U.S. TV News Marches To Iraq War Drumbeat

by Emad Mekay

"This broadcast was brought to you by: Freedom Cyber Force Militia. GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!" says the electronic signature left on the website of the Qatar-based news agency.

Al-Jazeera, whose coverage of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq focused on causalities on both sides, the human cost of the invasion and also gave more space to Arab and Iraqi views on the conflict -- upsetting Washington along the way -- had just launched the English site Monday.

Two of the Arab network's reporters were banned this week from stock trading floors in New York while another website, YellowTimes.com, which published photographs of the U.S. soldiers who were killed and captured by Iraqi forces, was temporarily shut-down.

Many media observers here say the two websites are only minor casualties of the war. The larger victim is the flow of accurate and fair information.

"Somebody doesn't like hearing the truth," wrote Yellow Times columnist Firas Al-Atraqchi, after he received a threatening letter from the site's Internet service provider.

The New York-based liberal media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) says it has been detecting a trend from well before the start of the war to muzzle the free flow of information and choke off a real debate in the United States about the war.

"I do find this a disturbing trend of people trying to shut down the flow of information," said Jim Naureckas, who edits FAIR's magazine, 'Extra'.

"And they are not responding to a view that has been expressed but simply to the presentation of information that is regarded as accurate. People have decided this is a piece of reality that should not be expressed. This is the worst form of censorship."

Naureckas blames the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for creating an atmosphere where suppressing such information is not frowned upon but seen as "rallying around the flag" and patriotic.

"You have a real fear on part of the administration that if people have access to all the images out there, it will affect they way they view the war," he said.

Scenes of slain U.S. marines in Mogadishu, Somalia helped hasten the withdrawal of U.S. troops from that trouble-ridden country in 1993.

Little wonder then that two days ago, the U.S. military intentionally bombed Iraqi TV, the primary source of the pictures of the dead and captured U.S. soldiers, although it is considered a civilian target that is supposed to be protected under the Geneva Conventions.

Besides fostering a climate where Internet vigilantes decide to deface or obliterate alternative sources of information, the administration has clearly signalled to U.S. media to fall in line.

"There's definite pressure on news outlets in the U.S. to be very cooperative with the U.S. government," said Laura Miller associate editor of 'PR Watch', which has been following the war coverage.

"For the corporate media, there's also definite self-interest involved in being on the good side of the White House and not challenging them," she said. If they do challenge the administration, she argued, their access to certain individuals could be cut off, with severe consequences.

"They have ratings to consider. People won't turn to them for news any more if they don't have sources," added Miller.

U.S. networks and their websites are largely echoing what U.S. generals say, streaming pictures of U.S. tanks rumbling towards Baghdad or of troops fighting heroically.

Terms coined by the administration, such as "liberating Iraq," the "coalition of the willing" and "clean and precise war" go unchallenged. Voices opposing the war have also been completely ignored.

Pentagon-embedded journalists, puffed up in their war gear and exulting that they have "never seeing anything like this," display lethal gadgetry, from precision-guided missiles to the MOAB bomb -- scenes which the Pentagon intends to use to intimidate the Iraqis.

"This masks reality from the U.S. public," Miller said. "That the U.S. media continues to use that sort of language hides the true objective of the administration from the public."

Naureckas agrees. This kind of coverage has been "really sanitized," especially pictures of the war's destruction.

"We are getting the picture of war, but presented as though nobody is killed. In fact it's a very bloody thing," he said.

The U.S. media has also made serious mistakes. FAIR says that a lack of skepticism toward official U.S. sources has already led top journalists into "embarrassing errors in their coverage."

Chief among them are the Pentagon line, spread widely in the United States, that Saddam Hussein was so hated by the Iraqi people that they would immediately rise up when U.S.-led forces arrived, and that the Iraqi army was so rag-tag and dispirited that its troops would immediately surrender in droves.

Other mistakes include reports of that proof had been discovered that Iraq possesses banned weapons. On the second day of the invasion, U.S. military spokespeople initially described missiles launched by Iraq as "Scuds" -- the U.S. name for a Soviet-made missile used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.

Many networks rushed to report the assertion without questioning it. All those claims were proven later untrue.

The media, said Miller, are fuelling a vicious circle.

"As long as public opinion in the U.S. appears to be supporting the war, the news media will want to support the war because they don't want be blamed for any sort of failure," she said.

"But on the other hand, they are propelling it. They are feeding the propaganda. They are an excellent source for maintaining that public support for the war."