, and we can only con-clude that the U.S. Army deliberately, and with-out warning, targeted journalists. U.S. forcesmust prove that the incident was not a deliberateattack to dissuade or prevent journalists fromcontinuing to report on what is happening inBaghdad.”

The ‘standards’ of MSNBC

MSNBC came in for a trashing from MichelangeloSignorile in this week’s New York Press. “The wayMSNBC responded to Peter Arnett, on the otherhand, is indicative of why that network is on thebottom of the cable-TV trash heap. Rivera wasright about one thing in his otherwise paranoidclaims that his former employer, NBC, was‘spreading lies’ about him: ‘MSNBC is so pathetica cable news network they have to do anythingthey can to attract attention.’ That includes hiringand firing anyone at whim, so long as there’s aremote chance of seeing those sagging ratings lift.

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“For sheer inconsistency, in both wartime andpeacetime, you really can’t beat the desperatesouls at MSNBC. It was amusing to watch honchoErik Sorenson and the higher-ups at NBC scram-ble to figure out what to do about Arnett’s IraqiTV interview. Arnett merely repeated what justabout every former general was then saying tothe rest of the planet via every other televisionnetwork: that Bush’s war plan was flawed. Afterfirst issuing a statement supporting Arnett anddefending his decision to give the interview, thenetwork brass turned around and axed him,deciding sanctimony to be the better path.

“It’s just inappropriate and arguably unpatri-otic,” Sorenson solemnly declared aboutArnett’s actions. He told the Washington Postthat, while watching the interview, he was hop-ing “there was a guy with an AK-47 behind thecurtain” so as to justify Arnett’s actions.”

Voice: Honest journalists abound

WRITING in this week’s Village Voice, CynthiaCotts is praising some journalists for gutsy cov-erage: “Before the war started, the Pentagon toldits embedded reporters not to dig for dirt or con-duct their own investigations – just sit back andlet the ‘truth’ set them free. Even so, during theweek ending April 6, some correspondentsstayed honest by covering not only Americanvictories and losses, but also the dark side ofwar, excesses that are unlikely to win the loyaltyof Iraqis. Never mind what the Arab media aresaying. Some of the most unflinching storieshave been written by reporters from the U.S. andU.K.”

Government propaganda escalates

THE U.S. government continues to invest mil-lions in getting its media message out–with greatsuccess. Bob Kemper of the Chicago Tribunereports: “The Office of Global Communications,a controversial agency created by PresidentBush in January, has blossomed into a huge pro-duction company, issuing daily scripts on theIraq war to U.S. spokesmen around the world,auditioning generals to give media briefings, andbooking administration stars on foreign newsshows. The communications office helps deviseand coordinate each day’s talking points on thewar. Civilian and military personnel, for exam-ple, are told to refer to the invasion of Iraq as a‘war of liberation.’ Iraqi paramilitary forces areto be called ‘death squads.’

“According to Kemper, “Critics are questioningthe veracity of some of the stories being circu-lated by the office and deriding it as a propa-ganda arm of the White House.” Administrationofficials rebut the charges, saying they “serve acrucial purpose.” The Tribune reports that OGCchief Tucker Eskew told Washington ForeignPress Center journalists, “Our executive orderinsists that we deal with the truth.” (Thanks toP.R. Watch for this.)

The legalities of assassination

SOCIOLOGIST Michael I. Lichter is calling for aprobe into the legality of military assassinationoperations. The NYTimes.com headline rightnow is “U.S. Blasts Site in Effort to Kill Hussein,”and the teaser to the story “CIA Tip Led toStrike on Baghdad Neighborhood” reads “Amer-ican military forces in Iraq dropped four bombs

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in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein, adminis-tration officials said in Washington.

“It’s appalling that The New York Times is(again) willing to report these extremely bluntassassination attempts as if they were routineand clearly justifiable.

“An executive order approved by PresidentFord in the mid-1970s and affirmed by PresidentReagan in 1981, states: ‘No person employed by oracting on behalf of the United States governmentshall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assas-sination.’ Ford issued the order after extensivehearings that exposed CIA assassination plots.”

The prohibition is not limited to assassinationagainst heads of state, said Steve Aftergood ofthe Federation of American Scientists, a Wash-ington-based watchdog group that follows intelli-gence matters.

The legalities of killing a specific person in amilitary strike are less clear. “I don’t think theprohibition applies if you’re undertaking a mili-tary action,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Arab media coverage

BBC Monitoring offers a flavor of the reportingon pan-Arab TV channels: “Many pan-Arab TVchannels carried live footage of the prolongedattempts by Iraqi civilians to topple the statue ofSaddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Al-Fardus Square.Commentators were united in saying that theevent was history in the making.

“Syrian TV, which has followed a distinctly pro-Saddam line in its coverage of the conflict,ignored the event completely, screening insteada program on Islamic architecture. Other state-run TV channels in the Arab world – includingAlgeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan – chose not

to broadcast the event live. “Excerpts from how the commentators

described the scene: Abu Dhabi TV: ‘This is amoment of history. Baghdad people must be feel-ing sad at witnessing the fall of their capital...Baghdad has been offered on a silver plate.’

“Al Jazeera – Qatar: ‘This scene suggests some-thing which does not leave any room for doubt,namely that the rule of the Iraqi president, Sad-dam Hussein, has now collapsed in Baghdad ...This is a banner saying “Go home.” Despite theirobvious welcome of the U.S. troops, they, as Iraqipeople, are demanding the departure of thesetroops, maybe after a short period.’”

The role of The New York Times

BOSTON PHOENIX media critic Dan Kennedywent after Johnny Apple of The New York Timeswho had been under attack from pro-war jour-nalists for suggesting that there was a quagmire.He seems to buckling under the pressure. WritesKennedy: “Well, today Johnny Apple weighs inwith something that should disturb those whomight be called patriotic antiwar liberals – agroup that includes Media Log and, one wouldhave thought judging from his previous pieces,Apple himself. He writes: ‘The antiwar forces,who have had to contend from the start with thewidespread belief that their position is unpatri-otic and unsupportive of American troopsengaged in deadly combat, must now bear theadditional burden of arguing with success.American losses are relatively small: 96 dead todate, compared with 200 a day at the height ofthe Vietnam War.’

“As Greil Marcus once said, ‘What is this shit?’Responsible war critics never thought the U.S.

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was going to lose, or even suffer many casualties.Rather, the danger was that we would unleashchaos in Iraq, inflame the Arab world by inflict-ing civilian casualties (which we have certainlydone), and cause terrible problems for ourselvesdown the road, such as creating a new genera-tion of revenge-seeking terrorists.

“But ‘arguing with success?’ Please. JohnnyApple’s problem isn’t just that he’s consistentlywrong. It’s that he tries on a persona-a-day, andexpects us not to remember or care what hewrote just days before. Today’s Apple feature onThe Times’s front page celebrates the victory inBaghdad. The headline: ‘A High Point in 2Decades of U.S. might.’”

Fox News is winning Israel

IF Washington is winning the war, Fox News(which has tied its brown nosing and brain wash-ing wagon to the Bush Administration) is scoringsome victories, too. Roger Alper writes in theIsraeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “America’s Fox Newsnetwork has been demonstrating since the startof the war in Iraq an amazing lesson in mediahypocrisy. The anchors, reporters, and commen-tators unceasingly emphasize that the war’s goalis to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny ofSaddam Hussein. The frequency, consistencyand passion with which they use that lameexcuse, and the fact that nearly no other reasonsare mentioned shows that this is the network’seditorial policy . . .

“Fox looks like part of the propagandistic cam-paign of systematic disinformation by the Bushadministration, while it accuses the Iraqi regimeof disseminating false information about the sit-uation on the battlefield . . . Like CNN, it presents

to the globe the face of America and its percep-tion of reality, and it exports its dark side, theinfuriating side that inspires so much hostility:the self-righteousness, the brutality, the preten-sion, hubris, and simplicity, the feverish faith inits moral superiority, the saccharine and infan-tile patriotism, and the deep self-persuasion thatAmerica is not only the most powerful of thenations, but also that the truth is always Ameri-can.

“For some reason, ever since Fox showed upon Israeli cable, the other foreign networks havebecome unnecessary. CNN was nearly removed,BBC World has been thrown out of the cablepackage, and both are suspected of hostility toIsrael. Fox, for whom Israel’s enemies are ‘thebad guys,’ is the perfect alibi for the new fashionof censorship. Who needs BBC when there’sFox?” ●

APRIL 11: LIBERATION FESTIVALFOR THIEVES AND TERRORSTATUES are relatively easy to demolish. Liesand false impressions are far more difficult toundercut. For three weeks now, we have heardabout a war organized according to “plan,” apaint-by-numbers plan that no one has beenallowed to see or scrutinize. Now we are beingtold that that plan was based on a more sponta-neous “opportunistic response,” as in “we willsee what’s happening and take advantage of anyopportunities.” It’s a form of military situation-ism. There may be command but there is no con-trol. Let it rip and then we pick up the pieceswhen we get around to it. It sounds mad, but

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could this all be part of the plan? When you let asociety fall apart, you will soon hear mighty callsfor law and order, as you are beginning to. Thereis nothing that occupiers like more than marketdemand–an invitation to rule by command.

Is Bush a secret anarchist?

COULD the chaos and looting and anarchy bepart of it? Is President Bush a secret member ofsome “black block” – the name the anarchostreet-trashing brigades called themselves whenthey sought to wreak havoc in places like Seattleor at other global justice marches? Their anar-chism was a no-no, but what we are seeing nowis being treated almost approvingly by news net-works who do a bit of “tsk-tsking” and explainaway and rationalize the lack of response to callsby Iraqi citizens to stop the Visigothian pillagingof their communities. “Our soldiers were nottrained to be policemen,” said Martin Savidge onCNN this morning. Robert Fisk reported in theIndependent:

“As tens of thousands of Shia Muslim poor,from the vast slums of Saddam City, poured intothe center of Baghdad to smash their way intoshops, offices, and government ministries in anepic version of the same orgy of theft and massdestruction that the British did so little to pre-vent in Basra – U.S. Marines watched from onlya few hundred yards away as looters made offwith cars, rugs, hoards of money, computers,desks, sofas, even door-frames.”

If this was happening in New York, would themilitary stand by? No way. Martial law would beinstituted at once as it has been in uprisings inAmerican cities during various insurrections . . .In one sense, therefore, America occupying the

capital of an Arab nation for the first time in itshistory was helping to destroy what it had spentso much time and money creating. Saddam was“our” man and yesterday, metaphorically atleast, we annihilated him. Hence the importanceof all those statue-bashing mobs, of all that loot-ing and theft. I was struck by all the interviewswith poor Iraqis who compare their lot to theopulence of the palaces they are now trashing.Couldn’t the same thing be said about the gap inliving standards between the poor and superrich in the USA or anywhere else?

Humanitarian law flouted

MEANWHILE over on the BBC, a representativeof the International Red Cross says the condi-tions created by the invasion make it impossiblefor them to provide humanitarian aid, an obliga-tion under the Geneva Conventions. You willrecall how many times we heard about violationsof the conventions when a handful of U.S. pris-oners of war were shown on TV. Now Washing-ton is silent even as UN Secretary GeneralAnnan pleads that the “coalition,” as the occupy-ing force, fulfill its responsibilities. The RedCross says it cannot even estimate the number ofcivilian casualties. There are no journalists that Iknow of “embedded” in Iraqi hospitals or withhumanitarian agencies. Beatriz Lecumberri ofthe Sydney Morning Herald reported:

“The southern Iraqi city of Basra is sinkinginto anarchy, with rampant looting, murders, andpetty crime. ‘Let’s say I had a problem withsomeone in the past. Now I come with a gun andkill him. Nobody’s there to do anything about it.That’s the situation we’re in,’ explained Aya, ahousewife.

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“We’re getting patients who were hurt in thelooting, stabbed by their neighbors, hit by bulletsin squabbles between members of (Saddam’s)Baath Party and their rivals,” said MuayadJumah Lefta, a doctor at the city’s largest hospi-tal. “The British are responsible for this,” heseethed. He said even the hospital was targeted,with the doctors themselves fending off thethieves until a group of British soldiers arrivedyesterday and took up a position on the roof. . .

“Where are the soldiers when we needwater?” she said. “They look at people heapingup everything they can and they just laugh. It’sawful . . . The British have only brought freedomto the thieves, not to the people,” she said.

Towards Freedom TV

WHILE all this was going on President Bush andTony Blair launched their own media war as anew “Towards Freedom” TV station beganbroadcasting from a plane into a city with noelectricity, so few could actually see it. (I wonderhow the folks in Vermont who publish the radicalmagazine Toward Freedom feel about the appro-priation of their name?)

More people in the West saw the broadcaststhan in Iraq, I am sure. Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed was watching for Arab News. Hisreview: “Watching George W. Bush deliver hisspeeches is becoming more alarming as his dic-tion and body language become ever so trans-parently arrogant.”

When it comes to body language, Bush speaksvolumes. The fixed stare in his eyes is boyish, ashe declares something as Biblical as, “The day ofreckoning is near.” He awaits the applause fromthe “safe” crowds of servicemen and women as a

little child awaits the teacher’s commendations.The posture seems to say, “How did I do in thisrecitation of my Sunday school homework?” Notbad, Mr. President.

Warnings were baseless

STEVEN SHALOM offers an assessment of thiswar of liberation on ZNET: “The relative ease ofthe U.S. military victory confirms how littlethreat Saddam Hussein’s regime posed beyondits borders. Where in 1990 Iraq had substantialarmed forces, it was clear well before the start ofthis war that the Iraqi military was no longer aformidable force, even by Middle Eastern stan-dards. The Bush administration claim that Sad-dam in 2003 was a danger to his neighbors wasnot taken seriously in the region and has nowbeen shown to have been baseless.

“Despite Bush’s constant repetition that therewas no doubt that Iraq had massive supplies ofchemical and biological weapons, no suchweapons, or even prohibited missiles, were usedby the Iraqi forces. Indeed, it seems the onlytime U.S.-U.K. troops needed to wear their chem-ical warfare suits was when recovering a bodyfrom a friendly fire incident to protect them-selves from the radiation given off by U.S.depleted uranium ordnance – which, of course,the Pentagon claims is absolutely harmless.

“Nor, despite many fevered media reports,have any hidden stores of Iraqi proscribedweapons come to light. Since Iraq’s alleged pos-session of banned weapons was the officialexplanation for the war, their absence is ratherembarrassing for the administration.”

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Off the charts

IN FACT, there was another false alarm yester-day in terms of those weapons of mass destruc-tion. Some radiation detectors went “off thecharts” near a nuclear plant. Another“GOTCHA,” assumed a press corps eager torelay the news until experts in Washington saidit was probably low-grade uranium not immedi-ately useful for the manufacture of weapons.Meanwhile speaking in Spain, Hans Blix, thechief UN weapons inspector, is sounding moreand more cynical.

News24.com reported: “The invasion of Iraqwas planned a long time in advance, and theUnited States and Britain are not primarily con-cerned with finding any banned weapons ofmass destruction, the chief UN weapons inspec-tor, Hans Blix, said in an interview on Wednes-day. “There is evidence that this war wasplanned well in advance. Sometimes this raisesdoubts about their attitude to the (weapons)inspections,” Blix told the Spanish daily, El Pais.

Penetrating the fog

I NOW believe that finding weapons of massdestruction has been relegated to fourth place,which is why the United States and Britain arenow waging war on Iraq. This is pretty obvious butwhy has it taken so long for him and others at theUN to start telling the truth? Robert Fisk cutsthrough some more of this oft-cited “fog of war.”

“Of course, the Americans knew they wouldget a good press by ‘liberating’ the foreign jour-nalists at the Palestine Hotel. They lay in the longgrass of the nearest square and pretended toaim their rifles at the rooftops as cameras hissed

at them, and they flew a huge American flagfrom one of their tanks and grinned at the jour-nalists, not one of whom reminded them that just24 hours earlier, their army had killed two West-ern journalists with tank fire in that same hoteland then lied about it.

“But it was the looters who marked the day assomething sinister rather than joyful. In SaddamCity, they had welcomed the Americans with ‘V’signs and cries of ‘Up America’ and the usualtrumpetings, but then they had set off downtownfor a more important appointment. At the Min-istry of Economy, they stole the entire records ofIraq’s exports and imports on computer discs,with desktop computers, with armchairs andfridges and paintings. When I tried to enter thebuilding, the looters swore at me. A Frenchreporter had his money and camera seized bythe mob.”

Professional looters in the wings

LOOTING can be organized and governmentapproved. Truthout reports: “U.S. plans to lootIraqi antiques.” Here’s part of the story: “Fearsthat Iraq’s heritage will face widespread lootingat the end of the Gulf war have been heightenedafter a group of wealthy art dealers secured ahigh-level meeting with the U.S. administration.

“It has emerged that a coalition of antiquitiescollectors and arts lawyers, calling itself theAmerican Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP),met with U.S. Defense and State Departmentofficials prior to the start of military action tooffer its assistance in preserving the country’sinvaluable archaeological collections.

“The group is known to consist of a number ofinfluential dealers who favor a relaxation of

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Iraq’s tight restrictions on the ownership andexport of antiquities.” Translation: give us thevaluable antiquities to sell, all in the name ofpreservation.

The sound of statues falling

YESTERDAY, I cast a skeptical eye at the bigstory on all the TV News – the toppling of the bigSaddam statue. We all saw it, complete withscenes of dancing mobs and young men withhammers beating up on what had been Saddam’shead. Many networks showed that dramatic“hammering” over and over. They milked thescene, which seemed to rationalize and justifythe invasion. American officials gushed aboutthe pictures. If there is one thing this war hastaught us all, it’s that we can’t believe what we’retold. As an indy media site explained: “For Don-ald Rumsfeld these were ‘breathtaking.’ For theBritish Army they were ‘historic.’ For BBC Radiothey were ‘amazing.’

BUT – and there is always a big But. “A wideangle shot in which you can see the whole of Far-dus Square (conveniently located just oppositethe Palestine Hotel where the internationalmedia are based), and the presence of at mostaround 200 people – most of them U.S. troops(note the tanks and armored vehicles) andassembled journalists.”

Run that by me again? Another IMC readeradds: “Oddly enough . . . a photograph is taken ofa man who bears an uncanny resemblance toone of Chalabi’s militia members . . . he is nearFardus Square to greet the Marines. How manymembers of the pro-American Free Iraqi Forceswere in and around Fardus Square as the statueof Saddam came tumbling down?

Picture this

“THE up-close action video of the statue beingdestroyed is broadcast around the world as proofof a massive uprising. Still photos grabbed off ofReuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square. . . it’s empty save for the U.S. Marines, the Inter-national Press, and a small handful of Iraqis.There are no more than 200 people in the squareat best. The Marines have the square sealed offand guarded by tanks. A U.S. mechanized vehi-cle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from itsbase. The entire event is being hailed as anequivalent of the Berlin Wall falling . . . but evena quick glance of the long-shot photo showssomething more akin to a carefully constructedmedia event tailored for the television cameras.”

Kim Sengupta reported another fascinatingdetail yesterday from Baghdad: “It was, by anymeasure, an astonishing coincidence. As thebiggest statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdadwas pulled down ‘spontaneously‘ in front of theworld’s media, the Stars and Stripes which flewon the Pentagon on 11 September was at hand tobe draped over its face.

“The U.S. army denied that the toppling of the20-ft edifice by a tank tower was stage-managed.It was a coincidence, they said, that Lt. TimMcLaughlin, the keeper of that flag, happened tobe present. And, it has to be noted, the com-mander of the U.S. marines who completed thecapture of Baghdad did express concern at thetime that the use of the Stars and Stripessmacked of triumphalism. It was later changed toan Iraqi flag. But not before acres of TV footagehad been shot.”

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The CIA role: Out of sight,not out of hand

IN my experience as a longtime CIA watcher,who personally spent years investigating covertactivities of the kind dramatized in “The QuietAmerican,” the movie about Vietnam that wasbriefly released and pulled from theaters byMiramax even after Michael Caine was nomi-nated for an Oscar, this operation smells of so-called “special ops,” a propaganda operation.

Richard Sale of UPI reminded us yesterdaythat the CIA has had a long history in Iraq aswell as an association with the man whoseregime they are now helping to topple. “U.S.forces in Baghdad might now be searching highand low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but inthe past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligenceservices as a bulwark of anti-communism andthey used him as their instrument for more than40 years, according to former U.S. intelligencediplomats and intelligence officials.”

United Press International has interviewedalmost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, Britishscholars and former U.S. intelligence officials topiece together its investigation. The CIAdeclined to comment on the report.

Where is Saddam? Was there a deal?

IF the CIA has been dealing with Saddam overall these decades, why not now? While the mediakeeps focusing our attention on the “where isSaddam?” question, the Tehran Times is report-ing rumors of a deal between the U.S. militaryand Hussein. Here’s the story by Parviz Esmaeili:

“Almost 10 days ago, there was a halt in U.S.-British operations in Iraq. However, U.S. Defense

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the chief of theU.S. Central Command, General Tommy Franks,in their interviews with the media never elabo-rated on the issue but instead tried to misleadworld public opinion in order to hide a greatersecret decision from them.

“Suspicions rose on the same day when U.S.troops, that had been stopped at the Euphrates,immediately were able to advance toward theheart of Baghdad without any significant resist-ance by Iraqi forces . . . Or why when the eliteIraqi forces arrived in eastern Iraq from Tikrit,the pace of the invaders advancing toward cen-tral Baghdad immediately increased. Also, it hasbeen reported that over the past 24 hours, aplane was authorized to leave Iraq bound forRussia. Who was aboard this plane?

“All these ambiguities, the contradictoryreports about Saddam’s situation, and the factthat the highest-ranking Iraqi officials were allrepresented by a single individual – Iraqi Infor-mation Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf – and theeasy fall of Baghdad shows that the center of col-lusion had been Tikrit, where Saddam, his aides,and lieutenants from the Baath Party had beenwaiting for al-Sahhaf to join them so that theycould receive the required guarantees to leavethe country in a secret compromise with coali-tion forces.”

This possibility was confirmed by the Al-Jazeera network, which quoted a Russian intelli-gence official as saying that the Iraqi forces andthe invaders had made a deal. The Russian offi-cial told Al-Jazeera that the Iraqi leaders hadagreed “to show no serious resistance againstthe U.S.-British troops in return for a guaranteethat Saddam and his close relatives could leaveIraq unharmed.”

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If this explosive story has any truth to it, itoffers one more example of the total unbeliev-ability of the news we have been watchingaround the clock.

Media Tenor: War as entertainment

IF truth is being sacrificed on the altar of newsdaily, who is benefiting from all the exposure?MediaTenor, the international media monitoringorganization based in Bonn, Germany, has issueda new report on coverage:

“It started with entertainment shows such asBig Brother, Survivor, and Idols – it’s the newbuzzword in media, albeit printed or television,and preferably should be combined with enter-tainment: Reality. With an added plus, howevercruel or inhumane, reality always seems to carrywith it an entertainment value. Now media havestumbled across the ultimate in reality: war. Andit is now available on worldwide television,uncensored and uncut. Well, then at least only asfar as new journalistic ethics define reality. Itmust be sensitive to its viewers when showingthe ‘good guys’ and repellent when depicting ‘theenemy.’

“The U.S.-led war against Iraq with its ‘embed-ded’ journalists, is turning to be the biggest PRmachine yet for President George W Bush. Thewar offers Bush the best opportunity to positionhimself as a leader with integrity as trailing opin-ion polls suggested last year. All those issues thatmay have caused concern in the past, such asenvironment, the rejected Kyoto Agreement andailing health system are unnoticed by the media.A staggering 40% of all statements in U.S. televi-sion (of a total of 3135) on Bush in the first quar-ter of 2003 focus on foreign affairs, a mere 29 on

education, 90 on health, and 27 on environment.International television seemed to have pickedup on this trend even before the outbreak of theconflict. In Germany, 91% of all reports on Bushfocus on foreign affairs, in Britain 93%, and inSouth Africa 82%. And approval seems to be thefruit reaped from the strong focus on the warand foreign affairs.”

Cronkite calls Bush ‘arrogant’

ON the media front, the Washington Post reportsthat “nearly two-thirds of Americans whooppose the war say there is too much coverage,while only a third of war supporters feel thatway. In a college appearance, former CBS newsanchorman Walter Cronkite called PresidentGeorge W. Bush “grossly arrogant” for invadingIraq without the approval of the United Nations.Cronkite also said that the major networks havefar less editorial control of their newscasts thanbefore. The 86-year-old news veteran said theproliferation of cable news channels has advan-tages, but has harmed CBS, ABC and NBC.

FCC: Giveaway on the horizon

THE Hollywood Reporter said yesterday: “Theodds seem to favor that the FCC will ease therestrictions on who can own what media com-pany and where.” Reuters reports that “FCCChairman Michael Powell said yesterday that hesupports adopting an empirical method forassessing diversity in individual media markets.Speaking to the National Association of Broad-casters at their national convention, Powellreported that a mathematical formula seemedmore desirable than having to individually

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assess each market whenever a company pro-poses to buy another property. Fellow Commis-sioner Kevin Martin expressed concern overincorporating complex mathematics versususing “simple rules” to measure voices.”

Meanwhile, the Center for the Creative Com-munity notes that all this could be illegal. TheFCC’s plan to issue final rules in its media own-ership limits proceeding by June 2nd violates theRegulatory Flexibility Act, writes the Small Busi-ness Administration’s Office of Advocacy in a let-ter to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Prior toissuing final rules, the FCC must first analyze theimpact of those rules on America’s small busi-nesses and then allow small businesses to com-ment on that analysis.

“The SBA Office of Advocacy intervened aftera request by the Center for the Creative Commu-nity, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization providingresearch, public education, and policy develop-ment on behalf of the tens of thousands of indi-vidual writers, directors, producers, performers,and other talented people who give life to Amer-ica’s popular and literary works of art and enter-tainment.” ●

APRIL 16: WAR WOWSTHEM IN THE HEARTLANDI AM writing from the library of WashingtonState University in Pullman, just up the roadfrom the wheat fields of Moscow, Idaho. I clickedon to CNN this morning but got the wrong chan-nel. I was misled by the title “IRAQ: The FinalDays” at the bottom of the screen. It looked likeone of those familiar news graphics, but this one

floated under a sermon by a Reverend BillHagee, who was describing the war on Iraq asthe beginning of the apocalypse, raving and rant-ing about the need to drive out Satan beginningwith Saddam (sounds like Sodom, doesn’t it?)and praising President Bush who has a “back-bone, not a wishbone.” I realized that I was nowin a foreign country called the YOUnited Stateswhere I came face to face with the evangelicalmessage that our Messiah from Midland hasunleashed. His audience loved it. For only $69,you can buy all three videotapes blasting the UN,the Nazis, the Commies and the Saddamites asone. Hallelujah.

TIME Magazine must have been given an earlypreview of his tapes because they simply putSaddam on the same cover they used toannounce the demise of Adolph the fuhrer. Whata way to drive home the comparison that theBush Administration has been pounding into theground from day one.

