Helping Them Win The Propaganda War

[MMMMMM]

Interesting comparison here.

I don't say we shouldn't report on Abu Ghraib or our own problems. But where the hell is the balanced coverage?

Does it matter that there is almost no self-criticism in the Arab world by the government-controlled presses, and the masses get a steady diet of anti-Western propaganda (which Western presses abet, for whatever reasons?) Does it matter that even the Western presses don't enlighten the Arab world as to their own atrocities and shortcomings (since their own presses don't do it)? Does it matter that the Arab masses basically get only one side of the story? Any wonder they hate us more all the time, even when we are doing good (as we indisputably did in rescuing Kuwait)?

More generally, does winning the propaganda war even matter? Just ask the howling mobs in the Middle East, or History itself.

"REPORTING FOR THE ENEMY

By DEBORAH ORIN

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June 16, 2004 -- THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.

No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.

But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why?

"Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose," says AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of the Saddam video.

It's not just journalists. The Pentagon has lots of Saddam atrocity footage — but is loathe to release it, possibly for fear it would be taken as a crude attempt to blunt criticism of Abu Ghraib.

So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of Saddam's prisoners getting fed — alive — to Doberman pinschers on Saddam's watch. (That video's been described by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.)

Former Pentagon official Richard Perle raps "faint hearts in the administration," saying they've bought into the idea that it's "politically incorrect" to show the horrors of Saddam's regime.

But he also faults the media — after all, AEI's briefings on Iraq have been standing-room-only, but the room was half empty for the screening of the Saddam torture video.

But part of the issue is simply that Saddam's tortures, like al Qaedas tactics, are so awful that they're unbearable to watch.

If I couldn't watch them myself, I'm hardly arguing that others should have to. Yet it raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling.

In this era, a photo is everything. We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse — so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management."

Terrorism is sometimes called asymmetric warfare — America had to adjust to new tactics to deal with small bands of terrorists who were able to turn our airplanes into weapons against us. Now it turns out that we also face asymmetric propaganda — where the terrorists gain a p.r. advantage precisely because what they do is so horrific that our media aren't able to deal with it.

The U.S. military hasn't figured out a strategic way to deal with this problem.

But neither has the press.

Media analysts like Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler admit it sounds "sanctimonious" to justify publishing prison abuse photos — but not al Qaeda beheading videos — in the name of showing "the reality of war." But that is just what he did.

AEI spokeswoman Veronique Rodman, puzzled by the minimal interest in the Saddam torture video, is sure that if it was a video of equally horrific torture committed by U.S. troops, the press would find ways to show or report it.

Reporters have to face up to the fact that right now, if we highlight the wrongs that Americans commit but not — out of squeamishness — the far worse horrors committed by others, we become propaganda tools for the other side.

This isn't to argue in any way against reporting the Abu Ghraib scandal. But reporters have to face up to the problems — and find ways to achieve a more balanced account.

Saddam's torture videos may be too awful to show, but it's hard to explain the low media interest in the story of seven Iraqi men who had their right hands chopped off by Saddam's thugs — and then got new prosthetic arms and new hope in America.

They're eloquent, they're available, they're grateful for the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about Saddam's tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. Yet, as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-proclaimed "paper of record" hadn't written a single story about those seven Iraqi men.

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau Chief"

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/23065.htm

[nicky g]

Some points in reply:

- Abu Ghraib was newsworthy at the time it was heavily covered several weeks ago. Saddam's atrocities were not.

- Noone shows the Berg beheading beause it is deemed far too gruesome for mainstream news coverage; indeed without knowing much about US media laws I'd have thought it would be either illegal or at least against the rules to show somoone being beheaded on air. The same goes for the other things she refers to, with the added point that as she acknowledges the Pentagon hasn't given the media access to most of this footage.

- THe Berg murder received a lot of coverage; in fact a disproportionate amount of coverage, given that it was the murder of one person by some known terrorsts answerable only to themselves, compared to the torture scandal, which demonstrated abuses and several killings by the people in charge of the country and directly responsible for the fate of tens of thousands of prisoners.

- In the run up to the war there was a great deal of coverage of Iraqi atrocities.

- THe US presents itself as the world's greatest advocate of freedom, and as a great liberator of the Iraqi people, two things a lot of people believe. It is vastly more newsworthy therefore when it is found to be torturing people than when a universally condemned totalitarian dictator is.

- The fact that the press in Arab dictaroships is heavily onesided and censored does not mean the Western press should simply become a mirror image of it.

-There was much coverage of the minor aspects of Abu Ghraib - mock torture, panties on head, nudity. THere was far less coverage of the fact that several people were killed, others raped, of the fact that the Red Cross said this kind of thing was happening across detention centres in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also far more coverage of the killing of the filmed Blackwater contractors than there was of the subsequent unseen deaths of hundreds of civilians in Fallujah, of the facts that the US was denying people access to the city's hospital and placing snipers on its roof, or of the fact that one of teh ceasefire terms was that the last journalist operating in Fallujah be made to leave.

