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Censorship
Can
a free press survive America's new war?
by
Alan Pittman
In "America's New War" the first U.S. casualty may be the First Amendment.
The military, Bush administration propaganda and
the media itself have squelched news in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
Asked at a press conference whether he would lie
to the media about the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quoted
Winston Churchill about disinformation around the D-Day invasion.
"Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard
of lies."
Rumsfeld is about the only source the U.S. media has
for covering the Afghan war. The military has refused to allow journalists
to accompany troops and pilots fighting in Afghanistan or even interview
them after their missions.
"They plan to fight the war and then tell the press
and the public how it turned out afterwards," the Center for Public
Integrity (CPI) quoted CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
The military spin is that pinpoint smart bombings
will keep civilian casualties to a minimum, international investigative
reporter Phillip Knightley wrote in a CPI commentary. "Bloody TV footage
or grim still photographs of civilian bomb victims would threaten
this most outrageous piece of propaganda, so an essential part of
the Western alliance's strategy has been not only to bomb in the dark
but, as far as possible, to keep the public in the dark as well."
John Barry, Newsweek's Pentagon reporter, told
The New York Times that the military is restricting
coverage, that "might not be consonant with their basic message that
they're making inexorable progress toward inevitable victory."
The media blackout is the culmination of a long trend
toward military censorship. After Vietnam, the military blamed the
media for turning public opinion against the war.
The British managed to successfully keep the media
away from directly covering their Falklands War. A U.S. Naval War
College publication reported on the Falkland lessons. To maintain
public support, the article said, a government should sanitize the
visual images of war; control media access; censor information that
could upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists who would
not write favorable stories, according to CPI.
The U.S. applied the Falklands model in Grenada and
Panama. The biggest application was in the Gulf War. A CPI report
on Gulf War coverage noted gross exaggerations of the effectiveness
of Patriot missiles and smart bombs and success rates for bombing
missions. The 1991 report concluded, "information about Defense Department
activities ... [was] restricted or manipulated not for national security
purposes, but for political purposes -- to protect the image
and priorities of the Defense Department and its civilian leaders,
including the president."
Media groups complained after the Gulf War, and the
Pentagon promised to allow more access next time. But that hasn't
happened and media groups are complaining again.
The presidents of a group of 20 journalism organizations
issued a statement expressing concern "over the increasing restrictions
by the United States government that limit news gathering and inhibit
the free flow of information in the wake of the September 11 attack.
... We believe that these restrictions pose dangers to American democracy
and prevent American citizens from obtaining the information they
need."
But the Pentagon has not budged. With patriotism running
high, the military may reason that the public isn't likely to complain.
A recent Pew Research Center poll showed 59 percent of respondents
want more military control over reporting the war. Only 28 percent
want more media control, the Times reported.
That has left journalists trying to cover the Afghan
war from Pakistan. Masood Anwar of the News International in Pakistan
describes the coverage from Quetta as "mainly cooked up and rubbish,
as the journalists themselves are hostages to circumstances and strict
security concerns" and must have Pakistani military escorts.
When a reporter in Pakistan does manage to report
news, they can be kicked out. The London Telegraph reported
that its correspondent was deported from Pakistan after uncovering
evidence of a covert operation by rogue elements of Pakistan's military
intelligence service to smuggle arms to the Taliban.
UO Prof. Anita Weiss, author of several books on Pakistan,
reads Pakistani and other Arabic newspapers and is "appalled" by the
local interviews and perspectives U.S. media are missing. "We're being
fed a line," she said. A free press "is a civil liberty we've quickly
lost."
Domestic Censorship
Reporting on the domestic war on terrorism
has also been severely curtailed. After the media complained that
the Justice Department refused to provide the names and charges for
1,200 people it detained after the terrorist attacks, the department
announced that it would no longer release even the total number of
detainees. Now, President Bush has signed an order allowing an unknown
number of present and future accused terrorists to be tried and potentially
executed in secret by military courts.
