APRIL FOOL

ARNETT’S APOCALYPSE NOW

MARKETING WAR

Quotes for April Fools Day:

“Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld , in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN March 23:”The course of this war is clear. The outcome is clear. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone. It’s over.

“Vice-President Dick Cheney , predicted “I don’t think it would be that tough a fight” in an interview with NBC television last September.

“Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , in a breakfast meeting March 4, 2003: “What you’d like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. The best way to do that is have such a shock on the system, the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end is inevitable.”

“Richard Perle, last winter: “I don’t believe we have to defeat Saddam’s army. I think Saddam’s army will defeat Saddam. There may be pockets of resistance, but very few Iraqis are going to fight to defend Saddam Hussein.”

WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN?

If I was more Runyonesue or Onionesque, I’d begin on this April Fools day with a jokey lead, but whatever wit I may be storing was drowned out in a that refrain by THE WHO, “won’t be fooled again.” If only that was true. I have William Falk of The WEEK magazine to thank for sharing the wisdom of one David Burd who owns a marketing firm called NamingCo. “The warmakers have learned from the marketers,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “They are marketing the war to the public, packaging it.” We all need a loud dose of The WHO these days to drown out the music the TV channels are using as a soundtrack for their war ccoverage. Over on MSNBC, the channel with the “God Bless America” promos, its martial music with the pitter patter of snare drums.

Inquiring minds in Philadelphia wanted to know more about this. The INKY as they call it, in the city of Brotherly Love, the town that hosted our commander in chief, yesterday, talked with a composer. This offers details on just how attentive the networks are to the details of the packaging,. “To me, this is the real deal, this is a real live war, and we should be both awed and simultaneously scared,” says Peter Fish, who composed CBS’s war music. Fox News creative director Richard O’Brien explains his network’s war music: “The other networks, they always go for that John Williams, big, grand music, but our music is always pointedly more aggressive. I feel the sound of Fox News Channel has branded us more than the look has. It’s rock-influenced, for sure.”

MAKE THEY SALUTE, CRY, “GET COLD CHILLS”

This music and marketing echoes the advice of radio consultants who are advising clients to go red white and blue all the way. Reports the Washington Post: “Now, apparently, is the time for all good radio and TV stations to come to the aid of their country’s war. That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who’ve been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.

“Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW: . . . Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion,” advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a “War Manual” memo to its station clients. “. . . Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war.”

“The company, which describes itself as the largest radio consultant in the world, also has been counseling talk show stations to “Make sure your hosts aren’t ‘over the top.’ Polarizing discussions are shaky ground. This is not the time to take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not when our young men and women are ‘in harm’s way.’” Translation: Keep anti-war voices off the air.

THE PHRASELATOR

While the media outlets parade their technology, US soldiers proudly dispay theirs including, as TIMES’s Tony Karon explains in his weblog, the Phraselator, a hand-held device used by Marines to communicate with the locals. The user chooses from a menu of about 1,000 stock phrases (”come out with your hands up”, “I need to search your car”, that sort of thing), and an amplified voice chip barks them out in tinny Arabic. Only problem, as anyone who has ever used a phrase book would know, is that it can’t translate the reply. I have the feeling this may be the gadget that best captures the spirit of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Could there have been a phraselator miscommunication yesterday at that bridge where US forces opened up on Iraqi civilliians including women and chidren.

The Penatgonian CENTCOM spin was immediate. They wouldn’t stop their minivan. They wouldn’t follow orders. We had no choice. It was their fault. The Times of London carried the kind of vivid account you didn’t see on TV. Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or innearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern townovernight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks andheavy artillery.

SHOT BY THE SHELL SHOCKED

“Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to thecoalition’s supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked youngAmerican marines with orders to shoot anything that moved.

“One man’s body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tuckedaway in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes.His savings, perhaps.

“Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a prettyorange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man whomay have been her father. Half his head was missing.

“Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqiwoman - perhaps the girl’s mother - was dead, slumped in the back seat. AUS Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.

