The War for Public Opinion

In 1922, social critic Walter Lippmann wrote, "Decisions in modern states tend to be made by the interaction, not of Congress and the executive, but of public opinion and the executive." Never has this been truer than in the war on terrorism. The Bush administration has justified its bombing campaign against Afghanistan not with a congressional declaration of war, but with polls indicating that close to 90 percent of Americans want military action.

In American politics today, public opinion polls have become a kind of Fifth Estate. As soon as they are released, poll results become fodder to justify policies, attack opponents or wage wars. When the numbers hover around 90 percent, as do Bush's current approval ratings, they are political gospel. After all, when nine out of 10 Americans agree, the country's resolve must be strong as steel. Or is it?

Therein lies the rub. Public opinion is a fickle thing, sometimes turning on as little as one horrific image or triumphant speech. A few well-placed media messages can cause sea changes in national opinion: Think of Southern cops turning dogs and fire hoses loose on desegregation marches; or the videotape of Rodney King; or napalmed villagers in Vietnam.

The Bush administration knows this media truism all too well. They also know its corollary -- that with the right pressure, public opinion can be manipulated. And so, as bombs began to fall on Kabul, the administration launched an equally aggressive front at home: the war for America's approval of war.

Back in 1922, Lippmann noted that public opinion tends to solidify during times of war and that the media, becoming more patriotic, aids in this solidification. That was the case during World Wars I and II, when news items smelled heavily of government propaganda and Hollywood's most talented filmmakers were hired to make inspirational war movies.

That was also the case during the Persian Gulf War. Had the U.S. government allowed reporters to file from the front lines, showing the effect of the war on civilians and the region, public opinion might have been different. Instead, the Gulf War came into American living rooms as a series of fuzzy Defense Department abstractions. From the couch, what happened in Iraq looked like a video game. Unlike the images that poured into the tube during Vietnam, there was very little to get upset about. The campaign seemed clean, technologically efficient. The majority of the public came away with a favorable impression, even if they failed to feel the war was a moral victory, as was the case during World War II.

That was the media success story of George I. Now along comes George II, waging a more complicated war that is a descendant of his father's. Since the first shots were fired, the Bush administration has successfully squelched negative news reports from Afghanistan. Asked at an October press conference how he would handle the media's war coverage, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quoted Winston Churchill's statement about disinformation around the D-day invasion. "Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies," he said. "They plan to fight the war and then tell the press and the public how it turned out afterwards," said CNN Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

The Pentagon's tactics in the media war have been less than subtle. For starters, they bought up access to all commercial satellite photographs of the region, preventing any news outlets from obtaining them. They also have prevented journalists from accompanying soldiers or airmen on most missions, or even from interviewing them afterward.

Meanwhile, television news has been behaving more like a wing of the military than an objective Fourth Estate, with anchors like CBS’s Dan Rather pledging his allegiance on air: "Wherever [Bush] wants me to line up, just tell me where." CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson ordered news staff to limit reports of Afghan war casualties and use World Trade Center deaths to justify the killings. Newspaper editors have admitted to taking dead civilian Afghans off their front pages for fear of appearing unpatriotic.