Government censorship has moved onto the Internet,
with information being removed from dozens of government web sites
on the theory that terrorists might use it, according to the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has removed
information about nuclear reactors, the Environmental Protection Agency
pulled information about chemical plant accidents and the Federal
Aviation Administration removed information about airport security
violations. The public now must trust that the government will make
nuclear plants, chemical plants and airports safe.
Government censorship has even moved into space. The
Pentagon has bought exclusive rights to commercial satellite imagery
of Afghanistan, blocking media from using the images, the Times
reported.
The censorship is producing growing mistrust. Variety
reported that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings wrote about his misgivings
in an e-mail to viewers: "We have been given to understand that the
Taliban forces had been 'eviscerated,' that its ranks had been severely
depleted by defections, and that the United States had bombed so heavily
it was running out of targets. -- Today, as bombing enters week
four, those claims appear questionable.''
A Frankfurt, Germany newspaper has warned readers
about disinformation, the Times reported. "Substantial amounts
of information about current military actions and their consequences
is subject to censorship by parties to the conflict," the warning
said. "In many cases, an independent confirmation of such information
is not possible for this newspaper."
UO political science professor Jerry Medler said the
military censorship has been successful in limiting opposition to
the war. "No one has stood up to say, 'wait a minute--' and the
reason is we have very little information."
But the military may be shooting itself in the foot
in the long run. The New York Times held back from reporting
on the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba under pressure from President
John F. Kennedy. Later, after the disastrous invasion, Kennedy told
the paper's editor that he wished the paper had printed everything.
"If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved
us from a colossal mistake," the Times reported.
Propaganda
"There are
reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say,
watch what they do, and that this is not a time for remarks like that,"
said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in response to comments from
ABC satirist Bill Maher questioning whether terrorists on suicide
missions should be called "cowardly."
In its propaganda war against Al Qaeda, the Bush administration
is pushing the media to watch what it says and does on many fronts.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told network
news executives that they shouldn't broadcast taped messages from
Osama bin Laden. The networks now paraphrase or air only snippets
of the tapes.
"We Americans -- are now the only people in the
whole developed world who can't actually hear what our enemy is saying
about us," lamented New York University media professor Mark Crispin
Miller in a Mother Jones column.
Censoring bin Laden's anti-American rants is actually
counter-productive, according to Robert Giles, of the Nieman Foundation
for Journalism. The violent bin Laden statements would only support
the need for the war, he wrote in a Times op-ed, "which makes
it especially odd that the administration would want to keep it from
the American public."
The bin Laden videos come to U.S. media through the
Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel. Bush sent Secretary of State Colin
Powell to press Qatar to censor the independent media outlet that
U.S. officials have criticized as anti-American. Recently, the U.S.
bombed the station's Kabul office.
The Bush Administration would likely be secretive
and anti-media even without the war. Journalists have complained about
administration efforts to fight Freedom of Information Act requests,
subpoena the phone records of a reporter, and withhold presidential
records from George Bush senior's administration that could prove
embarrassing to officials in junior's White House.
After Sept. 11, the Bush Administration came down
hard on leaks. Bush even threatened to end security briefings for
many members of Congress before the Republican and Democratic officials
complained bitterly.
There's so little information from the U.S. government
that Americans have come to rely on the British government for news
about their country. Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first to release
details of the legal case against bin Laden, and British military
officials were the first to discuss the likely need for ground troops
to catch bin Laden.
The Bush administration is now asking Hollywood to
contribute to the propaganda war. Moviemakers are reportedly willing
to do their part.
Bush's moves to sacrifice civil liberties in the war
on terrorism has been chilling, the Village Voice reported.
Paul McMasters, of the Freedom Forum, said that "In such an atmosphere,
voices of dissent grow silent, probing questions by the press are
viewed as unpatriotic and subversive, and whistle-blowers within the
government are quieted."
With public opinion polls registering a patriotic
80 percent or more support for Bush, the president is seeing few limits
to his power to bend the First Amendment and other rights to his will.
Tim Lynch, of the conservative Cato Institute, told The Washington
Post that the high polling numbers have fostered "an arrogance
at the White House." He said officials believe they can take presidential
power "farther than it's gone before."
