Origin: CHANNEL1 - 1396 - activism.prog
  From: RICH WINKEL
    To: ALL
  Date: 10/12/93
    Re: THE GULF WAR AND THE U.S.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
@FROM   :RICH@PENCIL.CS.MISSOURI.EDU
@SUBJECT:THE GULF WAR AND THE U.S. CENSORSHIP MACHINE
Message-ID: <1993Oct13.001138.4152@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
Newsgroup: misc.activism.progressive
Organization: PACH

/** reg.elsalvador: 138.6 **/
** Written 10:01 am  Oct 10, 1993 by peg:jgutierrez in cdp:reg.elsalvador **

**************************************************************
*                   RADIO FARABUNDO MARTI                    *
*                        La Farabundo                        *
*                   AUSTRALIAN MEDIA UNIT                    *
**************************************************************

        THE GULF WAR AND THE U.S. CENSORSHIP MACHINE
          Revolutionary Worker, October 20, 1991


Recently the Pentagon admitted that during the February ground
war in the Persian Gulf, US troops had buried Iraqi soldiers
alive. Tanks plowed up over 70 miles of desert trenches,
suffocating hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers who had
been unable or unwilling to surrender under tons of sand. US
officials kept this brutal atrocity hushed up for over seven
months. Reports of the time filed by journalists assigned to
this operation didn't even mention the live burials and
claimed that only "a few" Iraqi dead could be seen in the
trenches. How many other war crimes remain buried, covered up
by layers of lies and censorship?

Pro-government lies, censorship and propaganda blitz played a
major role in shaping public opinion in support of the war.
Many people watched this massive coverup and were outraged.
Some were shocked that this could happen in a country that
boasts of "the world's freest press." The hard truth is that
in a capitalist/imperialist country like the US the "free
press" is a myth actively pushed by the ruling class and
institutions. It is a myth during "normal times" and is all
the more so during wartime. The mass media is used as a tool
for shaping opinion on the "home front". The causes and goals,
the strategy and tactics, the results and long-term
consequences of imperialist wars are systematically hidden
from public knowledge and discussion.

According to Harvard scholar William Kovach, serious planning
for military control of the press during wartime began in 1970
during the Vietnam War. New elements have been added with each
military aggression since then. But not until the Gulf War
were all the elements combined in one coordinated effort, in a
way that took many people by surprise. In the Gulf War, the US
tested not only a generation of high-tech weaponry, but also a
new generation of high-tech propaganda machinery.

It is important to know how this war propaganda machine
operated and the techniques and strategies used.

HIGH LEVEL PLANNING AND DIRECTION

The control of media coverage of the war was planned and
directed by the highest levels of government and military.
According to a May 4 _New York Times_ article by Jason de
Parle, "early in the troop buildup" President Bush met with
his top military advisors to review past mistakes in policy on
media coverage of war stories. Secretary of Defense Dick
Cheney was given overall command of press policy at this
meeting. The President and his advisors reviewed the
performance of every military briefer who appeared on TV. (Air
Force generals now take a course in "briefing style," in which
they are videotaped and their performance critiqued.)

Cheney was blunt: "Military needs had to take precedence over
journalistic rights." According to one source who attended the
White House meeting, there was a quick decission to set up a
mechanism to control battlefield reporting: "Nobody dwelled on
it. The sense was, `Set it up over here, pay attention to it--
don't have things happen by accident, take control of it'."

Through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, the RW
recently obtained several documents from the U.S. Department
of Defence (Dod) concerning procedures and guidelines for war
reporters in Saudi Arabia. These documents indicate, among
other things, that the Pentagon began plans for a higher
degree of military control over battlefield reporting many
months before the Persian Gulf War--in fact, before Iraqi
forces had entered Kuwait. One memo, dated Jan.9, 1991, from
the U.S. Army colonel heading the Joint Information Bureau
(JIB) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, stresses that the "seven-
member quick reaction pools" of journalists must be strictly
enforced as the only way that reporters could report from the
battlefield. It also mentions that planning along these lines
began back in May 1990 "with significant input and compromise
from both the media and the military."