“This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a lastchance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. Onthe bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of adonkey.

“As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella,was born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared besideme.

“Did you see all that?” he asked, his eyes filled with tears. “Did yousee that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best Icould but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children beingkilled like this, but we had no choice.”

AMERICAN ACTIVISTS KILLED?

This morning the Iraq Information Minister claimed that US warplanes fired on a bus with human shields, including Americans, coming in From Jordan to protest the war. Note: I did say “claimed,” because the claims and counterclaims of this war, like the wars that proceeded it, may or may be true. For example while the briefers brragged of more civillians embracing their liberators, the BBC repoprted hostility from the Shia in the south to their advances. They are replacing their helmets with berets to appear more friendly. (Honest, they said that!)

PAST IS NOT PAST

In was in search for context that I reached back into a book on my shelf, The Powers That Be, by the great Vietnam War reporters David Halbrstam. In it he writes of two incidents. The first occurred in the spring of l965, a spring like the one we are living with. Two journalists for the Associated Press, a wire service that specializes in playing it straight down the middle reported that the US was using poison gas. The reporters had multiple sources. There was a big flap. President Lyndon Johnson personally went on TV to deny it. The Military was inraged. Another story appeared by one of the same reporters on the bombing of a village with a great cost of civilian lives. The military was really pissed off by that one because it quoted an American lieutenant who said, famously, “we bombed the village in order to save it.”

“That quote in many ways defined the war, and is its definimhg epitaph. The reporter on both stories was one Peter Arnett.

Halberstam wrote that reporters like Arnett were never invited on the Sunday talk shows because networks like CBS considered them a consensus medium. “In the early days, much of the film seemed to center on on action rather than the more substantitive qualities of the war. An emphasis on what the television correspondents for CBS themselves called “bloody” or “bang bang.” There was a group of younger correspondents who felt that that somehow the network was always managing to sanitize the war….”

How far have we come? By l991, Peter Arnett said he had covered 17 wars. Now, he is fighting one of his own.

THE RESURRECTION AND FALL OF PETER ARNETT

Last week, TV Guide ran a column on the resurrection of Peter Arnett. It discussed how this Pulitzer Prize winning one time AP reporter outraged the American right wing for his reporting during Gulf War 1 but was getting it right this time. No sooner had the piece appeared than Peter’s resurrection imploded, turning into another crucifixion, perhaps a self- crucifixion. One minute. the man was on top., reporting every other minute from Baghdad, the envy of all the networks who couldn’t or wouldn’t have their own man in the hot spot. The next minute, he was being run out of town on a rail, fired, disgraced, and apologizing all over the TODAY show for his “misjudgment.” (He has since been hired by the Daily Mirror in London which features as its headline today: “Fired By America for Telling the Truth.” Arnett writes he has not apologized for what he said.)

WHAT ARNETT SAYS NOW

Writing in the Mirror, Arnett expains his stance: “I am still in shock and awe at being fired. There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad.

“They don’t want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems….

“I’m not angry. I’m not crying. But I’m also awed by this media phenomenon.

“The right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here, whatever their nationality. I made the misjudgment which gave them the opportunity to do so.

“I gave an impromptu interview to Iraqi television feeling that after four months of interviewing hundreds of them it was only professional courtesy to give them a few comments.

“That was my Waterloo - bang!

… I’m not here to be a superstar. I have been there in 1991 and could never be bigger than that.

“Some reporters make judgements but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.

“I don’t blame NBC for their decision because they came under great commercial pressure from the outside.

“And I certainly don’t believe the White House was responsible for my sacking.

“But I want to tell the story as best as I can, which makes it so disappointing to be fired.” 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

What was Peter’s crime? Speaking what he believed to be true on Iraq TV. NBC us notr just punishing him. The network is punishing us because his reporting is needed now more than ever. NBC recently canned Phil Donahue, in part producers said, for having on too many anti-war guests was not about to put up with more corporate unappreciated unauthorized points of view like Peter’s, especially when their competitor Fox News whom, they are trying to clone and beat in the ratings began bombing Arnett with ideological ordinance of their own..

