The tabloids are ecstatic this mornin?&.Bin Laden on the ru?&80% of Afghanistan liberate?&.Special forces setting up highway checkpoint?&.Aid workers liberate?&Hip, Hip Hooray for the red white and blue, and Her Majesty’s government and the coalition, and on and on.

It is hard to hear other voices above all the cheering in high places, not that “other voices” are permitted to be heard very much at all, at least in the US.media. Over in England, George Monbiot captures the euphoric mood in his column in todays Guardian

“WRONG, WRONG, WRONG….”

“Yesterday’s Sun turned over two pages to an editorial titled “Shame of the traitors: wrong, wrong, wrong … the fools who said Allies faced disaster”. Christopher Hitchens raised the moral and intellectual tone of the debate in the Guardian yesterday with this lofty sentiment: “Well ha, ha, ha and yah, boo. It was … obvious that defeat was impossible”. Such magnanimity suggests to me that it is not Afghanistan which we have bombed into the Stone Age, but ourselves.

“But almost everyone now agrees that this is the end of history, all over again. The skeptics have been routed as swiftly as the Taliban. George Bush and Tony Blair, with the help of their “daisy cutters” and cluster bombs, have ushered in a new, new world order, the long awaited golden age of democracy. But have the warriors of the West, both actual and virtual, really won? And if so, what precisely is the prize?”

And that question, my friends and blog fans, is one that few media outlets want to look at too closely. Clearly, the media along with the military were caught off guard by this turn of events. No one predicted it. But beware that old Afghan trap, Muhammad Ali’s “rope a dope” writ large in another ring. The Taliban handed over its territory, hoping to fight another day. Some fights slipped slipping into the mountains, others changed clothes, shaved “defected,” or looked for bribes while slipping into the stream of refugees who have taken their CD players out of hiding and are, in some case, dancing in the streets. Who’s who? You can’t tell these players without a scorecard, and you sure can’t tell friend from foe from thirty thousand feet up.

ALL HAIL THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE

Hail, Hail the Northern Alliance. But, slow down, wait a minute. Should we? No, say the Revolutionary Woman’s organization of Afghanistan, in whose cause, at least, some of this war has been fought, at least for PR purposes. (Remember the joke about the best way to defeat the Taliban: ‘threaten to send their women to college’) Anyway, these women are very nervouse about what’s happening on the ground. Read this”

“RAWA’s appeal to the UN and World community

“The people of Afghanistan do not accept domination of the Northern Alliance!

“Now it is confirmed that the Taliban have left Kabul and the NorthernAlliance has entered the city.

“The world should understand that the Northern Alliance is composed of somebands who did show their real criminal and inhuman nature when they wereruling Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996.

“The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive development,but entering of the rapist and looter NA in the city is nothing but adreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul whosewounds of the years 1992-96 have not healed yet.

“Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months were sayingthat they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than beingscared by the US bombing.”

ANOTHER AFGHAN CRITIQUE OF THE MEDIA

Other Afghan women who support the Alliance as the only way to topple the Macho Mullahs of Misogyny are also very unhappy — with the coverage. I spoke at length yesterday with a very impressive young Afghan woman and human rights advocate who I met last week at American University. She was steaming about the almost complete absence of Afghan voices in our media, especially the voices of Afghan women. “Our plight is what this is all about, and yet we are denied the right to speech here too,” she told me in an ironic comment on the Taliban’s silencing of women. “Who controls your media?”

Her name is Hassina Serjan and she is immensely articulate. Have you seen her on CNN? Didn’t think so. In our chat, she challenged the media coverage Americans have been seeing on three grounds.

First, she insists that Afghans are capable of handling their own affairs, and the US media rarely offers any background on the culture and civilization of her country that, while poor, has many capable leaders and movements . Instead, she says, they are pictured only as a parade of pathetic victims who have been led around by the Taliban like sheep.

Next, she points out that the “Northern Alliance” is not even the name of the organization being hyped in our press. It is actually called the United Front, she says. It is a national pan-ethnic group, not a regional movement. She argues that it was dubbed the Northern Alliance by the Pakistanis who have been following a divide and rule policy, often supporting the most extreme Islamic forces as a way to depoliticize the culture and more easily manipulate it.. They wanted it to have it labeled as a mere regional entity to serve their own national political ends.

