Administration officials assert that U.S. news organizations have emphasized violence and setbacks in occupied Iraq while playing down progress. The officials say the satellite capability is designed to help local stations interview U.S. authorities in Iraq and offer live coverage of military ceremonies and briefings relevant to their geographic areas.
Avoiding questions from big-time reporters from the major networks is part of of larger strategy begun last month by the Bush Administration which saw Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and others gave interviews to, for example, the local ABC affiliate in Kalamzoo.
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"Joel Kaplan":http://newhouse.syr.edu/newhouse_web/faculty_focus_new/faculty_pic_bios/joelkaplan2.html, who teaches advanced reporting and communications law at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, said he felt there was no legal problem with C-SPAN Baghdad. For one, that law applies only to the "USIA":http://usinfo.state.gov, not the DoD. Instead, he says, this plan is more like what Congress does when it uses the broadcast facilities outside its chambers to provide local media access to their senators and representatives. However, he notes, often it's the Congress members' own press secretaries interviewing them, and the resulting video often gets shown on local affiliates as a video press release without much comment from the local journalists. It's not exactly _propaganda_, Kaplan says, although "obviously everything is propaganda depending on your definition." It's a technique that counts on journalistic laziness, Kaplan says. And that's exactly why the Bush administration is doing this. "It's up to the journalists to decide what is propaganda or not," he says. Apparently, the Bush team is betting local journalists won't make any decision at all. This is insulting on many levels. It's insulting to the local journalists because some of them are pretty good -- it was a local television reporter who made then-Gov. Bush squirm in 2000 when he was asked to name various heads of state. It's insulting to the American people, because it's obvious what the Bush Administration is doing. And by circumventing the journalists on the ground in Iraq, this DoD network insults the very idea of a free and independent press as a watchdog institution and as an agent of the American people. Now, much of the modern media -- particularly broadcast media -- can hardly be held blameless. They have often shown themselves to be willing partners in the White House's ham-handed manipulation of a story. With Bush TV on the air, it's likely to get worse before it gets better.
Well, all the more reason here Chris for you to go back to Iraq and seek out the voices of the people living there, and not rely merely on “what the president has to say”. I shudder to think if most viewers and readers in the US are relying only on that.
What’s interesting too is that it’s a DOD operation, as mentioned. Living overseas, I am able to vote in most local, state and national elections in the States by absentee ballot (please, no Diebold for me!) but alas, this program, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), is administered by none other than the DOD also. The official name of the legal act being administered is the “Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA)”. It’s somewhat telling about our country’s priorities — if this Act’s name and administrator are any indications — that if Americans are living overseas, they’re assumed first to be military…
Actually, I don’t feel all that confident in my votes and now my news being filtered/controlled by the Pentagon… Is the State Dept. really that weak? Is it (at least for the Iraq news) simply because of tax breaks? What really is going on in allowing seemingly more power (information IS power) being given to the military? Some rhetorical questions perhaps, but they have been on my mind lately.
Chris, this is one time I will have to disagree with your thoughts. I supported your trip to Iraq last time and I will do it again - because your writing from there was so much fresher than what you have produced after you returned. The big media is clearly not what you think they should be. Agent of the American people? All they care about is their ratings - and you get that by showing the bodies and the destruction, not by providing comprehensive coverage. I’d like to hear what the Bushies have to say. And you too (when you get there). Let everyone talk. The only way to see what’s behind all the “filters” (the media’s got one, so does Bush & co. and so do folks like you) is to hear from everyone and try to make sense of the pieces that come through those filters.
Bush is quoted as saying: ”’There’s a sense that people in America aren’t getting the truth,’”
The man who gets his own information through aides, who doesn’t read newspapers himself, who doesn’t seek out independent reporting, ought to have a sense that he himself isn’t getting or giving the truth.
But he doesn’t.
And as far as big media is concerned, they are complicit with the government in that both big media and government are driven by corporate special interests—or, in a word, money.
The Department of Defense serving as a domestic news outlet? We are taking a broad leap beyond McCarthyism to government control of society. Are we living in the U.S.S.R? Cuba? China?
What can we call the current hysteria? This is not a Red Scare, it is a Dead Scare. Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court, with the Bush administration, are using a fear of retribution to dissent—using fear of “terrorists”—to take away civil liberties from the people and grab more and more power for themselves. This is a plan they have been working on for years.
Does anyone else see that little by little, our rights under the Constitution are being undermined, and that one day soon they will all be gone?
“Does anyone else see that little by little, our rights under the Constitution are being undermined, and that one day soon they will all be gone?”
Yeah, right. Let’s elect Howard Dean instead, who has come out and said he is going to use the power of the Federal Government to attack media businesses he considers to be hostile. Ha ha, just joking. Sure he’s joking. He’s a fascist, and he’ll act like one if he gets in.
Why can’t the DoD have its own TV channel? Why is that so scary? It has a website. What difference does it make? Joe and Jane American can, if they want, duh, change the channel. And if the DoD lies, duh, there is the entire news media to correct them. At this point I trust some Army colonel with a power point presentation way, way more to tell me the unvarnished truth than I do anyone in the major newspapers or the big 3 TV networks.
This development has all the makings of a major self-inflicted public information disaster. The more that Rumsfeld et al. believe that they have to put their spin on developments and do do through their own raw news feed, the easier it will be to compare and constrast real journalism with the company propaganda.
All that is needed now is another houseful of non-combatant women and children killed, in this case, in the name of allegedly giving Iraq back to them to shut this garbage down.
Why should I, or any other taxpayer, be forced to fund this travesty? No matter what you name it, this is State-Controlled with no accountablity factor—which sounds like propaganda to me.
I agree with the ‘C-SPAN Baghdad’ concept. The major news media are not interested in serious reporting.
Todays media are interested in only one thing - sensationalism. I don’t believe in liberal or conservative media bias, I believe there is a sensationalist bias. This ‘C-SPAN Baghdad’ will provide an outlet to see what is going on - things that aren’t always exciting or shocking.
statism
\Sta”tism\, n. [From State.] The art of governing a state; statecraft; policy. [Obs.]
The enemies of God … call our religion statism. —South.
about sums it up
The media’s looking for ratings. Ratings bring revenue. Revenue pays for their operations and buys the big talent - which brings in viewers and increases ratings.
Bad news sells. Good news doesn’t sell. Good news doesn’t bring in the viewers. Without viewers, your ratings drop.
There’s a reason behind the news philosophy “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Not enough bleeding in Iraq? Then let’s look to Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant.
Sex sells also.
J.
State-controlled media are a problem when they are designed as replacement media that shove the privates away such as in Baathist Iraq. What happened here is that the Pentagon was drawn into nation-building and suggested it might be useful to provide a feedback channel for that. Label it properly as a Pentagon mouthpiece so that everybody will see it is not designed to replace anything.
It is a well-known fact that in war any frontline journalist can exploit his bottleneck position in the newsflow to distort facts. And will do so if his (or his bosses) moral compass has gone crazy. However it’s totally weird to believe that working around such a journalist means insulting him. Far from it, it means proving him by giving him the chance to be fact-checked by his audience. This looks like some odd feudal honor culture, where everybody cheats all allong but will cry humiliation when you interfere his cheats. It’s unterstandable that a journalist who focusses his career on a peculiar culture develops some romanticism for it, but he shouldn’t buy into Islamist honor culture too much in replacement of professional ethics.