Mary Mostert
Is George Bush unfairly competing with the big 5 media conglomerates?
By Mary Mostert
It seems that something new and different is happening to news coverage in the Middle East since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched early this year. This seems to be the first war in American history in which there have been so few casualties that every single death has become front-page news.
This, of course, has not always been the case. For example, in 1988 “Chemical Ali,” a cousin of Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of approximately 100,000 Kurds in Iraq. It wasn’t even reported in American papers. On March 16, 1988, Chemical Ali launched the poison gas strike on the village of Halabja, killing over 5,000 people, most of them women and children. THAT wasn’t considered “news.” Few people to this day even know about it.
Things are different today. This week, as Ramadan began, United Press International editor Claude Salhani scolded President Bush for the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq that killed 190 people in three months. According to Salhani, this week’s Ramadan violence in Iraq is comparable to the 1968 Tet offensive in Saigon during the Vietnam War. TheTet Offensive, we may recall, was the turning point of the Vietnam War that led to a downward spiral of American defeat.
To Salhani the 2,320 Iraqi combat deaths in the first three months of Operation Iraqi Freedom are far more significant and troubling to the Iraqis than the more than approximately 400,000 Iraqi deaths in the Iran-Iraq war. He seems to believe being killed by a fellow Muslim is of no concern to the Iraqi mothers and wives. In fact, he seems to believe there WAS no killing in the Iran-Iraq war, since the American media didn’t report it.
Today the same media that ignored 1.5 million Iraqis and Iranians being killed in the 1980s have reported 190 people killed in three months on the coalition side and 2320 on the Iraqi side is the worst tragedy ever to have happened in the region. Those deaths, we are led to believe, overshadow every positive thing that has happened.
This week Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said of the lack of reporting in the media: “We have witnessed or heard about hundreds of individual acts of courage by Iraqis and by Americans, and by the other Coalition partners who are working together to build a new and free Iraq.” UPI complained that “Despite obvious and ominous indications to the contrary Bush insists that the situation in Iraq is not as bad as it would appear, particularly as portrayed in the media, and that it's getting better all the time. To emphasize his point, the president points to the schools and hospitals that are opening and functioning, to small businesses starting to take off and to electricity and water now becoming more regular.”
Frank Rich of the New York Times, which hit the news in a big way this year for simply making up news stories, complained that the President said, “The most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Rich also compared Iraq with Vietnam: “Voters didn't turn against our Vietnam adventure en masse until it became, in Michael Arlen's undying phrase, the Living Room War.
For those too young to remember the Tet Offensive, which was reported by Captain Donald M. Bishop as, the North Vietnamese being “successful in altering the course of the war far beyond the accomplishments of their army. The American people were shocked that the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army (VC/NV A) possessed the strength to make the widespread strikes. In the public clamor that followed, President Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the 1968 Presidential race. The policy of Vietnamization was launched, and many Americans concluded that the war was too costly to pursue.
“It has always been clear that the press played a vital role in this dramatic shift of opinion. It has been evident that dissatisfaction with the war among media opinion-makers helped form an American public attitude of discouragement. Nonetheless, much of the assessment of the media's role in the war has heretofore been impressionistic and conjectural.”
Translated, Captain Bishop is challenging the MEDIA’S perception of the Vietnam War. And, it appears obvious that there is a strong movement in the traditional media leaders to do to the same thing in the Iraq situation that they did in Vietnam – force an American president to give up. The decision to not fight the Vietnam War, of course, eventually led to the deaths of 58,202 Americans. We are currently talking about approximately 300 American deaths in Iraq, and almost half of them are not combat deaths.
Of course Vietnam happened before the Internet, which increasingly is the source of news millions of Americans turn to. This prompted Rich to criticize Bush for going “over the heads of the filter (i.e. reporters and editors) to speak directly to the people."
And, the President IS going over the heads of the media anchors. Furthermore, people are listening.
The Bush Administration posts on government websites, i.e. cabinet officers and military websites, the actual transcripts of interviews, press conferences and speeches. The public, for the first time, has easy access to what is actually being said without the biased “filters” in the media. Anyone with Internet access can be read press conferences, speeches and background reports in full as given by Bush administration officials. Over the past year, the readership in those websites have shot up, cutting into the readership of “filters” such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and UPI.
The real problem here is, after managing to control most of the news Americans hear and see for decades, TV networks and huge media conglomerates the Internet is beginning to cut sharply into the profits of the big five conglomerate media outlets.
The very idea that the President of the United States should speak to the people without the “filter” of Ted Koppel, the N.Y. Times and Washington Post editors is galling. How can they continue to control the thinking of America if people start listening to what newsmakers actually say, rather than what the media makes up?