The shark bite stories are back

YOU know the war is over when CNN startsreturning to shark bite stories, missing kids, andthe new Madonna video. (She, like many artistswas intimidated into sealing her lips and videoson the war.) Happy Times are almost back again.FORTUNE offers the case for “optimism,”reporting that “Contrary to popular belief, 2002was one of the most profitable years ever for cor-porate America.” That should make you feelmuch better. The Seattle Times was headliningthe bright profit picture announced by the home-town heroes at Microsoft. In the back of thepaper, there is a report on boycotts worldwideagainst Starbucks, another star in the firmament

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here in Washington State. The WashingtonMutual Bank is also gloating because it has nowbroken the billion-dollar quarterly profit barrier.Folks in New York City (where city services arepoised to be slashed) know the bank on the basisof an advertising campaign that promises to “lib-erate” us from checking account fees. There aregiant bill boards in Times Square promising LIB-ERATION, a word we have been hearing about ingovernment and in the media that echoes itsmessage of the day.

Quote of the day

SPEAKING of Liberation, it is a word that hasbeen used before. Here is my quote of the day:“Our armies do not come into your cities andlands as conquerors or enemies, but as libera-tors. Your wealth has been stripped of you byunjust men . . . The people of Baghdad shall flour-ish under institutions which are in consonancewith their sacred laws.” (General F.S. Maude,commander of British forces in Iraq, 1917)

We don’t do body counts

AS one who has been looking for data on civiliancasualties, I was not surprised to see that thePentagon now says it wasn’t counting, won’tcount, and has no plans to release figures. Thislatest diktat flows from Commander TommyFranks’ mantra: “WE DON’T DO BODYCOUNTS.” Of course, you don’t. We will have towait a long time before all the damage caused bythe U.S. military is “assessed” and added up. Bythen, we will be moving on “preparing” the nextbattlefield. I noticed that the cluster bomb storythat I have been citing is getting some pick up

with a Newsday account on how the deadly ord-nance is still claiming lives of kids who pick upthe shiny bomblets. Newsday had a good storyon this that was picked up in these parts.

The people in Iraq are already being forgottennow that ABUL ABBAS, once the world’s mostwanted terrorist, was captured. We in the mediaprefer to focus on individuals, not whole popula-tions. It appears that he has been moving aroundfor years, and may have been covered by the l993peace agreement that precluded persecutions ofkillers on all sides of the Israeli-Palestiniandivide. The terms of that treaty won’t meanmuch in this case of a well-known terrorist. I cryno tears for his capture but with him grabbingthe headlines, other more important stories areignored.

The death toll from SARS is now at 150 andgrowing, to cite but one example.

The shades of Fox

BILL O’REILLY’S radio show wanted me to comeon last night to defend CNN which admits it did-n’t disclose some of Saddam Hussein’s crimesagainst its staffers in Iraq for fear of harmingthem. When I wasn’t available, they asked Nor-man Solomon, the great media writer. Normantold me over lunch yesterday that when he toldthem he considered it a gray area, Fox dumpedhim. They only deal in black and whites overthere, never grays. I was on Capitol radio,though. In Rome, Italy. What does that say aboutaccess to the airwaves for media critics in thehome of the free?

I am out at Washington State University tospeak on war coverage at the Edward R. MurrowSchool of Journalism. Ed was my mentor

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although we never met. It was his broadcaststhat turned me on to journalism. As kid, I memo-rized one of his I CAN HEAR IT NOW records.Hear them if you can. ●

APRIL 18: NETWORKS DECIDETO CHANGE THE SUBJECTSOMEONE in network-land has decreed thatpeople have had enough of Iraq. Having con-tributed for eons to cultivating the incrediblyshort attention span that characterizes so manyAmericans, it seems as if the word has gone outto wean us off the breaking news parade, andshift us back into a more tranquilized state. Andso CNN led this morning with the death of Dr.Atkins, of health diet fame (He never said thateating no carbs means you live forever), thestroke suffered by musical great Luther Van-dross and then the Iraq aftermath. They laterfeatured U.S. POWs invoking the God BlessAmerica mantra.

Welcome and go home

TONY KARON leads his weblog this week withthese words: “Welcome to Baghdad, Now FuckOff.” He writes: “Less than a week after themomentous toppling of a Saddam statue outsideBaghdad’s Palestine Hotel, Iraq’s self-styled lib-erators appear to have become the address forall manner of Iraqi grievances. Whether theissue is the looting of Mesopotamian antiquities,the prevailing anarchy in many parts of thecountry (even the capital) or the demand to beincluded in the decision-making over the future,

there’s suddenly a torrent of anti-American rhet-oric pouring out of the mouths of Iraqis.”

Moneyline

SOME real news is trickling out. First, there isthe report that that politically connected BechtelCorporation, which serves as the constructionarm of Pentagon planners on many continents,has been pressed into action once again with thejuicy contract to rebuild what we have justdestroyed. Reports The New York Times on itsfront page: “The award will initially pay theBechtel Group $34.6 million and could go up to$680 million over 18 months.”

Ah yes, the coalition for the drilling of many adollar is just being put together. In other lands,this news is greeted, shall we say, with moreskepticism since irony seems to have become acasualty of this conflict, at least in the press.

It takes a humorist like Terry Jones of MontyPython to cut through the ‘coalition’ chatter ashe did in the pages of London’s Observer: “Well,the war has been a huge success, and I guess it’stime for congratulations all round. And wow! It’shard to know where to begin.

“First, I’d like to congratulate Kellogg Brown &Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, whichare the construction companies most likely tobenefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Con-tracts in the region of $1 billion should sooncome your way, chaps. Well done! And what withthe U.S. dropping 15,000 precision-guided muni-tions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise mis-siles on Iraq so far and with more to come,there’s going to be a lot of reconstruction. Itlooks like it could be a bonanza year.

“Congratulations, too, to former Secretary of

State, George Schultz. He’s not only on the boardof Bechtel, he’s also chairman of the advisoryboard of the Committee for the Liberation ofIraq, a group with close ties to the White Housecommitted to reconstructing the Iraqi economythrough war. You’re doing a grand job, George,and I’m sure material benefits will be comingyour way, as sure as the Devil lives in Texas.”

The ‘vision’

THE Economist which follows these events moresoberly explains: “Under its “Vision for Post-Conflict Iraq”, America plans to spend more than$1.7 billion immediately to demonstrate a rapidimprovement in the quality of life in Iraq. Theplan is split into a number of bite-sized pieces,for which requests for tenders are being sent outin secret – a procedure justified due to ‘urgentcircumstances.’ The biggest single contract isworth $600M. This envisages that within just sixmonths the contractor will reopen half of Iraq’s‘economically important roads and bridges’ –some 1,500 miles – to high-speed traffic; repair15% of the high-voltage electricity grid; providehalf the population with access to ‘basic healthservices;’ renovate several thousand schools andsupply them with books and other educationalmaterials; and spruce up 5,000 houses and 3,000slum dwellings.

“Initially, the Bush administration issued ten-der invitations to a small number of companies,including Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown & Rootsubsidiary. This led to accusations of cronyism,as Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and one ofthe chief advocates of the war in Iraq, was chiefexecutive of Halliburton until 2000, when heresigned to join the Republican presidential

ticket. Kellogg Brown & Root is part of a consor-tium headed by Parsons Corp, which is believedto be on a shortlist of two, bidding against Bech-tel for the work. Halliburton was also initiallyawarded, without competition, a separate con-tract by the Army Corps of Engineers to makeemergency repairs to Iraq’s oilfields. This wasoriginally valued at up to $7 billion, but a newcontract is now being drawn up, estimated to beworth a more conservative $600m because thedamage was so light. Fluor and Bechtel are bothexpected to bid for the contract, though Hal-liburton, perhaps chastened by the cronyismallegations, has yet to say whether it will rebid.The Army Corps of Engineers is also taking bidsfor work worth up to $500m for road-and bar-rack-building projects.”

Nation rebuilding in the dark

AS of this morning, the lights are still not on inBaghdad. The head of one power plant therecomplains that the U.S. military has taken overhis office and he can’t find transport to bring hisstaff to work despite all the hummers crowdinghis parking lot. This situation mirrors other real-ities including under resourced hospitals and ahumanitarian crisis that is building. As we knowthis is not news the Administration wants to seereported.

Recall last weekend’s remarks from Secretaryof War Rumsfeld, who dismissed reports he did-n’t want to hear as off the wall, telling reporters“Chicken Little’s crying The Sky is Falling, TheSky is Falling”. He echoed the now departedIraqi Minister of Misinformation: “I picked up anewspaper today and I couldn’t believe it,” hesaid. “I read eight headlines that talked about

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chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was HennyPenny – ‘The sky is falling’. I’ve never seen any-thing like it! And here is a country that’s beingliberated, here are people who are going frombeing repressed and held under the thumb of avicious dictator, and they’re free. And all thisnewspaper could do, with eight or ten headlines,they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who theyclaimed we had shot – one thing after another.It’s just unbelievable . . .”

Privatization on the way

ZNET, on the left, carries a report itemizingmore manna from the City on the Hill but alsonotes that the post war plans call for privatizingthe Iraqi economy. What socialism there wasthere apparently has to go. “The $4.8 millionmanagement contract for the port in Umm Qasrhas already gone to a U.S. company, StevedoringServices of America, and the airports are on theauction block. The U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment has invited U.S. multinationals tobid on everything from rebuilding roads andbridges to printing textbooks. Most of these con-tracts are for about a year, but some haveoptions that extend up to four. How long beforethey meld into long-term contracts for privatizedwater services, transit systems, roads, schoolsand phones? When does reconstruction turninto privatization in disguise?

“California Republican Congressman DarrelIssa has introduced a bill that would require theDefense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit‘U.S. patent holders.’ As Farhad Manjoo noted inSalon, CDMA is the system used in the UnitedStates, not Europe, and was developed by Qual-

comm, one of Issa’s most generous donors. “And then there’s oil. The Bush Administration

knows it can’t talk openly about selling off Iraq’soil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leavesthat to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleumministry official. ‘We need to have a hugeamount of money coming into the country,’ Cha-labi says. ‘The only way is to partially privatizethe industry.’”

Ah, yes, those weapons

WE look forward to some news outlet running achart on all this with frequent updates. Interest-ingly, BBC World led this morning with areminder that the weapons of mass destructionalleged to be hidden in Iraq have yet to be found.UN weapons instructor Hanz Blix has offered togo back in to finish the job that, shall we say, wasput on hold by preemptive war. No thanks, saysWashington which is, nonetheless reportedlyhiring l,000 now out of work UN weapons inspec-tors do the job under Washington’s watchful eye.Colin Powell insists the weapons will be found.Having covered the work of the Drug Enforce-ment Agency in America for years, I have nodoubt they will.

Encouraging the chaos

SLOWLY, stories we haven’t seen and claims wehaven’t heard are emerging. They challenge theunrelieved picture of a beneficent liberation.One is from Sweden’s leading newspaper DagensNyheter, whose impressive offices I have visited.It interviews Khaled Bayomi, who has taught andresearched Middle Eastern conflicts for tenyears at the University of Lund where he is also

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working on his doctorate. He says some soldiersencouraged the looting we saw:

“I had gone to see some friends who live neara dilapidated area just past Haifa Avenue on thewest bank of the Tigris. It was the 8th of Apriland the fighting was so intense that I was unableto return to the other side of the river. In theafternoon it became perfectly quiet and fourAmerican tanks took places on the edge of theslum area. The soldiers shot two Sudaneseguards who stood at their posts outside a localadministration building on the other side ofHaifa Avenue. Then they blasted apart the doorsto the building and from the tanks came eagercalls in Arabic encouraging people to come closeto them.

“The entire morning, everyone who had triedto cross the road had been shot. But in thestrange silence after all the shooting, peoplegradually became curious. After 45 minutes, thefirst Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arabinterpreters in the tanks told the people to goand take what they wanted in the building.

“The word spread quickly and the building wasransacked. I was standing only 300 yards fromthere when the guards were murdered. After-wards the tank crushed the entrance to the Jus-tice Department, which was in a neighboringbuilding, and the plundering continued there . . .

“I stood in a large crowd and watched thistogether with them. They did not partake in theplundering but dared not to interfere. Many hadtears of shame in their eyes. The next morningthe plundering spread to the Modern Museum,which lies a quarter mile farther north. Therewere also two crowds there, one that plunderedand one with watched with disgust.

Are you saying????

“ARE you saying that it was U.S. troops who ini-tiated the plundering?”

“Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meantthat the American troops needed pictures ofIraqis who in different ways demonstratedhatred for Saddam’s regime.”

“The people pulled down a large statue of Sad-dam?”

“Did they? It was an American tank that didthat, right beside the hotel where all the journal-ists stay. Until lunchtime on April 9, I did not seeone destroyed Saddam portrait. If people hadwanted to pull down statues they could havetaken down some of the small ones without anyhelp from American tanks. If it had been a polit-ical upheaval, the people would have pulleddown statues first and then plundered.”

Media post mortems

THE media post mortems have begun with grow-ing doubts being expressed over the effect onwar reporting of the embedded journalists pro-gram. At the symposium I attended put on by theEdward R, Murrow School at Washington StateUniversity, mainstream journalists from AP, theOregonian and the Wall Street Journal admittedthat the whole story has yet to be told, and thatthe embeds, who most insisted were not cen-sored or suppressed, could only see one part ofthe story. I keep trying to argue that most Amer-icans get most of their news from TV, and thatwhile many newspapers did offer more detailedreporting, there was more selling of the war thantelling on the cable nets. I didn’t get much of anargument.

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Off with their heads

JOURNALISTS who offered negative commen-tary were often targeted by pro-war media out-lets. The Poynter Institute reports on a story yousaw here first: “Michael Wolff received over 3,000hate e-mails after asking Gen. Vincent Brooks ata Centcom briefing: ‘Why are we here? Whyshould we stay? What’s the value of what we’relearning at this million-dollar press center?’ Hewas also told by a CENTCOM civilian, ‘a thirtyishRepublican operative’: ‘Don’t f–- with things youdon’t understand. This is f–-ing war, asshole . . .No more questions for you.’

In Los Angles, one website reports: “The exec-utive producer of a CBS miniseries about AdolfHitler’s rise to power has been fired after givingan interview in which he compared the currentmood of Americans to that of the Germans whohelped Hitler rise to power. According to TheHollywood Reporter, Gernon was fired Sunday(April 6) from Alliance Atlantis, the productioncompany making ‘Hitler: The Rise of Evil’ forCBS. He had worked there 11 years and was headof the firm’s long-form programming division.Neither Gernon nor Alliance Atlantis is com-menting on the matter . . .”

Get Michael Moore

THE New York Post claims that a website“Revoketheoscar.com has been set up try to stripfilmmaker Michael Moore of his prize for bestdocumentary. The San Francisco Bay Guardian’sSteven T. Jones reports, “Instead of being backat work writing his technology column for theSan Francisco Chronicle last week, Henry Norrwas at home nursing a deep bruise on his leg, the

result of being shot with a wooden dowel by Oak-land police during an antiwar demonstration.

“His two-week suspension from the paper forcalling in sick and being intentionally arrestedon the first full day of the war should have endedApril 3, but he has been neither formally firednor invited to return. And he probably won’t bewelcomed back on terms he can accept, given apolicy change unilaterally implemented by edi-tor Phil Bronstein. On April 2, Bronstein issuedwhat he labeled a ‘clarification’ to the Chron’sconflict-of-interest policy, stating in a memo tostaff, ‘Our responsibility as journalists can onlybe met by a strict prohibition against any news-room staffer participating in any public politicalactivity related to the war.’” ●

APRIL 22: WAR IS OVER, NOW IT’S TIME TO MOVE ON SAY Goodbye to The War on Iraq, as brought toyou daily by all your news channels, and wel-come back television as usual. With the war“won” and victory to be officially proclaimed byGeneral Franks as early as today, the story isover. Right?

Wrong. But no matter. Chad was back in action as the

weatherman this morning on CNN and search asI did, I could find no more forecasts on TV forBasra. Imagine more sandstorms predicted andwe will know nothing of them!

“It never happened”

GET ready to yawn when you hear about the war

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again; it’s the old story of overexposure and sim-plification driving out more nuanced coverageand follow-up. Leave it to the Guardian in Eng-land to spot the trend in America, reportingtoday:

“One month after the beginning of the Iraqiconflict, America is returning to its normal dietof reality TV – including a presenting debut forone Monica Lewinsky.

“Suddenly, it’s as if the war had never hap-pened. Stefano Hatfield, a contributor to anadvertising magazine explains: ‘War is God’s wayof teaching Americans geography,’ said thewriter Ambrose Bierce. Well, the war is appar-ently over because those lustrous locations,Brooklyn and Queens, have elbowed Baghdadand Umm Qasr out of the news.

“The hour-long rightwing rant known as FoxNews contained not a single Iraqi name check. Isit over then? As I look north out of my apartmentwindow, I can just about make out the red, whiteand blue lighting on the Empire State Buildingthrough the clouds. It’s a giant Zoom ice lollythat will remain patriotically lit until ‘we’ had‘won.’ Or so we were told. It’s an eloquent sym-bol of the confusion reigning over how to definevictory.

“All around us, life has returned to what passesfor normal. Scott Peterson, the platinum-blondhusband who allegedly murdered and decapi-tated his pregnant wife, is the top story. The Cen-tral Park Jogger has a book out, Madonna a“controversial” new CD.

While New York City has a budget crisis, theYankees are laying waste to all around them.Michael Jordan has retired (again) and OJ Simp-son is set to be an ‘expert’ commentator onRobert Blake’s murder trial.

Besting the West

IT is not just Al-Jazeera by the way that hasemerged with new respect in this war. IslamOnline is carrying a report today from Cairoarguing “Western Media No Longer the Best.” Itreads in part: “When the First Gulf War eruptedin 1991, Egyptian TV was almost entirely depend-ent on CNN coverage of the war. The logo of theAmerican news channel appeared on almostevery feed about the war.

“For many years Western media had repre-sented the best option for Arab viewers. First, itpossessed the necessary resources for highquality news coverage, resources that Arabmedia lacked. Secondly, it was generally viewedas being free and unconstrained by political con-siderations. It had gained a reputation of beingmotivated solely by professional incentives, inwhich the first and most important objective is toseek and present the truth as it is. This was incontrast to Arab media, which had gained a rep-utation of being a mere propaganda tool.

“Now, with the outbreak of the Third Gulf War,things might be changing, and there is evidenceto suggest that Western media might be losingits edge in the Arab world. “Several Arab satel-lite channels, notably Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV,El Manar TV and possibly the new member ofthe MBC group, Arabiyya, have proven to have ahigh degree of technical and professional abil-ity.”

Was BBC biased?

AND what about the western media? How wellhas it done? The Guardian today looks into thecontroversy about BBC coverage. Media

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researcher David Miller of Stirling Researchwrites: “The BBC was attacked by both sidesover the Iraq war. It was the only news organiza-tion apart from the Sun that was targeted byanti-war demonstrators, and senior managersapologized for the use of biased terms such as“liberate” in their coverage. Meanwhile, minis-ters publicly criticized the BBC’s alleged biastowards Baghdad. The BBC argued that criticismfrom all sides showed it must be getting some-thing right. The empirical evidence, however,suggests a pro-war orientation.

“The BBC, as the national broadcaster, hasalways found it difficult to resist governmentpressure. During the Falklands war, for example,it was attacked as traitorous for airing doubtsabout the war, but its senior management wasclear that the bulk of its output had either notreported Argentinean claims or had ‘nailed’them as ‘propagandist lies.’

“The level of public opposition to the war inIraq was difficult for the BBC to navigate. Thewar exposed a serious disconnection betweenthe political elite and the public, so the usualmethod of ensuring ‘balance’ – interviewingpoliticians – was never going to be enough.Other channels, including even ITV’s lightweightTonight program, tried new ways of accessingopposition, while the BBC cautioned its seniormanagement, in a confidential memo dated Feb-ruary 6, to ‘be careful’ about broadcasting dis-sent.

Imagine that: ABC had more anti-war coverage than the BBC

YOU may be surprised to learn that our associ-ates at Media Tenor in Germany which studied

coverage in six countries found that the BBC fea-tured the lowest level of coverage of dissent ofall. Its 2% total was even lower than the 7% foundon ABC in the U.S.

Fisk: “It’s going wrong”

MEANWHILE, new stories are emerging thatseem to challenge the perceptions that the gov-ernment with the help of many media outlets arefostering. Robert Fisk of the Independent may behard line but, if so, so many of his American col-leagues are softer than soft. His latest just ripsthe veil off an emerging era of “good feelings:”

“It’s going wrong, faster than anyone couldhave imagined. The army of ‘liberation’ hasalready turned into the army of occupation. TheShias are threatening to fight the Americans, tocreate their own war of ‘liberation.’

“At night on every one of the Shia Muslim bar-ricades in Sadr City, there are 14 men with auto-matic rifles. Even the U.S. Marines in Baghdadare talking of the insults being flung at them. ‘Goaway! Get out of my face!’ an American soldierscreamed at an Iraqi trying to push towards thewire surrounding an infantry unit in the capitalyesterday. I watched the man’s face suffuse withrage.

“ ‘God is Great! God is Great!’ ” the Iraqiretorted.

“ ‘Fuck you! ’” “The Americans have now issued a ‘Message

to the Citizens of Baghdad,’ a document as colo-nial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone. ‘Pleaseavoid leaving your homes during the night hoursafter evening prayers and before the call tomorning prayers,’ it tells the people of the city.‘During this time, terrorist forces associated with

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the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well asvarious criminal elements, are known to movethrough the area . . . please do not leave yourhomes during this time. During all hours, pleaseapproach Coalition military positions withextreme caution . . . ’

“So now – with neither electricity nor runningwater – the millions of Iraqis here are ordered tostay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lock-down. It’s a form of imprisonment. In their owncountry. Written by the command of the 1st U.S.Marine Division, it’s a curfew in all but name.”●

APRIL 23: NOW THE RESISTANCEAND POLITICAL TURMOILYOU can’t help thinking that someone of self-importance and consequence in some safe roomin the bowels of Washington power was watching Nic Robertson’s CNN report this morn-ing “LIVE FROM KARBALA” and having atwinge of second thoughts about what liberationhas wrought. As thousands of the Shia faithfulflagellated themselves for Allah while denounc-ing the United States occupation of their country, some in the Bush brigade must be waxing just abit nostalgic for the bad old days of Saddam Hus-sein, the demon we loved to demonize. “He,” you can hear them mutter, “at least keptthe Sharia crowd in check; he was a strong manwe could do business with. He opted for a civil state, not a religious one. He was such a use-ful bad guy to rail against.”

But, for better or worse, they no longer haveSaddam to kick around. As the good poet oncesaid, when the center doesn’t hold, things fall

apart. And it will take more than the haplessGeneral Jay Garner to put Humpty Dumpty backtogether again. The New York Times is leadingwith this tale of woes today as well with severalstories such as, “As Baghdad Awaits Aid, FeelingGrows Against U.S. Islamic passions suppressedunder Saddam Hussein escalated in Karbala. InBaghdad, Iraqis awaited material help from theU.S.” And then there is: “Iranian-trained agentshave crossed into Iraq and are working toadvance Iranian interests, according to U.S. offi-cials.”

Reporting on the WMDs

CYNTHIA COTTS notes how some media outletshave handled the WMD issue in this week’s Vil-lage Voice. She writes: “Since the war began, the military and its media have trum-peted one WMD discovery after another thatturned out to be a dud. Searches of ‘sensitive sites’ have turned up gas masks, protective suits,antidotes, manuals, white powder, barrels ofchemicals, and a cache of mystery shells but nosmoking gun. The military types who could notwait another week for UN inspectors to do theirjob are now saying their own WMD search willtake weeks, maybe months.

“This is all so peculiar it calls for a heightenedlevel of skepticism. But after weeks of falsealarms, some major media outlets have falleninto the habit of reporting the absence of news.Last week, CNN began a WMD report with thewords ‘No smoking gun yet,’ and the headline ona recent New York Times story read, ‘U.S.Inspectors Find No Forbidden Weapons at IraqiArms Plant.’ On Monday, the Times reportedthat an unnamed scientist who claims to have

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worked for Iraq now says WMD evidence wasdestroyed just days before the war began.

“Sure, unambiguous proof of the hidden stock-piles may turn up any day now. But the threat ofIraq’s WMD may also turn out to be the biggest media hoax since Y2K.”

Not Comical Ali

WE still have had no attempt at accounting forthe number of civilian casualties in Iraq. But, asif to salve our conscience, media attention haspredictably enough been focused on one child, aposter boy for children in need. His name is AliIsmail Abbas. He is 12. He lost his father, hismother (who was pregnant at the time) and hisbrother to “coalition bombing.” He lost part ofhis body, too. Poor Ali has aroused the con-science of the west. You have probably seen himon TV. Mary Riddel wrote about him in theObserver:

“Today, he is recovering in Kuwait, where hispublicity shots show a sweet face above the blan-kets masking his scorched torso and stumps. Hehas eaten a kebab and obliged visiting journal-ists from British newspapers with quotes. ‘Whenwill my arms grow back?’ he asked.

“Ali, the iconic image of war, is the centerpieceof half-a-dozen charity appeals, which haveraised several hundred thousand pounds, asagainst the $20 billion cost of the conflict, or the$1.3bn needed by the World Food Program. Ofthat, only $296 million has been offered. Thoughcomparatively small, the Ali appeals prove thatthe dry plea of bureaucrats cannot compete as acan-rattler for humanity.

“The formula is not difficult to read. Hope, themagical ingredient of childhood, sells. Despair

does not. No one can predict whether Ali willultimately be glad of the officious mercyaccorded him, but few would argue it was wrongfor him to have his chance. Nor is it reprehensi-ble to make him the face of good causes. Hisexploitation lies, instead, in the propagandaimplicit in his story . . . Ali is the human emblemof the case for war, not for the argumentsagainst. A wonder of modern surgery, master-minded by the U.S. and Britain and performed inthe Middle East, is an exact metaphor for theoutcome the coalition wants for Iraq. Nor is Ali asting to Western consciences. Instead, he is theirbalm. Despite the correct insistence of Unicefthat he should be the figurehead for all Iraqi chil-dren, the spotlight on a single child distractsfrom the countless number who die this Easterbecause the miracle workers of the West cannotswitch on their electricity or offer clean water orbring oxygen and aid into flyblown wards wherethe mattresses stiffen with other people’s blood.”

Ignored warnings

REMEMBER Peter Arnett? Recall that he wasworking in part for National Geographic. I alwayswondered about what their interest was in Iraq.As it turns out they were fully aware of the coun-try’s cultural treasures and warned of lootingWELL BEFORE IT OCCURRED.

Here is a report just sent to me. It is datedMarch 21 – It was given scant coverage at thetime: “Iraq War Threatens Ancient Treasures. Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News(Updated March 21, 2003).

“The looming war in Iraq is likely to take aheavy toll in terms of lives and property. But in acountry regarded as the ‘Cradle of Civilization,’

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there may also be substantial harm to irreplace-able cultural heritage in the form of damage toancient structures, archaeological sites, and arti-facts.

“The first immediate danger to Iraq’s culturalsites is bombing or combat damage. In the firstGulf War, damage of this kind appears to havebeen fairly limited. “There are millions of sites inIraq,” said Selma Radhi, an independent scholarand consultant archaeologist who has excavatedand restored ancient monuments all over theMiddle East. “How could one choose two thatshould not be bombed?”

The greater worry

WHILE such damage is a concern, it’s likely notthe greatest worry. “We’re not so worried abouterrant bombing,” explained McGuire Gibson, anIraq specialist at the University of Chicago’s Ori-ental Institute. “It could happen, but it’s thatperiod of uncertainty that would come with thewar that would be a problem.”