Once NBC canned him, most of the US media fell in line praising the decision and, as the Guardian put it “rounding” on him. Doug Ireland offers an assessment on TomPaine.com:

THE “PROFESSIONAL COURTESY”

“What provoked Arnett’s defenestration? In an interview heaccorded on Sunday to Iraqi television (which an MSNBCspokesperson initially described as a “professionalcourtesy”), Arnett allowed as how media reports of civiliancasualties in Iraq “help” the “growing challenge toPresident Bush about the conduct of the war and alsoopposition to the war. The first war plan has failed becauseof Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write anotherplan.”

“The Americans don’t want the independent journalists inIraq.”

“Of course, these are rather commonsense observations of thesort that can be read daily in the pages of our newspapers,and which even find their way onto U.S. television. Yet whenNBC snatched the mic from Arnett’s hands, on Monday morningCNN ’s Jeff Greenfield rushed to endorse the veteran warcorrespondent’s firing. Greenfield dismissed the notion ofan anti-war movement whose challenge was “growing” — as ifthe millions who have taken to the streets of major U.S.cities and the some 5,000 American civil disobedients whohave so far been voluntarily arrested in “die-ins” and othernonviolent forms of political action — part of the risingcrescendo of protest on a scale not seen since the Vietnamwar — were not energized by the heart- rending accounts ofcivilians shredded by American bombs and bullets in anunnecessary and obtusely-run war.

Greenfield accused Arnett of pro-Iraqi “propaganda.” That was sad to me in light of my once tight palship with Jeff, and the way in which this view seems to be shared by so many in the media mainstream. Yesterday I parried on the issue with Bill Himmelfarb of the Washington Times on Keano’s program on Cape Talk Radio in South Africa. (I get on the air in South Africa more than in South Jersey.) Bill was blasting Arnett for what he called anti American coverage during Gulf War I.

ARNETT’S BIAS

To refute this canard, I cited some of my own research based on a book by Major General Perry Smith’s book “How CNN fought the War.” Smith who now comments for CBS said he originally came on board, in his mind, to counter-balance Arnett’s “misleading coveage. “I was trying to figure out Peter Arnett,” he writes,”Was he biased in favor of the iraqi government> Was he an anti-war advocate> Was he fundamentally anti-American?”

This TV General for hire decided that he was not ideological after all, ” The More I watched the Arnett coverage, the more I talked to people who knew him well, the more I came to believe he was a ‘feeler.’ In other words, Arnett is someone who empathizes with the people around him.”

FIRST THE SENTENCE, THEN THE TRIAL

Lewis Carrol must be laughing in his grave. Fired for feeling, is it? Actually, Arnett was complimentary of the courtesies extended to him by the Iraqis. He complimented them for it, and was roasted for doing so,. Yet the other night on Charlie Rose, John Burns of the NY Times was also praising his minders for treating him courteously as a professional. He said it straight out. No one accused him of treason. It seems that the NBC brass had bought some its own demonization hype of Saddam. Reports the NY Times today:

“Another NBC executive said that Mr. Shapiro had hoped that the Iraqis pressured Mr. Arnett in the interview and that he would say, “There was a guy behind this orange curtain with an AK-47.”

“But during a phone call, Mr. Arnett told Mr. Shapiro that he felt no such pressure, a spokeswoman said.

“NBC’s decision prompted some debate within journalism circles.

“It’s regrettable that a news organization feels compelled to fire a journalist for essentially doing journalism,” said Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

“But many others said they supported NBC. “I would have done the same,” said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. “It would have been to me a very fundamental judgment that you would not go on their state-controlled television.”

Writing in the New York Times today, Walter Cronkite echoes this view: His argument: “Journalists might recognize a motivation in Peter Arnett’s acceptance of an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV, but they should not excuse it.”

