

 January 30, 1991 


          GREENPEACE "PUNDIT WATCH" #1 


 "A quarter-ton of concentrated hatred," declared CNN's Richard Blystone as 
a lone SCUD hit Tel Aviv Tuesday. Due to wartime restrictions, the Pentagon 
offered no comment on the "hatred" content of thousands of tons of Allied 
ordnance dropped on Iraq. In the first week of warfare, the strengths and 
weaknesses of the U.S. media were more in display than the war itself. We 
saw the press unskeptically relaying Pentagon reports of "decimation" of the 
Iraqi military. But by week's end, a deep resentment of wartime censorship 
emerged among mainstream journalists.  

  We saw the extraordinary technical prowess of the media and the courage of 
behind-the-lines reporters emerge as their own news stories. We saw American 
viewers turn into voyeurs as each obsolete missile was lobbed into Saudi 
Arabia or Israel -- while night after night the bombing of Baghdad, some of 
the most lethal bombing in history, slipped into the background.  

  Welcome to Pundit Watch. In this weekly report, we'll offer analysis of 
U.S.  media coverage of the Persian Gulf War. This first issue focuses on 
the rise to stardom of the Patriot missile and the pressing issues of war 
censorship -- as formally imposed by the U.S., Iraqi, and Israeli military, 
and the more insidious selfcensorship imposed by news organizations. In the 
coming weeks, we'll analyze trends and fads in war reporting; unreported 
stories of the war and its opposition; we'll monitor the diversity -- or 
lack -- of opinion included on public affairs shows. But first, a list of 
dates to remember: 

 PREDICTED DATES OF THE WAR'S END, The McLaughlin Group, taped Jan. 18: Pat 
Buchanan, Jan. 30 ("No more than two weeks from day one."); Fred Barnes, 
Jan.  29 ("Eleven days from now"); Jack Germond, Feb. 6 ("I suspect it's 
gonna take a little longer than that. Three weeks."); Morton Kondracke, Jan. 
31 ("Thirteen days."). And John McLaughlin, Feb. 6 ("three weeks from day 
one.") The testosterone count dropped considerably by Jan. 25's show, with 
Buchanan predicting "less than a month;" Barnes, "maybe six weeks;" Germond, 
"At least six weeks and probably longer;" Kondracke, "three weeks;" and 
McLaughlin, "Sometime between April 1 and June 1." Mark your calendars. <PD> 


 PATRIOTS: THE LAST REFUGE FOR DEFENSE SPENDING?  

 Anointed as the war's first hero, the Patriot missile is basking in its 
fifteen minutes of fame. "Patriot Hailed as Making a Difference" cried The 
Washington Times (1/21). "War Hero Status Possible for the Computer Chip" 
said a New York Times headline. CBS's "48 Hours" visited the US training 
base for soldiers who repair and guard the missile (it fires automatically), 
and USA Today (1/22) reported on heightened morale at the Andover, MA Donut 
Master shop near Raytheon's Patriot assembly plant. The business section 
(1/22) at Al Neuharth's pet paper gave the missile a centerfold description: 
"Length: 17 feet, 5 inches; three inches longer than a Cadillac Sedan de 
Ville." This week so much moralizing surrounded the missile that almost got 
scratched by the Pentagon that the Patriot became the Little Missile that 
Could.  

  How did this missile become a media darling? Mid-week's single minded 
media focus on the Patriot may have taken place in part because control on 
reporters' conduct simply left no other stories within reach. The Washington 
Post (1/22) quoted an American reporter as saying "The whole structure is 
inherently manipulative. We have no independent access. Technically, I can 
be thrown out of this country for talking to an American serviceman and I 
find that ludicrous." Between military censorship and daily deadline 
pressure, journalists in Saudi Arabia needed a story. Voila - one exploded 
right above reporters' heads and in camera range. War zone journalists may 
have felt some personal reason to cheer for the Patriot. TV correspondents 
seemed at times terrified at the prospect of incoming SCUD's. On the morning 
of January 22, CNN's Charles Jaco dove for his gas mask during a live shot 
from Saudi Arabia.  Another unmasked reporter finished his report. It isn't 
hard to salivate over a anti-missile missile that you think may have just 
saved your life.  

  But only successful Patriots have been televised. An AP story (1/21) 
quoted several sources in northern Saudi Arabia who witnessed Patriots being 
fired, far away from probing TV cameras or reporters. As Rear Admiral Eugene 
Carroll, (USN Ret.) of the Center for Defense Information, told the New York 
Times (1/21) "all the news is coming through a filter. We see the hits but 
not the misses. Management of the news has put an emphasis on the success of 
our new weapons." Carroll's point was underscored later in the week, as 
SCUD's apparently eluded Patriots and landed in Riyadh and Israel. The 
Patriot hype dwindled.  