“Gibson and many other prominent archaeolo-gists are most concerned about looting. It’s beenan ongoing problem in Iraq since the first GulfWar, when Iraq’s formerly robust Department ofAntiquities began to decline. In the event of com-bat and/or unrest, looting could become muchworse.”

Debating BBC coverage

YESTERDAY, I also carried excerpts from aGuardian article lambasting the BBC for its warcoverage. I queried BBC News chief RichardSambrook for his response. He wrote back – oneof the few news executives willing to respond to

critics – saying, “There is a real critique to bedone of our coverage of course, but that wasn’tit.” He then included a response which laterappears in part in today’s Media Guardian:

“David Miller’s attack on the BBC’s journalism(Taking Sides 22.4.03) is a lazy cobbling togetherof disparate evidence taken out of context in anattempt to reach a pre-ordained conclusion. Heis also factually wrong in a number of instances.

“The BBC has not argued that because we arecriticized by all sides we must be right – we havesuggested it shows the case from either side isnot straightforward.

“Mr. Miller suggests we virtually ignoredopposition to the war. Yet in many programs,across radio and TV, opponents to war were reg-ularly given the opportunity to express theirviews, anti-war demonstrations were reportedand opinion polls showing the balance of publicopinion fully analyzed. (DISSECTOR: On thispoint, and for what it is worth, I would interjectthat I was interviewed several times on BBCRadio, and only once on CNN. A BBC world serv-ice reporter came along to a demonstration inNew York that I was covering.)

“Mr. Miller selectively quotes research carriedout for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Hedoesn’t, strangely, mention that the same surveyshowed the BBC, uniquely out of the broadcast-ers analyzed, was even-handed in its reporting ofthe U.S. military action and in reporting of coali-tion and civilian casualties. Presumably it didn’tfit his argument.”

I have not watched as much BBC coverage as Iwould have liked. Many of our readers preferredit to the U.S. cable nets. But there are many inEngland, especially around the website Medi-aLens which have compiled more detailed cri-

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tiques. Without passing judgments, I would onlysay that at least in the UK, there are debatesabout these issues in many newspapers. Theyare taken seriously. This is less true in the USA. ●

APRIL 24: WAR COVERAGE UNDERFIRE FROM BBC CHIEFJUST I was wallowing in the thrill of victory asmore wanted Iraqis experience the agony ofdefeat, just as I thought it was safe to eat Frenchfood again – as I did last night with fava beans onthe side. Shades of Silence of the Lambs – wordcomes that secretary of State Powell intends to“punish” France. Sorry Colin, the food hasalready been recycled. And then there was thismorning’s shocker coming from the land of coali-tion cronies and Blair Baathists: Our TV Systemis under attack.

BBC: Shock, no awe

A NEW front in the media war erupted acrossthe Atlantic when the “topper” (to use a Variety-ism) of the BBC opened up on American televi-sion. Embroiled in some criticism in the homecounties for less than objective war coverage,Greg Dyke is shifting attention across the seas.And in this case, hitting his mark in a gutsy man-ner that we have yet to hear from most of his U.S.counterparts. The Guardian reports:

“BBC director general Greg Dyke has deliv-ered a stinging rebuke to the U.S. media over itsunquestioning coverage of the war in Iraq andwarned the government against allowing the UK

media to become Americanized.“Mr. Dyke said he was shocked to hear that the

U.S. radio giant Clear Channel had organizedpro-war rallies in the U.S., and urged the govern-ment to ensure new media laws did not allowU.S. media companies to undermine the impar-tiality of the British media.

“We are genuinely shocked when we discoverthat the largest radio group in the United Stateswas using its airwaves to organize pro-war ral-lies. We are even more shocked to discover thatthe same group wants to become a big player inradio in the UK when it is deregulated later thisyear,” Mr. Dyke said.

“Mr. Dyke singled out Fox for particular criti-cism over its pro-Bush stance, which helped theRupert Murdoch-owned broadcaster to oustCNN in the U.S. to become the most popularnews network.

“Commercial pressures may tempt others tofollow the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriot-ism, but for the BBC this would be a terrible mis-take. If, over time, we lost the trust of our audi-ences, there is no point in the BBC,” he said in aspeech delivered at Goldsmiths College in Lon-don today.”

Targeting the Middle East

EVEN as the BBC blasts U.S. broadcasting, a U.S.government TV venture is good to go in the Mid-dle East. It’s run by a man who comes out ofInfinity Broadcasting, the radio monopoly ownedby Viacom and known for the wit and wisdom ofHoward Stern. Again, it is a British newspaperwe must turn to for a report on an AmericanMedia venture:

“Washington’s battle to win public support in

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the Arab world has begun in earnest with thefirst broadcasts of what officials say will becomea 24-hour satellite television network aimed atchanging minds throughout the region by Amer-ican-style morning chat-shows, sports, news andchildren’s programs.

“Iraq and the World, the prototype channelbeing beamed into the country from a U.S. airforce plane, began showing American eveningnews bulletins this week. A full-service versionshould be broadcasting 24 hours a day to 22countries in the Middle East by the end of theyear, Mr. [Norman] Pattiz, chairman of West-wood One, said. Faces familiar to U.S. audiences,including Dan Rather of CBS and Tom Brokaw ofABC, are appearing with their words translatedinto Arabic.

“We don’t do propaganda,” he insisted.

Give me the pictures,I will give you the war

At the start of the Spanish American War, news-paper magnate William Randolph Hearst report-edly said to a staff illustrator: “Give me the pic-tures, I’ll give you the war.” That comment wasthought to have ushered in the era of the “yel-low” (i.e. sensationalized) press. Clearly, for themedia at least, war is good business. That sug-gests at the same time that conflicts and tensionswill be pumped up through press coverage.

Already, new media layoffs are in the offing,with temporary employees brought in to assistwith war “coverage” being dispatched to theunemployment lines. Ponder the implications ofthis report from the LA Times: “Cable newsviewing continued to decline last week, with thecombined audience for Fox News, CNN and

MSNBC slipping over 30% from the previousweek.”

If wars take time to organize, watch for moresensational stories to boost ratings.

As for time to organize, Ted Koppel let loose afactoid last night of interest. He noted that theU.S. Army started its war plans for Iraq last June.That came up in a discussion with Andrew Nat-sios who runs the Agency for InternationalDevelopment, the government arm tasked withhelping the poorer countries of the world. He isnow in charge of the $1.7 BILLION dollar recon-struction effort in Iraq.

This is the agency that gave the biggest con-tract to Bechtel. Ted was asking why there hadbeen no competitive bidding and why the costplus contract. The AID Administrator explainedhow it takes time to draw up the documents out-lining the scope of work. He revealed that workstarted last September, while Washington wonkswere still publicly saying no decision had beenmade. While the public was being fed a line oflies, the agencies were planning the futuredestruction and reconstruction of another coun-try.

Media man implicated in looting

IF this is not a form of looting, what is? Yet it isnot being covered as such. Instead reports aredribbling in that U.S. soldiers and even mediaemployees had sticky fingers in Iraqi treasures.AP reports:

“WASHINGTON – Members of the news mediaand U.S. soldiers are being investigated for tak-ing art, artifacts, weapons and cash from Iraq,with criminal charges already brought in onecase, federal officials said Wednesday.

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“At least 15 paintings, gold-plated firearms,ornamental knives, Iraqi government bonds andother items have been seized at airports inWashington, Boston and London in the lastweek, according to the bureaus of Customs andBorder Protection and of Immigration and Cus-toms Enforcement. So far, only Benjamin JamesJohnson, who worked as an engineer for FoxNews Channel, has been charged. But officialssaid more charges could be brought and moreseizures of stolen items are expected in what isbeing dubbed “Operation Iraqi Heritage.”

Warnings of the TIMES

READING The New York Times today, one is con-fronted with two warning stories, from right toleft, side by side. The first is a warning to Irannot to interfere in Iraq because apparently onlyWashington has that right.

Says one more unknown and unidentified“Senior” Administration official, “It’s clear wehave to step in a little more forcefully.” To theright of this article is another reporting on warn-ings to Iraqi politicians against stepping into thepower vacuum.

He warned that no one challenging Americanauthority (note no use of the term coalition here)would be subject in the press. Also on page oneis a story about the fate of Afghan detainees stillsweltering in the prison camp in Cuba. CNN’sAaron Brown quipped last night that this is not astory we have been hearing about. (No shit, Sher-lock!) There was no mention on page one of thechildren in the camp. The Australian Broadcast-ing company featured this Reuters story moreprominently.

CNN on the media

PR SPIN reports: “The media watchdog FAIR/Extra! has studied the guest list of CNN’s Reli-able Sources to see how many critical voiceswere heard on the program that claims to “turna critical lens on the media.” Covering one yearof weekly programs, the FAIR study found thatReliable Sources strongly favored mainstreammedia insiders and right-leaning pundits. Inaddition, female critics were significantly under-represented, and ethnic minority voices werealmost non-existent.” ●

APRIL 25: THUG LIFE, BAGHDAD STYLEIT is April 25th. On this day, in another war fordemocracy, The New York Times reminds usthat the United States and Soviet forces linkedup on the Elbe River, in central Europe, a meet-ing that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Ger-many. What happened next, as we know werehopes for peace dashed by distrust and powergames among the allies, and a cold war replacingthat hot war. All the allies, not just the UnitedStates, later tried Nazi war criminals.

I raise this after watching Nightline’s JohnDonovan compare the now surrendered (by hisson) Iraqi Minister Tariq Aziz to a Nazi war crim-inal and denounce the thugs who ran Iraq. Thatsame word, “thugs,” was used again by frequent“expert,” neo-con Daniel Pipes this morning onFox who called for the U.S. soldiers to step intothe background and find a “strongman” to placein power.

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A call for a strong man

FUNNY, how much we like “strong men” prefer-ring authoritarianism to democracy, which inIraq anyway, could easily lead to the selection ofanti-American politicians. If only because weeksafter the never-doubted successful invasion, theU.S. occupiers have still not managed to get thelights and water back on in the desert town ofBaghdad. As we know the eve of destruction isalways easier than the morning of construction.

It was odd to hear about “thugs.” a word thatmay even understate human rights crimes inNew York. What about Guantanamo? CNN wasreporting on that, offering more dirty detailsabout the incarceration of suspects detained in ahigh security hole in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. Ilearned we still don’t know how many there are,who they are, what they are being charged with,and why there are children among them. Thislatter disclosure raises still more questionsabout U.S. violations of international treatiesgoverning the treatment of prisoners. But no –this is not “thuggish” behavior. The New YorkTimes reported yesterday that the detainees areprovided with new Korans and lots of fatteningfood twice a day. They reportedly have gainedten pounds apiece. I am waiting for theNewsweek cover on OBESITY in our prisons: isit humane punishment?

Was The New York Times used?

PROFESSOR Gary Leup writes in Counter Punchabout Judith Miller’s recent article in The NewYork Times, “Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, anIraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert” (New YorkTimes, April 21). According to a report on Media

news, it raised eyebrows in The Times newsroomwhere its veracity was questioned by some. Leupbelieves the Administration used The Times:

“You allow a New York Times reporter, whowas not permitted to interview the scientist, norvisit his home, nor permitted to write about thismomentous discovery for three days, whosecopy was submitted for a check by military offi-cials, to reveal this information to the world. Youannounce that this is the best evidence ‘to date’(as though one or more other shreds of evidencehad been unearthed recently), adding, ‘it may bethe discovery,’ so others might not be necessary.

Quite brilliant. You have to admire such audac-ity. But I think of the opening passage of thesamurai epic, Heike Monogatari, that chroniclesthe inevitable downfall of a ruling circle lessobnoxious than the one now wreaking havoc onIraq. “The proud do not endure, they are like adream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last,they are as dust before the wind.”

In the meantime, let us not let them throw dustin our eyes.

War games lead to . . . war games

IF you missed the Iraq War, you can play thegame. Maureen Clare Murphy of Electronic Iraq:“The war on Iraq has not caused any severe dis-ruptions to the generally comfortable Americanlifestyle. Even Americans’ favorite prime-timesitcoms have been spared from pre-emption.What many disconnected Americans conceive,as the war is what they see on CNN: green videoof explosions over Baghdad narrated by a corre-spondent in a flak jacket.

“However, many young men in America havedecided to ‘participate’ in the war by purchasing

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or downloading video games that are set in Iraq.In ‘Conflict: Desert Storm,’ by Gotham Games,the gamer’s mission is to find and capture (orkill) Saddam Hussein. In ‘Gulf War: OperationDesert Hammer,’ by 3DO, players head a techno-logically sophisticated tank, and seek out the‘Desert Beast,’ a dictator that can easily beinferred as Saddam Hussein.”

Although these games were developed beforethe U.S. bombing campaign began, their timelyreleases certainly seem opportunistic. “Conflict:Desert Storm” has sold out at video game stores,and “Gulf War: Operation Desert Hammer” hassignificantly surpassed its previous sales esti-mates.

How long can you watch?

IN this country, the cable news nets have driventhe coverage. Tim Goodman in the San FranciscoChronicle (the newspaper that just fired areporter who took a day off to protest) had someprovocative things to say. Mark Gould of NewCollege sent it along.

“CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC have gorged onIraq and come up for air bloated, slow and con-fused. Anyone watching these broadcasts seesthe same explosions repeated endlessly. Storiesthat could be told in 30 seconds or a minute sud-denly drag on for five minutes, with long pausesbetween anchors and field reporters. Not muchis either explained or answered in these liveinterviews, and yet the same verbal dance takesplace again 15 minutes later. This cycle has dimin-ished the ability to watch cable news.

“Where the first week – even 10 days if youwanted to be overly indulgent – offered the hard-core news junkie ample time to marvel at the

wonders of the modern, live war played end-lessly on cable television, that fascination hasnow faded. It has also rubbed off the patina ofcompetent journalism. What emerges now, forthose still putting in the hours, is the inevitableimpression that without editors, without reflec-tion or even a modicum of critical doubt, is cov-erage more seemingly defined by the military.

“With no one stopping for a breath, anchorsrepeat essentially what’s told to them by the gov-ernment, with phrases and lingo largely intact.Coalition forces are “pounding” or “hammering”the opposition, viewers hear, and while this istrue in the bigger context, it ceases to be rele-vant when it’s repeated ceaselessly.” ●

APRIL 28: TRUTH CRUSHED TO EARTH WILL RISE AGAIN I AM sure someone among the perception man-agers in the information operations division ofthe ministry of “newsspeak” considered addingan extra 6. Saddam Hussein (spelled interest-ingly Saddam Husayn Al-Tikriuti on the ace ofspades playing card) is 66 today. 666 would havebeen perfect don’tcha think? He is also verymuch alive according to Tariq Aziz, not alwaysknown as a truth teller, having reportedly sur-vived two decapitation strikes.

Carol Morello of the Washington Post was onMSNBC today talking about the disappointmentmany Iraqis expressed to her about not beingable to celebrate the big B-Day as they have inyears past. (Notice how many newspaperreporters are now being milked for stories by thecost-cutting cable nets. Are they getting paid?)

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She said that most of the folks in the streets ofBaghdad she talked with believe he is alive.Many are apparently pissed at him NOT becauseof all of the dreadful things about his regime thatbombard us daily but because he did not, aspromised, defend the capital and them.

More ‘revelations’ debunked

SECRETARY of Defense Rumsfeld, who was not“inclined” to tell reporters at a briefing last weekwhere he was going, has showed up to thank hismilitary forces for a job well done. The Presidentwill offer a more subdued victory statement laterin the week. Meanwhile four more U.S. soldierswere wounded in another sniping incident asGeneral Jay Garner begins his democracy build-ing-reconstruction exercise. There has beenmore debunking of false stories in the media.The Mail and Guardian reports: “Western intelli-gence officials are playing down the significanceof documents appearing to show that SaddamHussein’s regime met an al-Qaeda envoy inBaghdad in 1998 and sought to arrange a meetingwith Osama bin Laden.”

Also, a bunch of barrels widely reported ashaving chemical weapons now apparently, oncloser inspection, did not. One thousand more“experts” are on the way to join the elusiveweapons hunt. (My suggestion: send in the DEA,they always find the illicit substances–one way oranother.)

Weapons search a mess

THE Times is reporting that the search forweapons, the nominal purpose of the war, isrighteously screwed up. “Disorganization, delays

and faulty intelligence have hampered the Pen-tagon-led search for Saddam Hussein’s sus-pected weapons of mass destruction, causinggrowing concern about one of the most sensitiveand secretive operations in postwar Iraq, accord-ing to U.S. officials and outside experts familiarwith the effort.

“The slow start has created so many intera-gency squabbles that a National Security Councilmilitary staffer at the White House has beenassigned to mediate among the Defense Intelli-gence Agency, the Defense Threat ReductionAgency, the CIA, the Energy Department, andother government agencies involved in the hunt.

“And some weapons experts warn that thelapses have even raised the threat of arms pro-liferation from Iraq.”

“Selective use of intellligence,exaggeration”

THE Independent on Sunday yesterday said thatintelligence agencies in the U.S. and Britain arenow saying (where were they before the war?)that their findings were misrepresented. Ray-mond Whitaker reported: “The case for invadingIraq to remove its weapons of mass destructionwas based on selective use of intelligence, exag-geration, use of sources known to be discreditedand outright fabrication.

“A high-level UK source said last night thatintelligence agencies on both sides of theAtlantic were furious that briefings they gavepolitical leaders were distorted in the rush towar with Iraq. ‘They ignored intelligence assess-ments which said Iraq was not a threat,’ thesource said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle Eastnewspaper which said, ‘Washington has to prove

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its case. If it does not, the world will foreverbelieve that it paved the road to war with lies,’ headded: ‘You can draw your own conclusions.’”

ABC News is reporting on another aspect ofwhat was suspected but now confirmed as inten-tional deception: “To build its case for war withIraq, the Bush administration argued that Sad-dam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,but some officials now privately acknowledge theWhite House had another reason for war – aglobal show of American power and democracy.”

“Not lying”

OFFICIALS inside government and advisers out-side told ABC NEWS the administration empha-sized the danger of Saddam’s weapons to gainthe legal justification for war from the UnitedNations and to stress the danger at home toAmericans. “We were not lying,” said one offi-cial. “But it was just a matter of emphasis.”

The crimes of war

IN addition to the widely reported human rightscrimes, possible war crimes are surfacing. APreports: “Military officials are investigating aMarine who says he shot an Iraqi soldier twice inthe back of the head following a grenade attackon his comrades.

“The Marine Forces Reserve announced thepreliminary inquiry of Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covar-rubias on Friday, the day the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an interview in which hedescribed the killing.

“Covarrubias, 38, of Las Vegas, said that duringan intense battle in Baghdad on April 8, he pur-sued a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard

who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his unit. “I went behind him and shot him in the back of

the head. Twice,” Covarrubias told the Review-Journal. He said he also shot the man’s partner,who tried to escape. He showed what he saidwere the men’s ID cards.”

“Whitewashing the facts”

HUMAN Rights Watch is disputing Pentagonclaims on the use of cluster bombs. The story inThe Times: “U.S. Misleading on Cluster Muni-tions.” The U.S. Army has used ground-basedMultiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) andother artillery-launched cluster munitions inpopulated areas of Baghdad and other Iraqicities, Human Rights Watch said.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff Gen.Richard B. Myers told a press conference inWashington that coalition forces dropped“nearly 1,500 cluster bombs of varying types”during the war in Iraq, and that only 26 of thosefell within 1,500 feet of civilian neighborhoods,causing only “one recorded case of collateraldamage.”

“But Myers did not mention surface-launchedcluster munitions, which are believed to havecaused many more civilian casualties. ‘To implythat cluster munitions caused virtually no harmto Iraqi civilians is highly disingenuous,’ saidKenneth Roth, executive director of HumanRights Watch. ‘Instead of whitewashing the facts,the Pentagon needs to come clean about theArmy’s use of cluster munitions, which has beenmuch more fatal to civilians.’”

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The moral universe of Thomas Friedman

“AMERICA did the right thing here,” arguedThomas L. Friedman, minister of conventionalwisdom, on The NY Times Op-ed page yesterday.“It toppled one of the most evil regimes onearth.” And so a new rationale of the war isemerging post-hoc, picturing the Bush Adminis-tration as human rights avengers, “globo-cops”out to right wrongs. Friedman uses a skull of oneof Saddam’s many victims as a symbol of why thewar was worth it. I read that with a certaindegree of mirth because as every serious stu-dent of U.S. human rights policy knows Wash-ington’s stance on human rights is selective,guided by perceived U.S. interests, not morality.

Isn’t it interesting how Saddam’s crimes arebeing splashed across our TV screens now, butso many others in so many countries, over somany years were ignored, or criticized withoutcommitment to action. Today, while the BushAdministration points to human rights abuses inIraq, it will not support an International CriminalCourt to try offenders. Talk of human rightsabuses in the U.S. is verboten.

Thomas Friedman waffled for weeks about thejustification for going to war with Iraq. Now thatwar has been “won” he is out front supporting itas a humanitarian intervention. Come on. Lastweek Philip Weiss skewered Friedman’s preten-sions in The NY Observer. This week, some let-ter writers speak about this self-described lib-eral with a clarity that bears repeating.

Cathryn Carrol of Annapolis writes, “If peoplewrote about blacks, the way he writes aboutArabs, he metaphorically (and justifiably) wouldbe drawn and quartered.” She also lambastes

Friedman’s certainty, his sanctimonious insight,and his pseudo-depth.

Jim Furlong of Connecticut takes on his coreideas: “democracy and love of capitalism flowfrom the barrel of a gun: that seems to be ournew idea. It is a variant of the idea that the endsjustify means.” Henry Bright of Florida chargesthat Friedman “has become an intellectual cap-tive of the people he admires: the titans of indus-try and globalization.”

Remember Cambodia

FRIEDMAN holds up the skulls of Saddam’s vic-tims as reason enough for the intervention. Iwonder if he remembers the Vietnamese inva-sion of Cambodia to topple the genocidal KhmerRouge who piled up many more skulls that Sad-dam ever did. That invasion was condemned byall the policy wonks in the U.S.. Washington latersupported the killers, not those liberators. Butthen again, there was no huge supply of oil inCambodia.

I was talking the other day with a Falun Gongpractitioner who reminded me that 50,000 of herfellow non-violent colleagues are in jail, manytortured or dead, thrown out of buildings andtrains. Have we heard a peep about that? We dobusiness with China and so can pragmaticallyoverlook their treatment of Tibetans or pro-democracy activists.

You need a comment from Saddam

I WAS reminded also of a personal experience.Along with my colleagues here at Globalvision,we produced a special on human rights, whichincluded a segment on Saddam’s gassing of the

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Kurds. At that time, in the Bush years, the neo-cons were demanding more “balance” at PBS.Local programmers took a mechanisticapproach to that problem. We were shockedwhen we found our human rights programrejected because we didn’t have a personalresponse from Saddam to the charges leveledagainst him. Have you ever seen a documentaryon the holocaust rejected because the Nazis did-n’t have the right to respond?

Later, our series Rights and Wrongs, wasrejected by PBS not because the journalism wasinadequate but because the subject was consid-ered superfluous. “Human rights, we were told,“is an insufficient organizing principle for a tele-vision series.” Unlike gardening or home repair!We finally did get our series on many local PBSstations where it ran for four years. But once ourfunders experienced “fatigue,” the run ended.No network has since aired regularly scheduledprogramming about human rights.

60 Minutes on Iraq

DID any of you see 60 Minutes last night? Itopened with a strong piece about juicy no-bidcontracts to politically-connected corporationsfor the reconstruction of Iraq. It representedcompelling investigative journalism showinghow Dick Cheney used his connections to buildthe Halliburton company, which is now beingrewarded with a contract paying $50,000 a dayfor a five-man fire fighting team. The third seg-ment of show featured Mike Wallace in Syriawhere he interviews the foreign minister. Heasks him why he thinks the U.S. invaded Iraq.The guy suggests that it has a lot to do withthose post-war contracts, which were given out

before the war began. Mike looks askance.Clearly, he had not seen the first segment of hisown show. The Syrian may have been conspira-torial but so was 60 Minutes. Where there’ssmoke . . .

White House correspondentscheer Bush

AS for media coverage of the war, it was dis-tressing to see so many at the White House cor-respondents dinner cheer President Bush’sdefense of the war. His presence there is sup-posedly a sign of respect for the office, not com-pliance with his policies. The New York Timesdescribed the dinner as a tepid affair. There wasnary a word of dissent. The outgoing presidentof the Correspondents Association said somemembers had suggested the Dixie Chicks orHarry Belafonte as the entertainers. “Can youbelieve that?” he asked his colleagues. “You can’tmake this stuff up.” After watching the dinner, Icouldn’t make that up either. Disgraceful, exceptfor the award to Dana Milbank of the Washing-ton Post for challenging presidential claims on aregular basis while the rest of the crowd sleepson.

The Observer yesterday reported on how theowners of virulent pro-war media outlets aregloating over the outcome of the war. Yet, theirsales are going down. Peter Preston writes: “So,who really won the war? Conrad Black doesn’tseem to have many doubts. ‘We [that’s his DailyTelegraph ] have obviously surpassed our com-petition – and even bear favorable comparisonwith the New York Times ,’ he tells his staff.

“But the loudest cock-a-doodle-doos surelybelong to Lord Black’s most ferocious competi-

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tor, Rupert Murdoch. “His Fox News won the cable-ratings conflict.

His New York Post was top of the pops. HisWeekly Standard is now the neo-conservativeorgan of Bushy choice. He finally took DirectTVas the Marines took Baghdad. A forthcomingFederal Communications Commission reviewlooks certain to let him own more papers and TVstations. He’s on a roll; a big, big winner.

“It seems almost churlish to spoil the fun, topoint out that circulation wars have little in com-mon with shooting wars (except self-deceptionand mendacity). But let’s examine the MarchABC wisdom with a leery eye. The Telegraphwas down 7.56 per cent, year on year: selling926,500 a day, including 27,137 sales in foreignparts, 15,775 bulk copies, 307,596 pre-paid sub-scriptions, and 40,666 one-off cheapies. TheTimes was down 6.91 per cent, year on year,including 30,167 foreign copies, 32,892 bulks,101,986 subscriptions and 14,673 cheapies.

“Neither title, in short, has anything much tocrow about.”

Pilger: Corruption in journalism

ALSO from London, John Pilger skewers his col-leagues for the role they played. “Somethingdeeply corrupt is consuming journalism. A warso one-sided it was hardly a war was reportedlike a Formula One race, as the teams sped to thecheckered flag in Baghdad.

“I read in the Observer last Sunday that ‘Iraqwas worth $20m to Reuters.’ This was the profitthe company would make from the war. Reuterswas described on the business pages as ‘a modelcompany, its illustrious brand and reputationsecond to none. As a newsgathering organiza-

tion, it is lauded for its accuracy and objectivity.’The Observer article lamented that the ‘world’shotspots’ generated only about 7 per cent of themodel company’s $3.6 billion revenue last year.The other 93 per cent comes from ‘more than400,000 computer terminals in financial institu-tions around the world,‘ churning out ‘financialinformation’ for a voracious, profiteering ‘mar-ket’ that has nothing to do with true journalism:indeed, it is the antithesis of true journalism,because it has nothing to do with true humanity.