Abu Ghraib was big because some shocking but presentable photos were made available to the media. When there are no photos are they're too gruesome to be shown, noone hears about it, and the occupation forces do their best to make sure it stays that way when they're involved (AJ journalist made to leave Falluja, first person to be tried for Abu Ghriab was the guy who took the photographs, AJ offices blown up twice by US missiles, journalists warned against operating outside military units, closing newspapers etc etc)

[Utah]

Hi Nicky G,

Well written and I think you make many excellent posts.

However, it does make me wonder though about all those who think that the Iraqi's are no better off now. Liberals have made a direct comparison to the Bush "torture" and the Sadddam torture. Me, I think I would take the panties on the head than to have me tongue cut out. But that's just me. Maybe liberals would prefer the later.

[nicky g]

Ta. I don't think Iraqis were better off under Saddam. I just doubt that they and the world are better off enough to justify the costs and risks of the war. I too would rather have the pants-on-head but that was far from all that was happening.

[MMMMMM]

Good points, Nicky...I am not so much raising the issue because of the specifics in the news recently but because of the overall approach to such things. I feel that the terrorists and the totalitarian governments have been winning the propaganda war lately, and to us that may seem silly or unimportant since we know better, but lots of people don't (especially those in third-world countries or Middle Eastern countries), so the impact of non-countered propaganda is quite substantial. Its effects are undesirable and are exploited greatly by both the Arab governments and the Islamic preachers. Just some thoughts. Maybe a Radio Free Middle East project, or something similar, would be a good thing, if it isn't already going or in the works.

[ACPlayer]

The problem with communicating with the Arab population is one of credibility. Just as for me Al Jazeera and Fox News are both on par as reliable news sources, any American press (see the impact of the American run Iraqi TV channels) will be considered to be without any credibility.

We can only gain credibility with the Arab masses by treating them as people with brains, that means by a) implementing actual policy not words that are fairhanded vis-a-vis the Israeli problem, the Saudi/Egypt problem and the Iran problem - the source of our lack of credibility and, hence, b) co-opting the Arab populace to be against the hard liners who are basically using the Arab masses as canon fodder (or is it canon shells!)in their terrorist agenda.

[jokerswild]

You still try to convince yourself that fascism is acceptable. The press didn't publish the videos of 21 prisoners being beaten to death by US soldiers. Nor did the US press publish the videos of prisoners being sodomized, or forced to perform "homosexual acts." Several of these were viewed by Congress, but not released to the public. The question that a fascist like you should ask is why military intelligence leaked these videos in the first place. It indicates that elements of the establishment want to discredit your fuhrer. A good fascist would hold those individual;s accountable. They would be prime targets of friendly fire, vehicle accidents, or "suicide bombings."

Don't delude yourself in thinking that covert ops such as these never happen. Too many frags in Vietnam discount your "naivate." Operation Pheonix documents the ordered murder of thousands of Vietnamese. Where was the balanced coverage? US bombing in Vietnam acounted for the death of up to 2 million people. This conservative estimate indicates that US forces have no qualms in murdering, or torturing,on the instructions of their commander in chief.

[andyfox]

"But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why?

'Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose,' says AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of the Saddam video."

-Has Ledeen taken a survey? How would he know this? Isn't it more logical to assume that, since it was common knowledge that Hussein was a thug, even during the years he was our friend (when there were also no pictures and very little reporting about it), that it's more newsworthy when our country acts in a bad way?

"We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show."

-This also makes more sense as an explanation of why the U.S. prisoner abuse photos are shown and the Saddam torture photos are not.

We've seen the "blame the media first" explanation for U.S. government failures time and time again before. (Usually it's the Democrats that do this, witness Kennedy and Johnson's efforts to stifle the media during Vietnam,
Carter's blaming a national "malaise" for his ineffective policies, and Mrs. Clinton's allegations of a vast conspriacy against her and her husband.) So I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Has Ledeen taken a survey?

[/ QUOTE ]

This looks like something I might write [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Good point IMO.

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't it more logical to assume that, since it was common knowledge that Hussein was a thug, even during the years he was our friend (when there were also no pictures and very little reporting about it), that it's more newsworthy when our country acts in a bad way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. A few days ago or so I pointed out where I thought some coverages made a conclusion about a Cheney email that wasn't necessarily warranted. This is different though. The reporting on the prison scandel didn't seem to me to make a lot of conclusions. It's obvious that abuse occurred. People want to know how and why did this happened. I'm not sure we still know the whole story.

[Chris Alger]

This is another reason why the American right wing stands for rape, murder and torture and therefore why it's claims to supporting the "liberation" of Iraq are pure nonsense. No matter what the U.S. does to Iraqis, the right will always insist that (1) other forces have done worse; and (2) any worse evil is automatically relevant to the evil we do in order to miitgate U.S. atrocities. Therefore, the U.S. can't be condemned for anything short of the very worse thing that's ever been done. Indeed, the right insists that U.S. atrocites should not even be spoken of without contrasting them against someone else's greater evil lest some anonymous "them" win the "propaganda war." If we torture people, the media should not report it without saying Saddam tortured them worse; if we torture them as badly as Saddam, the media should show how Stalin tortured them worse, if we torture as bad as Stalin, the media should show how Hitler tortured them worse, and so forth, ad nauseum.