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Has the media has dropped the ball?
Topic Started: Aug 15 2004, 12:41 PM (133 Views)
Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Commentator Lee Smith has a very insightful piece in Slate titled "The First Casualty" that examines the failings and problems with the media in covering America's effort in the Middle East.

Mr. Smith starts by showing how the reporting of the Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan leak vacillated within a week between considering it a huge blunder to then seeing a bigger picture.
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Why did someone in the Bush administration leak the name of suspected al-Qaida member Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan to the press? In the weeks between his July 13 arrest and the Department of Homeland Security's Aug. 1 decision to raise the terrorist warning alert to orange, Khan had been convinced to engage his former colleagues in an encoded e-mail correspondence. In other words, he had been turned. When the New York Times first revealed his identity, and the White House later confirmed it, the administration sacrificed what one intelligence expert called a "holy grail."

"[The leak] goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth," the intelligence source explained to Reuters. "The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse."

However, two days later, another Reuters article allowed that maybe the leak wasn't the tremendous screw-up the wire service had previously reported. "Terrorism experts," the piece noted, "said the reasons for the release of Khan's name could range from a judgment error to a sophisticated ploy designed to put al Qaeda on edge about the extent to which the network has been infiltrated by moles."

Mr. Smith uses these events to argue that U.S. intelligence is learning from past mistakes and that it is far more effective than is assumed by the media. And as a corollary, he argues that the media is not learning from its mistakes and is far less effective at reporting news than one may assume.
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In the almost three years since Sept. 11, the White House and U.S. intelligence have come under heavy fire for their errors, while the press has mostly been criticized for not being hard enough on either of them. Certainly, there's a time for the U.S. press to play the adversary—to challenge Washington and itemize its errors—but that's not its only role. The media can also choose to explain the government's actions rather than reflexively criticize—or cheer—them. But in order to explain, we have to assume that the White House is essentially a rational actor that can neither afford to lie out of habit nor to ignore its mistakes because it is too incompetent to correct them; rather, we need to recognize that there are circumstances under which a government is likely to deceive and err. Obviously, war is the No. 1 condition for both.

The article makes, what I feel are several salient points, and in order to move linearly in sync with the article, let me cite two paragraphs I believe makes an important point about strategic deception, but it's not the most important point.
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During every war, the government will sometimes lie to the American people and its allies, and it will almost always attempt to deceive or conceal information from its enemies. The Bush administration gambled that it could invade Iraq without revealing its real reasons for doing so and without losing the support of the people who will ultimately decide whether venturing American lives and money was worth it. After all, we know we are at war, not just because the president told us, but because our enemies have done so in word and deed. So, there are two ways to look at our current predicament: 1) the government lied to get us into the Iraq war, and the inevitable result is a series of mistakes and miscalculations; or 2) Iraq is just a campaign in a war we were already fighting, and both lying and confusion are essential parts of all wars. However, the press seems to be confused because it's not really sure we're at war.

For instance, last week when the Iraqi government decided to close Al Jazeera's Baghdad office for a month to give the station a chance to reconsider its positions and policies, the New York Times ran an editorial condemning the government's action. "Thwarting Al Jazeera's news coverage will not halt the violence that has been tearing Iraq apart for the past 16 months. But it may … give [Allawi's] government a freer hand to abuse human rights and pursue personal political vendettas in the name of restoring law and order." The Times doesn't really think that Al Jazeera's watchful eye prevents Arab regimes from abusing the human and political rights of Arab citizens—or why didn't the network keep Saddam in check? No, this is the U.S. press on auto-pilot. Any decision that keeps someone from articulating their point of view, even if it abets violence and misreports facts, is censorship, and we're against it, even if it's just for 30 days. But does the NYT's editorial staff believe that if Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl had wanted to film George Patton's 3rd Army in its march through France, she should have been allowed to do so?

The hard truth is, truth is the first casualty of war, but not for inconsequential reasons. Both tactical and strategic plans must be protected, and sometimes protected from even a nominal ally. To effectively wage war a nation cannot reveal the long term plans to an enemy who would simply adapt its own strategic plans to compensate. Even when an enemy knows what is happening, they shouldn't know the how, when and why. When a media demands a 'right to know' that how, when and why, the only choice available is to reveal important information or simply lie about it.

To be effective and win, it is often necessary for a nations political leaders and military leaders to put on their best poker faces and then obfuscate to the media, the public and the world.

This is not to argue that the Bush administration or the Clinton administration or the administrations of any other world power is or were purposely lying about Iraq's weapons, but it is an argument that the media, in an infantile notion that it has the right to know everything, must recognize it does not have that right. And as an out-growth of that, it may be told patently false information to deceive the enemy.

I feel the most salient point made in the essay is found in this paragraph...
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The press isn't thinking hard about these matters because it's not convinced that this war might affect them personally. It's safer right now just to treat it as a big story. Close readers of the press will notice that the major media outlets have been rotating reporters into Iraq over the last year—some reporters are exhausted, and others want a shot at covering the big story. Do they all have experience covering war zones and living in Arab societies? Absolutely not. The military talks about a learning curve for its new troops sent into Iraq. Doesn't the same apply to journalists? Critics have pointed out that U.S. forces don't know Arabic or much about Arab or Muslim culture, but neither does the American press. Analysts have argued that the military is not prepared to occupy and police a country. But the media is not trained to report an occupation or an insurgency. When the press describes fierce fighting, are they comparing it to a multidivisional engagement with tanks and heavy artillery or a really ugly shootout in front of a Bronx social club? When the press says that after a year the occupation is a total mess, is it in the context of Great Britain's decadeslong occupation of Egypt or the weeks it takes to quell a raging forest fire? Or are they just trying to catch the White House in one of its prewar flights of fancy?

Not only does the media not place events in context, but they rely a great deal on incomplete information or inaccurate preceptions of how thing ought to be.

The national and internation press agencies do not train reporters to report on war, but how to play 'gatcha' type games with the coalition forces in Iraq, George Bush and Tony Blair.

After reading Lee Smith's essay, it's hard to reach a conclusion that the media is as smart or as fair and balanaced as they often make themselves out to be.
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Do the bump!

Actually, I'm surprised no one has responded to this one.
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Wichita
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The Adminstrator wRench
I'm not surprised at all that no one has responded to it. With Olympics, hurricanes and the last days before summer, there has been very little activity on the board in general over the last few days.

Let's not "read" anything into a lack of response on this or any topic and please don't repeatedly "bump" items to get them back to the top.
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Dwayne
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Me thinks the media has dropped the ball.
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Minuet
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Fleet Admiral Assistant wRench, Chief Supper Officer
Administrative Response

Dwayne you were clearly told by Wichita not to bump your topics. Next time you do it consider the thread closed.
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Dwayne
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Yeah sure, but the media has dropped the ball.
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Minuet
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Fleet Admiral Assistant wRench, Chief Supper Officer
Bye bye :wave2:
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