John Whitehead's Commentary
The Iraqi War: Is This the Death of Journalism?
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular." --Edward R. Murrow
Thanks to progressive new technologies, journalists are now able to report live from the front lines of the war on Iraq. Embedded within the ranks of U.S. troops advancing into Iraq, representatives of most of the major television networks, newspapers and media outlets are attempting to provide the American public with a bird's eye view of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sadly, some journalists have already become casualties of war--having been taken prisoner, killed in crossfire or fallen prey to illness.
Yet even as news anchors risk their lives to rattle off the latest news while perched on a battle tank, some critics are beginning to wonder if what we are seeing has more to do with government propaganda than journalistic reporting. Is this, in fact, the death of journalism? For some time, members of the mainstream media have been accused of acting as agents of the government, regurgitating its propaganda without much analysis or objectivity. The charge being leveled at the media during this war on Iraq, even more so now than before, is simply this: that the mainline media has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and, thus, the Pentagon.
As Professor Stanley I. Kutler, author of The Wars of Watergate, recalled in a recent interview with Salon magazine, in the 1960s "we used to say he who controls the mimeograph controls the revolution. Now, the government controls the microphone and the camera." He continued, "The media has not served us well in this crisis. It has been very, very passive. Essentially, they were eager to get this supreme television production and now they've got it, they're busy producing it."
For example, a recent report by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) indicates that television network newscasts, dominated by current and former U.S. officials, largely exclude Americans who are skeptical of or opposed to the Iraqi war. Seventy-six percent of all sources were current or former officials, leaving little room for independent and grassroots views. And sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. Indeed, on the networks studied, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism--less than one percent.
Unfortunately, American journalists, especially those on television, are virtually indistinguishable from the military personnel around them. And they seem so busy contributing to the media circus surrounding the war on Iraq that they appear to have lost sight of the reason they exist--that is, to present objective, nonbiased truth to the public. In the words of one journalist, "Good journalists pursue truth; great journalists communicate it with grace. Legends do it every week."
While it might be unreasonable to expect all reporters to attain legendary status in their pursuit of truth, we should at least expect our journalists to be the guardians of the gates of knowledge--reliable conveyors of fact, not fiction--and, thus, act as a check on government run amok. However, if what critics say is true--that our leading journalists have become nothing more than conduits for the government propaganda machine, churning out disinformation at every turn--then there can be little hope that we can ever know the truth, especially in an age of manipulated imagery.
Indeed, with the sanitized version of the war we are receiving, it is becoming extremely difficult to discern fact from fiction. As Professor Kutler states so well, "Omission is the weapon of choice for the media's passivity." And a lack of information is possibly more misleading than misinformation.
For example, one foreign media outlet recently reported that 500 dead bodies of American and British soldiers killed during military operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 have been lying in a morgue at Jacobabad Airbase. The article stated that the bodies of the dead have yet to be sent home due to a concern by American and British officials that doing so might create a strong public outcry and raise concerns about the present Iraqi conflict. Not surprisingly, the American mainline media have yet to report on--or even investigate--such a claim.
The sad reality is that there are very few investigative journalists anymore--and there are certainly no living legends who would dare raise troubling questions or speak contrary views. For example, would Ernie Pyle, the legendary World War II foreign correspondent whose unflinching reports of the battlefront riveted our nation, have so blithely failed to report on those 500 dead soldiers? Or would Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who ferreted out Richard Nixon's Watergate crimes, have turned a deaf ear to such disturbing allegations?
Journalists seem to have bought into the erroneous philosophy that it is disloyal to question the policies of our government, let alone stray from reporting the approved view on the war with Iraq. Fair reporting of both sides of this tangled web that is the war on Iraq, however, doesn't signify a lack of support for our troops. It simply means revealing the facts to the public. Without a free press, the public is left ignorant and, thus, is easily misled by those in power. In fact, there are some who believe that it is the main goal of those in government to stay in power--not necessarily to be open and forthcoming. In other words, you cannot necessarily trust what rolls off the tongues of politicians. As the independent journalist I. F. Stone commented decades ago, "Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed." Stone was not equating all governments or asserting that they always lie. However, he was pointing out that skepticism is essential and no government's claims should be automatically accepted.
Coming from someone who has talked to a lot of reporters in my time, I would suggest that part of the problem with many reporters today is that they're in such a rush to get a story filed that they rarely engage in true investigative journalism. Possibly a more serious problem was candidly addressed by Dan Rather in a BBC interview eight months after 9/11. Rather noted that American journalists were intimidated in the wake of the attacks. Making what he called "an obscene comparison," the CBS news anchor said: "There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be 'necklaced' here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of tough questions." And he added: "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend."
Finally, we must be concerned with the manner in which most, if not all, of the mainstream media have turned this war into an entertainment spectacle--and it's PG-rated entertainment at that, devoid of any real sense of war's bloody and inhumane aspects. And for what? Ratings, perhaps?
Who's at fault here? As Edward R. Murrow once pointed out, "Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not our stars, but in ourselves.'"