“There is something deeply corrupt consum-ing this craft of mine. It is not a recent phenom-enon; look back on the ‘coverage’ of the FirstWorld War by journalists who were subse-quently knighted for their services to the con-cealment of the truth of that great slaughter.”

The art of propaganda

HERE is a must read. It speaks to how mediastrategists shape public perception through askillful use of “message development.”

This particular document was prepared forpro-Israel activists by Frank Luntz’s researchcompanies, an agency that worked for the Bushpresidential campaign, and most recently forMSNBC. As you evaluate it for yourself, thinkabout the similar media plans that were used bythe Administration to sell the war to the mediaand the public.

The Arab Anti-Discrimination Commission(ADC) sent me a copy, calling it a “vital propa-ganda strategy document for the period follow-ing the war in Iraq. The document, entitled“Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communications Pri-orities 2003,” was prepared for the Wexner Foun-dation, which operates leadership training pro-

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grams such as the “Birthright Israel” project,which offers free trips for young Jewish Ameri-cans to Israel.

Here is a taste of the “analysis” and recom-mendations:

1. “SADDAM HUSSEIN are the two words thattie Israel to America and are most likely todeliver support in Congress. The day we allowSaddam to take his eventual place in the trashheap of history is the day we lose our strongestweapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.

2. “IRAQ COLORS ALL. Saddam is your bestdefense, even if he is dead. For a year, a SOLIDYEAR, you should be invoking the name of Sad-dam Hussein and how Israel was always behindAmerican efforts to rid the world of this ruthless

dictator and liberate their people.” “3). It DOES NOT HELP when you compliment

President Bush. When you want to identify withand align yourself with America, just say it. Don’tuse George Bush as a synonym for the UnitedStates.

“4) SECURITY sells. The settlements are ourAchilles heel, and the best response (which isstill quite weak) is the need for security that thisbuffer creates.

“5) A LITTLE HUMILITY GOES A LONG WAY.You need to talk continually about your under-standing of ‘the plight of the Palestinians’ and acommitment to helping them.

“6) OF COURSE RHETORICAL QUESTIONSWORK, don’t they?” ●

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By TED RALLNEW YORK, APRIL 16, 2003 – The stirring imageof Saddam’s statue being toppled on April 9thturns out to be fake, the product of a cheesy mediaop staged by the U.S. military for the benefit ofcameramen staying across the street at Baghdad’sPalestine Hotel. This shouldn’t be a big surprise.Two of the most stirring photographs of World WarII – the flag raising at Iwo Jima and GeneralMacArthur’s stroll through the Filipino surf – werejust as phony.

Anyone who has seen a TV taping knows thattight camera angles exaggerate crowd sizes, buteven a cursory examination of last week’s statue-toppling propaganda tape reveals that no morethan 150 Iraqis gathered in Farbus Square to watchAmerican Marines – not Iraqis – pull down the dic-tator’s statue. Hailing “all the demonstrations in thestreets,” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld waxed rhap-sodically: “Watching them,” he told reporters, “onecannot help but think of the fall of the Berlin Walland the collapse of the Iron Curtain.”

Hundreds of thousands of cheering Berlinersfilled the streets when their divided city wasreunited in 1989. Close to a million Yugoslavscrowded Belgrade at the end of Slobodan Milose-vic’s rule in 2000. While some individual Iraqishave welcomed U.S. troops, there haven’t beensimilar outpourings of approval for our “liberation.”Most of the crowds are too busy carrying off Uday’ssofas to say thanks, and law-abiding citizens are at

home putting out fires or fending off their rapa-cious neighbors with AK-47s. Yet Americanswanted to see their troops greeted as liberators, sothat’s what they saw on TV. Perhaps FrancisFukuyama was correct – if it only takes 150 happylooters to make history, maybe history is over.

Actually, they were 150 imported art critics. Thestatue bashers were militiamen of the IraqiNational Congress, an anti-Saddam outfit led byone Ahmed Chalabi. The INC was flown into Iraq bythe Pentagon over CIA and State Departmentprotests. Chalabi is Rumsfeld’s choice to becomeIraq’s next puppet president.

Photos at the indispensable Information ClearingHouse website place one of Chalabi’s aides at thesupposedly spontaneous outpouring of pro-Ameri-can Saddam bashing at Firdus Square.

“When you are moving through this countrythere is [sic] not a lot of people out there and youare not sure they want us here,” Sgt. Lee Buttrillgushed to ABC News. “You finally get here and seepeople in the street feeling so excited, feeling sohappy, tearing down the statue of Saddam. It feelsreally good.” That rah-rah BS is what Americans willremember about the fall of Baghdad – not the prob-ability that Buttrill, part of the armed force that cor-doned off the square to protect the Iraqi NationalCongress’ actors, was merely telling war corre-spondents what they wanted to hear. In his criti-cally acclaimed book “Jarhead,” Gulf War vetAnthony Swofford writes that Marines routinely lie

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to gullible reporters. ABC further reported: “A Marine at first draped an

American flag over the statue’s face, despite mili-tary orders to avoid symbols that would portray theUnited States as an occupying - instead of a liber-ating – force.” Yet another lie. As anyone with eyescould plainly see, American tanks are festoonedwith more red, white and blue than a Fourth of Julyparade. And that particular flag was flying over thePentagon at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.The Defense Department gave it to the Marines inorder to perpetuate Bush’s lie that Iraq wasinvolved in the 9-11 attacks.

Patriotic iconography is a funny thing. I’ve knownthat the Iwo Jima photo was fake for years, but itnonetheless stirs me every time I see it. FirdusSquare’s footage will retain its power long after thelast American learns the truth.

The phony war ends, the phonyliberation begins

IT was a fitting end for a war waged under falsepretexts by a fictional coalition led by an ersatzpresident. Bush never spent much time think-ing about liberation, and even his exploitation

is being done with as little concern as possiblefor the dignity of our new colonial subjects.

What a difference a half-century makes! Ameri-can leaders devoted massive manpower andmoney to plan for the occupation of the countriesthey invaded during World War II. What goodwould it do, they asked, to liberate Europe if crimi-nals and tyrants filled the power vacuum createdby the fleeing Nazis?

Thousands of officers from a newly-establishedCivil Affairs division of the U.S. Army were para-chuted into France on the day after D-Day, whilebullets were still flying, with orders to stop looting,establish law and order and restore essential serv-ices.

GWB is no FDR. Three weeks after the U.S.invaded Iraq, Civil Affairs was still stuck in Kuwait.Rumsfeld’s war plan didn’t allow for protectingmuseums and public buildings from looters, orinnocent Iraqi women from roving gangs ofmarauding rapists. At the same time thousands ofirreplaceable archeological treasures from theNational Museum of Iraq were being sacked bythousands of looters, dozens of American troopswere hanging around the Saddam statue videotap-ing, trying to be quotable. ●

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the Tehran government has given that country’sright-wing mullahs new arguments to labelreformists traitors. Another country is on theverge of imploding.

Meanwhile, Iraq is still coming apart at theseams. More U.S. soldiers are dying in incidentsthat lead the Independent’s Middle East corre-spondent Robert Fisk to say that an armedresistance is emerging as complaints about alack of services and self rule spread. Politically,demography appears to be destiny. ReportsWilliam O. Beeman in the Los Angeles Times:“The war in Iraq has produced an unintendedconsequence — a formidable Shiite Muslim geo-graphical bloc that will dominate politics in theMiddle East for many years. This development isalso creating political and spiritual leaders ofunparalleled international influence.”

British media outlets seem ahead of their

American counterparts in following up on sto-ries of civilian casualties and the lack of discov-eries of weapons of mass destruction. TheGuardian’s Jonathan Steele says Iraqis don’tmake distinctions between those killed defend-ing their country and innocent victims.

He writes: “All over Baghdad on walls ofmosques or outside private homes, pieces ofblack cloth inscribed with yellow lettering bearwitness to the thousands of Iraqis killed in theAmerican-led war. Only if they were officers dothese notices make clear whether the victimswere soldiers or civilians. As far as Iraqis areconcerned all the dead are “martyrs,” whetherthey fell defending their country or were struckwhen missiles or cluster bombs hit their homes.”

On the very day that Tony Blair was staging atriumphant visit to see his “boys in Basra,” the

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AFTER THE WAR: CALL FORA MEDIA CRIMES TRIBUNALLook at sins of commission, omission and blinkered patriotism

y late May, no one in Washington wanted to talk about Iraq any more. Iran had become theenemy du jour as all the familiar tools of media demonization were trotted out as if theywere in some playbook of well-worked but successful scenarios for orchestrating crises. Thesame neo-conservative cast of strategists that gave us the Iraq War seemed to be crankingup a new confrontation with Tehran.

Oddly, some of the Terror War advocates here recommend assisting (i.e., arming) oppositionmovements that the Iranians brand as terrorists. A Pentagon warning that it will seek to “destabilize”

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British press was revealing that Downing Streethad doctored a dossier on Iraq’s weapons pro-gram to make it “sexier.” This is according to asenior British official who claims intelligenceservices were unhappy with the assertion thatSaddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD)were ready for use within 45 minutes, TheGuardian reports.

New information about the war itself is emerg-ing. Pacific News Service reports that the seem-ing successful invasion of Baghdad may havebeen staged. It reports on a story “making head-lines around the world – but not in U.S. media,”and goes on to say: “European newspapers arereporting that a notorious Republican Guardcommander mysteriously left off the U.S. carddeck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis was bribed by theUnited States to ensure the quick fall of Bagh-dad.”

Pacific News Service also says: “A San Fran-cisco Chronicle interview with Iraqi soldiers sug-gests that Saddam himself may have double-crossed his soldiers and made a deal. Saddamrefused to follow a military plan establishedbefore the war to launch the street war to defendBaghdad, despite the repeated statements of theleadership that the Iraqi army would fight fromone house to another to defend the capital.”

The London-based, Saudi-owned newspaperAl-Hayat says: “For the first time, Iraqi soldiershave revealed the details of the fall of the Iraqicapital Baghdad, explaining why the Americantroops entered it without meeting any resist-ance. One of the main reasons is that Qusay, theyoungest son of former Iraqi President SaddamHussein, issued a number of orders during thelast days of the war, which resulted in the deathof the Iraqi Republican Guards’ elite outside the

city. This enraged the military leaders, whodecided to return home calmly, and let the cityfall at the hands of the invading troops.”

Slowly but surely, new information like this istrickling out, calling into question the rationalefor the war and the coverage of its most cele-brated moments. The International Press Insti-tute says that an estimated 3,000 journalists cov-ered the war, making it one of the most reportedevents in history. Many of their stories seem toconfirm the institute’s finding that “propaganda,bias and disinformation were more prevalentthan accurate and relevant information.”

This propaganda offensive was all too success-ful in the way it influenced media coverage andpermitted the Bush Administration and its per-ception managers to dominate the media anddrive all other voices to the margins. Storiescame so fast and furious that there often wasn’ttime for follow-up, clarifications and diverseinterpretation. Breaking News broke up ourattention spans, lurching from one new develop-ment to another.

In its postmortem, the International PressInstitute concludes: “At least 15 journalists died inthe conflict. Two are still missing. Journalistsand media outlets were targeted and attacked;journalists were beaten, harassed, jailed andcensored. The battle over the airwaves and pub-lic opinion was seemingly as important to thebelligerents as the battles over territory and airsuperiority.”

And yet if you were watching the news on TV,rare were the admissions that the news wasmanaged, manicured, sanitized and spun. It allseemed so authoritative even when it wasn’t. Itwas produced to be believable even when it wasn’t.

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As Linda McQuaig wrote in the Toronto Star:“Accordingly, a terrified American public waskept under the mistaken illusion that SaddamHussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction‚’ andwould soon strike America if America didn’tstrike first.”

She indicts the administration for its deception– but also the media for marching in lockstep.“This media docility has allowed the BushAdministration to go largely unchallenged as itadopts the mantle of an imperial presidency,”she writes.

An environment of patriotic correctness in themedia led to more selling than telling on the partof many journalists. When historians began toconstruct the real story of this war, it is safe topredict that they will indict the media along withthe administration.

In the best of all possible worlds, there would bea war crimes investigation into this dreadful war.A media crimes tribunal should accompany it. ●

CPJ RELEASES REPORT ON PALESTINE HOTEL ATTACKNEW YORK, May 27, 2003 – The Committee toProtect Journalists (CPJ) released an investiga-tive report today about the April 8 shelling of thePalestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. forces, whichkilled two journalists and wounded three others.CPJ’s investigation, titled “Permission to Fire,”provides new details suggesting that the attackon the journalists, while not deliberate, wasavoidable. CPJ has learned that Pentagon offi-cials, as well as commanders on the ground inBaghdad, knew that the Palestine Hotel was full

of international journalists and that they wereintent on not hitting it. However, these seniorofficers apparently failed to convey their con-cern to the tank commander who fired on thehotel.

Written by Joel Campagna, CPJ’s senior pro-gram coordinator responsible for the MiddleEast, and research consultant Rhonda Roumani,“Permission to Fire” is based on interviews witha dozen reporters who were at the scene of theattack, including two embedded journalists whomonitored radio traffic before and after theshelling occurred, and journalists who witnessedthe strike from inside the Palestine Hotel.

During the intense fighting that occurred onthe morning of April 8, a U.S. battalion encoun-tered stiff resistance from Iraqi forces. It wasdetermined that an Iraqi forward observer, orspotter, was guiding the attacks against theAmericans, and a frantic search for the spotterbegan. During this search a U.S. tank officerbelieved he had sighted a person with binocularsin the Palestine Hotel, and received permissionto fire on the building a short while later.

Journalists covering the U.S. military com-mand headquarters in Baghdad that morningtold CPJ that commanders there were aware thatthe Palestine Hotel was in the vicinity of thefighting, and that journalists were staying in thehotel. That information, and the location of thehotel, apparently wasn’t relayed to the tank bat-talion until it was too late

Conflicting responses

In the aftermath of the attack, U.S. military offi-cials have given a variety of explanations for theshelling of the Palestine Hotel, mainly alleging

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Terry Lloyd, ITV News, Date unknown, ImanAnasPaul Moran, free-lancer, March 22, 2003,GerdigoKaveh Golestan, free-lancer, April 2, 2003,KifriMichael Kelly, Atlantic Monthly, WashingtonPost, April 3, 2003, outside of BaghdadChristian Liebig, Focus, April 7, 2003, outsideBaghdadJulio Anguita Parrado, El Mundo, April 7,2003, outside BaghdadTareq Ayyoub, Al-Jazeera, April 8, 2003,BaghdadJosé Couso, Telecinco, April 8, 2003,BaghdadTaras Protsyuk, Reuters, April 8, 2003,Baghdad

NON-COMBAT-RELATED DEATHS:Veronica Cabrera, America TV, April 15, about24 miles from BaghdadMario Podestá, free-lance, April 14, about 24miles from BaghdadDavid Bloom, NBC News, April 6, 2003,outside BaghdadGaby Rado, Channel 4 News, Date unknown,Suleimaniya

OTHER MEDIA WORKERS KILLED IN ACTION:Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, translator forBBC, April 6, 2003, northern Iraq

MISSING IN IRAQ:Fred Nerac, French, 43 years oldHussein Othman, Lebanese, 28 years old

Source: Committee To Protect Journalists, April 26, 2003

that U.S. forces came under “significant enemyfire” from the hotel, that there was an Iraqibunker next to the hotel, and that Iraqi fire wascoming from the hotel’s lobby. However, accord-ing to the report, “There is simply no evidence tosupport the official U.S. position that U.S. forceswere returning hostile fire from the PalestineHotel. It conflicts with eyewitness testimonies of

numerous journalists in the hotel.” “Based on the information contained in this

report, CPJ calls afresh on the Pentagon to con-duct a thorough and public investigation into theshelling of the Palestine Hotel. Such a publicaccounting is necessary not only to determinethe cause of this incident, but also to ensure thatsimilar episodes do not occur in the future.” ●

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uring the Iraq war, the guest lists ofmajor nightly newscasts were domi-nated by government and military offi-cials, disproportionately favored pro-

war voices and marginalized dissenters,a new study by FAIR has found.

Starting the day after the invasion of Iraqbegan, the three-week study covered the mostintense weeks of the war (March 20 to April 9,2003). It examined 1,617 on-camera sources instories about Iraq on six major evening news-casts: ABC World News Tonight, CBS EveningNews, NBC Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf BlitzerReports, Fox News Channel’s Special Report withBrit Hume and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.

Some key findings: ■ Official voices dominate: 63 percent of all

sources were current or former governmentemployees. U.S. officials alone accounted formore than half (52 percent) of all sources.

■ Pro-war chorus: Nearly two thirds of allsources – 64 percent – were pro-war.

■ Anti-war voices missing: At a time when 27percent of the U.S. public opposed the war, only10 percent of all sources, and just 3 percent ofU.S. sources, were anti-war. That means the per-centage of Americans opposing the war wasnearly 10 times higher in the real world than on

the news. ■ Sound bytes vs. interviews: When anti-war

guests did make the news, they were mostly rele-gated to man-on-the-street sound bytes. Not asingle show did a sit-down interview with a per-son identified as being against the war.

■ International perspectives scarce: Only 6percent of sources came from countries otherthan the U.S., Britain or Iraq. Citizens of France,Germany and Russia – countries most opposedto war – constituted just 1 percent of all guests.

The six shows’ guest lists had a lot in common,but there were a few differences. Of U.S. sources,NBC Nightly News had the smallest percentageof officials (60 percent) and the largest percent-age of anti-war guests (4 percent), while CBSEvening News had the highest percentage of offi-cials (75 percent) and fewest anti-war voices (asingle sound byte from Michael Moore’s Oscaracceptance speech).

“When independent policy critics and grass-roots voices are shortchanged, democracy isshortchanged,” said FAIR’s Steve Rendall. “Notone show offered proportionate coverage of anti-war sentiment. If media are supposed to fostervigorous, inclusive debate during national crises,it’s clear that during the Iraq war, TV news let thepublic down.” ●

AMPLIFYING OFFICIALS,SQUELCHING DISSENT

S O M E F A C T S F R O M F A I R ( F a i r n e s s a n d A c c u r a c y i n R e p o r t i n g )

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machine while the Republican-dominated FCCgives more power to media moguls. Significantly,one of its arguments for more consolidation inthe industry is that only big companies can coverthe war the way this one was reported.

Our movements have to take this orchestrationand abuse of the media as our challenge. It has tobecome an issue, not just a complaint. PR-ori-ented responses are an important, but not a suf-ficient response. It is no longer enough to justhold press conference, put celebrities on TV orbuy ads that often don’t air. It is the relentlessmedia spin of the story and the content of theprogramming that affects what Americans thinkthey know. Mainstream media coverage helpedprepare America for this war, and it was pro-moted through uncritical reporting.

The media was not just a conduit for adminis-tration positions. It was a communications col-laborator. While they talked endlessly aboutweapons of mass destruction, they functioned asweapons of mass deception.

That is why we have to make this problem anissue. What can be done about it?

First we have to decide that the fight for mediafairness and truth is central to our collectiveagenda. We need to raise money and mobilizepeople to fight the media war as we combatother wars. We need to ask ourselves: How canwe get people to recognize that changing themedia frame is a key to changing policy?

The real problem is ideological, and institu-tional, a function of concentrated media power,news management, censorship and self-censor-ship. News bias is not only about what isreported – but what is left out. It involves the waystories are framed and given one-sided pro-gov-ernment tilts. It has to do with what points ofview are heard, and which are excluded while‘consent is manufactured’ for war. Today, “patri-otic correctness” rules the airwaves.

We need to launch a campaign to press thepress for more openness, diversity of newssources, more skepticism towards governmentclaims, balanced treatment for dissenters. Oneway to change government policy is to get morecoverage and airtime for our views.

f we want better media coverage, then we have to make it happen! It is time for a campaign toPRESS THE PRESS AND MOVE THE MEDIA. Every activist knows that American media hasslanted the coverage of the war, distorted coverage of the anti-war movement by understating itssize and marginalizing its message, is prone to distorting the anti-war message and demonizingthe messenger. Most of us are outraged by the way the size of demonstrations are downplayed

and minimized. As this book makes clear, propaganda was pervasive, and truth was distorted. If youthink it is bad now you haven’t seen anything yet. The Bush administration perfects its media spin

A CALL FOR MEDIA ACTIVISMNow’s the time to press the press and move the media

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This will take a campaign and real organizingincluding protests, critiquing on a daily basis, let-ter writing, petitions, selective pressure onadvertisers, law suits, and a counter media prop-aganda campaign to delegitimize phony news.

It will require insider lobbying, educationalforums, mobilizations of well-known journalistsand activism within the profession.

We need to create some positive goals andfight for our values and visions, not simplyagainst theirs. I think we should develop a Mediaand Democracy Act, an omnibus bill that couldbe a way of showing how all of these issues areconnected. This is not unlike the Contract forAmerica in that it will create one easy to marketand explain package of proposals that can forgea coalition with many stakeholders and con-stituencies. We are far stronger together thanpushing separately. We have to simplify and proj-ect a united message.

At the same time, we need to support alterna-tive independent media and promote it to ourorganizations and e-lists. It is not enough to getan occasional progressive sound-bite on the air.We need to find a way to work together in a sus-tained effort, perhaps even create a united media

appeal to try to create a serious fund for thistype of long term multi-track media work. It willtake a big push. It can be done.

We at Globalvision launched Mediachannel.orgas global network for media change. We startedwith 20 groups. We now have well over a thou-sand. We also started the Globalvision News Net-work (GVnews.net) to offer syndicated coveragefrom 350 news partners to offer a different kindof news from around the world. We want anti-war activists to know about these offerings. Wewant to help syndicate and distribute media con-tent. We have worked with and would like to domore with World Link TV, Free Speech TV, andIndy media projects to cross-promote and crossmarket.

As a media person with a 30-year track record(CNN, ABC, WBCN etc), I know that media com-panies are responsive to pressure when it is sus-tained, sophisticated and well executed. If wedon’t like the news, then we have to do some-thing about it – with a well thought out strategyto press the press and move the media. Let’s dis-cuss it – and do it.

Your ideas are welcome . . . share them withme by writing: dissector@mediachannel.org. ●

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weapons of mass destruction.The term “deception” that critics use to chal-

lenge the coverage is now being liberally appliedto characterize the political leaders who startedthe war. Clare Short, a former member of theBritish Cabinet admitted to Parliament thatthere had been willful inconsistencies, mis-truths, and embellishments in the pro-warspeeches and dossiers offered by Prime Minis-ter Tony Blair. She called it “honorable decep-tion.”

And so, at last, the “d-word,” the idea of delib-erate deception enters mainstream discourse.This leads to another question, of course. If offi-cials – including heads of state – whether ‘honor-ably’ or not, were deceptive, why didn’t themedia catch them in the act, or even try to verifyor debunk their claims. Why were all the half-truths and the self-serving spin that they came

wrapped in reported with little scrutiny? The truth is that most media organizations

refused even to make the effort. After the war,Michael Getler, the Washington Post omsbuds-man asked some questions that should havebeen shouted before the conflict got underway:“The question for news organizations is whetherthese claims should have been reportoriallytested and challenged sufficiently. Were newsorganizations inhibited for fear of seeming unpa-triotic after September llth?”

THE PATRIOTISM POLICE

THERE is no question that there was pressure onthe media to stay in line. Eric Sorenson who ranthe coverage at MSNBC told The New YorkTimes, “Any misstep . . . and you can have the

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AFTER THE WAR: THE SUMMER OF SUMMING UPSoldiers die, questions go unanswered

he war is over but the Iraq debate goes on as summer erupts in the West and heat rises toinsufferable degrees in the deserts of Arabia. By early July 2003, the Iraq story had become

an unending catalogue of deadly incidents claiming the lives of British and U.S. soldiers. Therewere also daily reports of seething unrest and festering anger by a visibly unpurified and oftenenraged Iraqi population. It seems clear that if “we” won the war, we may have already lost

the peace, if there ever was any. Alongside, the reality of the post-war war has been a non-stop paradeof allegations, debates and political recriminations over the status of the still unsuccessful hunt for

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Patriotism Police hunt you down.” Fear of beingso hunted led broadcasters to do some huntingof their own, perhaps to keep any potential crit-ics at bay. In the unbrave world of broadcasting,Sorenson fired Peter Arnett for the crime of say-ing on Iraqi TVwhat he had been saying onMSNBC.

When MSNBC correspondent Ashleigh Ban-field publicly criticized some of the war coverageas “sanitized,” she was “taken to the wood shed”and chastised publicly by her bosses. This intol-erance towards dissent in the ranks sent anunmistakable message to any others who mightraise similar questions. (It is still not clear if hercontract will be renewed.)

Was it just fear and intimidation that led somany in the media to become willing boosters ofthe “coalition of the willing?” Why was theprospect of war constantly projected asinevitable, and then widely accepted, eveneagerly anticipated, as “the next big thing?” Itseems clear that large sectors of the media werenot duped but rather complicit, even enthusias-tic flag-waving partners with the military

THE SEDUCTIONS OF EMBEDDING

THE embedding program helped breach the wallbetween the media and the military, betweensubject and reporter. Few investigated the ori-gins and financing of this program. Thanks toMilwaukee Magazine, we now know why:

“Who paid for this media training, transporta-tion and equipment? Unwittingly, American tax-payers picked up the tab for these and manyother expenses in the military’s embeddedmedia program.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” concedes Maj.

Tim Blair, Pentagon officer in charge of the pro-gram. Another way of looking at it is the embed-ded media, by accepting military handouts attaxpayer expense, betrayed the public’s trustand venerable journalism policies against free-bies.”

WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE

CARTOONIST Aaron McGruder captured the fre-quent flavor of the exchange between studio andjournalist in one of his Boondocks strips. Hisprincipal character, Huey Freeman, is watchingthe tube:

“I’m Aaron Brown, this is CNN. We’re talkingto one of our brave correspondents in Iraq.Hello?

“Hey, Aaron” is the response.“You are so brave to be out there.“Thanks Aaron, I am brave but our troops are

braver.“Yes our troops are brave. But you are very

brave as well. “Yes Aaron, there is a lot of bravery here.”“There sure is a lot of Bravery – IN YOU, my

friend.“ . . . And that’s it. From Iraq, back to you

Aaron.”This invented exchange captures a psychic

subtext of self-promotion and mission identifica-tion. For many covering the war, the task clearlyhad a personal dimension, the sense journalistscrave of doing something important, and beingpart of history. In years past, this type of satis-faction came from crusading, muckraking,‘speaking truth to power.’ Today, it seems tocome from serving power and its many servants.

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A MILITARY VIEW

EVEN experienced military people were turnedoff by all the media pandering. Writing in ArmyTimes, Gulf War 1 veteran Ralf W. Zimmermanwrote:

“Often contradictory news coverage of our waron terror has made me a bit suspicious of thecontrol the Pentagon and other governmentagencies are exercising over what can and can’tbe reported. Without access to the Internet(despite all its flaws) and other reliable westernmedia sources, I’m afraid I’d have a ratherincomplete picture of what is really shaping upin the world around us.

“American war reporting seems to be gov-erned by extremes, especially on television. Weget either a sketchy tabloid report or the Penta-gon’s edited party line. Both are readily availableand mainly strive to entertain the public or towhip up superficial patriotism.”

Many media organizations became an adjunct,to the selling of the war for political and eco-nomic reasons as well.

