The Corruption of Journalism in Wartime

When I arrived in Afghanistan last November, Operation Enduring Freedom -- the American bombing campaign that eventually toppled the Taliban -- was being hailed by the U.S. media as an unqualified success.

Precision bombing and first-rate intelligence, the Pentagon claimed, had kept civilian casualties down to a few dozen victims at most. Long-oppressed Afghan women burned their burqas and walked the streets as the country reveled in an orgy of liberation. Or so we were told.

The amount of disjoint between television and reality was shocking.

The "new" Northern Alliance government was no better than the Taliban; with the exception of the U.S.-appointed former oil-company hacks in charge, they were Talibs. Women still wore their burqas, stonings continued at the soccer stadium and the bodies of bombing victims piled up by the thousands. Not only was the War on Terror failing to catch terrorists, it was creating a new generation of Afghans whose logical response to losing their friends and parents and siblings and spouses and children would be to hate America.

Why didn't the truth about the extent of civilian casualties get out?

I blame the journalists, though Lord knows, some of them tried. As a novice correspondent for The Village Voice and KFI-AM radio in Los Angeles, I carefully studied the pros. A brilliant war reporter for a big American newspaper-- he'd done them all, from Rwanda to Somalia to Kosovo -- filed detailed reports daily from his room down the street from mine as I charged my electronic equipment on his portable generator. The next day we'd hook up a satellite phone to a laptop to read his pieces on his paper's website. Invariably every mention of Afghan civilians killed or injured by American air strikes would be neatly excised. One day, as a test, he fired off a thousand words about a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bomb that had taken out an entire neighborhood in southeastern Kunduz. Hundreds of civilians lay scattered in bits of protoplasm amid the rubble. His editors killed the piece, calling it "redundant."

He was an exception. The TV people, particularly the big American networks, were the worst. ABC News, for instance, paid $800 for a 12-mile ride from the Tajik border to the first town in Takhar Province. (The usual rate was 50 cents.) The TV guys eased the discomforts of Fourth World living by throwing around hundreds of thousands of dollars, bribing Northern Alliance warlords to put them up in their palatial compounds -- electricity, hot water, beefy bodyguards, the works -- and buying access to places where news was supposedly taking place. While they were off chasing fictional Osamas in mountain caves at fantastic expense, American bombs would strike civilian targets in the most obvious of places; only European journos would show up to cover those horrifying scenes. It never occurred to these well-fed American fools that relying for food, shelter and protection on the top officers of one side in a civil war might not give them the best vantage point for unbiased reporting.

Here in America, reputable media outlets pride themselves on refusing to pay for news. That's why Gary Condit couldn't collect a buck for his interview with Connie Chung. But out in Afghanistan, all bets were off. Broadcast networks paid for interviews, access to battle zones and even rides into battle in the bowels of armored personnel carriers. Had everyone refused to pay, no one would have been fleeced. But war is the seventh circle of hell, and breeds such unseemly rat-like behavior among war junkies.

Their unscrupulous conduct turned all journalists, whether from NBC or a Portugese radio station, into fat targets for robbery, rape and murder. Because the TV scum had driven up prices for all reporters, you needed at least $5,000 merely to buy food and a room for a few weeks. And in a nation with an average monthly income of $1.20, anyone who lifted those $5,000 from your bloody money belt would be set for life. Perhaps only the young soldiers who robbed and murdered 42-year-old Swedish cameraman Ulf Stromberg in his Taloqan guest house are legally responsible for widowing his wife, but surely the irresponsible behavior of well-funded TV personnel share the blame.