Other DoD documents received by the RW detail how "pool
products (news stories and images) will be subject to review
release to determine if they contain sensitive information
about military plans, capabilities, operations, or
vulnerabilities." Some 12 categories of information were
labeled "nonreleaseable"--in other words, banned from news
reports--and dozens of other rules were set down governing the
conduct of reporters in the conflict.

CENSORSHIP IN THE BATTLEFIELD

The "Pool" System

Reporters who might file stories critical of the military or
the war effort were tagged by the "pool" system. The pool
system in the Gulf conflict was designed by Ron Wildermuth, a
Navy captain and aide of General Norman Schwarzkoft, and named
"Annex Foxtrot." There were over 100 reporters trying to cover
the war from Saudi Arabia. All reporters were required to be
accompanied by a military "handler" or escort at all times.
(The "handlers" even allowed one woman reporter from CNN to
the toilet on the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy). There
were only 13 pools, with even media people in each. This meant
that at any given time there were less than 100 people out of
the total media corps of 100 doing actual reporting.

To be eligible for pool reporting, journalists had to be: (1)
nominated by a news organization, (2) approved by the JIB in
Dhahran in coordination with the Pentagon and U.S. Central
Command, and (3) accredited by the Saudi Government.


Most of the pools were taken to places like bases for AWAC
radar planes where there was no action to report. Due to a
supposed "shortage" of handlers, only a few pools were ever in
the field at a given time. All the other reporters had to sit
in their hotel rooms in Dhahran or Riyadh and interview each
other "live."

This aspect of control had been tested out in Panama and
Grenada. However, one of the originators of the pool system in
the mid-1980s, Fred S. Hoffman, has said that the pools in the
Gulf were "far more restrictive than anything we'd ever tried
to do."

Direct Satellite Feed to the Troops

One of the lesser known, but most effective, means of media
control during the Gulf War was the fact that network news
broadcasts taken off the transmission satellites were shown
directly to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi
Arabia. In other words, the same news footage that went out to
civilian viewers in the U.S. went out to troops in the field.
There was no separate military news network. This was a way of
exerting more pressure on the networks to filter out any
"inappropiate" news that might "demoralize" the troops and
hurt the war effort--and it also provided the networks with
justification to self-censor its own coverage.

Military Propaganda Corps

All dispatches from correspondents and reporters in and out of
pools were subject to military censorship. News stories,
photos, and video and audio tapes filed by reporters in Saudi
Arabia had to be cleared by the JIB director in Dhahran, in
"consultation" with a representative of the news media.
Veteran war correspondent Malcolm Browne of the _New York
Times_ commented one week into the Gulf War, "I've never seen
anything that can be compared to it, in the degree of
surveillance and control the military has over the
correspondents. When the entire environment is controlled, a
journalist ceases to be a reporter in the American or Anglo-
Saxon tradition. He works a lot like the PK. "PK" refers to
the Nazi propaganda corps (Propaganda companien) that operated
under Hitler.

Delaying Tactic

One tactic of the military censors was to hold up the release
of dispatches until they were no longer news. A number of
instances have been documented where journalists had their
reports from the Gulf War delayed until their contents were
released later in the military press briefings. The U.S.
government and military were very afraid that military
difficulties or setbacks might affect the morale of the troops
as well as the mood of the people back in the U.S. A 48-hour
news blackout was imposed at the start of the ground war--this
was canceled when it became clear that the US was going to
achieve a quick victory with small casualties on its side.


Intimidation of the Press

There was also straight-up threats and intimidation of the
media by the military. The DoD documents received by the RW
claim that military censorship was instituted purely for
security reasons. For example, a memo from Pentagon
spokesperson Pete Williams stated: "Material will be examined
solely for its conformance to the attached ground rules, not
for its potential to express criticism or cause
embarrassment." However, James Le Moyne of the _New York
Times_ confirms that Pentagon press officials analyzed
reporters' past stories and used this openly to intimidate
reporters in the field. The military keeps a file on every
reporter and researched her/his past articles. Reporters who
asked hard questions were warned that "they were seen as
`anti-military' and that their requests for interviews with
senior commanders and visits to the field were in jeopardy."
Le Moyne had an interview with Commander Schwarzkoft canceled
after he was told that the article he wrote was "not liked."
Reporters were also kept in line by threats to turn them over
to Saudi authorities to have their visas revoked.