“Your media keeps talking about ethnic conflict as our worst problem but you ignore the real force that has disrupted our society and controlled our country: foreign intervention. ” Then, she gave me a short the British, then the Russians and later the Pakistanis. Its they who are blamed for backing and imposing the Taliban and stage managing their rule. It is they who are being denounced, and in some cases, killed by Northern Alliance troops. She was especially upset when the US and Britain demanded that the United Front not enter Kabul.” First they didn’t even ask, but ordered. Second, they had no right to do so. And, third, they were ignored.

“This is the kind of arrogance by outsiders we have had to put up with for years.”

THE PAKISTAN CONUNDRUM

So here you have one of the big under-reported contradictions in this conflict. Pakistan is supposedly the big US ally, and yet the people we are supposedly “liberating” hate their guts. The New York Press’ conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell calls the Taliban, “The Afghan arm of the Pakistani state,” and quotes a leading Pakistani journalist to the effect that our main ally in the region, to whom a billion has just been promised, “worked to scuttle any peace process that would have resulted in a multi-ethnic settlement of the Afghan conflict.”

Leave it to veteran foreign correspondent, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI , an analyst of a decided right wing hue to understand this tension best. Speaking of the Northern Alliance triumph, he writes. “For Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf it was an unmitigated disaster. Already the Pakistani media are accusing the United States of betrayal and Musharraf of being rolled by President Bush. Pakistan’s enemies are now in Kabul.” How can this be? Why is this? Why is our media not pointing this our? Read on:

“Pakistani newspapers are also filled with speculation that the United States deliberately dragged its feet on the creation of a post-Taliban coalition. Key tribal leaders in both the Baluchistan region and the Northwest Frontier Province, including some who had sent secret messages to U.S. intermediaries that they were ready to turn against Taliban, are yet to be contacted by U.S. representatives…..Some 15,000 armed jihadis (holy warriors) have crossed the border via the Mohmand and Bajaur tribal agencies that are controlled by the ISI. (the Pakistan Intelligence Agency that has backed the Taliban. …Pakistani newspapers are still supporting the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and religious groups while condemning U.S. policies. And Musharraf is the leader who got snookered by the United States with an aid package worth about $1 billion. Pakistan’s annual foreign debt servicing charges run $3 billion. ….”

Ok, Ok., we can get drift off into far too much detail here, but it is this type of detail that ultimately will determine the outcome, and that is why media images can be, and usually are, misleading. That is also why need to be asking more questions of the kind posed by Monbiot:

HOW WILL THE AFGHAN PEOPLE BENEFIT?

“The first and most obvious is: will the advance of the Northern Alliance lead to the overthrow of the barbarous Taliban? he asks. “The answer is, almost certainly, yes; though they may persist as a guerilla force. The question this then begs is will it improve the lives of the Afghan people? Almost everyone appears to believe that it will. But we should be foolish to forget that just five years ago both Afghans and western diplomats welcomed the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, as it relieved the inhabitants of the murderous dominion of the men who now run the Northern Alliance. Yesterday the Telegraph claimed that the NA’s “fearful violence” towards Arab and Pakistani soldiers “is a shocking reminder of the fact that bin Laden’s zealots have been a hated army of occupation.” Well, perhaps. But it is also a shocking reminder of the fact that the Northern Alliance can be just as brutal as the hated regime it has displaced.”

Also, the refugee and food crisis is far from over. Carol Lin of CNN had another fine report today from one Afghan-Pakistan border post noting that food supplies into the starvation zones have been held up. She also showed us that talk of a real border is a bit misleading since there are few fences or control ports. There is nothing to stop the Taliban fights from slipping across. MEMO to CNN: Lets see more of Carol’s reports. ….

James Ridgeway notes in this week’s Village Voice that a “victory” in Afghanistan will leave the US responsible for cleaning up the mess which will include feeding 7 million starving refugees. This can be a long term deal, folks, give Presidential promises not to abandon Afghanistan again, as happened after the Russian bear crawled home. “With billions spent,” he asks,” what have we got?”

