Stop the Presses

In "America's New War" the first U.S. casualty may be the First Amendment. The military, Bush administration propaganda and the media itself have squelched news in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Asked at a press conference whether he would lie to the media about the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quoted Winston Churchill about disinformation around the D-Day invasion. "Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." Rumsfeld is about the only source the U.S. media has for covering the Afghan war. The military has refused to allow journalists to accompany troops and pilots fighting in Afghanistan or even interview them after their missions.

"They plan to fight the war and then tell the press and the public how it turned out afterwards," the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) quoted CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre. The military spin is that pinpoint smart bombings will keep civilian casualties to a minimum, international investigative reporter Phillip Knightley wrote in a CPI commentary. "Bloody TV footage or grim still photographs of civilian bomb victims would threaten this most outrageous piece of propaganda, so an essential part of the Western alliance's strategy has been not only to bomb in the dark but, as far as possible, to keep the public in the dark as well." John Barry, Newsweek's Pentagon reporter, told The New York Times that the military is restricting coverage, that "might not be consonant with their basic message that they're making inexorable progress toward inevitable victory." The media blackout is the culmination of a long trend toward military censorship. After Vietnam, the military blamed the media for turning public opinion against the war.

The British managed to successfully keep the media away from directly covering their Falklands War. A U.S. Naval War College publication reported on the Falkland lessons. To maintain public support, the article said, a government should sanitize the visual images of war; control media access; censor information that could upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists who would not write favorable stories, according to CPI. The U.S. applied the Falklands model in Grenada and Panama. The biggest application was in the Gulf War. A CPI report on Gulf War coverage noted gross exaggerations of the effectiveness of Patriot missiles and smart bombs and success rates for bombing missions. The 1991 report concluded, "information about Defense Department activities ... [was] restricted or manipulated not for national security purposes, but for political purposes -- to protect the image and priorities of the Defense Department and its civilian leaders, including the president." Media groups complained after the Gulf War, and the Pentagon promised to allow more access next time. But that hasn't happened and media groups are complaining again.

The presidents of a group of 20 journalism organizations issued a statement expressing concern "over the increasing restrictions by the United States government that limit news gathering and inhibit the free flow of information in the wake of the September 11 attack. ... We believe that these restrictions pose dangers to American democracy and prevent American citizens from obtaining the information they need." But the Pentagon has not budged. With patriotism running high, the military may reason that the public isn't likely to complain. A recent Pew Research Center poll showed 59 percent of respondents want more military control over reporting the war. Only 28 percent want more media control, the Times reported. That has left journalists trying to cover the Afghan war from Pakistan. Masood Anwar of the News International in Pakistan describes the coverage from Quetta as "mainly cooked up and rubbish, as the journalists themselves are hostages to circumstances and strict security concerns" and must have Pakistani military escorts.