Journalists who tried to cover combat from outside the pool
system were specially targeted with threats. A photographer
for a news wire trying to work on his own was detained by
Marines for six hours. They told him, "We have orders from
above to make this pool system work," and threatened to shoot
him if he left his car!

When British reporter Robert Fisk of the _Independent_ tried
to cover the battle of Khafji without official permission, an
NBC correspondent told him, "You asshole, you'll prevent us
from working. You're not allowed here. Get out. Go back to
Dhahran." The NBC correspondent then ratted on him to the
Marines. Also at Khafji, where US led units faced stiff combat
from Iraqi troops, the Marines forced a French TV crew at
gunpoint to turn over his footage of US soldiers wounded in
the battle.

Gagging of Soldiers

Intimidation was not limited to reporters. The brass put
pressure on the soldiers to "say the right things." Le Moyne
in the _New York Times_ reported some complaints from ordinary
military people critical of Bush and the military. Later, some
of the people quoted in the article were criticised in a
letter to the editor. Le Moyne's request for permission to
revisit the unit was denied. Eventually he learned that the
unit was called on the carpet and an explanation demanded by
higher-ups. The reporter's escort were held personally
responsible for what had been printed. At another point,
Commander Schwarzkoft himself called a general and demanded
explanation of how a private was allowed to say something
critical of the war to a reporter.

Ron Nessen, former press secretary to President Ford pointed
out: "When a reporter has an officer standing over his
shoulder at all times, what soldier being interviewed will
spill his guts and speak his personal truth?"

"Hometown News Program"

A major innovation in news control in the Gulf was the active
fostering of favourable propaganda stories by the military PR
people. This took the form of the Hometown News Program,
headed by AF Lt. Col. Michael Cox. It consisted of handpicking
960 journalists from mostly small-town newspapers and TV
stations (most of them near the home bases of units stationed
in the Gulf) and flying them free on military aircraft to the
Gulf. When asked why these reporters weren't subjected to the
pool system, Cox replied, "There was just a safer feeling. if
they know that they're getting a free ride, and they can't
afford the $2,000 ticket, there's probably going to be a
tendency to say, "We'll do good stuff here."


CENSORSHIP ON THE HOMEFRONT

Ignoring the Opposition

There was almost a total blackout of activities opposing the
war. Anti-war demonstrations and anti-war spokes-persons were
simply and effectively shut out by the mass media. The Jan. 26
march on Washington, drawing a quarter of a million people to
the largest demonstration ever held in D.C. in wintertime, was
given less that four seconds of coverage by CBS.

A survey of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) revealed
that only about 1.5 percent of TV sources of information who
received network time were people protesting the war--"about
the same number of sources asked about the war had affected
their travel plans." FAIR found that of 878 on-air "experts,"
only one was a representative of a national peace organization
(Physicians Against Nuclear War). FAIR sampled 2,855 minutes
of network news coverage of the Gulf Crisis from the crucial
period Aug.8-Jan.3, before the shooting war started; only 29
minutes of this (about 1 percent) reported on popular dissent,
even though roughly half the country's population opposed
going to war.

Especially important to the ruling class was to suprpress
general knowledge of GI resistance. A few cases of resistance
made it into the media, but the wide extent of opposition in
the military was covered up. Groups like the War Resisters
League pointed out that thousands GIs and reservists had
applied for conscientious observer status. Many GIs stationed
in Germany there simply went AWOL and were helped by an
underground network of German supporters. Some GIs were taken
in chains to the battle front. None of this was taken up by
the media.

The networks even suppressed spokespersons who offered to pay
for air time to oppose the war. Television station WJLA, the
ABC Washington affiliate, turned down a spot from the Military
Family Support Network, a group of relatives of servicemen
opposed to the war. At the same time, the station accepted a
pro-war spot from the Freedom Task Force, a group headed by a
former Reagan functionary with ties to the reactionary
religious figure Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

When the media did cover anti-war actions, they often gave
"equal time" to the handful of pro-war counter-demonstrators.
Such was the case in Berkeley, California where 600
demonstrated against the war while several Young Republicans
came out for the war. The _San Francisco Chronicle_ gave the
headline to the reactionaries: "War Backers March on UC
Protest."