Why? There were three principal reasons:1. Institutional changes in our media system.2. A shift in our media culture.3. A new sophistication by the military and

government in the art of news management.

MEDIA SYSTEM CHANGE

THE American media system today is totally cor-porate dominated, market driven and hence, atits core, conservative in the sense that it rarelyrocks the boat or challenges the status quo. It ismore consolidated and, more paradoxically, frag-

mented than ever. Diverse in appearance, ittends towards uniformity in content and con-formity in method. Most news outlets act morealike even as they seem more different throughpositioning and “branding.”

All fight for market share and “mind share.”All target the same demographics, covet thesame advertisers, and offer similarly formattedand formularized programming. Infotainmenthas been dominant for 20 years on television. Asentertainment companies took over news organ-izations, showbiz techniques were fused intonewsbiz presentation style.

This institutional dimension to the problemhas been overlooked by most critics.

The rise of Fox News has not changed thisdynamic, even if it has added more polarizationand patriotic correctness to the television spec-trum. Studies have shown that whenever a broad-caster seems to be winning the constant race forratings and revenues, others clone their look andadapt their attitude. Fox built its format on theexperience of right-wing talk radio, adding person-ality, harder edge politics, and aggressive postur-ing to a news business known for centrism andblandness. As the new kid on the block, it playedthe patriotic card by hitching its wagon to a popu-lar president who understood how to play to fearand insecurity while wrapping himself in the red,white and blue to boost approval ratings.

By positioning itself as an alternative and anti-dote to a non-existent liberal media, it appealedto a hard core audience and those estranged bymainstream middle-of-the-road news. It servedas the media shock troops for the Bush waroffensive often framing news in a pro-adminis-tration direction while insisting on its fairnessand balance.

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Media outlets which long ago abandoned anysense of serving as the nation’s conscience orsocial mission were blindsided by Fox’s bullyingapproach and rushed to emulate it. It was easyfor Fox, which claimed to believe in something toscore points against outlets which believed innothing, save their bottom line.

That fact that most had abandoned any realcommitment to investigative reporting or inter-pretive journalism, not to mention in-depth any-thing, made it far easier for the Administrationto get its views over. By substituted simplistic slo-gans for substantive policies, the Bush mediateam was bold and convinced of the righteous-ness of their cause. Mainstream outlets, whichtend to mirror and reflect dominant ideas, aswell as reinforce them, was well-suited as atransmission belt. When major opinion leadersline up behind a policy, the media falls in line.

MEDIA CULTURE SHIFT

IN a desperate bid for younger viewers, most ofthe networks had already pushed out their gray-haired eminences. The older, more experienced,journalists with commitments to journalistic tra-ditions were disposable. Inside news organiza-tions, the “thinkers” were out; the marketerswere in. Images became information. Perceptiontrumped reality.

Soon newscasts became faster – “more news inless time” – to quote a claim of a station in NewYork. World news was cut way back as symbol-ized by a Fox feature called “The world in aMinute.” CNN followed shamelessly with the“Global Minute.” The proliferation of digitalchannels enabled CNN to offer one “brand” ofnews-lite in the US and another more substantial

and more international newscast for foreignviewers.

Inside the networks, the media culture hadshifted. The premium now was on younger hip-per anchors, happy talk and dumbing down bydesign. As economic hard times rocked themedia business, insecurity spread. Soon therewere more lowest common denominator shows –anything to bring viewers into the tent.

Staffers understood that you got along bygoing along and not standing out for the wrongreasons. During World War II, it was said thatloose lips sunk ships. Today, the right botoxedlips raise media ships. Dissenting documentariesand hard-nosed investigators became a thing ofthe past in the age of “you news” and constantentertainment updates.

In what some scholars call a “post journalismera,” media institutions had become experts atengineering news as a spectacle with one storydominating all others, with more money spenton promos and graphics than programs. Sensa-tionalism was in along with tabloid formats.Soon, there was the year of O.J. Simpson trialsfollowed by two years of Monica news and theClinton scandal. That gave way to the missingintern story and a summer of shark attacks.

Until the day that changed everything.

AND ALONG CAME 9/11

AFTER September ll, media companies saw theirrole as reassuring an anxious public and playingto the sense of patriotism that always surfaces ata time of national crisis. They gave the adminis-tration a pass when it came to serious criticism.A president who one day was being dismissed asa global village idiot was transformed into a

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statesman overnight.9/11 provided the opening for rolling out a pre-

packaged and orchestrated strategy of deceptionand demagoguery, which would be amplified onthe airwaves, endlessly recycled and repeated.

When the decision to go to war was made, inearly September 2002, the media offensivebegan. The country was prepared for the“inevitable” in a rollout that resembled a prod-uct launch. Speech after speech hit the samethemes positioning a strategy of aggression intoa posture of defense and victimization. Thealarmist note was enunciated by the President inCincinatti on Oct. 7, 2002, “The Iraqi dictatormust not be permitted to threaten America andthe world with horrible poisons and diseases andgases and atomic weapons.”

Was America and the world at large ever sothreatened? Were there horrible poisons, anddiseases and gases and atomic weapons justwaiting to be deployed? Were there otherweapons of mass destruction being hidden forlater use? Was there a link between SaddamHussein’s secular regime and the 9/11 Islamicjihad junkies presumably following orders fromOsama bin Laden?

GOVERNMENT MEDIA MANAGEMENT

AS preparations for a war with Iraq moved up onthe Administration’s agenda, plans were made tosell the story. Journalists were easy prey formedia savvy ideologues in Washington who hadperfected a strategy of perception management,and knew how to play the media as an orchestraconductor directs different instruments.

The Administration understood how to get itsmessage out and did so relentlessly. Corporate

PR techniques were implanted early on with theIraq war “rolled out’ like a product with a multi-tiered campaign to sell the policy to the publicthrough the media. Sheldon Rampton and JohnStaunber of PR Watch tell this story in detail in anew book on “the uses of propaganda in Bush’sWar on Iraq.” Like this one, it is about weaponsof mass deception; only their emphasis is on thePR campaign and media management tech-niques used by the Administration and the Pen-tagon through a network of PR firms, thinktanks, lobbying groups, disinformation special-ists military operators and international market-ing efforts. Among their findings:

“ ● Top Bush officials advocated the invasion ofIraq even before he took office, but waited untilSeptember 2002 to inform the public, throughwhat the White House termed a “productlaunch.”

“ ● White House officials used repetition andmisinformation – the “big lie” tactic – to createthe false impression that Iraq was behind theSeptember 11th terrorist attacks . . .

“ ● Forged documents were used to “prove”that Iraq possessed huge stockpiles of bannedweapons.

“ ● A secretive PR firm working for the Penta-gon helped create the Iraqi National Congress(INC), which became one of the driving forcesbehind the decision to go to war.”

From a war fighting perspective, media is nowviewed as a target for IO – Information Opera-tions – a key component of what military peoplecall Psy-ops. “Information is the currency of vic-tory,” says one military manual. Winning themedia war is as important as winning on thebattlefield.

And, hence, the deployment of a well-trained

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network of advocates, lobbyists, experts, retiredmilitary and intelligence officers, and covertoperators to work the media on the inside andout. The news army had to be managed lest it go“off message”. Media messages were framed onthe basis of polling and research. They were fieldtested with focus groups. Presidential speechesand other administration utterances were cali-brated and coordinated for maximum effect.

A variety of pundits were placed on TV pro-grams to reiterate and repeat the same message,that Saddam is a threat, a menace, and an evil-doer. His weapons of mass destruction becametheir boogie man. Mere assertions wereaccepted as evidence. In the absence of anequally visible coherent counter-narrative, thisgovernment-promoted line became the domi-nant media line. Every tactic was used – selectiveleaks, authoritative assertion, references tointelligence documents that could be shown andin some instances were faked, infiltration, culti-vation, co-optation, embedding and denigration.

And oddly enough, this strategy of deceptionwas justified in terms of the need to challengedeception by the other side. Pentagon mediachief Torie Clarke told a panel after the war: “Iknew with great certainty if we went to war, theIraqi regime would be doing some terrible thingsand would be incredibly masterful with the liesand the deception. And I could stand up there atthat podium and Secretary Rumsfeld could standup there and say very truthfully the Iraqi regimeis putting its soldiers in civilian clothing so theycan ambush our soldiers. Some people wouldbelieve us and some people wouldn’t. But we hadhundreds and hundreds of credible, independentjournalists saying the Iraqi regime is puttingtheir soldiers in civilian clothing.”

“YOU DID WELL”

WHEN the President said, you are either with usor against us, he had the media in mind as well.He ignored the protesters and rolled over thedoubters. And his administration appreciatedthe outcome. Dick Cheney, never a media fave,told the annual dinner of the American Radioand Television Correspondents Association “Youdid well -– you have my thanks.”

Is it any wonder that so many journalists inthis country look to non-Americans like theyhave sold out and sold in? Journalists in othercountries are increasingly putting down theirAmerican counterparts. In a recent article,Justin Webb, who covers Washington for theBBC, lorded it over his U.S.-based colleagues,asking: “Are American journalists simply spine-less? Do they toe the line because they love thePresident? Or because their employers do?”

There is no denying that there is the stench ofobedience and deference among far too manymedia people. Legends in business are noticing itas well.

Here’s Newsday’s Jimmy Breslin, an iconamong newspaper columnists, who now says,“news reporters go about the government likegardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding whenone of the owners shows up. You only have to lookat a White House news conference to see howthey aggressively pursue your right to know.

“The newspeople stand when the presidentcomes into the room. They really do. They don’tsit until he tells them to. You tell them a lie andthey say, ‘Sir.’ . . . Newspeople like to be called‘journalists’ and write of ‘the need to protectsources.’ They don’t have any. . . . The newspeo-ple are comfortable with being known as the

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“media.” That is a dangerous word; all evil risesaround those afflicted with it.”

Please, Jimmy, don’t just blame the reporters.They don’t assign themselves stories. They don’tedit their work or decide how much time orspace to allocate for it. They work in an industry.They are paid to do a job, and disciplined whenthey stray from the appointed path. Being a teamplayer is rewarded; being a troublemaker is not.

THE MASTER NARRATIVE

IT is fair to ask which major media companieshad the gumption or the guts to deviate from theofficial story and “master narrative” adoptedwith such ease on so many seemingly competi-tive outlets. It is hard to name many reporterswho challenged the hourly and daily onslaughtof rah-rah newspeak built around constant brief-ings, endless “breaking news” bulletins and uttercontempt for critics?

Could there be another explanation for thisculture of compliance? Could the economic inter-ests of the media cartels have had something todo with it? Especially at a time when economi-cally challenged media companies had lucrativebusiness pending before the FCC, a governmentbody headed by the son of the Secretary of State,a high profile salesmen for the war policy.

Earlier in this book, I argue that there was a con-nection between war coverage and FCC delibera-tions. For a long time, I felt very alone in suggest-ing such a link, since few other media writersexplored the relationship. But now, New York Mag-azine’s Michael Wolff, who covered the CENTCOMbriefings in Doha, is making me feel like I am notcrazy of conspiratorial to think this way.

“It’s important to understand how much this

FCC ruling means to these companies,” hewrites. “News (especially old-fashioned headlinenews) is a sick business, if not a dying game. Fornewspaper companies, the goal is to get out ofthe newspaper business and into the televisionbusiness (under the old rules, it’s a no-no to ownnewspapers and television stations in the samemarket). For networks with big news operations,the goal is to buy more stations, which is wherethe real cash flows from. The whole point here isto move away from news, to downgrade it, toamortize it, to minimize it . . .

“All right then. The media knows what it wants,and the media knows what the Bush peoplewant. So is it a conspiracy? Is that what I’m say-ing? That the media – acting in concert – took adive on the war for the sake of getting animproved position with regard to the ownershiprules? Certainly, every big media company was acheerleader, as gullible and as empty-headed-oras accommodating-on the subject of WMDs as,well, Saddam himself. But conspiracy wouldn’tquite be the right word.

“Negotiation, however, would be the right one.. . . The interesting thing is that in most news-rooms, you would find lots of agreement as tothis view of how businessmen and politicians getthe things they want. A general acceptance ofthe realities of ass-kissing, if not a higher level ofcorruption”

The sad truth is that the truths that are nowtrickling out were known before the war began.There was no secret about the Administrationwas up to. On September ll, 2001, Bill Kristol, edi-tor of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, andthe founder of the Project for a New AmericanCentury, the lobby group that mapped a the planfor unilateral preemptive intervention that the

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Bush Administration has followed since, appearedin the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Herevealed that the Administration was planning tolink Saddam Hussein to Osama Bin Laden.

The cat was out of the bag. Others reportedDick Cheney’s call for war on Iraq on that day. Itwas not classified. None of it was. None of ourmedia wanted to say that the emperor had noclothes, if just possibly, just plausibly, and paren-thetically, he did.

Taking on this naked ‘Emperor’ also meantbeing willing to incur the wrath of what the headof MSNBC called the “patriotism police,” aidedand abetted by an ascendant Fox News Channelwhich smartly exploited the political environ-ment that the Bush Administration cultivated.

THE MEDIA FAILURE

AN examination of the sordid story of media cov-erage of this war reveals a media failure as bla-tant and troubling as the record of failures bythe Administration in Iraq and the war on terror.

Less than a year after Bush’s exaggerated andalarmist proclamation in Ohio, and just a fewmonths after the war in Iraq was said to end,fresh doubts about the reasons for the war arebeing raised by pundits, members of Congressand the “we-told-you-so” activists of the largestanti-war movement in history.

No one is still clear on the real agenda for thewar. Was it oil, power, or global imperial ambi-tion? Was it regime change or region change?Was it to satisfy the macho needs of unhappywhite males who found new role models inBush’s new action army, as writer NormanMailer opines. Or was there a higher powerinvolved, some divine purpose as suggested by

the President himself, who said in June, 2003while visiting the Holy Land that “God instructedme to strike at Saddam.”

“You can’t put it plainer than that” Chris Floydcommented in The Moscow Times, “The wholechaotic rigmarole of Security Council votes andUN inspections and congressional approval andColin Powell’s whizbang Powerpoint displays of“proof” and Bush’s own tearful prayers for“peace” – it was all a sham, a meaningless exer-cise. “No votes, no inspections, no proof or lackof proof – in fact, no earthly reason whatsoever –could have stopped Bush’s aggressive war onIraq. It was God’s unalterable will: the Lord ofHosts gave a direct order for George W. Bush to“strike at Saddam.”

A TIME FOR REASSESSMENT

COLORFUL polemic aside, these issues will bedebated for years to come. Already the journal-ism reviews and op-ed columnists are debatingthe role the media played-or refused to play. Thisis a time for reassessment.

One thing is certain: that the war coverage ofthe US invasion of Iraq is unlikely to win the kindof praise that Supreme Court Justice Hugo Blackheaped on major media outlets in the aftermathof the Pentagon Papers case. “In my view, farfrom deserving condemnation for their coura-geous reporting, The New York Times, theWashington Post, and other newspapers shouldbe commended for serving the purpose that theFounding Fathers saw so clearly, “ he wrote.

“In revealing the workings of government thatled to the Vietnam War, the newspapers noblydid precisely that which the Founders hoped andtrusted they would do.” ●

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diers can eventually be withdrawn. India isbeing promised aid concessions and other good-ies for sending its boys to take the heat. A debatein Japan’s Parliament erupted into fisticuffswhen that member of the “coalition” was pres-sured to do its duty by sending a few contin-gents, for humanitarian duty of course. To thedegree possible, Washington is “privatizing” thewar by contracting out to specialized companiesto provide support services and even security.

Propaganda expert Paul de Rooij predicted,after analyzing discrepancies in the body countsand the downplaying of casualties, “All told,expect the war in Iraq to become like the wars inOrwell’s l984; these were only used to stoke jin-goism and rile the crowd and would occasionallyyield a glimpse of a captured enemy in a cage ondisplay. Every other facet of those wars was notreported on. In Iraq, soon, too, reporting on thedaily carnage will be a thing of the past – warswill be something occurring far away, and theplight of the mercenaries fighting them will not

be something the home crowd will have to knowanything about.”

THE GREAT SADDAM HUNT

THE big news now seems to have been inspiredby Cowboy and Indian movies and tales of theold West when posses saddled up to catch thebad guys. Saddam Hussein is the prey thismonth just as Osama bin Laden had been in anearlier unresolved war in Afghanistan not thatlong ago. His sons were captured and slaugh-tered in what sounded like a reprise of Holly-wood’s “Shootout at the OK Corral.”

A U.S. government which chastised news out-lets for running pictures it didn’t like, and hadcondemned Al Jazeera for transmitting them andsome U.S. outlets for carrying them, was soonhawking the most grotesque images of their kill.(Left out of the picture was the body of the 14 yearold boy slain with them as well as a bodyguard.)

N E W Y O R K , A U G U S T 2 , 2 0 0 3

MANHUNTS AND MEDIA MYOPIAMedia debates as body count mounts

t is now early August. The war in Iraq has a new face and a continuing stream of casualties. Thequagmire talked about during the war was evidently premature then. It seems undeniable now.The death toll of U.S. soldiers killed in the post-war grows daily with fresh sniping incidents thathave finally been acknowledged officially as a form of guerilla war. By mid-summer, media criticswere complaining that the Pentagon was underreporting its dead and wounded as well as the

skyrocketing costs of a volatile and insecure occupation. The U.S. military response was to try to cajole other countries to dispatch troops so that U.S. sol-

To most of the world, this PR maneuver back-fired, as PR columnist Mark Borkowski noted inthe Guardian on August 1st, “Since this is war,this is PR and the Uday and Qusay photographincident, planned as a surgical media strike, hasturned mucky (both in media and military terms)because no one had the sense to think throughthe PR implications properly. It’s been a total PRdisaster.”

Meanwhile a non-stop manhunt for Saddambegan to feel like the earlier tracking of Osamabin Laden. Like the elusive caliph of Al Qaeda,the on-the-run Iraqi leader began releasing mes-sages to rally his supporters and taunt his pur-suers. In the Arab world, SH, was, like OBL,becoming an icon of resistance. News anchorsfollowed the “action” closely with video of sol-diers breaking into Iraqi homes in hot pursuit.They began reassuring viewers that it was only amatter of hours, and then of days.

It all began to take on a soap opera-ish quality.Sometimes it felt like reality TV shows such asCOPS with endless chase sequences. But bear inmind, in the TV industry at least, much of thereality programming is fabricated. Years ago aTV syndicator rejected a TV series I was co-pro-ducing on real world human rights issuesbecause “we only do reality TV.”

By the time you read this, Saddam have left thematerial realm and entered into the mythic pan-theon of martyrs. Long time anti-war activistTom Hayden saw the end coming in time for thenext commercial break, writing, “To judge fromthe excited build-up, Saddam Hussein will bekilled very soon. Once his location is identified,the spectacle of his death can soon be orches-trated. To have the greatest impact, perhaps itwill be televised in all time zones on a weekday,

avoiding the competition of weekend sports.There must be burnt offerings and a triumphalrevelation of the corpse. For an insecure Amer-ica, this killing will be a “ritual of blood,” a “com-pact of fellowship” – terms used by West Indiansociologist Orlando Patterson in the context ofritual lynchings in the Old South.”

A BAD MEMORY,NOT A RIGHTEOUS MISSION

AS the dog days of August grew nearer, the Iraqwar was on its way to becoming thought of as abad memory, not a righteous mission. Whatmedia focus there was shifted to battlegroundscloser to home, to the lies and distortions in thealarmist claims that were used to stoke the war.

In Britain, Tony Blair was holding off mountingskepticism in a scandal that included the dra-matic death of a high level weapons expert whohad been fingered as the source of BBC reportsthat the government had “sexed up” its dossierwarning that the Iraqis could hurl Weapons ofMass Destruction at its enemies within 45 min-utes.

Not only was the claim later debunked as pre-posterous but also the weapons themselves hadnot been found. Soon the government was shift-ing attention away from its actions to challengingthe BBC. A government deception had triggereda media controversy.

In the U.S., it was 16 words in a presidentialspeech attributed to British intelligence claimingthat the African country of Niger had sent ura-nium to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program.Even though the claim had been thoroughlyinvestigated and found to be based on forgeriesprior to the President citing this “evidence” in a

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State of the Union address, it was used anyway. Amedia storm ensued only to be doused when thepresident “accepted responsibility” and promptlywent on vacation. Throughout this controversy,his supporters in the press and the Congresswere arguing that the weapons issue was neverall that important. Thomas Friedman in The NewYork Times was now scolding the Administrationfor raising the weapons issue in the first placesince Iraq, in his view, was always a “war ofchoice,” not necessity. The rationales began toshift like sand in the Arabian Desert.

THE FCC BACKGROUND BECOMES THE FOREGROUND

DURING the war, media companies were lobby-ing the FCC for regulatory concessions while atthe same time downplaying and barely coveringthe FCC issue. Yet, thanks to brilliant grass rootsorganizing, the issue mushroomed in impor-tance. More than a million people wrote the FCCor their legislators opposing pro-industry rulechanges voted June 2. This is unprecedented.Conservative and liberal groups made commoncause. The result: Congress voted 400-21 againstthe Bush Administration policy, prompting athreat of a veto.

Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtzwas startled by the response. “Nobody muchlikes Big Media these days,” he wrote. “But whowoulda thunk that it would become a hot politi-cal issue? Not me … this issue has struck somekind of nerve.”

New York Magazine’s Michael Wolff went fur-ther in suggesting that there is a wave of revul-sion building against the media itself, as well asthe FCC. He told me in an interview: “We’re all

media consumers. It stinks and nobody’s happy.Nobody can find what they want. Nobody ispleased … there are so many people who workin the media business and those people are alsosaying this stinks. These companies that wework for don’t work anymore. They’re dysfunc-tional because they’re too large and now youwant to make them bigger?”

The public has yet to turn against the mediafor its propagandistic coverage but a wave ofscrutiny had finally begun. At last, the coverageof the wars seemed to be striking a nerve, too,within parts of the media world.

In England, the BBC coverage of the Blair gov-ernment’s dossier justifying the war becameembroiled in controversy with top governmentofficials and members of Parliament denouncingits reporting. When the BBC’s principal sourceof information, weapons expert David Kelly com-mitted suicide under intense pressure from thegovernment, the story dominated the headlines.

In retaliation, there were calls by Tony Blair’ssupporters for regulatory supervision of the BBCby a new FCC-type commission called OFCOM.While the Beeb defended its impartiality, a CardiffUniversity study on its war coverage was releaseddocumenting not an anti-war bias but a pro-gov-ernment tilt in much of its coverage.

JOURNALISTS DEBATE

JOURNALISTS on both sides of the Atlanticbegan debating the coverage and speaking out. Icovered two conferences dealing with the issuesraised in this book. One in England was spon-sored by Reporting The World. Another, in NewYork, was co-sponsored by The Guardian andNew York Magazine.

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Reporting the World’s roundtable was hostedby journalist Anabel McGoldrick who posedimportant issues about the role of the media incovering the conflict:

“ENABLING DEBATE – Did we do a good jobof equipping readers and audiences to form theirown views on the merits – or otherwise – ofattacking Iraq?

“MISSING PERSPECTIVES – What about thealternatives to war – non-violent ways of bring-ing about regime change? What other evidencewas there about Iraq’s weapons programmes?

“WHY – Why did we go to war? Was it overweapons of mass destruction? Removing Sad-dam? Oil? To help establish a ‘New AmericanCentury’ by force of arms?

“CONTEXT – How effective were the embeds?Did we risk losing sight of the bigger picture?Did they distract us from real fighting and realcasualties, such as the bombardment of theRepublican Guard positions around Baghdad?

“MISINFORMATION – Were facts ‘created’ inorder to be reported? What really happened toPrivate Jessica Lynch; how many times did wehear that Umm Qasr had fallen or that there wasan uprising in Basra? And was there anythingstaged about the fall of the Saddam statue inBaghdad?

“SECURITY – Is the world now a safer or moredangerous place? Is Iraq now becoming a quag-mire? Was Iraq liberated or did the war leave itas a chaotic, seething hotbed of resentment?How is it affecting the war on terrorism?”

I was asked to have a say in the very headycompany of newspaper editors and the head ofnews for the BBC. Happily, there is a transcript ofmy intervention to draw on so I can get it right:

“The war that you saw in Europe, the war that

people saw in the Middle East and the war thatwe saw in America were different wars with dif-ferent focus and a different emphasis. And Ibelieve that CNN’s decision to offer two distinctnewsgathering services, and I speak as a formerCNN producer by the way, I believe that wasbecause Chris Cramer and Rita Golden and theirpeople knew that the rest of the world would notaccept the jingoistic news coverage that wasbeing fed to people in the United States and theywere right to take pride in what they did.

“But I challenge this notion that was very com-mon in the top media executives, that we can’tget ahead of our audience, the audience wasgung-ho for the war, therefore we have to givethe audience what it wants and I think in doingso there was an abdication of journalistic respon-sibility.”

TWO NATIONS, TWO WORLDVIEWS

THE New York conference showcased the differ-ences between British media discourse and ourown. It was clear that the journalists from Lon-don were far more outspoken and adversarialthan their American counterparts.

Gary Younge of The Guardian noted that theU.K. media had covered Northern Ireland andFrench media had covered Algeria in much thesame way that the U.S. media covered Iraq. Buthe was also blistering in his assessment of U.S.media telling me: “… Just a half an hour of anykind of news TV show or reading the papers,you’re wondering, you think you’ve lost half ofthe paper. Where’s the bit where you criticize,where you analyze, where you go into somedepth and rip this thing apart?”

New York Magazine’s Michael Wolff chal-

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lenged the journalists present to think about thedegree that the war coverage was self-referen-tial, media framed with journalists at its center.Was it, he wondered, “all about us?” He alsoasked if the U.S. media had sold out? Many of thepositions in the debate were predictable, but atleast the issue was raised. The U.S. media cover-age was being challenged before a media audi-ence.

“When the President comes into the room,American journalists stand erect with theirbacks rigid, British journalists stay slouched intheir chairs,” the New Statesman’s JohnKampfner said. “American journalists regard thepeople in authority as good men who shouldhave the benefit of the doubt. In Britain, we workon the assumption that they need to prove to usthat we should believe them.”

The New York Observer’s Phillip Weisspraised the British journalists for speaking out:“However spineless or greasy he has seemed tobe, this is Tony Blair’s gift to America: The Eng-lish have provided us with a left wing, a con-science wing that must be taken into account.This conscience wing is now leading the UnitedStates on the Middle East peace plans, and lead-ing the American press in the furore – soon tobecome a furor, one hopes – over the manipula-tion of intelligence preceding the war.

“At the same time, the war has made the Amer-ican press docile and flaccid. Imagine that BillHemmer, the anchor of a leading network, CNN,could go before the New School audience anddefend the network’s policy of vetting its arm-chair generals through the Pentagon by sayingthat the network was only trying to check outtheir “credentials.” “We were trying to makesure they were worth their weight,” he said. And

he’s proud of that.”

EMBEDS SENT “TO COUNTER LEFTIST PROPAGANDA?”

