The Cartoonish State of the Media

When it comes to matters of free speech and sound journalism, it's getting increasingly difficult to determine who is worse: the present rulers of the United States or the Islamo-fascists they're now at war with. When they're not busy attacking one another, each side in the current conflict keeps busy attacking journalists (more already dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam era), journalism and the very concept of freedom of the press.

In the midst of the ongoing controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and the pusillanimous reaction by scared outlets such as CNN and France Soir (of which more later), it was particularly sad to see U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lobbing yet another round of verbal grenades at the media last week.

Claiming that press criticism has made "our people … chilled and reticent and uncomfortable," Rumsfeld resurrected the silly, shopworn shibboleth that the media will be to blame if the United States "loses" the global war on terrorism.

"We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will," Rumsfeld said. "And the determinant of that is what is played in the media."

The terrorists, Rumsfeld noted, "manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it."

Meanwhile, U.S. military personnel "get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media, and the media likes to write about the media," Rumsfeld said. "How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, [and] the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them."

Rummy spoke just a few days after a Freedom of Information Act request by the redoubtable National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University, compelled the release of the previously secret "Information Operations road map" he signed in 2003.

The newly declassified 74-page document details the U.S. military's plans for "information dominance" -- from influencing public opinion through media to designing "computer network attack" weapons -- and notes that information is "critical to military success." The "road map" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.

The document was written to set out policy guidelines and establish the Pentagon's rationale for making information operations a "core" mission for the U.S. military. It says, "Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future."

The operations described in the document include a range of military activities, the most disturbing of which is the acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or psyops, is finding its way to the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."

The document's authors agree that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda, and say, "Specific boundaries should be established," but don't bother to explain how.

But the National Security Archive calls this 'psyops' what it really is: propaganda planted overseas that will inevitably make its way back to the United States. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States -- even though they were directed abroad," said Kristin Adair, a representative of the group.