IRONY: HE WAS FIRED BUT NEVER HIRED

Corporate controlled television tethered to the Pentagon is apparently above much criticism, candid disclosure, or self-criticism..MSNBC didn’t even have the guts to even hire Arnett in the first place, even though he as good a war reporter as they come. They used a ruse, retaining his services through National Georgraphic Explorer which did his first reports with Camera Planet, the indy news organization. That gave them plausible deniability they believed. NBC wanted him so bad that they rode rough shod for Camera Planet’s contract with Arnett who was all too happy to be back on the year after years of forced exile from CNN.

Do you remember the circumstances of his axing there? ? The network repudiated a story they investigated alledging the use of nerve gas against US military deserters in Vietnam after a ton of bricks fell on them from the Pentagon. After all the top brass approved the story, they hangs some producers and Arnett out to dry. The producers later sued for false dismissal, and CNN which was so righteous in distancing themselves from the story gave them big cash payoffs rather than have the issue publicly adjudicated. Arnett embarrassed the network by admitting he had not checked out all the details of the story himself, a common practice among busy network correspondents who rely on producers for most of their reporting. He was the fall guy.

“OUTSTANDING REPORTING SPEAKS FOR ITSELF”

After Arnett was targeted this time, NBC at first made positive noises. A spokesperson said: ‘that his TV comments “were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more,” according to a news story on MSBNC.com. “His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for itself,” she added. NBC then decided otherwise.

Journalists are debating the ethics of what Arnett did, not what ABC did. There is a discussion between members Bob Steele Kelly McBride and Aly Coló on the pointer.org .site

Aly:…” I wonder what the reaction from the public, the U.S. government and journalists would have been if Arnett had said on Iraqi TV that the U.S. military had succeeded in its battle plans and that the Iraqi resistance was having no impact on those who oppose the war in the U.S. or on the U.S. government itself. I wonder if the criticism cascading about Arnett now would have been as virulent.

Kelly: ‘My hope is that journalists as well as the general public will use this conversation to really examine what it is Arnett did wrong. Because his sins, if you will, are common. He revealed his personal viewpoints. He made declarative statements that were beyond his authority to make. He crossed the line that separates reporters from opinion writers. Yet, I’m hearing people call him a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. That is hardly the case.

Bob: “Peter Arnett had a unique and important vantage point for covering the war in Iraq. He was one of the few reporters remaining in Baghdad. He had the ability — and journalistic duty — to report on what was happening in Baghdad. He could tell meaningful stories. It’s a shame that he has wasted this vantage point by stepping out of his reporter’s role to express his personal views on how the war is going in Iraq and how it is playing out in the United States…”

THE DE-BEDDING OF GERALDO

Arnett is not the only correspondent in deep doo-doo. Fox’s mighty Geraldo appears to have stepped on a land mine of his own making. The man who would singlehandedly liberate Iraq. if only Roger Ailes at Fox News would give him the nod .may be on his way back to Brooklyn where he went to law school. Geraldo had been talking about the glory that would his, motor-mouthing: “I intend to march into Baghdad alongside [101st Airborne]’” Jason Deans reports in the Guardian, that the G-MAN may be sidelined like Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter who broke a shoulder yesterday: “The US military says that gung-ho Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera will be kicked out of Iraq today despite his defiant insistence that he will be staying in the country and marching on Baghdad. He is expected to leave Iraq today after giving away allied troop movements in a TV report, according to US military officials.

“Rivera was still inside Iraq yesterday despite reports - gleefully picked up by Fox News’ rivals CNN and MSNBC - that he had already left.”

INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS AT RISK

The story about the debedding of Geraldo in the Guardian was accompanied by a report on what is happening to independent reporters who try to operate outside the warm embrace of the military: “The international press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres has accused US and British coalition forces in Iraq of displaying “contempt” for journalists covering the conflict who are not embedded with troops.

