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| Fifth Column |
| StrategyPage: Bad Reporting and Iraq |
| 2005-09-12 |
| There are a lot if links in the story, so I recommend going to the source. âSir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, Iâd be pretty depressed as well.â â Captain Sherman Powell to Matt Lauer, Today, 8/17/05 If you were to believe what you read in the papers, Iraq has become a horrendous quagmire, with soldiers being killed almost on a daily basis, for what turns out to have been a lie about weapons of mass destruction. To top it off, after having nothing to do with terrorism, Iraq has now become a training ground for al-Qaeda. But maybe not. The media has gotten things wrong before. Just look at Dan Ratherâs story about the memos concerning President Bushâs service in the Texas Air National Guard, or how the battlefield victory of the 1968 Tet Offensive was turned into a defeat with a few words from Walter Cronkite. What is happening in Iraq is a failure by the media to give the American people relevant information. This has probably colored public opinion on the liberation of Iraq. The mediaâs failure has come in two areas. First, it has failed to provide the news in context, often focusing on negatives. Second, it has not brought evidence to the American people that would place the initial decision to go in into context. Both of these failures have occurred often enough that one cannot be blamed for wondering if a pattern of deception, by omission, is not occurring. The term âdeception by omissionâ might sound harsh, but it is accurate. Deception does not need the active misrepresentation of facts, it can occur when someone fails to reveal something relevant to the situation â particularly when the people leaving out some of the facts are advocating a specific course of action (such as withdrawal from Iraq ). For instance, the media has often failed to report many of the successes. This was a major complaint voiced by at least two columnists who have served in Iraq. In the first case, the complaint is about the lack of good news ( schools opened, rehabilitation of infrastructure neglected by Saddam Hussein, and other news items that donât have the suddenness and shock value of a car bombing). The second complaint is that the âpolice blotterâ coverage often obscures the âbig pictureâ of what is going on. This is quite important as well. The insurgents offer little more beyond murder, mayhem, and terror. The second, and more serious matter is the fact that the media has flat-out omitted several pieces of information that tend to back up the decision to go to war and put to rest claims that President Bush lied. Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard has documented the connections between Saddamâs regime and al-Qaeda. This has been a constantly repeated pattern. In April, 2003, a pair of journalists discovered a memo in which the Mukhabarat wanted to bring over a representative of Osama bin Laden to discuss âthe future of our relationship with himâ. The memo in question went through five translations before the article was published, and the reporter in question, Mitch Potter, admitted that he had been skeptical of the claims. o Other memos show Iraq not only having terrorist connections (English translation here), but attempting to acquire mustard gas and anthrax, and seeking a means to attack American forces in Somalia. Note that the published WMD articles are from 2000. These were carefully vetted by the news agency that did this. Contrast these first two efforts with the efforts made by CBS to vet the memos concerning President Bushâs service in the Texas Air National Guard.These four instances would clearly exonerate the President and his national security team of the most serious charges laid against them by the anti-war movement. To wit, they prove that the rationale for going to war was based in fact, not lies. Knowing that the threat was real would certainly have an effect on public opinion. In essence, the coverage of Iraq that people have been getting from the media is a distorted picture that has characterized by a distinct pattern of omission of facts that would support the Administration. Given the call by Greg Mitchell for media outlets to editorialize in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, there is a serious question as to whether or not these omissions are deliberate. If so, then the media is guilty of deception by omission. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #5 Is there a question? MSM can't and won't cover any portion of Bush's years in office in a positive manner. They aren't reporting... Seems I learned in school, the who, what, where, when and how. And now, we got the "Attack of Katrina" that rather than report the most incredible response to a national disaster that we have ever faced, 90,000 square miles (oh.. they are now stating, "the alleged 90,000 square miles) is there any question that there is bad reporting? Only problem is, I'm getting extremely nervous, that they are winning. They have really succeeded in erasing the last 20-30 years of our race issue. And today during the Senate hearings for Judge Roberts... one has to wonder, were the hearings about Roberts or Katrina? Wonder who an Excel spreadsheet would show had the most mentions? Roberts or Katrina. I'm one of Fred's folks getting burned out. And I hate that. I watched this happening during the Vietnam days, and often have stated, I refuse to let that happen again. But, it is. And I don't know what to do to stop it. I don't spend any money in support of them.... but yet, they are still the "voice" we are hearing. How can we defeat this? We didn't win in the 60's and the stakes are even higher these days. |
| Posted by: Sherry 2005-09-12 23:23 |
| #4 The antidote for lies is truth. Since the MSM has pulled almost all of its embeds out of country, and most of the remainder stay in their hotel in the Green Zone, in future, someone has to take their place. The only one who could do this is the Pentagon. Before a future conflict, it needs to create a large permanent pool of MSM and independent journalists who will be assigned to units when they are deployed, under pre-agreed OPSEC rules. The difference will be that the journalists will be paid by the Pentagon, from an escrow account not in their wartime control. If their unit deploys for combat operations in other than a covert operation, the journalist is brought along, and the meter is ticking. He is given all the perquisites of the soldiers, commo support for his job, and a paycheck. As long as those journalists stay with their units, they don't even have to write copy, they are paid just to be there as independent observers. If they leave, they are no longer paid. If they do write copy, they can sell it to whoever wants to buy it and keep 100% of what they can get. This means that the MSM can no longer claim that there just isn't any qualified journalist there gathering the news. If they want news, they pay for it just like all the other stringer news they routinely pay for. The MSM also cannot claim that the news is biased, just because the journalists (with the old and honorable label "war correspondents", instead of "embeds") are paid by the Pentagon. The Pentagon has agreed ahead of time to only "fire" them immediately if they violate OPSEC, *not* for printing negative stories. Other rules, of course, would apply, such as Geneva Conventions limits. The MSM would have to submit personnel for this pool, too. Personnel capable and willing of dropping whatever they are doing and deploying. Any late comers would be restricted to higher headquarters, though they could come along, too. They just can't run out there, grab the indy's microphone, do their story and run away, ripping him off of his story. Pool "memberships" could be for a given time, a few weeks or months, so that the Pentagon could *eventually* eliminate purely hostile or incompetant reporting. A journalist can turn down a deployment, but he will forfeit his slot to another journalist. Last but not least, indy journalists could set up a corporation to market their news over the Internet, so even though the MSM would get a crack at it, they could not censor it by refusing to publish. Somebody, think Rush Limbaugh, would pick it up and blow the scoop. And they could clearly state that it was available, but the MSM intentionally ignored it. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-09-12 19:13 |
| #3 I've been lurking on a "Global Journalist" listserve for a few months. Many of the posts to the list are interesting, but lately there's been a loonbat spouting all the loonbat talking points. On a hunch, I googled the LB's name and sure enough, it has a website. When I go to the website, it says: This site has been experiencing technical problems, for which I apologize. I suspect, but cannot prove, sabotage by opaque right-wing political power. I will persevere. Needless to say, this LB is especially venomous toward the US military and writes for the Progressive Populist. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-12 15:31 |
| #2 Of course if you take the position that the media is deliberately distorting the news to aid their allies (Al-Qaeda) their coverage makes perfect sense.... The left would claim that they really mean only that 'there is no link between Iraq and 9/11' then go on to proclaim that [since there is no proven link between Iraq and 9/11] there is no link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-09-12 14:47 |
| #1 The media is guilty of aiding an enemy and treason since they only report stuff to further their own goals, which often is at the expense of American lives and security. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-09-12 13:18 |