  As the star of the Patriot rose, so did the perceived threat of the 
Sixties-era, Soviet-made SCUD. While described as "militarily insignificant" 
by the Pentagon, the SCUD became a major strategic player in TV's war drama. 
Lee Feinstein of the Arms Control Association, branded the Scud as 
"inaccurate with a small payload -- the longer the flight, the lighter the 
payload." General Norman Schwarzkopf, told the BBC (as reported in the 1/24 
Washington Post) that he "would be more afraid of standing out in a 
lightning storm in southern Georgia than I would standing out in the streets 
of Riyadh when the Scuds are coming down." Raytheon`s stock, both literally 
and figuratively, soared. At the New York Stock Exchange on January 21 
Raytheon stock was up $4.50, to close at $74.625. That day, ABC's Sam 
Donaldson had jokingly exhorted viewers to "Buy Raytheon." 

  On the same day, the Army stepped up production of the Patriot to re-arm 
troops in the Gulf. (It is interesting to note that the military only 
deployed about 60 Patriot systems in the Gulf region. According to a 
Raytheon press release, the US military is in line to receive 869 more 
missiles -- but not until January of 1993, and at a cost of $1.1 million 
each.) 

  Defense contractors are smiling because the Patriot, with the press as a 
guidance system, has scored another direct hit -- a few days' reported 
success by a single missile system seems to have atoned for decades of 
corruption and mismanagement in defense contracting. Members of Congress, 
whose best information sources are the same censored news stories we've all 
seen, have used the Patriot as a launching pad to revive the SDI and other 
staggeringly expensive high-tech systems. Senate Armed Services Chair Sam 
Nunn told CNN last Sunday, "I think every now and then we ought to praise 
our defense industry out there. They get a lot of knocks, but they've 
developed a tremendous amount of technology that's saving precious American 
lives." Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) was paraphrased by the LA Times (1/21) as 
saying "that televised display of 'smart' weapons at work would overcome 
objections from critics that they were too high-priced and complicated." The 
lesson in this is clear: Should the Patriot become the rallying cry for 
another defense spending spree, its moments of fame will be the costliest 
fifteen minutes in TV history. <JW> 


           EVERYBODY OUT OF THE POOL 

 Nobody likes bad press, least of all the Pentagon, but few have so much 
power to control the press. Still smarting from its lesson in Vietnam when 
there still was such as thing as an adversarial press, the Pentagon turned 
its sights on the media. Honing its censorship techniques in Grenada and 
Panama, the Pentagon has presented the American public with an antiseptic, 
bloodless war.  

  In Panama, the press attended with their "security reviewers" and gave us 
such gritty journalism as the TV piece on the most requested song that the 
grunts blasted at Noriega in Panama's Vatican compound: Bon Jovi's "Wanted 
Dead or Alive." For the next several months, no one bothered to go back in 
afterwards and get the real story. Malpractice during the "surgical" strikes 
actually left hundreds of civilians dead.  

  The new Pentagon press regulations that were handed down on January 7 
require that battlefield dispatches and photography clear military "security 
review," an anachronism from the Korean War. Reporters can only travel in 
predesignated pools, accompanied by a military escort at all times.  

  The Pentagon claims that detailed news coverage of everything from troop 
movements to weather conditions can aid the enemy, but critics dismiss the 
security argument as ludicrous.  

  "The press has never put American servicemen at risk," said Newsday's 
Sydney Schanberg, an outspoken criticism of war censorship. "It's about a 
political decision to keep the public from having a front row seat in this 
war." 

  Even Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams can only recall that no more than 
five or six of more than 2,000 correspondents had their credentials lifted 
during the 13-year Vietnam War.  

  "There are more breaches of security by military people than there ever 
will be by press," Schanberg added.  

  The multi-tiered "security review" is part media enmity, part spin 
control.  Press reports often have to clear "public affairs" officers both 
here and in the Gulf, causing delays long enough to either kill a story 
completely or give the Pentagon first shot at breaking the news at their 
daily briefings.  

  "Security reviewers" in the Gulf helped the Pentagon scoop pool coverage 
of initial F-117A stealth fighter bomb runs by sending them to their death 
in the desert--the Nevada desert that is--for a secondary review by the U.S. 
stealth base. (Philadelphia Inquirer 1/25) 

  In another instance, "a military censor wanted to change the word 'giddy' 
to 'proud' in a (Detroit Free Press) story describing some pilots. That has 
nothing to do with national security. That's spin control," said Jane 
Kirtley of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (USA TODAY, 
1/25).  

  The mainstream press have finally begun to chafe at Pentagon restrictions. 
 Tensions have risen noticeably at Pentagon briefings. However, before the 
war even began, one groups of journalists expressed the outrage that the 
major media has only recently articulated.  

