American "free press" in action
US networks agree to serve as Pentagon propaganda tool in Iraq
By Henry Michaels
15 April 2003
Having served unofficially as a propaganda arm of the White House and
Pentagon before and during the war on Iraq, the major US media networks,
with the exception of CNN, have agreed to make their function official. In
the name of providing Iraq’s people with a taste of a “free press,” ABC,
CBS, Fox and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) have decided to provide
content for a Pentagon-controlled television service in Iraq.
The five-hour-a-day program, called “Toward Freedom,” will consist
primarily of repeats of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, The PBS
NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, NBC Nightly News and Fox News Special Report With
Brit Hume. Confident that the content will serve the purposes of the US-led
occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon has pledged to air the repeats unedited.
Interspersed with the network programs, Iraqi people with access to TV
will also view the Pentagon briefings given by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, translated into Arabic. Some British content, one hour of the
daily total, will be supplied by Britain’s Foreign Office, which has
outsourced production to a private London-based company called World
Television.
The programs will be beamed throughout Iraq via Commando Solo, a fleet of
specially equipped military C-130 cargo planes—the same planes that have
conducted the Pentagon’s psychological warfare operations on Iraqi
television frequencies since the US-led invasion began. A government
official said the network-supplied programming would not be “intermingled”
with Air Force “psy ops” material.
The US government has used Commando Solo planes as part of its
information wars since Vietnam, and deployed them last year in Afghanistan.
But this is believed to be the first time American media organizations have
officially joined the “psy-ops” effort, setting a precedent for future
partnerships at home and abroad.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair inaugurated the
broadcasts with statements taped during their summit in Northern Ireland
last week. In his message, aired in English with Arabic subtitles, Bush
declared, “I assure every citizen of Iraq: Your nation will soon be free.”
Blair said: “Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not
your conquerors.”
On the ground, troops have been distributing flyers to residents with the
text of the messages by Bush and Blair. US and British forces have also
begun publishing an Arabic-language newspaper, the Times, with a
starting circulation of 10,000.
Under the banner of “freedom,” the new propaganda service enjoys a
monopoly in Iraq, thanks to the bombing and destruction of Iraqi TV and
radio facilities. The US attacks on the Iraqi media are a violation of the
Geneva Conventions, which forbid such attacks on civilian facilities, even
if state-controlled, during war.
One US network, Time-Warner’s CNN, has refused to join the broadcasting
project. In a statement, a CNN spokesman said: “We didn’t think that as an
independent, global news organization it was appropriate to participate in a
United States government video transmission.”
Other networks, however, quickly overcame any reservations. CBS News
President Andrew Heyward said he was “skeptical” on first hearing that the
project would be funded by the government and operated by the Middle East
Committee of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a State Department
communications agency. He became convinced that “this is a good thing to do
... a patriotic thing to do” after conversations with “some of the most
traditional-minded colleagues” at CBS News.
Defending the project, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer raised
to a new level of absurdity Washington’s claims to be “liberating” Iraq’s
population. “For decades, the Iraqi people have heard nothing but
totalitarian propaganda that was designed to prop up the regime of Saddam
Hussein,” he said. “That will now change, and that is for the good of the
Iraqi people.”
Fleischer confirmed that the Pentagon and the British military would
decide what airs in the nightly broadcasts. Asked if Iraqis would just see
“Toward Freedom” as yet more propaganda, but from another source, Fleischer
said: “If the scenes that we’re seeing on the streets carried through free
media’s cameras are any indication, the Iraqi people welcome a message from
President Bush.”
His response underscored the administration’s gratitude for the US
media’s stage-managed and highly-selective coverage of events throughout the
war, culminating in the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s
Firdos Square. [See “The
stage-managed events in Baghdad’s Firdos Square: image-making, lies and the
‘liberation’ of Iraq”] Fleischer’s comments summed up the seamless
transition that government and media officials anticipate in the functioning
of the US networks. To go from having their media crews “embedded” with
military units, eulogizing their killing activities, to glorifying the next
phase—a colonial-style American occupation—is a natural progression for the
media conglomerates.