Ignoring the Iraqi Casualties

Any news of the horrendous death and suffering caused by U.S.
bombs in Iraq was heavily suppressed by the media. When the
Iraqi government brought out stories of civilians killed and
hurt by the bombing, the media tried to paint them as
"propaganda ploys" by the Hussein regime. FAIR in its
publication EXTRA!, gav eone example: "NBC's Dennis Murphy
(1/27/91), concluding a segment on video evidence of victims
by the Iraqi government, took a tone that was widespread
throughout the media: "Until we get some Western reporters and
photographers in there to vouch for it, I think we'll have to
call it propaganda." It's a name that the media gave to dead
Iraqis again and again."

While the heavy destruction in Iraq was ignored, every SCUD
missile launched by Iraq that landed in Israel or Saudi Arabia
made headline news. On January 21, when U.S.-led forces
launched some 2,000 air sorties over Kuwait and Iraq, Ted
Koppell on ABC's _Nightline_ commented, "All is quiet tonight
in the Middle East; only one SCUD missile landed in Tel Aviv."
There were even callous and cold-blooded "jokes" about Iraqi
casualties. _Time_ magazine at one point defined "collateral
damage" (a phrase used by the military to refer to Iraqi
casualties) as "a term meaning dead or wounded civilians who
should have picked a safer neighbourhood." People in the anti-
war movement who tried to bring out what had happened to the
Iraqi people were locked out of the major media. The TV
networks made commitments to air "No Place to Hide," a
documentary narrated by Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney
general who is now a prominent anti-war activist. But the
networks went back on the promise after viewing the tape,
which showed the ravaged bodies of Iraqi civilians killed by
the bombings.


Fired for Not Going Along with the Program

Some reporters who managed to elude the military censors and
smuggle out real stories out of the Gulf met a worse fate at
the hands of their bosses back home. When Jon Alpert, an NBC
stringer, came home with footage of the devastation of the
bombing of Basra, NBC News president Michael Gartner, who
never saw the footage refused to allow it to go on air.
Gartner then ended Alpert's relationship with NBC News. Alpert
took the film to CBS, but that network also refused to run it.

Editors and columnists who went against the tide and came out
in opposition to the war were often punished or axed. When
_San Francisco Examiner_ columnist Warren Hinckle wrote a
column titled "If Sadam is Hitler, Bush is Tojo," publisher
William Randolph Hearts III killed the item and sentenced
Hinckle to a three-month "vacation."

FAIR has publicized a number of simmilar incidents. The
management of the Round Rock, _Texas Leader_ fired its own
editor for publishing a Palestinian-American's charge that
Bush "is the biggest liar in the United States." The move was
explained in an editorial that said, "We hope that flag flying
from our office and the yellow ribbob on our tree will remove
any doubt about our loyalty to the President and our men and
women in uniform." The Kutztown, Pennsylvania _Patriot_ fired
its editor for his item, "How about a little PEACE?" and the
management of Spanish-language radio station WADO in New York
fired a talk show host for supposedly having "an unbalanced
view of the war."


ROLE OF THE MEDIA UNDER THIS SYSTEM

What can people learn from all this? During the Gulf war there
was rather blatant all-around control by the ruling powers in
this society of the propagation of news and opinions. There
was strict censorship exerted jointly by the government, the
military, the media and other leading institutions. This
control was complex and multifaceted, extending from the
battle field to the home front. Government and military
control over battle field news reporting, which was tigthtened
for the Grenada and Panama invasions, was jacked up even
tighter in the Gulf War.

But this is not an "aberration" of the "free press" under the
bourgeois democratic system in the US. It is a concentration
of the role of the media under this system, of how bourgeois
democracy actually works and what the "free press" actually
amounts to. The media is an important instrument of the ruling
class in putting over its point of view and discrediting or
simply supressing views opposed to it. It molds people's ideas
and opinions, and is an important part of the overall
bourgeois dictatorship.

The U.S. rulers have no "Ministry of Propaganda" and no formal
government control of the mass media. But control is exercised
in other ways. First, the media is controlled by big
capitalists. The major media have boards of directors with
ties directly to the government, military and industry. For
example, NBC is owned by General Electric, a big weapons
industry contractor. Among NBC's board members are Gen. David
Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan.