  Several small news organizations in filed suit in U.S. District Court in 
New York City two weeks ago, challenging the Pentagon's rules. But the 
Nation and Mother Jones magazines, Schanberg and E.L. Doctorow and their 
nine co-plaintiffs drew no support -- and very little attention -- from 
major national news organizations.  

 When asked why they didn't sign on to the suit NBC said they had joined 
with the other major networks in sending a letter asking the Pentagon to 
ease press restrictions. They said they would continue to work behind the 
scenes to ease censorship.  

  So far the spin control seems to be working. To be sure, Pentagon 
censorship played a role in narrowing the range of stories to a very 
favorable few: The overhyped Scud/Patriot drama, the clearly abused US 
POW's, the heroic Saudi pilot, and the massive oil spill. If the effort were 
designed to obscure the destruction wrought by over 22,000 allied air 
sorties beyond exaggerated reports of their success, it certainly succeeded. 
The lack of access to hard information and their unwillingness to 
aggressively challenge the rosy rhetoric converted the press into a conduit 
for blatant misinformation. For TV newsmen, this war's first night was 
clearly the best -- the Iraqi elite guard was "decimated," and sorties were 
80% successful.  

 Number-crunching on the sorties played out throughout the week. Nightline 
quoted General Schwarzkopf as saying on 1/18 that the numbers meant that 
"more than 80 percent of all those sorties have successfully engaged their 
targets." But by week's end, it was revealed that the "sorties" included all 
refueling and reconnaissance flights -- about half the total -- and that the 
"successful" engagements represented planes that had dropped their payload, 
but not necessarily hit their targets.  

  The euphoria of the opening-night press reports added to the historic 
tendency for Americans to jump on the war wagon early and often. US Rep. Bob 
Dornan (R-CA) was widely quoted as predicting the war's end in "two days." 
Col. David Hackworth (USA Ret.), blustering for Newsweek from Saudi Arabia, 
declared that it would be a "six-minute war." A few nights later on the CNN 
Larry King Show, Hackworth re-set his victory clock to "eleven days." His 
1/28 Newsweek story had Iraqi troops "throwing down their guns and running." 

  So alarmingly rosy was the ringside rhetoric that even the White House 
tried to put on the brakes. On Thursday, Marlin Fitzwater prepared Americans 
for a long war, with plenty of American tragedy. With George Bush's approval 
rating at a record high, the press helped put the war effort on a pedestal 
so high that a fall was certain. The White House had apparently come to fear 
that simmering resentment on military censorship might actually unleash some 
of the dormant ideals of US journalism.  

  But the press has yet to confront its own self-censorship. War opponents 
have largely been written off, and with little distinction made between 
military family members and the handful of smash-the-state anarchists. The 
universal message in the too sparse coverage of war opposition is that any 
talk of peace is in bad taste until Saddam Hussein's ass is fully kicked. 
Just as the White House and Pentagon fear the press, the press has come to 
fear the public, whose current pro-Bush demographics has chilled reasonable 
reporting on the growing number of war dissenters.  

  It is both easy and understandable that the networks place some reliance 
on men with military backgrounds to discuss military tactics and weaponry. 
But the near-total dominance in network situation rooms by men who have made 
a living in the industry of war has no place in journalism. The press would 
do well to accord substantially more credence and respect for those of us 
who simply do not accept war. This quote from a previous war suggests that 
the phenomenon is not new: 

  "Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the 
leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter 
to drag the people along ... All you have to do is tell them they are being 
attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the 
country to danger." Hermann Goering, 1936 <AD> 


  THREE WISE MEN: Appearing among the mainstream pundits this week were a 
triad of convicted felons: Gen. Richard Secord (USAF, Ret.); providing 
air-war expertise for CNN; Adm. John Poindexter (USN, Ret.), interviewed 
1/22 by USA TODAY; and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North (USMC, Ret.), who wrote a 
1/23 Wall St.  Journal Op-Ed that parlayed the absence of hard information 
on the war into a plea for more high-tech weaponry. None of the three made 
mention of TOW missiles' strategic value in Gulf. SUPER QUOTES: "Journalists 
often make analogies in headlines between football and war. But not in this 
war." John Madden's CBS Super Bowl Preview, 1/26. "Patriots vs. Scuds: Iraqi 
Touchdown is Averted." One of the many such headlines in this war, New York 
Times, 1/27.  

 JUST A THOUGHT: If peace demonstrations are routinely described as 
"reminiscent of the Sixties," then why can't we say that about U.S. carpet 
bombing raids? <PD> 

 NEXT WEEK: Oil Spills/Oil Profits; US Coverage of Peace Activists 

 Written by Andrew Davis, Jeanne Whalen, and Peter Dykstra - Greenpeace 
Media 


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