Journalists, however, are not the only ones guilty of shirking their duty. The public also has a responsibility to seek out credible and balanced information and be discerning about what they believe or do not believe. Indeed, we live in perilous times--and a free press is the key to an informed citizenry, which is the only way to maintain a democracy.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
Thanks to progressive new technologies, journalists are now able to report live from the front lines of the war on Iraq. Embedded within the ranks of U.S. troops advancing into Iraq, representatives of most of the major television networks, newspapers and media outlets are attempting to provide the American public with a bird's eye view of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sadly, some journalists have already become casualties of war--having been taken prisoner, killed in crossfire or fallen prey to illness.
Yet even as news anchors risk their lives to rattle off the latest news while perched on a battle tank, some critics are beginning to wonder if what we are seeing has more to do with government propaganda than journalistic reporting. Is this, in fact, the death of journalism? For some time, members of the mainstream media have been accused of acting as agents of the government, regurgitating its propaganda without much analysis or objectivity. The charge being leveled at the media during this war on Iraq, even more so now than before, is simply this: that the mainline media has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and, thus, the Pentagon.
As Professor Stanley I. Kutler, author of The Wars of Watergate, recalled in a recent interview with Salon magazine, in the 1960s "we used to say he who controls the mimeograph controls the revolution. Now, the government controls the microphone and the camera." He continued, "The media has not served us well in this crisis. It has been very, very passive. Essentially, they were eager to get this supreme television production and now they've got it, they're busy producing it."
For example, a recent report by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) indicates that television network newscasts, dominated by current and former U.S. officials, largely exclude Americans who are skeptical of or opposed to the Iraqi war. Seventy-six percent of all sources were current or former officials, leaving little room for independent and grassroots views. And sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. Indeed, on the networks studied, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism--less than one percent.
Unfortunately, American journalists, especially those on television, are virtually indistinguishable from the military personnel around them. And they seem so busy contributing to the media circus surrounding the war on Iraq that they appear to have lost sight of the reason they exist--that is, to present objective, nonbiased truth to the public. In the words of one journalist, "Good journalists pursue truth; great journalists communicate it with grace. Legends do it every week."
While it might be unreasonable to expect all reporters to attain legendary status in their pursuit of truth, we should at least expect our journalists to be the guardians of the gates of knowledge--reliable conveyors of fact, not fiction--and, thus, act as a check on government run amok. However, if what critics say is true--that our leading journalists have become nothing more than conduits for the government propaganda machine, churning out disinformation at every turn--then there can be little hope that we can ever know the truth, especially in an age of manipulated imagery.
Indeed, with the sanitized version of the war we are receiving, it is becoming extremely difficult to discern fact from fiction. As Professor Kutler states so well, "Omission is the weapon of choice for the media's passivity." And a lack of information is possibly more misleading than misinformation.
For example, one foreign media outlet recently reported that 500 dead bodies of American and British soldiers killed during military operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 have been lying in a morgue at Jacobabad Airbase. The article stated that the bodies of the dead have yet to be sent home due to a concern by American and British officials that doing so might create a strong public outcry and raise concerns about the present Iraqi conflict. Not surprisingly, the American mainline media have yet to report on--or even investigate--such a claim.
The sad reality is that there are very few investigative journalists anymore--and there are certainly no living legends who would dare raise troubling questions or speak contrary views. For example, would Ernie Pyle, the legendary World War II foreign correspondent whose unflinching reports of the battlefront riveted our nation, have so blithely failed to report on those 500 dead soldiers? Or would Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who ferreted out Richard Nixon's Watergate crimes, have turned a deaf ear to such disturbing allegations?
Journalists seem to have bought into the erroneous philosophy that it is disloyal to question the policies of our government, let alone stray from reporting the approved view on the war with Iraq. Fair reporting of both sides of this tangled web that is the war on Iraq, however, doesn't signify a lack of support for our troops. It simply means revealing the facts to the public. Without a free press, the public is left ignorant and, thus, is easily misled by those in power. In fact, there are some who believe that it is the main goal of those in government to stay in power--not necessarily to be open and forthcoming. In other words, you cannot necessarily trust what rolls off the tongues of politicians. As the independent journalist I. F. Stone commented decades ago, "Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed." Stone was not equating all governments or asserting that they always lie. However, he was pointing out that skepticism is essential and no government's claims should be automatically accepted.
Coming from someone who has talked to a lot of reporters in my time, I would suggest that part of the problem with many reporters today is that they're in such a rush to get a story filed that they rarely engage in true investigative journalism. Possibly a more serious problem was candidly addressed by Dan Rather in a BBC interview eight months after 9/11. Rather noted that American journalists were intimidated in the wake of the attacks. Making what he called "an obscene comparison," the CBS news anchor said: "There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be 'necklaced' here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of tough questions." And he added: "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend."
Finally, we must be concerned with the manner in which most, if not all, of the mainstream media have turned this war into an entertainment spectacle--and it's PG-rated entertainment at that, devoid of any real sense of war's bloody and inhumane aspects. And for what? Ratings, perhaps?
Who's at fault here? As Edward R. Murrow once pointed out, "Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not our stars, but in ourselves.'"
Journalists, however, are not the only ones guilty of shirking their duty. The public also has a responsibility to seek out credible and balanced information and be discerning about what they believe or do not believe. Indeed, we live in perilous times--and a free press is the key to an informed citizenry, which is the only way to maintain a democracy.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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