But there is a more important, deeply concealed, way that the
media serves the needs of the ruling class. As Bob Avakian
points out in _Democracy: Can't we Do Better Than That_: "it
remains a fact that on any really significant issue (and for
that matter, most not very significant ones) the men (and the
few women) of the media put forward the same viewpoint--and to
a great degree seem to be reading from the same prepared text.
Where they to disagree--with each other, or with a particular
government policy at any given time--this too is from the
point of view of the general interests of the ruling class and
the established order as a whole. In part, this occurs more or
less "spontaneously"; that is, these people--specially those
who have climbed up the ladder to any position of real
influence--can overwhelmingly be counted on to know what the
basic interests of the ruling class are and how to present
them as effectively as possible. But on any ocassion where the
system and its rules are put to a severe test or find their
interest threatened, then there is a marked "pulling together"
around and orchestrated official line--whichis often all the
more insidious because it is done without the acknowledgment
that it is an official line--and generally with the denial
that such an official line even exists."

This "pulling together" could be seen clearly in how the media
operated during the Gulf War.

Lu Hsum, a revolutionary writer in China during the 1920s and
'30s, wrote, "Lies written in ink can never disguise facts
written in blood." The ruling class and its propaganda machine
can obscure the reality partially and temporarily. But the
crimes committed by the US imperialists in Iraq will never be
forgotten and forgiven by the people of the world. And a
system that must suppress the truth, lie to the people and
stifle news of opposition is a system that is weak and
vulnerable to the core.


DEATH AND DESTRUCTION CAUSED BY U.S. BOMBS

Through the media, the military pushed the lie that the war
against Iraq was "clean and surgical". Images of guided
missiles hitting buildings filled TV news, while pictures of
Iraqis killed and civilian areas damaged by the bombing were
blacked out.

Photographer Ken Jarecke, working with a news "pool" set up by
the US military, came upon a Iraqi soldier burned beyond
recognition on a bombed-out truck 25 miles inside Iraq. His
military escorts tried to forbid any photos. The picture was
taken anyway and was put on the wires back to the States. But
the Associated Press pulled it off the wires "because it was
too grim." The _New York Times_ had a copy of the photo but
never used it. The TV networks also had a video of the same
scene, but it was never put on air. One producer declined to
use the image of the man "because it was too gruesome" and
instead just showed the burned-out truck.

ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE

The US war against Iraq left massive ecological disaster in
the Gulf. US officials blamed all the damage on Iraq, and this
was faithfully echoed by the media.

One of the claims by the US government on this question was
that IRaq had purposely dumped oil into the Gulf, causing the
largest oil spill in history. But the New York aternative
weekly _Village Voice_ reported on March 5: "Allied military
officials now admit that as much as one-third of the oild
spilled in the Gulf is the result of coalition bombing, not
Iraqi sabotage."

POST-WAR CATASTROPHE IN IRAQ

After the war the U.S. media remained silent about the
conditions facing the Iraqi people. After a few months some
articles even claimed that things were beginning to go "back
to normal" in Iraq. But the real situation has been far from
"normal".

The media was part of the post-war New World Order hype to
encourage celebrations of the bloody "victory" over Iraq.
Greenpeace estimates that at the same time as these
celebrations were going on, between 49,000 and 76,000 Iraqi
civilians died from the effects of the war.

Journalists and other  who have travelled to Iraq after the
war tell of extreme hardships Iraqi people are suffering. In a
current series in this paper based on a two week trip to Iraq,
RW correspondent Larry Everest reports that the conscious
decision by the US and its allies to bomb Iraq's electrical
power stations (which goes against the Geneva convention for
war conduct) has resulted in disaster for the people. The lack
of electricity to run sewage treatment facilities and water
purification plants has led to epidemics of intestinal
diseases, especially affecting children. As one Iraqi relief
official told Everest, "Since the war, Iraqi children have
been exposed to biological warfare. When you destroy the
infrastructure of a country, sewage with all its germs will
flow into the streets; you stop pure water from reaching the
children; you give them malnutrition; you prevent medicines
from reaching the country. So it's an excellent environment
for death and disease."


** End of text from cdp:reg.elsalvador **


<*>