Self-Censorship
The Bush
administration doesn't need to do anything to censor many media outlets;
they do it themselves.
CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson ordered news staff to
limit reports of Afghan war casualties and use World Trade Center
deaths to justify the killings, the Washington Post reported.
After the deaths in the U.S., it "seems perverse to focus too much
on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan," Isaacson wrote in a
memo.
Other U.S. networks have taken a similar approach,
according to the Times. "In the United States television images
of Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors
or American officials explaining that such sights are only one side
of the story," the Times reported. In other countries, however,
"images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital beds or women
rocking in despair over a baby's corpse" are "more frequent and lingering."
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) called CNN's
casualty coverage policy itself "perverse." "One of the world's most
powerful news outlets has instructed its journalists not to report
Afghan civilian casualties without attempting to justify those deaths."
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Stephanie
Salter wrote, "Between the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the so-called
war in Afghanistan, a once-great news operation seems to be morphing
into the Atlanta-based annex of the West Wing." Salter quoted from
a New York Times report that "after two months, American television's
cautious approach has turned into knee-jerk pandering to the public,
reflecting a mood of patriotism rather than informing viewers of the
complex, sometimes harsh realities they need to know."
Too many journalists view themselves as part of the
military. CBS's Dan Rather said of the commander in chief, "Wherever
he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he'll make the call,"
reported media commentator Norman Solomon.
Brit Hume, anchor for the conservative Fox News Channel,
said that neutrality isn't appropriate in coverage for this war because
the enemy are "murderous barbarians," WorkingForChange reported.
But ABC President David Westin warned in a speech
that "unless we are diligent our enemy could use our own patriotism
against us by encouraging us to shut down independent thinking and
open mindedness."
Many media outlets appear to be shutting down reporting
for fear of negative reaction from patriotic zealots.
FAIR quotes from a warning memo from the chief copy
editor of the Panama City, Florida News Herald. "DO NOT USE
photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S. war on
Afghanistan. Our sister paper in Fort Walton Beach has done so and
received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails and the like.
... DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from
the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down
in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian
casualties, DO IT."
Organized right-wing "patriot police" have hounded
network executives, according to FAIR. ABC's Westin said his network
got a "torrent of complaints" when it aired an interview with a PLO
spokesman.
Some media outlets don't need prompting to toe the
popular line. "If you get on the wrong side of public opinion, you
are going to get into trouble," CNN's Isaacson said, according to
WorkingForChange.
Newspaper columnists have felt the heat. Columnists
for the Texas City Sun and Grants Pass Daily Courier
were fired after they criticized Bush for cowardice in not immediately
returning to Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks.
At a UO peace conference last month, UO journalism
Prof. Carl Bybee held up a copy of The Register-Guard coverage
of the conference that he said was skewed. The story reported that
a keynote speaker favored a police action to apprehend bin Laden.
"Even peace activists want revenge," began the R-G story.
In the atmosphere of self-censorship, FAIR has complained
that peace protests have been undercovered and peace opinions are
given little room on op-ed pages.
Rallying around the president in war time may have
even skewed the reported results of the media consortium recount of
the Florida presidential vote. The Nation notes that the recount
showed that Al Gore would have narrowly won if all ballots in the
state were accurately counted. But CNN declared, "Florida recount
study: Bush still wins."
With the U.S. media censored and waving flags on the
air, more aggressive British reporters have repeatedly scooped American
journalists. The Brits were first to report on a new video in which
bin Laden justifies Sept. 11th, first to find documents abandoned
by retreating Al Qaeda forces hinting at efforts to build nuclear
bombs, and first with an interview of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad
Omar, the Times reported.
Recently, the BBC gave far more detailed and prominent
coverage of alleged atrocities by Northern Alliance troops in Mazar-i-Sharif
than did CNN or The New York Times.
America cannot risk losing the First Amendment to
war, said NYU Prof. Crispin. "If we allow the government and media
to keep us all in nervous ignorance, American democracy will not prevail
against the terrorists; it will have been destroyed regardless of
the outcome of this latest war."
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