EMBEDDED journalists insisted for the most partthat their work was not censored although sev-eral acknowledged that they did not show us thewhole war. John Danvan of ABC’s Nightlineadmitted that Iraqi voices were rarely heard andthat the picture overall was sanitized. He toldme: “I’ve covered enough wars to be able to saythis that I, believe me, have never shown theviewer what it’s really like; how horrible war is.And partly you can’t show it, because you nevercan capture it, and partly because the cameradoes catch it but we can’t show it. There’s certainclose ups, blood spatters and dead children thatwe don’t show because it violates certain longterm practices, ‘Don’t put gore on television’.And it’s a very tough issue. I only say to friendswho see that pictures, ‘it was just a lot worsethan that’. I’m not sure they could take it. I don’tknow.”

While the Embeds defended their coveragewhile admitting its limits, war supporters on theright saw the embedded journalists in a morepolitical light. Tom Kilgannon of the right-wingFreedom Alliance contended that there was areason the Pentagon permitted embeds in thefirst place, and it was not to provide impartialcoverage. “The Pentagon sent hundreds ofimbedded (sic) reporters to Iraq,” he said, “toshow America the heroic nature of the men andwomen in uniform, and counter decades of leftistpropaganda about the U.S. military.” Eventhough reporters would hate to be characterizedas counter propagandist, that is how many of the

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war’s most fervid backers saw them.

SOUND BITES OVER TOKYO

AND so, at long last, months after the war wasprematurely deemed over, the media role wasbeing reconsidered. Many top editors and someTV correspondents turned up. But there wasonly one TV news executive present and, evenmore disturbing, no U.S. TV outlets there.

This debate has still not been exposed to thepublic at large.

I was covering the conference for a documen-tary Globalvision is trying to make about theissues raised in this book. As of now, we have nofunding and no certainty that we can finish thefilm or get it in the air in the television environ-ment that manufactured the coverage I havebeen dissecting. As those of you who have readthis whole shameful story know, as Susan L. Car-

ruthers of the University of Wales put it in herbook length study, The Media At War (2000).

She writes: "Following the lead of the state,mass media are frequently more willing accom-plices in war time propaganda than they care toadmit, and may even play a significant role ininstigating conflict."

Is there air time in our vast universe of somany TV channel to tell this "Weapons of MassDeception" story,? And if there is, can we findthe funding to make the film and get it seen?Stay tuned

I reported earlier that no TV teams came todocument the conference raising these issue ofthe media and the Iraq War, I was wrong. Therewas one. From the other side of the world.Japan's NHK had a camera and producer pres-ent. I know because at least they interviewed me.

If nothing else, I may get my fifteen seconds offame in Tokyo. ●

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your TV programs, See It Now, Harvest OfShame and even Person To Person. (Yes, I know,you did celebrity interviews, too, and evenchanged your name from the awkward EgburtRoscoe Murrow to the more impressive EdwardR. Murrow.)

In elementary school, I even memorized one ofyour “I Can Hear It Now” 78-rpm records thatcrisply recapped recent history with all thesounds that made it special. Your work shapedmy idea of what a journalist should be. Your gutsin taking on Joe McCarthy later showed me thata reporter could stand up for truth.

You used to talk about “illuminating” issues,not just reporting them.

Anyway, here we are in 2003. You have beenlong gone, and I am trying to honor your mem-ory by pounding away at what’s happened tomedia institutions that “back in the day” showedsuch great promise. I don’t want to overdo the“golden age” of TV bit, but clearly this profes-sion has gone downhill, as news became anindustry. Despite all the channels and choices,there are few voices today as commanding asyours. The only illumination these days in TV

studios comes from the light bulbs. When I was at your old school library, I dipped

into the archives and discovered a set of lettersyou wrote in lavish penmanship to a girl namedHermine Duthie who you were enticing but notcommitting to. You seemed to love her physicalattentiveness but were keeping her at a distancewith exaggerated tales of perpetual busyness.That gave me the sense that even a media iconcould be a real and flawed person like the rest ofus.

I would have loved to get your reaction to theway the Iraq war was covered. Many rememberyou, Ed, as the best dressed daddy of all war cor-respondents covering what was then the motherof all bombings, the blitz in London. You werethe quintessential war reporter we all looked upto, standing there in well-tailored suits, coolunder fire, microphone in hand, painting visualpictures with sound.

“This is London,” was your signature. Memo-rable language reportedly dictated to a secre-tary, but rarely written down, was your method.You learned how to speak conversationally in

Dear Ed:I got the idea of writing to you after visiting the Edward Murrow School of Communication out in thewheatfields of Washington State. I had come to debate the coverage of the Iraq war with a group ofmainstream journalists, who surprised me by how they were willing to be candid outside their insti-tutional settings.

While I was out there I tried to commune with your spirit. You have never died for me because itwas your work that got me into the media racket in the first place. It was as a kid that I was awed by

A LETTER TO EDWARD R. MURROW

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speech class. Your first concern was the humanstory, the suffering people, and the traumatizedcity. According to Gerald Nachman’s “Raised onRadio,” Murrow “picked up his basic speech pat-terns from his Quaker mother, who often spokein inverted phrases like ‘This I believe.’ ” Manydon’t recall that you were dispatched to Londonas CBS’s “director of talks,” not of news.

I can hear it now. “Tonight, as on every other night, the rooftop

watchers are peering out across the fantastic for-est of London’s chimney pots. The anti-aircraftgunners stand ready.

“I have been walking tonight – there is a fullmoon, and the dirty-gray buildings appear white.The stars, the empty windows, are hidden. It’s abeautiful and lonesome city where men andwomen and children are trying to snatch a fewhours of sleep underground.”

It was only years later that I learned most ofthose memorable talks/reports were not deliv-ered live but instead carefully crafted and, then,only broadcast three days after the incidentsthey reported on. Some had been censored; oth-ers were self-censored, clearly reflecting the war“message” and propaganda of those times.

There were, for example, no reports I know ofin the early years about the then unfolding holo-caust that many news organizations includingthe BBC knew about but did not broadcast forfear of confusing war goals. Some British leadersbelieved that the English people (perhaps likethemselves) were anti-Semitic and would notfight if the war were pictured as a battle to savethe Jews. So they muzzled the biggest crime ofthe century by decree. The truth came out muchlater, sadly, after the fact, after the destruction ofa people.

Fortunately, Ed, your moving reports from thedeath camp at Buchenwald helped drive the hor-ror home with its reference to “bodies stackedup like cordwood.”

Your broadcasts are still listened to in journal-ism classes, still revered. How much of the mediacoverage of the Iraq War will ever be regardedthat way? Alas, so much of what we producetoday is forgettable, disposable, even embarrass-ing. Sometimes it is thought of as “product” to berecycled into retrospectives or used as archivalmaterial as today’s breaking news becomes gristfor tomorrow’s History Channel specials.

The pressures journalists felt in covering thiswar were not new. Ed, you experienced themyourself. A profile I found on the Internetexplained the internal tensions that existedwithin your own beloved CBS between you, thejournalist, and your bosses.

Quote: “ . . . though he and William Paley, headof CBS, were soulmates during the war, fightinga common enemy, that closeness was becomingstrained. Paley felt he had to compromise withthe government, the sponsors. Murrow felt, atfirst, that broadcast news could not suffer, shouldnot be compromised. It would eventually take itstoll on Murrow as he tried to straddle bothworlds.”

What you had then is what so many of today’sself-styled experts and oh, so authoritative news-casters lack today – a sense of humility thatadmits that none of us are know-it-alls. It is astance that concedes that today’s news is just afirst and often flawed draft of a history still to bewritten. You knew that Ed, and you said it plain:“Just because the microphone in front of youamplifies your voice around the world is no rea-son to think we have any more wisdom than we

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had when our voices could reach only from oneend of the bar to the other.”

A final relevant recollection comes from one ofyour producers, Joe Wershba, who wrote a bookabout your work and times. He tells of a momentwhen many at CBS had second thoughts aboutgoing after McCarthy’s Red Hunt. They wantedto kill the broadcast. You observed, as you lis-tened but did not bow to the fears of your col-leagues: “The terror is right here in this room.”

And so it was – and so it is today when jour-nalists hesitate to challenge the dominant story-line for fear of appearing unpatriotic. DanRather, of today’s CBS, voiced his concerns aboutstirring a backlash and being bullied in an inter-view with the BBC on May 22, 2002. He worriedhe would be “necklaced” in the way some SouthAfricans had been, with burning tires put aroundtheir necks if he stepped out of line. For him, thatwas a metaphor – but what a metaphor, what anightmare to have embedded itself in his brain.Talk about intimidation. Talk about “the terror”in the room.

Some things don’t change. Media institutionsremain citadels of conformity, conservatism andcompromise. Courage is in short supply in ourunbrave world of news because it is rarelyencouraged or rewarded, especially if and whenyou deviate from the script. Ask Peter Arnett.There is little space, airtime or support for thoseindividuals in the media who stand alone, who doit their way, who at times dissent to challenge theparadigm or who suspect that today’s emperorhas no clothes.

Ed, today’s news business hands out awards inyour name by the bushel. They revere your leg-end and embellish its impact. But few are willingto battle the way you did or take the stands you

did because when you come right down to it theystand for so little.

Today, the challenge news people face involveshow to get along by going along, how to keeptheir heads down to survive cutbacks in avolatile cut-throat news world. A young womantold me of her work at MSNBC during the war.She was part of a team of eight whose job was tomonitor all the news on the other channelsaround the clock, “We didn’t want Fox doing sto-ries or features we didn’t do,” she explained.There was constant pressure to do what the oth-ers did and not fall behind. Competition became,in effect, cloning. When the war “ended,” so didher job.

Is the war over? Not on the evidence. Occupa-tion breeds resistance in Iraq as it does on theWest Bank. American soldiers are dying and sois the dream of the Administration to go in, get itover with, proclaim democracy and steal the oil.They knew how to pummel a far weaker fightingforce. They prepared for that with unequalledforce and a war plan that used psy-ops, bribery,and deception as much as not such awesome orshocking bombing raids. They won, or havethey?

Seven weeks after the President landed in tri-umph on the deck of an aircraft carrier to strut inuniform and proclaim victory (even if that was notthe term he used), the storyline has changed. Tenweeks after the “fall” of Baghdad, new questionsare being raised that sound an awful lot in tonelike those raised during Watergate. What did thePresident know and when did he forget he knewit? Is he lying or did he merely “exaggerate.”

On June 22, 2003, The New York Times promi-nently displayed a lead Week in Review analysisheadlined: “Bush may have exaggerated but did

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he lie?” The report leaned to a toned-down “allpresidents use selective interpretation”. A weekearlier, in contrast, the Economist in London puta picture of Tony Blair on its cover with lessequivocation and beating around the bush. Itblared about Blair: “LIAR.” In testimony before aParliamentary Committee, Clare Short, one ofBlair’s Minister who resigned in protest, cata-logued deliberate distortion in her former Gov-ernment’s position. She called it – echoing thetitle of this book – “Honorable Deception.”

In the United States, the focus has been onintelligence failings and how the Administrationabused its spy agencies and concocted a threatthat was not there to stage a war that may nothave been needed. This focus has been mis-placed – and even so – not fully pursued. As Mau-reen Dowd put it in late June: “They’re scrutiniz-ing who gathered the intelligence rather thanthose who pushed to distort it.” For more detailon this whole sordid tale, see the New Republic’stake out, Deception and Democracy in its June30th, 2003, issue. The magazine focuses on gov-ernment deception.

This book looks at how media outlets boughtthis whole distorted story, and then brought it tothe rest of us.

This book was rushed out almost like a Samiz-dat publication in the old Soviet Union; clearly, itlacks the more considered perspective of themany that will follow. There is more to dig upand some of it may lead believers in a free pressto throw up,

That does not mean that many American jour-nalists are willing to concede they had been usedand had their trust abused. Few see a connectionbetween the June 2nd, 2003, FCC rule changesthat sailed through a body headed by the son of

the Secretary of State as a reward to media com-panies for a job well done.

Many media people remain defensive, farmore willing to point their fingers at governmentdeception than their own. “I really want to reada book by someone who wasn’t there,” was thedismissive response I received when I offered tosend this book to a military correspondent on anewspaper in Atlanta.

That may sound like fair point. But, the fact isthat many of those who were there had no ideaof the picture that most of were getting, or how itwas hyped, exaggerated and shorn of context.The value of news has to be evaluated by its con-sumers, not its originators.

Writes Chris Hedges who has covered manywars for the New York Times:

“I doubt that the journalists filing the hollowreports from Iraq, in which there are images butrarely any content, are aware of how they arebeing manipulated. They, like everyone else,believe. But when they look back, they will findthat war is always about betrayal.”

He believes that journalists are used to dis-seminate myths, justify war and boost themorale of soldiers and civilians. “The lie in wartime is always the lie of omission,” he wrote inThe Nation.

Perhaps it’s too soon for many in the media torecognize these truths. At the same time, I amsure that much of what I have to say, and perhapseven how I say it, is far too “unobjective” formany in the media trenches to “get.” Most dis-trust personality-inflected commentary fromindependent journalists who deviate or dissentfrom the straight and narrow, or even from themore predictable left-right divide.

In the words of Lord Tennyson, “Theirs is not

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to reason why.” Sometimes, not to reason at all. So Ed, I just wanted you to you to know that

war reporting today has become just as contro-versial as some of your programs on the redscare were way back when.

I am writing to you on my 61st Birthday. I amthinking of how in the early l960s, you left broad-casting to lead the Voice of America. (A fewyears later your partner Fred Friendly who wenton to head CBS News would quit when the net-work refused to broadcast an important hearingon the Vietnam War and instead ran reruns of ILove Lucy).

War coverage built your career, Ed. A warended your partner’s network presidency.

And, it is war and its coverage that still definesthe media in these times.

My hunch is that the analysis offered in thesepages may have seemed too far out to some inthe war’s immediate aftermath, but will, in itsessentials, be accepted down the line.

As you put it once, “the obscure we see even-tually. The completely apparent takes a littlelonger.”

Danny Schechter June 27, 2003

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he Takingsides.blogspot.com site pub-lished some internal memos in and doc-

uments in April 2003 that strike me asbelievable, given my own experience as aproducer inside two TV networks. They

speak to the amount of micro-management thattakes place within news divisions at a time ofnational crisis. The site describes these documentsthis way:

“Recently, a mid-level executive of one of thethree major American television networks sent onover 1,500 pages of memos from the corporateoffices of his network in New York to the head oftheir television news division.

“These memos contain a multitude of instruc-tions concerning the presentation of national andinternational news for the network’s viewers. Itwould be impossible to show all of these revealingdocuments but selections are certainly possible.What is not possible, obviously, is to reveal eitherthe name of the conscience-stricken media execu-tive nor the company that employs him.”

Excerpts:““FFeebbrruuaarryy 1100.. It is not permitted at this point to

use or refer to any film clips, stills or articles ema-nating from any French source whatsoever.

““FFeebbrruuaarryy 2266.. It is expected that coverage of theforthcoming Iraqi campaign will be identical withthe coverage used during Desert Storm. Shots of

GIs must show a mixed racial combination. Anyinterviews must reflect the youthful and idealistic,not the cynical point of view. The liberation ofhappy, enthusiastic Iraqis can be best shown byfilming crowds of cheering citizens waving Ameri-can flags. Also indicated would be pictures of pho-togenic GIs fraternizing with Iraqi children andhanding them food or other non-controversial pres-ents. Of course, pictures of dead U.S. military per-sonnel are not to be shown and pictures of deadIraqi soldiers should not show examples of violentdeath. Also indicated would be brief interviewswith English-speaking Iraqi citizens praising Amer-ican liberation efforts. All such interviews must bevetted by either the White House or Pentagonbefore public airing.

““MMaarrcchh 2266.. U.S. alliances with the Turkish/IraqiKurdish tribes should be played down. This is con-sidered a very sensitive issue with the Turks andAmerican arming and support of the Kurds couldcreate a severe backlash in Ankara. Kurds shouldbe depicted as ‘Iraqi Freedom Fighters” and notidentified as Kurds.

““MMaarrcchh 22.. Further references to the religiousviews of the President are to be deleted.

““MMaarrcchh 1155.. Photo opportunities of the Presidentand members of his cabinet, especially SecretaryRumsfeld, with enthusiastic GIs.

““MMaarrcchh 2255.. No mention of either Wolfowitz orPearle should be made at the present time.

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““MMaarrcchh 1100.. Pro-Government rallies are to be giventhe fullest coverage. If anti-Government demon-strations are shown, it is desired to stress either avery small number of ‘eccentrics’ or shots of socialmisfits; i.e., with beards, tattoos, physical deformi-ties, etc. Pro-Government supporters should beseen as clean cut with as many well-groomed sub-jects as possible. Subjects should stress completesupport for the President’s programs and espe-cially support for American military units en routeto combat. Also interviews with photogenic familymembers of participating GIs stressing loyalty andaffection. American flags are always a good prop inthe background.”

There has been quite a debate about the accu-racy of these documents. Some struck me as veryplausible, others as overdone. In my experience,news managers do review what networks producebut it is rare when there is a commisar type over-lord dictating or calibrating all coverage, especiallyin advance. My sense is that news organizationsare more chaotic than cunning on a day-by-daybasis. I still want to be convinced.

I tracked the originals down to a website calledwww.tbrnews.org The site seems to lean way right,into historical revisionism of the holocaust andother subjects. Its webmaster, Walter Storch,seems to be an informed, congenial and non-doc-trinaire person but he would not supply me withany evidence to confirm that these documents arewhat he claims they are. He wouldn't respond whenI pressed him to even tell me that he believes them

and would swear by them. That made me uncom-fortable. And as for revisionism, I covered theforged Hitler Diaries for ABC so I know documentsare not always what they claim to be. (Neither is thenews!)

I assume it was Storch who raised this issue, too:"It was always possible that this material consistedof a very involved hoax or was something designedfor the news site to use and then have it revealedthat it was not original. It would not be the first timethat spurious disinformation had been sent to us inthe hopes that it would be used.

"There were not ‘thousands of pages’ of memosbut a total of 1,497 separate pages involved. Manyof them consisted of short memos while others ranto a larger format.

“Naturally, someone could easily have obtainedcorrect in-house network letterheads, made copiesof them and prepared false memoranda but thesheer size and depth of the collection was impres-sive.

“If these memos were true, they showed with aterrible clarity that at least one part of the Americanmass media was strictly controlled and that thenews was so doctored and spun that it might aswell be official news releases from the WhiteHouse and Pentagon.”

You can download them and judge for yourself atwww.tbrnews.org/tnc.zip. It should be clear fromthis book that I am not a conspircy theorist when itcomes to the media, although conspiracies dooccur and agendas are pushed. ●

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of three U.S., one British, three German, twoCzech and two South African TV networksbetween March 20 and April 16 to determine hownews of the war was presented to their respec-tive audiences.

The analysis, examined on behalf FrankfurterAlgemeine Zeittung’s cultural desk, was con-ducted on the level of individual verbal andvisual statements. In order to determine the toneof the coverage, both explicit and implicit posi-tive and negative statements were recorded.

But we are not going to attempt to answer thequestion whether the war was right or wrong, aswe don’t have a clear overview of all relevantinformation necessary to decide this question.For the same reason, the science of media analy-sis cannot decide what type of coverage of thewar was right and which was wrong.

However, media content analysis can show

how the war was presented to TV audiences:which issues did journalists choose to report on,how did they evaluate them? The subject of thisanalysis is not reality, but the mediated depictionof reality.

Several questions must be raised in the contextof media coverage of the war: To what degreeare American patriotism and European anti-Americanism a by-product of news coverage ofthe war?

What were the actual benefits of embeddingjournalists with the troops? Perhaps most impor-tantly, but also most difficult to discuss: To whichdegree were journalists in the U.S. and abroadserving the interests of their governments, inten-tionally or not? Was the media merely part of alarger war strategy?

M E D I A T E N O R ( B O N N )

THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ ONTELEVISION: A SPLIT REALITYBy Raimund Mock and Markus Rettich

he war in Iraq is and remains foremost a political affair. The question about its necessity hasdivided whole societies before, during and after the beginning of the military actions and

continues to do so. But the evaluation of causes and consequences of armed conflicts dependsgreatly on political, moral or economical beliefs and interests - this goes for politicians as wellas for journalists (and, for that matter, media researchers).

Media Tenor, the independent and non-partisan media analysis institute with offices in Bonn, NewYork, Dover, Ostrava and Pretoria conducted a detailed analysis of the main evening news broadcasts

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Visualization pushes old journalisticprinciples to the background

WAR is unpopular: Not only does it cost lives, butalso money, and its benefits are hard to see ini-tially. It has thus always been an integral part ofstrategic war planning to win over public opinionat home, since, at the end of the day, it is the pub-lic and their elected representatives who mustprovide the money and supply the soldiers.

The information ministry is not an invention ofSaddam Hussein. Television’s visual dominanceincreasingly dictates the tactics in the fight forpublic opinion. According to US political legend,the Vietnam War’s days were numbered whenpopular TV news anchor Walter Cronkite pub-licly expressed his opposition to it. The massmedium of television has turned every questionof this conflict into a subject of public debate.This has led to a situation where the war has tobe justified on moral rather than on politicalgrounds.

In the 1991 Gulf war this was accomplished withthe help of dubious reports on Iraqi atrocities inKuwait. A similar dynamic was at work beforethe war in Kosovo, when news coverage focusedon atrocities committed by the Serbs. It wouldseem as if the public will only support a war if itis directed against mass murderers, baby killersor rapists.

The war of weapons is anticipated by the warover public opinion. However, most journalistssay they do not want to be used as instrumentsin this game. At the beginning of the war, manycorrespondents broke an unwritten rule of jour-nalistic conduct and made their own workingconditions and status a focus of their reports. Itis questionable to which extent this coverage was

really necessary. If some journalists became the story, the sourc-

ing of their stories quickly became an issue. Ashas been known for decades , journalists aredependent on information, butinformants usu-ally act out of self-interest. This is why eachsource must be treated with utmost scrutiny.News should not be driven by images alone;reports must be topical and relevant. And yet,the images often come first.

This is the dilemma of television at the heart ofits appeal and its limit: It needs images. Visual-ization pushes old journalistic principles to thebackground, because they often conflict with theconstant challenge to break news. At the begin-ning of the war, for example, German news chan-nel N-Tv boasted of having been the first stationto report news in Germany in the middle of thenight. In fact, they had managed only to switchover to CNN one minute ahead of their competi-tion. But is it really an indicator of journalisticachievement when one technician presses aswitch more swiftly than another?

Some media outlets solved the dilemma ofneeding to be both quick and believable byreporting on its limitations, thereby shifting theresponsibility to the audience: Journalistsreflected on their working conditions continu-ously throughout the war, in terms of their phys-ical well-being and practical conditions as well asthe access they were given to information.

On the news programs outside of the U.S thatMedia Tenor analyzed, there was an overwhelm-ingly negative tone about the coverage of jour-nalists’ working conditions. This specificallyrelates to the ability of journalists to get accessor operate in a secure setting. As much as athird of the coverage on this subject - 34% on Ger-

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many’s public broadcaster ARD - was explicitlyor contextually negative. Even on BBC news, gen-erally moderate and unemotional in otheraspects of its coverage, journalists had almostnothing positive to say about their working con-ditions, but negative statements of the latterstood at over 25%.

U.S. journalists apparently did not experience,or at least did not feel the need to emphasize, thesame degree of difficulty as their European col-leagues. On NBC and especially on CBS, journal-ists reported more positively on their workingconditions by a wide margin. Only ABC journal-ists offered a slightly more negative tone ontheir experiences. Of course, compared to mostof their foreign colleagues, American journalists,by virtue of being embedded with troops, didgather more first hand information, However,there was little reflection on the potential short-comings of their relatively narrow view of eventson the battlefield. After all being embedded didnot necessarily guarantee the factual accuracyof the information, a question on which Ameri-can journalists had little to say, or assure reportswith perspective and scope. German journalistsin particular appeared to complain the mostwithout offering solutions, thereby shifting theblame at least partly to their viewers.

This can be very tricky with no clear cut solu-tion. The traditional idea of giving access to“both sides” can lead to the dissemination of liesand propaganda. Identifying a source as as liar isalso problematic and naïve An army at war willnever be entirely truthful, unless it makes surebeforehand that its opponent does not haveaccess to television for its claims. When a jour-nalist is faced with two potential liars, is it satis-factory to give both of them a chance to speak.

Clearly, more contextualization and backgroundis needed.

Radically different representations of war

OBJECTIVELY observed, the situation in Iraq hadto look the same for all reporters. But in fact,they all reported very differently, particularly ifone compares the media coverage internation-ally. American broadcast news coverage of thewar assumed a tone that was as positive as thatof European coverage was negative. The overallpattern on the three U.S. networks was similar:After initial restraint, the tone of the coverageapproached something like euphoria. This was inline with opinion polls conducted at the sametime. They frame as our analysis.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll of 504adults nationwide shows that approval of U.S.military actions spiked on April 9, with 80% of therespondents supporting U.S. war efforts.

The similar development of media approvaland public support do not seem coincidental.When it came to coverage of American militaryactions - by far the most widely covered topic inthe context of the war in all analyzed news media- the margin of difference between positive andnegative coverage was notably greater on CBSEvening News than on NBC Nightly News andABC World News Tonight, where the tone ofcoverage concerning U.S. war actions did notbecome overwhelmingly positive until the thirdweek of fighting, although the tone remainedmore positive than negative throughout the timeframe of the analysis on all three networks’evening news.

Differences were greater among U.S. news

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programs in the tone in which the President wascovered. ABC World News Tonight was verypolarized in its portrayal of Mr Bush as the Com-mander-in-Chief, with an equal 19.4% positive andnegative average implicit and explicit statementswith the President as the subject – a number ofnegative statements on par with those of mostEuropean news programs.

On NBC, the tone of the coverage was clearlymore positive, while the difference between pos-itive and negative statements was most glaringon NBC, where it was explicitly or implicitly pos-itive 41.9% of the time the President was its sub-ject, compared to 7% negative statements.

While U.S. news programs portrayed the Pres-ident and the war in a more positive light overall,they nevertheless did so from different anglesand at different degrees of enthusiasm, leavingus to wonder to which extent ideological differ-ences may account for variations in the newscoverage. These differences become moreapparent when we look at the frequency withwhich voices of dissent were featured on thenews.

German TV presented a different reality: itsbias become obvious in the newscasters’ evalua-tion of U.S. military actions. In the beginning ofthe war one out of five verbal or visual portray-als by RTL journalists was negative, only six per-cent of all statements on the Americans werepositive. The coverage was particularly criticalby the end of March, as U.S. advances, accordingto the journalists, were beginning to slow downand the end of the war was not yet in sight,.Instead, there was talk of the threats of house-to-house fighting or the deployment of biologicaland chemical weapons. The BBC, on the otherhand, assessed the American war effort in an

overall balanced manner, despite American‘friendly fire’ incidents leading to the deaths ofBritish troops.

In the Czech Republic, a member of the waralliance, the assessment of U.S. military actionswas slightly negative, while in South Africa amore differentiated picture emerges: Whereasthe public broadcaster, English-language SABCNEWS portrayed the American military morepositively than negatively, the private televisionstation E-TV criticized them harshly. This pro-gram, which targets South Africans of Indian ori-gin ended their newscasts day after day with thesame remark. So far, E-TV would say, the Amer-icans have not found any weapons of massdestruction. Of all analyzed media, only the BBCmaintained an equilibrium of sorts of positiveand negative coverage, mostly remainingambivalent in tone, with far fewer explicitly pos-itive or negative statements than its German orU.S. counterparts.

