Holt on "THE MEDIA, CENSORSHIP AND THE WAR"

[Doug Millison]

THE MEDIA, CENSORSHIP AND THE WAR

[...]

A Lesson in Grants Pass, Oregon

A key example is what happened to Dan Guthrie, a popular columnist for
the last 8 years at the Grants Pass, Oregon, newspaper, The Daily
Courier. On September 15, Guthrie wrote that President Bush "skedaddled"
after the 9/11 attacks, and that "against their courage [that of the
passengers on the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania] the picture of
Bush hiding in a Nebraska hole becomes an embarrassment."

When hundreds of people protested, the publisher fired Guthrie. Dennis
Roler, the editor, was told to apologize to readers  He wrote:
"Criticism of our chief executive and those around him needs to be
responsible and appropriate. Labeling him and the nation's other top
leaders as cowards as the United States tries to unite after its
bloodiest terrorist attack ever isn't responsible or appropriate."

This was seen by many as quite an about-face of the Courier's mission,
in part that "truth will emerge from free discussion."

As Adair Lara of the San Francisco Chronicle put it, "Criticism of our
chief executive and those around him needs to be responsible and
appropriate? Since when? Did the Daily Courier sleep through the Monica
feeding frenzy?"

Lara reminded readers that a free press cannot exist without free
discussion. "When we let terrorists scare us into relinquishing freedoms
that define our society - such as getting to take potshots at the
president even at inappropriate times - then they truly undermine us."

The problem is, I think, we're going to see a lot of suppression in the
news - or if we don't see it, there's going to be a lot of
self-censoring in the name of patriotism. It's been a fact of life for
years that most newspapers, magazines, television channels and radio
stations are owned by conglomerates that answer to stockholders'
interests, not to principles of free speech. The big guys (Maher) and
the little guys (Guthrie) are going to learn that lesson or else.

[...]

Perhaps the most outspoken and authoritative voice to weigh in about the
media's role during the Afghan War is that of John MacArthur, publisher
of Harper's Magazine and author of "Second Front," a book about
censorship in the Gulf War.

Interviewed by Gerti Schoen for Media Channel at
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/interviews/macarthur.shtml , MacArthur
contends that the major networks and newspapers will again find
themselves corralled into a common media pool, denied access to most
military operations, restrained or arrested if they try to act
independently and reliant on direction from the same leaders - Colin
Powell and Dick Cheney - who kept the lid on last time.

That's why today "the press has absolutely no leverage," says MacArthur,
against  government censorship that's been building up for years.

"In WWII, Korea and Vietnam, it was understood that reporters were
allowed to accompany units into action," says MacArthur. "It's just that
in Vietnam we lost." Since then, the goal has been "to fight the war in
secret. That's the whole point to permitting the generals to fail . . ."
Censorship for the sake of "national security" is thus used as "an
excuse to crack down to the point where it seems there will be no
reporters at all. It won't just be censorship, but silence."

Look how constraining the "pool coverage" was during the Gulf War, where
"public relations officers read all pool reports," says MacArthur.

"The pool reporters were from the news organizations, the networks, and
the big newspapers. The pool would go out, draw straws, and one reporter
would go on the action. He'd come back and share all this information,
so there is no competition allowed, and each version of the pool report
would have to pass censorship before it could be sent back to the news
bureaus in Dahrain. It was very effective censorship."

MacArthur has been interviewed about the role of the press in the Gulf
War and in Afghanistan on CNN, Fox News and other networks, "but that's
very little time being devoted [to the issue]," he says. "You're not
seeing big articles about the Pentagon's press policy," nor, he says, is
the press aggressively pursuing an independent role.

"The press has lost the habit of independence in this country...There is
still some balance, but in terms of fighting for the right to cover the
war on behalf of the American people, it is finished. The battle was
lost in the Gulf War and the press is in a hopeless position. I am not
even sure they want to cover it. There isn't even the spirit any more
that was in Vietnam, of skepticism, and the sense that the patriotic
thing to do is to tell the American people the truth and to try to be as
impartial as possible and not to be the cats paw of the government. But
when I say this on TV, the reaction is overwhelming. There is tremendous
hostility to the free press in this country."

MacArthur says he watches the BBC on C-Span and believes the difference
in coverage is "like night and day. I read Le Monde every day. Both news
organizations are absolutely pro-American but there is a real debate
going on." You may not believe MacArthur's brash and one-sided opinions,
but his passion and blunt honesty are a refreshing change from the usual
middle-of-the-roaditis we usually see.

Example #2: The Center for Public Integrity

One of the most thorough explanations of how the government tried to
control the news media during military actions in the Gulf War, Grenada
and Panama is a scathing 1991 document published by the Center for
Public Integrity.

[Here again there is a different way of reading the "new media" on the
Internet. Like using a dictionary to read an essay or story with many
unknown words, using Yahoo, Google or other search engine helps to
identify places like the Center for Public Integrity, which (who knows?)
could be somebody's chat room. In this case, go to
http://www.publicintegrity.org where you find out the Center is a
nonprofit, nonpartisan political watchdog (Bill Moyers spoke at its
10-year anniversary) which the New Yorker has called "a journalistic
utopia" and the president of the National Press Club has described the
as "a significant force in the nation's capital."]

This study is discussed by University of Arizona journalism professor
and author Jacqueline Sharkley for "The Public i," an investigative
journal published by the Center, reprinted by TomPaine.com and again
reprinted by AlterNet at
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=11606 .

[...]

According to Sharkley, the  study shows "a disturbing pattern of
escalating control over media access to information on and off the
battlefield" that has led to "distorted accounts of what occurred,"
especially if government sources " 'doctored' statistics about the
success rates of weapons systems."

Some examples from the past to watch out for during the Afghan War, says
Sharkley:

	-- The Pentagon claimed that bombing missions in the Gulf War had
an 80
percent success rate, but later "Defense Department officials clarified
that 'success' meant a plane had taken off, released its ordnance in the
area of the target, and returned to base."

	-- "Congressional testimony by a former Pentagon advisor [stated that]
Patriot missiles were not as effective as the Defense Department
claimed, and that they may have caused more damage than they prevented."

	-- Because the press was restricted to media pools, "private video
firms interested in producing Gulf War programs that would present the
U.S. military effort in a positive light were allowed greater access to
the field than journalists."

	-- "During Pentagon briefings, officials repeatedly stressed that U.S.
planes were avoiding civilian targets, but little was said or asked
about the long-range effects that the bombing of Iraq's infrastructure
would have on the civilian population. A report prepared in May of 1991
by a Harvard study team predicted that 170,000 Iraqi children would die
within the next year as a result of the effects of the Gulf crisis."

	-- Lessons from "the Falklands model" were advocated by a U.S. Naval
War college publication: "To maintain public support for a war, the
article said, a government should sanitize the visual images of war;
control media access to military theaters; censor information that could
upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists who would not write
favorable stories."

[...]

Holt Uncensored #271
Tuesday, October 9, 2001

http://www.holtuncensored.com



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com