THE “RESCUE OF THE AID WORKERS

We can feel good that the foreign Aid workers falsely held for promoting Christianity in that Muslim country have been released. The impression being given is that they were liberated. Not true. Before the mythology of a heroic Rambo style rescue spreads too widely,-( Scroll down for more on Rambo’s return), and just as the ectstaic interviews with them and their relieved relatives begins to foill the airwaves, file awaythese facts , as circulated by Lee Roskin:

“One U.S. official said the Taliban handed the aid workers over to a non-governmental organization, apparently the International Red Cross, which then contacted the U.S. military. The special forces were flown in. The forces did not encounter gunfire or hostile Taliban, the official said. —-CNN 11/14

“Few details of their release were available but one defense official said it was the result of “non-confrontational'’ negotiations between the Taliban and international agencies. —-Reuters 11/14

“The Taliban had agreed to turn over the aid workers through the International Committee of the Red Cross, two senior administration officials said. The Red Cross was going to get them in the hands of U.S. troops. But before the exchange could be accomplished, the anti-Taliban northern alliance overran Ghazni, prompting the Taliban and the workers’guards to flee. —-AP 11/14

CHILLING ALL DEBATE

The Boston Globe reports that an organization founded by Lynn Cheny, wife of the Vice President has launched a campaign against campus dissenters: “‘College and university faculty have been the weak link in America’s response to the attack,'’ say leaders of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in a report being issued today. The report names names and criticizes professors for making statements ‘’short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation.'’ Several of the scholars singled out in the report said yesterday they felt blacklisted, complaining that their words had been taken out of context to make them look like enemies of the state.”

NEEDED A DEBATE ON THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA

The News World conference of TV news organizations worldwide is underway in Barcelona. I attended the one last year. The Media Guardian reports today that BBC Correspondent Stephen Evans has branded the repetition of images of the September 11 attacks as “pornographic” meanwhile, the “The BBC World Service has taken a policy decision not to describe theattacks on the US as “terrorism.” This has occurred even as Prime Minister Tonly Blair went before the British Parliament declaring that Osama bin Laden has now admitted his role in he attacks of Sepetember 11th in a video only circulated within his own ranks. Blair says this is the smoking gun, proof!

IN DEFENSE OF MEDIA COVERAGE

Meanwhile, the Nepal Times carries a piece my American Mark Morford defending all media coverage, including many of the practices I have been banging away at day after day. Never say I don’t believe in balance and dieverse views. Here are some of his I won’t bother asking why he had to go all the way to Nepal to publish them:

“There’s nothing like a complicated, nasty, lie-riddled war that’s not really a war to get people riled about the media. And it’s a slippery slope, all major media outlets trying to package the war as attractively and excitingly as possible while down-playing the sensationalism and the blood and death, but also clearly leveraging the horror like hell, but then denying it because they’re accused of pandering, hyping and lying. Call it a dilemma, a conundrum. Just don’t call it reasonable or in any way something you can condemn with 100 percent impunity.

But know this about journalists and editors-in-chief and news directors and etc.: Most take their responsibility to the public seriously, genuinely want to tell the “real” story, get at the honest truth, not overhype or instil wanton fear and cause you to build a bunker and wear a hazmat suit to have sex and never open another greeting card. Most want to deliver balanced and thorough information in a concise, cogent manner so you are entertained and informed, and do so such that they can still make their car payments. Really.”

Really?

MY LETTER TO THE MEDIA

Let’s find out. I am about to send out this letter to the most well known mainstream media mavens I know. If you know any yourself, forward it along to them. Let’s find out togeher just what kind of response we get. How open is the American media to debating its own role? In the interests of transparency, I am publishing my request, and will write next week aboutt he response.

“Dear media colleague,”

Danny Schechter here. I have an interesting proposition that may help us all do a better job of covering the “war on terrorism.”

Our site, www.mediachannel.org, has been monitoring coverage of the global crisis and noting the criticism of media performance.