International differences became even clearerwhen it came to the choice of protagonists of thenews coverage. In the U.S., more than half of theprotagonists of news stories on the war wereeither U.S. politicians or military personnel(ABC: 53%; NBC: 54%; NBC: 58.1%), more thantwice as many as on the average foreign newsprogram.

More tellingly, while TV news outside of theU.S. made frequent reference to British andother coalition troops, British troops figured lit-tle in U.S. coverage of the war and coalitiontroops from other countries played almost norole at all. U.S. TV news coverage was thusarguably as unilateral as the actions of the Bushadministration, a point further illustrated bycomparing the amount of coverage on military

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actions to that of international politics.By far the majority of the coverage on evening

news programs in the U.S. focused only on U.S.military actions. On BBC news, in comparison,U.S. politicians and military personnel made up25.1% of the featured protagonists, while Britishpoliticians and military personnel comprised12.8%. German and British news programs alsoreferred much more often to the allies as anentity than U.S. news programs (ARD: 8.9%, ZDF:9.5%, RTL: 9.5%, BBC: 9.9%).

When U.S. politicians and military personnelwere the subject of the coverage, it was most fre-quently in the context of military actions, com-pared to which the consequences and politicalramifications of the war received only scantattention. In the context of U.S. society, as men-tioned before, only NBC showed concern for pol-itics to a significant extent, with 86 statements(ABC: 5, NBC: 4). On German news programs,reports on military actions figured less promi-nently in the coverage of public broadcastersARD and ZDF than on RTL, the private network(ARD: 44.7%, ZDF: 47.3%, RTL: 55%). The BBCspent 58.3% on its news coverage reporting onmilitary actions, slightly more than the Ameri-cans (ABC: 52.3%, NBC: 55.8%, NBC: 56.3%).

In comparison, international politics played afar greater role on ARD and ZDF, with 20.9% and17% of the coverage, respectively, than on anyother network in the three countries. BBC newsprograms devoted 9.1% of their coverage to inter-national politics; among U.S. network news theshare of the topic exceeded 10% only on NBC(ABC: 9.7%, NBC: 12.7%, NBC: 9.8%).

One could argue this merely goes to show thatthere is no room for politics on the battlefield,but it also raises the question about whether the

overwhelming focus on military actions, both inthe overall coverage and in regard to politiciansand military personnel, may not have served toobscure and detract from the political issuesunderlying the conflict. Coverage of interna-tional politics suffered the most from the latter.

The rule of thumb here seems to be, thegreater the share of coverage of military actionson any network, the lower the share of coverageof international politics – a phenomenon not lim-ited to TV news in coalition countries.

We should also note that there is no clear cor-relation between the share of coverage of mili-tary actions on any of the analyzed programsand the share of reports filed by journalistsembedded with troops for each. Several of thenon-U.S. news programs, including the BBC,managed to report just as much on militaryactions as their U.S. counterparts without rely-ing on embedded journalists, instead supple-menting their reports with footage bought fromU.S. or Arabic networks or reporting from Bagh-dad or the studio.

The narrow focus on the battlefield was thuslargely endemic, although reports from embed-ded journalists certainly shortened the supplylines for the newsrooms of all analyzed pro-grams. As a consequence, the coverage of thewar was largely de-politicized and journalistswere running the danger of merely providinginfotainment instead of contributing to publicdebate by focusing more on the political issuessurrounding the war, both domestically andinternationally.

TV news programs outside of the U.S. tendedto focus more on Iraqi civilians, though not by asmuch as one might have expected. On Germannews programs, around 15% of protagonists fea-

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tured on all three programs were Iraqi civilians,on BBC they comprised 17.1%. NBC Nightly Newswas the only news program in our analysis onwhich Iraqi civilians made up less than 10% of thefeatured protagonists, while the numbers wereslightly higher on the other networks (ABC:13.7%, NBC: 9.6%, NBC: 12.1%).

The American way of reporting I:unseen U.S. casualties

ANOTHER category in which American newsprograms fell markedly behind in their coveragewas the depiction of American casualties. AfterAl-Jazeera was sharply rebuked by U.S. officialsfor broadcasting images of dead and capturedPOWs, the depiction of U.S. casualties in particu-lar seemed to become taboo on U.S. news pro-grams.

Short of saying that news producers and jour-nalists were cowed into withholding information,Media Tenor’s data clearly shows a much greaterreluctance on the part of U.S. news programs toshow images of American dead and woundedthan on foreign news programs, even thoughthey had no problems depicting dead orwounded Iraqis – on NBC, the share of visualdepictions on dead or wounded Iraqis evenexceeded the share of verbal statements.

Of all statements on dead, wounded or missingAmerican soldiers on both ABC and NBC, 80.6%were delivered verbally, while only 19.4% weredelivered in the form of visual depictions. OnNBC, the share of visually depicted dead, miss-ing or wounded was significantly higher, with42.4% of all statements on the subject.

The coverage of Iraqi casualties offers one ofthe most obvious differences between coverage

in the U.S. and abroad, particularly if one consid-ers that the number of American casualties waslower than in the Persian Gulf war, while thenumber of Iraqi casualties, both military andcivilian, numbers in the thousands. In the U.S.,allied casualties comprised up to two thirds of allcasualties reported on in evening news (ABC:58.9%, NBC: 60.5%, NBC: 67%). On BBC news pro-grams, allied casualties made up 44.2% of casual-ties reported on; 50.6% were Iraqis. In Germany,the picture was almost the exact opposite fromthe U.S. On the low extreme, only 26.5% of casu-alties on ARD were allies, while 69.9% wereIraqis (ZDF: 35.9%/ 58.8%, RTL: 42.3%/ 55.1%).

The American way of reporting II: CBS silences dissent

IN their reports on U.S. society during the war,we found significant differences among U.S.news programs in the amount of coverage givento protests against the war. ABC World NewsTonight reported most frequently on protests(101 statements), followed by NBC Nightly News(68 statements). With only 6 statements onprotests in the U.S. in the time frame of ouranalysis, CBS Evening News hardly ever exposedits viewers to news of dissent among Americans.Only NBC featured a notable amount of coverageon both protests and political affairs in referenceto societal protagonists in the U.S.

With a geographical focus on non-allied coun-tries, all three networks featured a comparableamount of coverage on these political aspects,but, once again, the disparity between the net-works in their coverage of protests was glaring,with ABC taking the lead and NBC barelyacknowledging protests abroad.

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But, surprisingly, protests did not play a par-ticularly great role on European news either.

In the overall comparison of coverage ofprotests, Germany’s ARD, with 5.2% of its cover-age, is alone at exceeding the share of coverageABC granted to protests. On the BBC, protestswere the main focus of only 1.3% of the coverage.There were also no great variations internation-ally concerning the frequency with which thelegitimacy of the war was the central aspect ofthe coverage – around 4% of the coverage in Ger-many, Britain and the U.S. dealt with this topic.

Another similarity between news programs inthe three countries is the extent to which theyreported on the justifications for war providedby the allies. The combined topics peace, humanrights and weapons of mass destruction com-prised a mere 1.2% of the coverage on ARD newsprograms and even less on all others. In thenews coverage as on the ground in Iraq, WMDswere mostly absent. The combined topics will ofthe people, democracy and dictatorship, on theother hand, received significantly more cover-age. In the U.S., all three networks dedicatedmore than 3% of the coverage to topics associ-ated with the liberation of the Iraqi people, withNBC in the lead (ABC: 3.1%, NBC: 3.1%, NBC:3.6%).

The U.N. dropped out of the coverage almostentirely with the beginning of the war. On therare occasions in which it was the subject ofreports, it was mostly in terms of politics, fol-lowed by discussions of Iraq after the end of thewar. Of the three evening news programs in theU.S., only NBC was reporting on the interna-tional organization in the context of militaryactions or their consequences, but even here,mentions of the U.N. were so scarce as to be

almost negligible. In Germany, the public broadcasters ARD and

ZDF in particular reported much more fre-quently on the U.N., while the BBC’s reports onthe U.N. were almost on par with NBC’s in termsof their frequency (ARD: 2.3% of all reports, BBC:0.9%, NBC: 1%).

Compared to the other two networks, ABCstood out in giving space to voices of dissent andrelied less on embedded journalists. It showed agreater capacity for self-criticism and offered amore balanced – though highly polarized –depiction of the American President. ABC alsofeatured a higher share of footage originatingwith Arabic networks, showed a greater interestin the rebuilding of Iraq and the consequences ofwar and gave slightly more room to Iraqi casual-ties than the other two news programs. NBC’scoverage was less balanced in most of these cat-egories, but did comparatively well in the depic-tion of American dead and wounded. Of all three,Dan Rather’s NBC EVENING NEWS went to themost extremes, firmly toeing the governmentline in terms of its tone of coverage of the warand in the issues it chose to disregard. NBC wasalso among the highest in using emotionallycharged coverage (5.2% of all verbal and visualstatements).

The German way of reporting – a good example?

THE war is over but the problems still remain inpost-war Iraq. In German TV news, the militaryactions had been depicted largely as a U.S. waragainst Iraqi civilians. The Americans were thesubject of criticism on all three analysed newsprograms, particularly on private Broadcaster

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RTL. The German network also made less of aswitch toward more positively-toned coverage,as the military success of the American opera-tion became apparent. In the discussion onwhether or not the war was justified, ARD andZDF ignored the fact that Anglo-Saxon expertson international law did not agree with theirGerman colleagues. ARD in particular focusedits coverage heavily on anti-war protests. ZDFled in reporting on the issue of the allies ignor-ing popular will worldwide.

On the other hand, the topic ‘Dictatorship inIraq’ only played a noticeable role in the HeuteJournal. The question whether the interventionwould result in liberating Iraq was practicallyleft out of the coverage in the first two weeks ofwar.

With the benefit of hindsight: did German TVjournalists do a better job than their Americancolleagues? Editors and executives of GermanTV stations think so: “Better than during thefirst gulf war in 1991,” this is how representativesof ARD, ZDF and RTL assessed their coverage ofthe war in Iraq in the German financial paperHandelsblatt on April 11th.

‘Better’ does not necessarily mean good, how-ever; nor even good enough. The analysis ofGerman TV news coverage on the war in Iraqreveals the basic journalistic decisions that weretaken: Which issues were important to them ininternational comparisons, and how they choseto describe the situation.

For the German media, the war was a mega-event that was given more coverage that the cat-astrophic Elbe flood of the past summer, a majorstory in Germany. Almost two thirds of the newscoverage broadcast during the first week of thewar dealt with Iraq, and this does not even take

into account a large number of special news spe-cials. By the end of March the exceeded that onthe Kosovo war in 1999.

In comparison, in the last week before the 2002German parliamentary elections, the latterreceived only half as much attention as the warin its first week. The leader in the ranking wasprivate broadcaster RTL Aktuell, which hadpractically eliminated all non-war reporting – amarked difference from how it covered theKosovo conflict. The dominance of this issue can-not be explained solely in terms of its relevance.

First: The war did not come as a surprise: Fail-ing diplomacy in Washington, Paris and Berlin aswell as the poker game played in Baghdad madeit seem inevitable for months. The German fed-eral government’s loudly announced goal toprevent the war at the eleventh hour was at bestan indication of the unrealistic assessment of itsnegotiating power.

Second: German soldiers were not involved,they did not fight or die in Iraq. It is true thatGerman interests were at stake in regard toglobal security and oil. But those key topics weremissing from discussion.

Third: Facts from the news front were in shortsupply, for reasons mentioned above.

Fourth: ‘Solidarity with the suffering Iraqis’ asa reason for the strong media interest would belittle more than hypocrisy, at least when takingChechnya into account; and also, in retrospect,from the Iraqi perspective, whose sufferingunder the dictatorship was always of marginalimportance to the German news media.

Fifth: Outlawing war might have been a noblegoal in and of itself. But that was rarely analyzedalong with what the intervention might mean forfuture wars and threats. US arguments pointing

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in that direction, however, were simply por-trayed as propaganda, put forward to maskpower and business related interests.

This leaves us with one explanation for thestrong focus on the war: the fascination of hor-ror, the entertainment value of war. The sadtruth: We are used to the fact that TV stationshave torn down almost all moral barriers, as if tosay that privacy is theft., Years ago Tucholskysaid. “Satire is free to do anything.” Today thisquote could read: Television is free to do any-thing. Reality in itself is no longer enough toattract viewers; it is Joe Millionaire, not JoeSchmo, who heralds the mainstreaming ofhyper-reality, while the war is pictured as an ulti-mate showdown between good and evil.

In order to boost the ratings, the boundaries oftaboo are under attack. They are pushed furthereach time, only to be transgressed anew.

It is well known that CNN rose to being arespected international news source with PeterArnett’s reporting on the roof of a Baghdad hotelin 1991. The development of transmission tech-nology continues to permit new feats in break-ing news coverage.

German stations have also focussed on these“gee whiz” aspects. Even compared with inter-national coverage it is striking how RTL rejoicedin the fact that one of their reporters, UlrichKlose, accompanied the allied troops. Publicbroadcaster ZDF, on the other hand, in the news-cast Heute Journal, primarily relied on its cor-respondent in Baghdad, Ulrich Tilgner. The menon both sides of the front suggest proximity tothe events. But are they also able to keep theirjournalistic distance?

On April 8th, after three international journal-ists had died under American fire in Baghdad,

correspondent Stephan Kloss appeared on thenewscast TAGESSCHAU, wearing a bullet-proofvest. On the subsequent special edition BREN-NPUNKT, his colleague Christoph-MariaFröhder conjectured (without a bullet-proofvest) that the Americans, bothered by the cover-age they received, were no longer showing con-sideration for journalists. One has to wonder,though, what war correspondents had expectedbefore heading out on their dangerous, but alsohighly prestigious assignments. (ZDF’s Tilgner,as well as his colleague Antonia Rados, report-ing from Baghdad for RTL, are due to receive theGerman Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs Award forJournalism this year.)

The scenario we have been sketching under-score the limitations of war coverage. Corre-spondents cannot report freely, even if they didnot have conditions to meet, watchdogs and cen-sors to deal with or pre-selected perspectives toportray. It is not surprising that Ulrich Tilgner,who was so intensively questioned by ZDFanchors, comes in second in the “don’t know”-ranking, a statisical measure of the number ofstatements which clearly expressed an assump-tion or the admission of being unable to answera question from the studio in Germany. However,he had good company in the guessing game.

Even highly praised colleagues like Anne Will,Steffen Seibert and Peter Kloeppel presentedtheir audience with assumptions and featureprominently in the rankings. In retrospect, it isstriking how many of the infinite number ofprognoses turned out to be speculations withoutany foundation or evidence to substantiate theclaims. At first the Iraqis were reputed to be tooweak and unmotivated to fight back. Then, all ofa sudden, we were told they would engage in

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tough house-to-house fighting and a long war. At first, the Americans were chararacterized

as e hated by the Iraqi people. Then they wereprojected as liberators. Conjectures as to theextent of casualties did not coincide with num-bers. The question is whether the ambition to befirst justifies everything. The first lesson a jour-nalism trainee learns is that unconfirmed newsis not news. It is unlikely that any audiencewould really chose quick and unchecked infor-mation over thoroughly researched news if theyhad the choice,

RTL not only relied on its military correspon-dent Ulrich Klose, but also on its reporter Anto-nia Rados in the Iraqi capital. As cited earlier,ARD and RTL correspondents in Baghdad putthe main emphasis on the suffering of civilians,rather than on warfare, whenever Iraqi protago-nists were in the picture. The newscast RTLAktuell even devoted a slight majority of cover-age to this topic. German television reporting onvictims clearly focused on the Iraqi side. SinceRados and Tilgner will receive a journalismaward for this type of coverage, it must meanthat it is considered to be proper and even polit-ically correct

German journalists had ventured into the cov-erage of the war with real concerns. They feltthey did not want to be taken for a ride by theAmericans (again). This they did manage. Butthere was also a sense of self satisfaction amongGerman TV executives that appeared out ofplace.

The question arises, did the news coveragewent to another extreme: After assuming a posi-tion of sharp criticism of the American militaryactions, which was abandoned only with theincreasing success of the operation, and after fix-

ating on the Iraqis as suffering victims, they cre-ated a representation of the war for the Germantelevision-viewing public which was neatly inline with the position of the German govern-ment. Critical questions, concerning, e.g., theextent to which the unrelenting German positioncontributed to the escalation of the conflict, werethus widely kept from public scrutiny.

An alternative approach?

MOST worrisome, across the board, was theovert reliance on coverage of military actions,compared to which political discussion took aback seat. This was true both in Europe and inthe U.S. Journalists appeared as reluctant toallow for arguments of the other side as theirrespective governments, leaving us to wonderwhether the goal of journalistic objectivity wasmissing or misappropriated in the name of info-tainment, while political and moral argumentswere presented in an almost indistinguishablefashion.

News programs in the U.S. and abroad weredrawing a very sharp line between talk andaction. But, what about all the repetition. Anyonewho subjected themselves to a few evenings ofwar coverage on TV will to attest to the level ofredundancy which rose steadily with each hourof viewing. Action, we learned, can be cheap, too,especially when it is dotted with flags and inter-spersed with dramatic musical interludes aimedat consolidating the national spirit.

To escape the patriotic sheen, viewers had toturn to other media outlets, foremost the BBC.An April 28 article in Business week describedhow “‘the Beeb’ is gaining viewers from aroundthe globe with its sober, authoritative coverage

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of the war,” citing Nielsen Media Research dataof a 28% increase in viewers of BBC World in theU.S. since the beginning of the war. The net-works might want to take note.

These concerns were raised, but then quicklysidelined by discussions of national complacencyand/or naiveté about the world. How the US intel-ligence apparatus could have missed this was

taken only as evidence that it needs moremoney, not a different policy to serve. No men-tion was made of course of the cutback in inter-national news coverage that keeps Americans soout of touch with global events. ●

For more of Media Tenor’s reports, visit:www.mediatenor.com

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“progress.” Already there are suggestions thatthe media coverage is too negative, threateningnot only the “mission” but also the lives of thesoldiers on the front lines. Spinmeister VictoriaClarke who quarterbacked media relations at thePentagon has now joined CNN. In her first on airinterview, this military flack turned cable newspundit called for more embeds to improve thecoverage.

VIETNAM TEMPLATING

A CONSERVATIVE Georgia Democrat, JimReynolds has lashed out at the ghost of Vietnamwhich he fears is hovering over reporting fromIraq. Writing in an Atlanta newspaper, he put itthis way, “It’s not the reporting of criticisms orbad things that’s the issue... It’s the lazy Viet-nam-templating, the ‘of course America must be

losing’ spin, the implicit and sometimes explicitsneer, and the relentless bringing to the fore ofevery convenient negative fact while suppress-ing the positive ones that’s the issue. It’s whatthe terrorists are counting on, and it’s what toomany in the media are happy to deliver, becausethey think it’ll hurt Bush.”

Who is guilty of this “Vietnam templating?”Reynolds doesn’t say, but he is not alone in criti-cizing media coverage. He can’t be thinking ofChristiane Amanpour, CNN’s star reporter whowas a baby during Vietnam. She has criticizedher own network publicly for “muzzling” thecoverage. Or New York Times Baghdad corre-spondent John Burns who has lashed out at cor-ruption by the media that paid off Saddam Hus-sein for access and failed for years to focus onhis abuses. He couldn’t be thinking of the con-

N E W Y O R K , O C T O B E R 1 0 , 2 0 0 3

COVERING THE POST-WAR WAR:MEDIA STILL DON’T GET ITVietnam templating or just bad jounalism?

uch of the coverage of Iraq war on American television was a disaster for our media sys-tem, It appeared to viewers like a merger between the media and the military, a fusionof journalism and jingoism. As conflict and turmoil in Iraq continues to dominate theheadlines, one of the great triumphs of the Bush Administration may be turning intoone of its biggest defeats. And our media is at the center of an emerging debate about

how media should be covering developments there.Administration officials are all over the talk shows and congressional hearings trumping all the

servative fuddy-duddy George Will who is nowcriticizing the Republicans he’s admired for notbeing able to prove their WMD charges. Or TedKoppel who fears the war was sanitized becausethe public here never saw how bloody it was.

A HISTORICAL VIEW

AT issue now is how well we are being informedabout the occupation of Iraq and what it meansto ordinary people there and here. Most Ameri-cans have forgotten what occupation means. Fewhistorians are reminding us of our own history inresisting British occupation or the “Boston mas-sacre” of revolting colonists that helped triggedour own Revolution.

One historian, Howard Zinn is a “Vietnam tem-plater” of another kind. He was an anti-warleader than and an anti-war activist now. Hethinks the lessons of the war are missing in themedia. He is speaking out against the occupationin moral terms that we rarely hear detailed inthe media.

Writing on ZNET, he notes that “more Ameri-cans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers inIraq, that something is terribly wrong, that this isnot what we want our country to be. More andmore every day, the lies are being exposed. Andthen there is the largest lie – that everything theUnited States does is to be pardoned because weare engaged in a “war on terrorism” – ignoringthe fact that war is itself terrorism, that the bar-ging into people’s homes and taking away familymembers and subjecting them to torture, that isterrorism, that invading and bombing othercountries does not give us more security but lesssecurity.”

How well is our media bringing these issues

home? Most of our journalists are incidentchroniclers, not big picture reporters Theyreport on attacks on soldiers, not the strugglesof the Iraqi people to deal not only with theBaathists who remain, but the American militaryand the terrorists they’ve attracted, the US Com-panies who are sucking up meaty contracts orthe machinations of the smarmy Iraqi NationalCongress, a CIA creation which is trying to mus-cle its opposition out of the way.

MEDIA SPOTLIGHTS ISSUES,NOT INTERESTS

OUR journalists focus on issues, rarely on inter-ests.

Who is getting what? Who is making money onthis “reconstruction? What about the cost-pluscontracts awarded outfits like the Vinnell Corp.,a subsidiary of the huge defense contractorNorthrop Grumman. They are part of a networkof what are called PMC’s – private military con-tractors – in a war that is being privatize to ben-efit commercial interests. (It was a Vinnell com-pound that Al Qaeda bombed in Saudia Arabiasome months ago). Who is following these oper-ators as closely as they are the casualty statis-tics? How much of the $87 billion the Administra-tion is seeking will they get? Has the media for-gotten its own injunction to “follow the money?”

If you want to track all of this more closely, youhave to abandon most of the US media and readthe British press and specialized websites moreclosely. For my money the best source – for theflavor of what’s happening as well as the details– is a “girl blog” called Baghad Burning postedfrom Iraq by a young woman who calls herself“River.” She offers an eloquent bottom-up Iraqi

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view of events there that put our Big Media toshame. (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com)

BIG MEDIA POST MORTEM

DO you know the name Thomas Ricks? He is themilitary correspondent of the Washington Post,as respected a mainstream print reporter asthere is. Back on March 27th he wrote a front-page story quoting “defense officials” who pre-dicted that the US military would be in Iraq forten years to come. A pile of bricks fell on hishead. He was denounced for making it up by BillO’Reilly of Fox “News” Network, whom he nowcalls a “clown.” People in the Pentagon swore upand down that no one said any such thing. Theyimplied the Post had no source.

The next day, the Post, in a rare moment ofcourage, published a picture of a General Wal-lace who had made the estimate and had theguts to say so. That shut up the naysayers. Gen-eral Sanchez, the man in charge of the US occu-pation, has now confirmed that US forces cannotleave. He also revealed that the US is facing amore sophisticated and organized adversarythan ever before. In short, the Iraqis haveregrouped and the war threatens to flare upagain. It is getting worse, not better. And onlyincidents are being covered, without regard tothe big picture.

WAR AT A MUSEUM

RICKS was on a panel at the Museum of Radioand Television on October 2 along with NBCanchor Tom Brokaw, two NBC correspondents,the network’s sole self-admitted liberal militaryanalyst Bill Arkin and former Pentagon Media

chief Torrie Clarke (now with CNN). TomBrokaw moderated.

The discussion was nominally about the publi-cation of a book, skillfully crafted by veteran pro-ducer Marc Kusnetz with Brokaw. It celebratesthe story of NBC’s war coverage. The bookcomes with its own DVD featuring a selection ofthe coverage. The book is handsomely producedwith lots of color photos and reminiscences byembeds and other NBC journalists. It will makeinteresting reading.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, PT 2

PROMOTING this endeavor was a short, over-the-top greatest-hits video that lionized NBC’snetwork team. It packaged the war and NBC’swork as if they were an epic – not unlike thehighlights underscored with dramatic music thatNBC gave us of the Olympics. (To borrow anABCism, the subtext was the “thrill of victoryand the agony of defeat.”) Sound the trumpets.

The hype is not the real concern here. We haveseen plenty of that. The real problem is that thewar it commemorates as a victory for NBC andthe USA – in that order – is not over yet. YourNews Dissector pressed Tom and Co. to acknowl-edge the many shortcomings of the coverage andtake responsibility for TV news’s complicity inselling the war. It was a charge, predictably, thatno one on the panel embraced or copped to.Only the audience in the room seemed to agree.They cheered me on.

Brokaw asked me if I was saying NBC was “onthe pipe” – i.e., carrying the Administration’swater. He defended the network’s coverage withgreat passion as if all bases were covered, allviewpoints heard. I like him. He is willing to

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engage. Ricks offered a mild dissent in the formof a reality sandwich of an observation. Hepointed out that the war is still raging with moreUS soldiers dead after the Saddam statue fellthan before.

WE ARE OUTTA HERE

IN the wake of the statue toppling (by US sol-diers, not the pre-assembled crowd), VictoriaClarke noted that after that, there was a “flood”of journalists de-embedding, splitting, and aban-doning the story. Many were anxious to call it awin and get the hell out of there. Ricks suggestedthat we now see that period not as the end of awar but as a mere half-time, “like in a footballgame.”

“We are now in the second half and it is notclear who will win.” He said we could lose. Thiswas sobering coming from a military journalistwho is in and out of the Pentagon (a.k.a. “theBuilding”) and who knows all the Big Brass –who largely respect his work.

AS WAR INTENSIFIES,COVERAGE SHRINKS

THIS prompted Kusnetz to ask why, if it’s worsethan ever over there, NBC has reduced itsreporting staff at a moment that demands morecoverage, not less. Brokaw explained the prob-lems and the complexities of covering a compli-cated story. He cited the recent attack thatwounded an NBC employee at “our hotel.”Clearly, this back-and-forth speaks to a debatewithin the News Division about how manyresources to allocate to a story that is not now astriumphalist as it was not so long ago.

A study of how TV News plays into and doesnot clear up the many misperceptions that TVviewers have about Iraq, the WMDs and AlQaeda’s “link” with Saddam came out just yes-terday but was not commented upon. It sampledthe public and looked at the frequency of mis-conceptions among the viewers of different net-works. It found that 30% of NBC viewers hadmisperceptions on the terrorist link to Iraq. Thatwas not as bad as the 45% of Fox viewers or asgood as the 11% of the PBS-NPR viewer-listeners.

TO NBC’s CREDIT

I WAS surprised to learn from another studythat NBC actually featured more coverage ofanti-war protests than BBC during the run-up tothe war. It did offer diverse analysis by analystslike Arkin, who quarreled with Clark last night,and even General McCaffrey who pissed off thePentagon at one point by questioning their plan.Reporters like the late David Bloom, who died inIraq, were offered inventive and gutsy reports.Whatever good one can say about NBC cannotbe applied to its offspring MSNBC, which spentthe war dueling with Fox over who could be themost obnoxious.