“The criticism comes after a group of four “unilateral” or roving reporters revealed how they were arrested by US military police as they slept near an American unit 100 miles south of Baghdad and held overnight.

“They described their ordeal as “the worst 48 hours in our lives”.

“Many journalists have come under fire, others have been detained and questioned for several hours and some have been mistreated, beaten and humiliated by coalition forces,” said the RSF secretary general, Robert Menard… ”

THE INNER TOUR

Last night I took a break from watching one war to watch a film about the aftermath of another. The Sundance Channel, which runs documentaries on Mondays aired “The Inner Tour,” a film by Israelis and Palestinians about a group of Palestinians who take an official tour of Israel. There was no “breaking news,” no incessant chatter and blather, no military “experts.” Only a gripping highly visual verite look at looking at Israel through the eyes of dispossesed people. It was stunning and heartbreaking. It was moving in the way the iraq war coverage isn’t. Its underkill was terribly effective and heart breaking. See it if and when you can.

SOME LETTERS

Brian Marr writes: “I came across this site that goes into more detail about the Arab Leadership. Read past the expletives

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2468.htm#Top

“The Arabs have got a real problem here and I am not sure how they can get out of this hole they have dug for themselves.

“Letter to the Oregonian by Frank Logan, sent in by a reader: “Let me see if I’ve got it right: The Iraqis are terrorists because theydon’t wear uniforms, might have weapons of mass destruction and sneakaround using guerrilla tactics to defend their country against foreigninvaders.

“The U.S. forces are freedom fighters, not terrorists because they wearuniforms and because helicopters, bombers, cruise missiles, tanks,armored personnel carriers, cluster bombs, chain guns, night-visiondevices, depleted uranium munitions and dolphins are not weapons of massdestruction.

‘The Iraqis and Al-Jazeera are evil for showing U.S. prisoners of war anddead U.S. soldiers on TV.

“The Washington Post, CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX and ABC are providing a valuablepublic service by showing Iraqi dead and prisoners of war. After all, noone in Iraq is going to see a loved one on U.S. television.

“I support the war, but I am having a tough time taking the U.S.propaganda machine seriously.”

“Joan Wile writes” Please read the article about Kofi Annan in Sunday,March 30, 2003, NY Times, on Page B1 entitled U.N.SECRETATRY GENERAL FACES HIS ‘MOST DIFFICULT’ MOMENT.It is a rather confused article, but one fact is,shockingly, crystal clear. I quote: “Hisaggressively public diplomacyis energized in part because he came late to theconclusion that this war was unavoidable.” It thengoes on to say, in essence, that he supports the useof force in Iraq.

“It is indeed disturbing to learn that the head of theU.N., who has so much authority to control the actionsof nations, felt it necessary for the United States toengage in this obscene, catastrophic war. I do hope you will look into it and write a commentaryregarding this disquieting information.

VIEWS OF MEDIA COVERAGE

Ok, Ok, I will lighten up. Since it is April Fools Day, we turn to the satirical Onion to share one feature asking readers what they think. In this case, the question is about media coverage. The answers of course, are invented (as some of the coverage appears to be) or are they?

‘Across the nation, citizens are glued to their TV sets for war coverage. What do you think of the job the media are doing?

“I watch the Fox News Channel, because they’re unbiased and support the war 100 percent.”Michael Crane,Systems Analyst

“Can’t we skip all that disturbing night-vision bombing stuff and go straight to the jubilant liberation footage?”Andrea LytleHomemaker

“I watch Al-Jazeera on satellite but turn the sound off and listen to NPR. I have no idea what the fuck is happening.”Gordon JacksonArchitect

“I’m hoping there will be helmet-mounted soldier-cams to be outraged by.”Dan Durkee,Roofer

“Talk about your boring reruns.”Mitchell Fawkes

Back tomorrow with more. Your thoughts and comments are welcome as usual. Interns and volunteers still wanted. Write to you news dissector Danny Schechter: Dissector@mediachannel.org. tech note: sorry for any typos. Editor away. Dissector trying.