© Mary Mostert
It seems that something new and different is happening to news coverage in the Middle East since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched early this year. This seems to be the first war in American history in which there have been so few casualties that every single death has become front-page news.
This, of course, has not always been the case. For example, in 1988 “Chemical Ali,” a cousin of Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of approximately 100,000 Kurds in Iraq. It wasn’t even reported in American papers. On March 16, 1988, Chemical Ali launched the poison gas strike on the village of Halabja, killing over 5,000 people, most of them women and children. THAT wasn’t considered “news.” Few people to this day even know about it.
Things are different today. This week, as Ramadan began, United Press International editor Claude Salhani scolded President Bush for the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq that killed 190 people in three months. According to Salhani, this week’s Ramadan violence in Iraq is comparable to the 1968 Tet offensive in Saigon during the Vietnam War. TheTet Offensive, we may recall, was the turning point of the Vietnam War that led to a downward spiral of American defeat.
To Salhani the 2,320 Iraqi combat deaths in the first three months of Operation Iraqi Freedom are far more significant and troubling to the Iraqis than the more than approximately 400,000 Iraqi deaths in the Iran-Iraq war. He seems to believe being killed by a fellow Muslim is of no concern to the Iraqi mothers and wives. In fact, he seems to believe there WAS no killing in the Iran-Iraq war, since the American media didn’t report it.
Today the same media that ignored 1.5 million Iraqis and Iranians being killed in the 1980s have reported 190 people killed in three months on the coalition side and 2320 on the Iraqi side is the worst tragedy ever to have happened in the region. Those deaths, we are led to believe, overshadow every positive thing that has happened.
This week Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said of the lack of reporting in the media: “We have witnessed or heard about hundreds of individual acts of courage by Iraqis and by Americans, and by the other Coalition partners who are working together to build a new and free Iraq.” UPI complained that “Despite obvious and ominous indications to the contrary Bush insists that the situation in Iraq is not as bad as it would appear, particularly as portrayed in the media, and that it's getting better all the time. To emphasize his point, the president points to the schools and hospitals that are opening and functioning, to small businesses starting to take off and to electricity and water now becoming more regular.”
Frank Rich of the New York Times, which hit the news in a big way this year for simply making up news stories, complained that the President said, “The most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Rich also compared Iraq with Vietnam: “Voters didn't turn against our Vietnam adventure en masse until it became, in Michael Arlen's undying phrase, the Living Room War.
For those too young to remember the Tet Offensive, which was reported by Captain Donald M. Bishop as, the North Vietnamese being “successful in altering the course of the war far beyond the accomplishments of their army. The American people were shocked that the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army (VC/NV A) possessed the strength to make the widespread strikes. In the public clamor that followed, President Lyndon Johnson announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the 1968 Presidential race. The policy of Vietnamization was launched, and many Americans concluded that the war was too costly to pursue.
“It has always been clear that the press played a vital role in this dramatic shift of opinion. It has been evident that dissatisfaction with the war among media opinion-makers helped form an American public attitude of discouragement. Nonetheless, much of the assessment of the media's role in the war has heretofore been impressionistic and conjectural.”
Translated, Captain Bishop is challenging the MEDIA’S perception of the Vietnam War. And, it appears obvious that there is a strong movement in the traditional media leaders to do to the same thing in the Iraq situation that they did in Vietnam – force an American president to give up. The decision to not fight the Vietnam War, of course, eventually led to the deaths of 58,202 Americans. We are currently talking about approximately 300 American deaths in Iraq, and almost half of them are not combat deaths.
Of course Vietnam happened before the Internet, which increasingly is the source of news millions of Americans turn to. This prompted Rich to criticize Bush for going “over the heads of the filter (i.e. reporters and editors) to speak directly to the people."
And, the President IS going over the heads of the media anchors. Furthermore, people are listening.
The Bush Administration posts on government websites, i.e. cabinet officers and military websites, the actual transcripts of interviews, press conferences and speeches. The public, for the first time, has easy access to what is actually being said without the biased “filters” in the media. Anyone with Internet access can be read press conferences, speeches and background reports in full as given by Bush administration officials. Over the past year, the readership in those websites have shot up, cutting into the readership of “filters” such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and UPI.
The real problem here is, after managing to control most of the news Americans hear and see for decades, TV networks and huge media conglomerates the Internet is beginning to cut sharply into the profits of the big five conglomerate media outlets.
The very idea that the President of the United States should speak to the people without the “filter” of Ted Koppel, the N.Y. Times and Washington Post editors is galling. How can they continue to control the thinking of America if people start listening to what newsmakers actually say, rather than what the media makes up?
© Mary Mostert
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