THE VIEW FROM THE ARAB WORLD

IF my own view of media reporting out of Iraq iscritical, it is low key when compared to how mostArab journalists feel about it. I found that out inmid-October when I took part in the Arab MediaSummit.

The Summit was held in Dubai sponsored bythe Dubai Press Club. The club invited me tospeak along with majordomos from CNN and

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BBC and the leading lights of the Arab mediaworld. War was the topic and politics the subtext.Now I can personally confirm the accuracy ofrecent studies that show that love of Americanculture and hatred of American policies coexist,with the latter becoming more intense. I tried bymy own presence and statements to make clearthat the United States and the Bush Administra-tion are not one and the same – just as Iraq is nota synonym for Saddam.

There was lots of ventilation at this event –expressions of the hurt, frustration and humilia-tion that many Arabs feel about US policies inIraq and towards Israel, and the refusal of manyUS media outlets to tell this story in an ongoing,fair and responsible way. “The western media”was denounced frequently but all too oftenviewed as a monolith, as all one big evil entity.There were lots of good arguments made aboutwhat we are doing wrong. High up on the list wasfailing to properly inform the American peopleabout the region and the human consequencesof our policies. By going there, to the UnitedArab Emirates, a place once called the TrucialCoast, I came to see that this part of Arabia is notjust some sand lot, oil well or filling station but avibrant hub of culture and consciousness.

CONTRADICTIONS AND CRITICISM

DUBAI is of course also riddled with contradic-tions with feudal and tribal traditions – rule byHighnesses and Emirs seems at odds with mod-ern societies but in fact, are co-existing withthem. The society is hardly democratic – andmany fear criticizing the men at the top. At thesame time, they seem to be bent on modernizingthe culture. I had never been around so much

elegant looking bearded royalty in white garb, orso many Muslim young people who want to forgemodern lives and a new media environment. Iwas impressed by a group of bright and ener-getic media students who sat in on the confer-ence. It seems as if the Sheikh has been particu-larly forceful in encouraging women to partici-pate and train for opportunities in the media.

Two royal figures opened the event. One was“His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed binRashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai andUAE Defense Minister.” When I think of DefenseMinister, I think Rumsfeld, not Rashid – but I waspleasantly surprised by his remarks whichaffirmed the importance of media to society andthe same time admitted that the Arab media hasshortcomings. A surprise guest, without toomuch to say on the subject was none other thanGerman Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. This isnot the sort of company your News Dissector isused to.

ARAB LEADER CRITICIZES ARAB MEDIA

THE Sheikh condemned Israel’s recent attack onSyria, while at the same time taking a poke at hisown media. He was frank: “Being fully frank, wecan state simply, that before the war, Arab mediafailed to expose the true nature of the Iraqiregime. We all know that it was based on terror-ism and oppression, and that it had waged morethan one war against its neighbors, and that ithad occupied a neighboring country and hadtried to erase that country from the politicalmap.

“Yet the Arab media forgot, or appeared toforget all that, and failed to explain it to its audi-ences. Over and above that, Arab media dealt

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with the regime as if it were safe and sound, andwent along with its efforts to portray theimpending conflict only as a war between West-ern powers and an Arab regime that was readyto confront and to defy them in the name of Arabdignity and solidarity,”

He went on to take a swipe at the westernmedia too, saying, “Arab journalists embeddedwith coalition forces suffered from a lack ofobjectivity and balance because they were ableto report only the information they were given,and because their movements were restricted.”He then referred obliquely to recent commentsfrom Christianne Amanpour who charged thatCNN’s war coverage had been muzzled, “As oneof the prominent Western reporters noted a fewweeks ago, she, too, had to practice self-censor-ship, while her station had felt intimidated bothby the U.S. Administration and by competitors,”he said.

CNN ROYALTY

AMERICAN news royalty was represented byChris Cramer, the president of CNN’s Interna-tional networks who followed, but did notrespond to the reference to the statement by onehis own correspondents. Nic Robertson of CNNwas asked about it directly and demurred. ACNN correspondent later told me that they wereall told to watch what they say and not talk aboutCNN.

Cramer praised the Arab Media instead, say-ing “Let me salute you for your courage andcommitment in covering the conflict, the one inAfghanistan and the continuing nightmare inIsrael and the Palestinian territories. I believethe new Arab media has brought a collective

voice, which is crucial for the people of thisregion and for those of us outside the area aswell.” I have heard Cramer in the past contrastwhat CNN’s International channels do with thedomestic channels – and criticize the later. Per-haps his new corporate role precludes that now.He is very admired in the business for his con-cern with the safety of journalists. I include aninterview with him in my book, “Media Wars.”

PETER ARNETT: OUTSPOKEN AS USUAL

LATER in the conference, the one time CNN starPeter Arnett spoke. Peter is now living in Bagh-dad, writing his own book on the Saddam years.I had some problems getting him to tell me whatreally went on behind the scenes when he wasfired during the war by MSNBC. He did blameFox for targeting him and making him too hot forthat network. I gave Arnett a copy of this book,hoping he would like it. I was flattered when henot only enthused about it but also gave me anon-camera statement to use when the hard backversion comes out. Maybe Fox News will nowtake note of it and start attacking me. Recall thatAl Franken’s new book was pushed on to thebestseller list when FOX sued Franken (and lost)and Bill O’Reilly attacked them. Please Rupert,take a whack.

Arnett explained that he was “crucified forhaving gone on Iraqi TV for a few minutes dur-ing the war”. His defense: “As journalists, weneed to know the other side, we should know theother side.” He also said “War reporting was ona decline. CNN’s success during the first warmotivated others. It inspired other organizationsto cover live TV. In the first war, I was the only(foreign correspondent) in Baghdad. Everyone

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had taken off. This time, there were 37 of us. Iwas again the only American journalist there,”Arnett said.

MEDIA AT RISK

HE did not rule out the possibility of an attack onWestern media targets in Iraq along the lines ofthe bomb that went off at the hotel housing NBC.He said many Iraqis working for Western com-panies and media were under threat. There arehalf a dozen very good newspapers and in sixmonths there could be more broadcasts too.

“I just bought a satellite TV for US$ 105 with 320channels,” he confided. “There is more Iraqienvironment in the media, but US still domi-nates.” He pointed out that the U.S. has won thewar, but has lost the information war. “Today, it isimpossible for anyone to control the media.There is no embedding anymore.” On this point,I was struck by a report in the Guardian thatmany of the Iraqi minders in Saddam’s Ministryof Information whom western journalists de-nounced for obstructing coverage are now work-ing for western news organizations.

PILING ON WESTERN MEDIA

THERE was an ongoing debate between Arabjournalists and their western counterparts. JihadAl Khazen of the Al-Hayat newspaper, a longtime Reuters correspondent claimed that theArab media was more objective in its coverage ofthe Iraqi war compared to western media”. CliveMyrie, a BBC correspondent who had beenembedded with British forces in Basra disagreedand, said that the issue should not be reduced toa beauty contest between the Arab and western

media. “We are all involved in getting to thetruth and that is what we should be doing,” hesaid.

He argued that the western media is not a sin-gle monolith that thinks alike but consists of var-ious perspectives and processes. He was verycandid about the limits of the embeddingprocess and shared some of his criticisms of theUS coverage with me in an interview I did for afilm I am doing on the media coverage of the war.

Also critical: Yousef Ibrahim, the former NewYork Times correspondent, who covered the firstGulf War. He combined his critique with praisefor Arab satellite TV outlets “The brilliant part isthat we now have a voice that is listened to at theCIA and at the White House. It is now a questionof quality. We have an opportunity now. Arabsatellites have become a force to shape publicopinion and finally, the Arab world has an outletto answer the Western media back.”

Al Arabia Editor-in-Chief Abdullah Bra Aswan,was also supportive of the new very competitiveArab TV. “Arab satellite TV is opening up theminds of the people. They now know about cor-ruption and the other ills...We may have lost thewar, but we have won the media battle. For thefirst time we can make our voices heard.”

MONOPOLY BROKEN

AN often quoted US based expert on the Arabworld, Dr. Hisham Sharabi, of Georgetown Uni-versity said the Western and Arab Media vieweach other with a distorted eye. But added thatthe monopoly of the Western media has beenbroken by the new Arab media led by the likes ofAl Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV.

A more fascinating view of Arab media was

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offered to me by Abdallah Schleiffer, a formerVillage Voice writer cultural critic who con-verted to Islam and now lives in Cairo.

He sees the Arab satellite TV as responsiblefor reviving Arab nationalism and a pan-Arabidentity. He compared it to Zionism in the senseof that a small group of expats created a virtualArab Nation first and then helped mobilize theirpeople via media. I will have more to say aboutour interview later.

FALLEN COLLEAGUES

AN Arab Journalism Prize was given in the nameof Tareq Ayyoub, a correspondent for al-Jazeerawho was killed by a US missile while reportingfrom the roof of a clearly designated mediabuilding in Baghdad the day before the firstphase of the war ended. His widow Dima TareqTahboub, a lecturer at the Arab Open Universityin Amman, accepted it, alongside their daughterwho carried a poster with her martyred father’spicture. Last Saturday, she wrote movingly in theGuardian about the difficulties she is having intrying to sue the US government for wrongfuldeath.

She writes: “I can’t find anyone to help me tolaunch legal action against those who killed him.When I thought I had found an outlet under Bel-gian law, US threats and ultimatums got the lawrepealed and put an end to my hopes of gainingjustice...

“When the Muslim Association of Britaininvited me to speak at last weekend’s anti-warmarch in London, I hesitated because of thedespair I have been in. But when I saw all thesepeople marching against the war, condemningthose responsible for it, my hope and belief in

the solidarity of humankind, in humanity, justiceand truth was rekindled.”

I also met one of the journalists who survivedthe US military attack on the Palestine Hotel,another well-known haven for journalists inBaghdad. Several operations later, she now hasshrapnel in the brain. I told her I had just spokenwith Victoria Clarke, the former Pentagon Mediachief about whether the Pentagon investigatedthe incident, Clarke said they had. This journal-ist told me that no one from the Pentagon hadbothered to speak with her, or even apologize. Somuch for an investigation.

A week after I met her, the International Fed-eration of Journalists denounced the lack of aU.S. response. On October 14th, the world’slargest journalist organization issued a detailedreport on the Iraq war and called for a “globalcampaign to expose the secrecy, deceit and arro-gance of the United States authorities” sur-rounding the killing of up to seven journalistsduring and after the war. They also want an Inde-pendent probe into unexplained killings; newrules to make targeting of media and negligenceover journalists’ safety a war crime; and a globalcampaign to demand justice for media victims." Ididn’t see this mentioned on any US TV outlet.(See: http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=2008&Language=EN)

Big journalism is finally assessing its role inIraq. The Fall 2003 Nieman Reports of the Nie-man Foundation for Journalism at Harvard car-ries an analysis of how the media was asleep atthe switch during the run-up to the war. GilbertCranberg writes: “Five months went by beforemany in the press questioned the Administra-tion’s evidence for going to war.” The AmericanJournalism Review carries a cover story asking

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of the Media was too soft on President Bush. Theconclusion: YES WE WERE.

Why does it take so long for our mediamachine to see what is happening and how ithelped promote this war? Why?

As for me, I am still writing about these issuesin my weblog, but now have to assess how thisbook will be received. Will it be taken seriously,or as I fear, dismissed because I lack “standing”or because this issue has “been done?”

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

AS I write this latest chapter, I have delved intomaking a film on the subject – hoping that willhelp these issues break through. The hard coverpublication of the book seems to be taking for-ever, so this last chapter will not be in it.

So far, I have had several initial reviews thathave been heartening. Noam Chomsky and GregPalast gave me a blurb along with former FCCCommisisoner Nicholas Johnson who spoke outagainst the trends that have advanced so far heleft office. More recently, two people who writeabout Iraq, in detail have read it – and liked it.

One is someone who figures in the story, PeterArnett, who never saw the way his coverage wasused – or how we saw the war. He read the bookat the Arab Media Summit and enthused aboutit. Getting someone like Peter who lived thisstory to be willing to endorse it is more than Icould have hoped for.

He said: “This is the best book to date abouthow the media covered the second Gulf War ormaybe miscovered the second war. Mr.Schechter on a day to day basis analyzed mediacoverage. He found the most arresting, interest-ing, controversial, stupid reports and has got

them all in this book for an excellent assessmentof the media performance of this war. He is verynegative about the media coverage and whenyou read this book you can see why he is so neg-ative about it. I recommend it.”

More moving to me was an unsolicitedresponse from Baghdad from the Iraqi bloggerwho calls herself Riverbend. I reprint it herealmost in full because it connects the book to alived experience. It had me in tears

WRITING FROM IRAQ

Dear Danny,I’m your biggest fan in Iraq. Your book is amaz-ing. Amazing. I started reading it last night and Ihaven’t been able to . . . stop reading. I spent thenight sitting up in front of the computer, readingpage after page. I only stopped when the elec-tricity went off and then I tried sleeping – butsleep wouldn’t come because I kept thinking ofsome of the things you had written – especiallyabout the embedded journalists. I’m hardly fin-ished with it yet, but I expect I will be by tomor-row.

Danny, you can’t know what we went throughduring the war. About a week into the war, ourelectricity went out completely. We had no tele-vision, no internet (which disappeared on the3rd day for people trying to access it from home).All I had was my radio... I fell asleep on thatradio, woke up to that radio and went around thehouse with the headphones in my ears.

The news was atrocious. It took us about 4 daysto realize that the BBC and VOA (Voice of Amer-ica) were lying. Our Iraqi media channel was fullof speeches and national anthems... not muchinformation. And you know about Al-Sahhaf.

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Monte Carlo in Arabic (a French radio station)was the best and even they seemed confusedabout what to report and what not to report...

The media tore us apart. We didn’t know whatwas happening and half the information on theair was false. I can’t even get my thoughtstogether at this point. I spent sleepless nights lis-tening to the radio and wanting to throttle some-one – a reporter, someone . . . I couldn’t believethere were so many blatant lies and what wasworse was that the casualties were ignored – likethey never happened or blamed on the Iraqis . . .unbelievable.

We were confused in the beginning as to whoto believe... who should we believe? Our mediawas horrid and weak– you’d think that a countryso experienced with war would be better at warmedia . . . the days I felt truly lost began on April6 . . . our Iraqi media just faded out. Our radio sta-tion (which was travelling on wheels at the time)was almost gone and instead of it, was someAmerican military media – a rigid, mechanicvoice that scared me silly . . . I’ll never be able todescribe the feeling. I read the part about PeterArnett. I got to see him in a university in Bagh-dad a couple of weeks before the war. Themoment I saw him, the reality of our situation hithome – if Peter Arnett was in town, the bombsare going to start flying. I know he’s a great jour-nalist and is admired but he’s an omen.

You mentioned Al-Jazeera’s Diar Al-Omariand Taysir being kicked out of Baghdad or some-thing – I remember that. I think they said thereason behind their expulsion was because dur-ing a press conference with Taha Yassin, all themedia people were asked not to bring in mobilephones for security reasons and the Al-Jazeeracrew ignored that and began speaking on their

phone or something... And there’s so much more... so much more. People keep writing to me and asking me to

put the past behind and start working for thefuture... I can’t seem to do that because I see thelies on a daily basis and it kills me that themajority of the world seem so blind to the truthand atrocities are being covered up on a dailybasis. Thank you for clearing up so much of thesmoke – I hope everyone reads your book.

I hope one day you collaborate with a psychol-ogist and write a book on the affects of media onthe people on the other side – like the Iraqis.People wonder why the Iraqis are so skeptic ofeverything around them – why they find it hardto believe the promises being made by Bush andCo. It’s because we got to see the BS firsthand-we lived through the lies and sometimes laughedat them and often found ourselves cursing,yelling and beating the poor radio with frustra-tion . . .

I just want to tell you that your book is amaz-ing. I hope it sells 3 million copies and that itbecomes required reading everywhere. Not foryour sake, for our sake and the sake of all theignorant people out there. I don’t know howmany fans you have – or how many you will even-tually have but I mean every single word. I livedthrough that incredible lie.

Thank you.Riverbend

DOCUMENTING THE DECEPTION

WHEN I began this book, the war was gettingunderway. While there were many activists ques-tioning the policy, only a few were challengingthe media – or even recognizing the central role

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they play to engineering consent, and mobilizingsupport for war. Little of the reporting focusedon the media war, or the tactics and techniquesthe Administration was using. On October 8.almost five months to the day after the war“ended,” a new document emerged that in manyways confirmed my own view.

It was written by Sam Gardiner, a retired AirForce Colonel who taught strategy and militaryoperations at the National War College, Air WarCollege and Naval War College. Sam seems to bea man who understands plans. His document isabout how the US government focused itsresources in an orchestrated effort to achieve“strategic influence” by managing and distortingperceptions before and during the conflict.

In his view, this campaign centered on strate-gic information warfare and strategic psycholog-ical operations. Its intent was to win support forthe war; its effect was to erode democracy. “Inthe most basic sense, “Gardiner writes, “Wash-ington and London did not trust the peoples oftheir democracies to come to the right decisions,Truth became a casualty, When truth is a casu-alty, democracy receives collateral damage.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself although Ihave tried.

Gardiner argues that the Defense Departmentcontinued its strategy of achieving strategicinfluence even after an office of that name wasclosed down when the press challenged its inten-tion to plant stories in the foreign press. Theoffice was closed. The work continued but with adifferent approach to plan and promote storiesin all of the media. This effort was more aboutmarketing rather than military mission.

He says that over 50 stories were “manufac-tured”, and that they “engineered the distorted

picture” of the Gulf War. He sounds like NoamChomsky in uniform. Each of these stories wereput forth to be part of a “mosaic.”

“I am not writing about a conspiracy,” he says.“It is about a well run and networked organiza-tion,” that relied on using the old “Big lie” strat-egy.” It revolved around defining the war as astruggle between good and evil, and implyingthat Iraq was behind the World Trade Centerattack.

According to Colonel Gardiner (Ret), “Four orfive contracted media groups were probablyinvolved in one way or another.” One was PRcompany called the Rendon Group. They cameup with multi-dimensional well-plotted influencestrategy. They targeted the cable news opera-tions. Explains Gardiner: “24/7 news requires dif-ferent techniques. Saturate the media time andspace. Stay on message and stay ahead of thenews cycle. Manage expectations. No matter howbad the story, it tends to level, Jeep the informa-tion consistent daily – Quatar, Pentagon, WhiteHouse, London. Use information to attack andpunish critics.”

It was all about story, he write. “It was aboutstory. It was story. Story was most important.”

These words could be coming out of themouths of any media executive because that’show they think too. They think story. The mediaaccepted their story because it fits into theirmedia logic. Mili-tainment sells.

And so it came to pass that many media outlets“bought” these stories, accepted them as validand used them without verification,

Knowingly or unknowingly, they becameweapons of mass deception,

Gardiner ends his report by reporting on thereactions he has had. Government insiders

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OCTOBER POSTSCRIPT

accept it as valid. Print reporters have noddedwith approval, although many had used thismaterial because it was leaked or planted, “ Ithink one could take the stories I have high-lighted and ask some direct questions, he says.How as it that the Washington Post took classi-fied information on the Jessica Lynch Story andpublished it just the way the individual leaking itby the government wanted? Why did the NewYork Times let it be used by ‘intelligence offi-cials’ on stories?...

“I have not heard any self-criticism fromreporters to whom I have talked.”

But saddest of all was his next sentence: “When I have talked to television reporters

and producers, my sense is that they believe thestory is just too complex to tell. That’s sad, butprobably true. Cynicism is the most disturbingreaction I have found.”

Welcome to our media world. Colonel Sam.Yes, its worse than you know and more patheticthan you think.

Its time for those of us in the know to do all wecan to bring some of our “strategic influence” tobear.

Let’s do it. ●

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LAST WORDS

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As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh discovered, a small group of neo-conservative ideologues, callingthemselves the Cabal and stationed at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, reworked U.S. intelligenceon Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to help justify a U.S. invasion. Hersh also quoted a former BushAdministration intelligence official as saying he quit because, "They were so crazed and so far out and sodifficult to reason with – to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God."

Hersh found, too, that Wolfowitz and other key neo-conservatives at the Pentagon were disciples of thelate political philosopher Leo Strauss, who believed that some deception of the population is necessary instatecraft. "The whole story is complicated by Strauss’s idea – actually Plato’s – that philosophers need totell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians," said Stephen Holmes, a lawprofessor at New York University. [See The New Yorker, May 12, 2003] – Robert Parry, Consortium News.

DECEPTION AS POLICY

CREDITS

299

anny Schechter is a television producerand independent filmmaker who alsowrites and speaks about media issues.He is the author of “Media Wars: News

At A Time of Terror (2003); “The MoreYou Watch, The Less You Know” (Seven StoriesPress) and “News Dissector: Passions, Piecesand Polemics” (Akashic Books and ElectronPress). He is the executive editor of Mediachan-nel.org, the world’s largest online media issuesnetwork, and recipient of the Society of Profes-sional Journalists’ 2001 Award for Excellence inDocumentary Journalism.

He has produced and directed many TV spe-cials and documentary films, including “Countingon Democracy” about the electoral fiasco inFlorida narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee;“We Are Family” (2002), “Nkosi: A Voice ofAfrica’s AIDS Orphans” (2001) narrated by DannyGlover; “A Hero for All: Nelson Mandela’sFarewell” (l999); “Beyond Life: Timothy LearyLives” (1997); “Sowing Seeds/Reaping Peace:The World of Seeds of Peace” (1996); “Prisonersof Hope: Reunion on Robben Island” (1995, co-directed by Barbara Kopple); “Countdown to Free-dom: Ten Days that Changed South Africa”(1994), narrated by James Earl Jones and AlfreWoodard; “Sarajevo Ground Zero” (1993); “TheLiving Canvas” (1992), narrated by Billy DeeWilliams; “Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspir-acy” (1992, co-directed by Marc Levin and Bar-

bara Kopple); “Give Peace a Chance” (1991);“Mandela in America” (1990); “The Making of SunCity” (1987); and “Student Power” (1968).

Schechter is co-founder and executive producerof Globalvision, a New York-based television andfilm production company now in its 16th year. Hehas specialized in investigative reporting and pro-ducing programming about the interfacebetween popular music and society. His careerbegan as the “News Dissector” at Boston’s lead-ing rock station, WBCN.

Later, Schechter was a producer for ABC NEWS20/20. He produced profiles of such stars asBruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner andpioneering segments on hip-hop and heavymetal. Working with Springsteen guitarist LittleSteven Van Zandt, he produced SUN CITY, the hitrecord and video featuring 54 top artists speak-ing out against apartheid. In l991, he worked withLenny Kravitz and Yoko Lennon on a videoremake of John Lennon’s classic “Give Peace aChance” with 39 stars. He was a producer on theNelson Mandela concert at Wembley Stadium inLondon in l990.

A Cornell University graduate, he received hisMaster’s degree from the London School of Eco-nomics, and an honorary doctorate from Fitch-burg College. He was a Neiman Fellow in Jour-nalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969.

After college, he was a full time civil rightsworker and then communications director of the

DANNY SCHECHTERDissector/Writer/Director/Producer

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Northern Student Movement, and worked as acommunity organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style Waron Poverty program. Then, moving from thestreets to the suites, Schechter served as anassistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a FordFoundation grant.

Schechter joined the start-up staff at CNN as aproducer based in Atlanta. He then moved to ABCas a producer for 20/20, where during his eightyears he won two National News Emmys.Schechter has reported from 49 countries and

lectured at many schools and universities. He wasan adjunct professor at the Graduate School ofJournalism at Columbia University.

Schechter’s writing has appeared in leadingnewspapers and magazines including the TheNation, Newsday, Boston Globe, Columbia Jour-nalism Review, Media Studies Journal, DetroitFree Press, Village Voice, Tikkun, Z, and manyothers. ●

Danny Schechter can be reached at dissector@Mediachannel.org

COLDTYPE.NEToldType (http://coldtype.net) is a Cana-dian web site devoted to Writing WorthReading From Around The World. Thesite contains books, magazines, news-papers, essays and photo-essays, all

produced in pdf format for downloading. Every-thing on the site is free.

Contributors include international correspon-dents such as top British commentators RobertFisk, John Pilger and George Monbiot, U.S. mediacritics Norman Solomon, Michael I. Niman andDanny Schechter, Antonia Zerbisias from Canada,and noted South African writers Denis Beckettand Rian Malan.

ColdType is edited by Tony Sutton as an adjunctto running the international newspaper designconsultancy, News Design Associates Inc.(http://newsdesign.net), which provides servicesto clients in Europe, Africa, North America and

Australasia from its base in rural Ontario,Canada.

Before becoming a consultant, Sutton – anaward-winning editor and designer – worked fordaily and Sunday newspapers in his nativeBritain, and was executive editor of Drum maga-zine in South Africa (where he was also a con-sultant to the apartheid-era alternative press). Hemoved to North America in 1990 to becomedesign director of Toronto’s Globe and Mail, laterjoining Thomson Newspapers as head of designfor its North American operation before becominga newspaper consultant.

Sutton also spent five years as editor of Designmagazine, the quarterly publication of the U.S.-based international Society for News Design.

He is the author of Creative Newspaper Designand Creative Magazine Design. ●

Tony Sutton may be contacted at editor@coldtype.net

EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

By DANNY SCHECHTERNews Dissector and Editor Mediachannel.org

There were two wars going on in Iraq - one fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and fearsomemilitary force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists andpropaganda techniques. One war was rationalized as an effort to find and disarm WMDs - Weaponsof Mass Destruction; the other was carried out by even more powerful WMD’s, Weapons of MassDeception. Veteran journalist and media watcher Danny Schechter, a former ABC and CNN producermonitored and and now analyzes the cheerleading for a war in which reporting was sanitized, stagedand suppressed. The author of Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, The More You Watch The LessYou Know and News Dissector, brings an insider’s knowledge based on 30 years in journalism withan outsiders perspective to critiquing media coverage. Throughout the war he was “self-embedded”at Mediachannel.org, the world’s largest on-line media issues network.

“In this compelling inquiry, Danny Schechter vividly captures two wars: the one observed byembedded journalists and some who chose not to follow that path, and the “carefully planned, tightlycontrolled and brilliantly executed media war that was fought alongside it,” a war that was scarcelycovered or explained, he rightly reminds us. That crucial failure is addressed with great skill andinsight in this careful and comprehensive study, which teaches lessons we ignore at our peril.” –NNooaamm CChhoommsskkyy..

“Once again, Danny Schechter, has the goods on the Powers The Be. This time, he’s caught America’spress puppies in delecto, “embed” with the Pentagon. Schechter tells the tawdry tale of the affairbetween officialdom and the news boys — who, instead of covering the war, covered it up. How wasit that in the reporting on the ‘liberation’ of the people of Iraq, we saw the liberatees only from thegunhole of a moving Abrams tank? Schechter explains this later, lubricious twist, in the creation ofthe frightening new Military-Entertainment Complex.” – GGrreegg PPaallaasstt,, BBBBCC rreeppoorrtteerr aanndd aauutthhoorr,, ““TThheeBBeesstt DDeemmooccrraaccyy MMoonneeyy CCaann BBuuyy..””

ColdType.netIn Association with MediaChannel.org