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CounterPunch
August
23, 2002
"Yes,
We Censored News About Afghanistan"
The Lapdog Conversion of CNN
by Kurt Nimmo
In an August 15 news item carried by Press Gazette
Online, Rena Golden, the executive vice-president and general
manager of CNN International, admitted censoring news regarding
the US war in Afghanistan. This censorship, she explained, "wasn't
a matter of government pressure, but a reluctance to criticize
anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority
of the people."
How exactly the American public are expected
to judge the validity of the US war in Afghanistan--and, indeed,
the entire war on terrorism--when news organizations refuse to
provide crucial information is not explained. In essence, Golden
admits public opinion is cast by one source--the government--and
the media has essentially abrogated its responsibility to provide
additional, even contrary information on these momentous issues.
Additionally, CNN New Delhi chief Satinder
Bindra said many journalists pushed "harder than they should
for a story," thus endangering the lives of other journalists
covering the war from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bindra did not
comment on how exactly journalists might be expected to receive
information for their stories, or what precisely constitutes
pushing "harder than they should." Maybe Bindra expects
them to remain ensconced in their Islamabad hotel rooms and wait
patiently for the news to arrive by courier? Or stay in Washington
and rely on Donald Rumsfeld as their only source?
While many journalists complained about
military imposed censorship during the Persian Gulf War a decade
ago, it now appears the corporate media has decided on its own
to censor the news without external limitation imposed by the
Pentagon. In other words, the corporate media has in essence
become a rather short-sighted and assentive propaganda organ
for the Bush administration. Remarkably, they attribute this
lapdog conversion to a desire not to offend public opinion, which
they arrogantly assume is entirely monolithic. It would seem
CNN is now the official government news agency.
As official Bush administration propaganda
mills, CNN and other corporate news networks have obsequiously
agreed to a White House demand not to broadcast unedited remarks
by Usama bin Laden. The White House wasted no time in exacting
likewise from newspapers in regard to print transcripts. "In
a bizarre and unprecedented move," Veronica Forwood, chairwoman
of the British branch of Reporters without Borders, remarked,
"the five major networks--CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News
Channel--have rolled over and acquiesced to the call for censorship
from the US president's security adviser Condoleeza Rice."
During the Persian Gulf War, however,
things were different--some of the media did not so easily roll
over and play dead like a dog straight out of obedience school.
In 1991, Harper's, The Village Voice, The Nation, and others
sued, claiming government censorship was a violation of the First
Amendment. Predictably, the major corporate newspapers and TV
networks refused to join the lawsuit. Instead, as now, they simply
ingratiated themselves with the Pentagon and dutifully spoon-fed
the public censored and heavily excised information (if not outright
lies and fabrications). The lawsuit was eventually dismissed
by a judge who didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.
It would seem the media of decades past was made of brawnier
stuff than the media of today.
John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's
Magazine, wistfully entertained the idea of suing again, but
he was less than sanguine about the prospect. "We might
sue again, some small lawsuits, some civil libertarians may do
so, but it's hopeless," he told the German journalist Gerti
Schoen back in September. "This will be the most censored
war in history... It won't just be censorship, but silence."
While we have not exactly received complete silence, the news
trickling out of Afghanistan is, to say the least, highly stage
managed and tilted for a world of spin.
So confident is the Pentagon corporate
media resides in its hip pocket that back in December they dropped
a requirement demanding journalists covering Afghanistan be part
of an exclusive and authorized group, otherwise known as a "press
pool." The press pool concept was devised in 1983 when the
US invaded Grenada. It was updated in 1991 during the Persian
Gulf War after publishers such as MacArthur began murmuring about
military censorship. The relaxation of the press pool rules in
December, however, did not prevent the military from denying
journalists access to the war zone. On December 6, when American
troops were hit by a stray bomb north of Kandahar, photojournalists
were locked in a warehouse by Marines to make sure they didn't
take pictures of wounded soldiers.
More recently, media access to the Uruzgan
wedding massacre was sharply curtailed. When journalists in Kabul
submitted a request to join press officers at the Bagram air
base--in order to travel by helicopter to the site--they were
steadfastly denied permission by the military. Only two journalists
traveled with US investigators to villages near Deh Rawud--one
was a reporter from the US armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes
and the other was cameraman from the Associated Press Television
Network. The chief US media officer at Bagram, Colonel Roger
King, told those left behind they would have no right of access
to the pool reporters' work. King's statement was a contradiction
of the Pentagon's own press pool guidelines. As a result of this
decision, it took four days for information about the Uruzgan
wedding massacre to be made public. Allegations were later leveled
by United Nations workers, accusing the military of changing
the press pool rules in order to limit access to the area and
thus destroy evidence, a charge the Pentagon naturally denied.
But the Pentagon's war against media
coverage in Afghanistan is not limited to reporters and news
crews on the ground. In October, as the brass busily prepared
for war, they used public money, at the none too shabby tune
of $2 million per month, to secure exclusive rights to all new
high-quality commercial spy satellite images of Afghanistan.
During a policy debate on the release of satellite imagery, the
idea was floated that the Pentagon might shoot down the commercial
satellites if they were not allowed to control the images. Regardless,
in December the Pentagon decided not to continue the exclusive
contract. Considering CNN's recent admission of tailoring news
in deference to the sensitivities of the American people, access
to satellite photography is a moot point--chances are they would
not publish them anyway.
It would seem Americans need to be protected
from the harsh realities of war--or, more likely, as in the case
of Vietnam, their visceral abhorrence to it--when it comes to
documentaries, as well. When Irish director Jamie Doran released
his controversial documentary--Massacre in Mazar--in Europe,
not one major US newspaper or television network covered the
story, which essentially resulted in a news black out in the
United States. Doran's film documents the aftermath of the massacre
of hundreds of Taliban fighters at the Mazar-i-Sharif prison
Qala-i-Jangi. In the documentary, dead prisoners are shown with
hands tied behind their backs. Eyewitnesses describe the torture
and slaughter of some 3,000 prisoners who were subsequently buried
in the desert. While the Pentagon has denied any complicity in
the torture and massacre of the POWs, many European parliamentary
deputies and human rights advocates have called for an independent
investigation into the atrocities. The human rights lawyer Andrew
McEntee said it is "clear there is prima facie evidence
of serious war crimes committed not just under international
law, but also under the laws of the United States itself."
Nonetheless, CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, et al, decided not to run coverage
of the film or announce the possibility of an investigation.
Much later, however, when the massacre story simply became too
high profile to ignore, it did receive a degree of limited coverage
in the United States.
Fortunately, the press in Britain and
Europe has an excellent track record of covering stories the
US media have consistently (and deliberately) ignored at the
behest of the Pentagon and the Bush administration. Thanks to
the Internet, these stories can be read by Americans without
access to foreign newspapers. Both the Guardian and the UK Independent
carry alternative news (available via the Web)--and also carry
reports and editorials by award winning journalists such as Robert
Fisk and John Pilger. These are news stories and opinions The
NY Times would never touch.
We no longer live in a world of hermetically
sealed information. For those Americans thirsty for truth--and
who do not take kindly to their news being sanitized and rubber
stamped by the Pentagon and unelected presidents--there are more
than a few sources out there.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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