Critics say the war coverage by U.S. media bypasses the balanced reporting and diverse sources that make for good journalism.

Let’s take a moment to check in with one another on how we view our efforts. We hope you’ll participate.

We’ve asked journalists, editors and anchors to weigh in on a number of critical comments reported in The New York Times last Sunday. Included: “European journalists have also become suspicious that the American news media have been co-opted by the government or at least swept up by patriotism.” One German columnist called this a “Post Vietnam Patriotic Syndrome.”

Is this fair? Has there been a blending of jingoism and journalism?

Do dissenting views have a chance to be heard? What is your news organization doing to promote more independent coverage? Are you worried about stringent government information management? Are conservative “media watch” groups having an effect on your coverage decisions?

We are interested in reporting all points of view on these issues. Would you share yours with us by return e-mail (danny@mediachannel.org)? We are seeking brief responses from many of our colleagues at television and radio networks, and in the press, for quotation in a report we will prepare and distribute.”

Best regards,

THAT’S THE OUTGOING. HERE’S THE INCOMING….

Mail can go two ways. That is the letter I am sending out. Here are some of the kind comments that are coming in after I asked yesterday if I should keep going with this daily dissection. Thanks to one and all for responding.

From Spain:: “I almost wrote a message yesterday toencourage you to keep it up, and since today youquestion whether or not to keep writing the column, Ijust wanted you to know once again that I DEFINITELYwant you to continue with your column. Just accessingthe Internet to read it every day is already making mytelephone bill go sky-high, but it is worth it”…. Writes Eric Nora: “As I grew increasingly frustrated by the one-sided corporate media coverage of the “war on terrorism”, I turned to Mediachannel for more diverse reports. I think your are a much needed outlet for independent news.”….

This note from Carl Halpern came from California: ” Just wanted to let you know I picked up your site through KPFA, after hearing an interview with you….Thanks for your incisive column.” Alan V adds: “Great article on ‘Media Management’ by Danny Schechter. In discussing’getting the press on board’, however, he neglected to mention onesignificant fact: ABC, News Corporation (FOX), CBS, NBC, CNN, et al, have avested interest in acquiescing to government info management- MichaelPowell, head of the FCC and Colin Powell’s son, is a staunch advocate ofremoving most remaining restrictions concerning ownership of media and hasbeen petitioned by owners to do so. These corporations stand to gain a lotby currying favor with Uncle Sam” Good point. I wrote him back to advise that I wrote a comment on the media-war connection months ago. It is in the News Dissector archive, accessible through the Mediachannel.org front page. Joseph Corrado adds, “Thanks for the great insights in your “Warning: Media Management Now In Effect” piece. Very cogent and persuasive! I share your hope that it is not too late for domestic media to get the message that traditional standards of conduct are still in vogue for all media pros.” And then the last, a letter from D hazit that ends with ab admonition:

“Although almost 80 years old, your columns have become a necessity! — Almost in themselves reason to have bought this new Sony PC….Go! Go!

GOING, GOING….GONE?

I am going, going, going, but not yet gone. In the reality trumps fiction arena, two final items: First, from what one friend calls the, “If the Turban fits” department:

“WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Dick Armey erupted Tuesday after finding himself labeled part of “the Republican Taliban” in a U.S. News & World Report gossip item. “I don’t think it’s a damn bit funny,” said Armey, who picked up the magazine when he got off an American Airlines flight from Dallas. “I don’t think it’s cute. It’s certainly not responsible.” …”I, for one, am deeply offended by the Democrats. It’s disgusting.” He also called the language “ill-mannered and rude.” Not sure how ge plans to respond. The ruler of the other Taliban is threatening to destroy America. Armey would be a good ally for him in that crusade. Mullah Omar’s threats may be empty, but then again…..Which brings me to another threat from Hollywierd:

Sly Stallone is thinking of bringing RAMBO back to go after and finally capture Bin-Laden. He is working on a script. Not sure why he just doesn’t use the last one….One size fits all. Given the pace of events, he better hurry. The fight against evil demands nothing less.

Keep your letters coming. My blurry eyes need encouragement. Write dissector@mediachannel.org