Fleischer insisted that Pentagon control over broadcasting was a
praiseworthy enterprise. “I think it’s entirely appropriate, from the
president’s point of view, for DOD [Department of Defense] to be involved in
this. It remains a dangerous country where DOD assets are needed to field
these missions. DOD is very good ... at providing information for people who
have a thirst for information.”
Fleischer portrayed the campaign as a transitional effort designed to
fill an information vacuum until Iraqi news media are up and running. But he
added that the media campaign would run indefinitely. Any Iraqi media will
remain under US oversight, as indicated by the fact that the US Agency for
International Development has a team in Iraq to help administer the
longer-term media policy.
The Pentagon will work with the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which
supervises all the US government’s international broadcasting, including
Voice of America, Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio service, and Radio
Farda, a new Persian station broadcast in Iran. Together, the services
broadcast in 65 languages. Its Middle East Committee, inaugurated last year,
operates under the direction of Radio Sawa news director Moaufac Harb and
consultant Bill Headline, a former CBS News and CNN executive.
Chairing the Board of Governors is Norman Pattiz, chairman of radio
distributor Westwood One. Pattiz said the Board’s mission was “to promote
democracy by being an example of a free press. What better way to fulfill
that mission than to provide actual examples of America’s free press?”
Not accidentally, prominent sections of this “free press” agitated for
the illegal bombardment of Iraq’s media, which created the monopoly now
exercised by the Pentagon. Almost as soon as the war began, TV network
correspondents and hosts demanded that Iraq’s broadcasting facilities be
targeted.
On March 24, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly declared: “I think they
should have taken out the television, the Iraqi television.... Why haven’t
they taken out the Iraqi television towers?” MSNBC correspondent David
Shuster agreed: “A lot of questions [remain] about why state-run television
is allowed to continue broadcasting. After all, the coalition forces know
where those broadcast towers are located.”
After the facility was struck, reporters expressed satisfaction. On March
25, CNN’s Aaron Brown recalled that “a lot of people wondered why Iraqi TV
had been allowed to stay on the air, why the coalition allowed Iraqi TV to
stay on the air as long as it did.” New York Times reporter Michael
Gordon appeared on CNN to endorse the attack: “And personally, I think the
television, based on what I’ve seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein
presenting propaganda to his people ... when we’re trying to send the exact
opposite message, was an appropriate target.”
This support extended to US military attacks on other non-US media
sources, not merely Iraq’s state-controlled services. No US network called
into question, let alone objected to, the deliberate April 8 bombing of the
Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, in which Al Jazeera reporter
Tariq Ayoub was killed.
This “free press” provides a revealing example of what the US government
and the mainstream media mean by the “liberation” of Iraq. The country’s
people and society have been shattered to remove all obstacles to US
domination and the “free market” of corporate power.
One of the capitalist “models” on display, the US media, is dominated by
a handful of media magnates and vast conglomerates. Far from serving “democracy,”
it constitutes a major part and critical instrument of the ruling plutocracy.
From cheerleading for war to the embedding of journalists, the conquest
of Iraq has already become a milestone in the final debasement of the US
media, with the networks openly enlisting in the establishment of US
colonial-style rule. This voluntary and open integration by the media into
the apparatus of the Pentagon must be taken as a sharp warning of the
breakdown of democratic processes within the US itself. Can there be any
doubt that the same media conglomerates will serve as direct accomplices in
sweeping attacks on political dissent and the establishment of authoritarian
forms of rule?
See Also on wsws:
The
stage-managed events in Baghdad’s Firdos Square: image-making, lies and the
“liberation” of Iraq
[12 April 2003]
The
battlefield deaths of American journalists Michael Kelly and David Bloom:
some hard truths
[12 April 2003] |