The media war has come home
By Danny Schechter
Nov. 23— The Republican Party has just announced it is
importing Doha to New York, by reapplying the lessons learned at the
Iraq War Coalition Press Center, the centerpiece of a well-crafted propaganda
system to domestic politics.
This is not entirely new. During the war, corporate PR veteran and Pentagon
media spokesperson Victoria Clarke told the Wall Street Journal that
she was running her operation as if it was a political campaign.
And now that we realize how specious most of the arguments for the war
were, we can see that politics and PR (along with oil and regional change)
was what it was about. It wasn’t much of a armed clash since the
other side folded most its tent through bribes and bullying when the
invasion began, only to reappear when it ended.
Clarke was so impressive at orchestrating the media that a media outlet
has now hired her. She joined CNN as a correspondent. (The Pentagon
briefer in chief during Gulf War I joined NBC News in its aftermath.)
Now, the New York Observer tells of an impending merger between military
media strategy and domestic news management. Ben Smith reports, “We’re
looking at embedding reporters, we’re looking at new and interesting
camera angles,” Jim Wilkinson said recently in the quick, confidential
drawl reporters got used to at the US Central Command in Doha, Qatar.
But while the Republican operative spent much of the year in desert
camouflage as General Tommy Franks’ director of strategic communications,
he’s now in Brooks Brothers mufti in foreign territory, New York.
“Mr. Wilkinson started last month as the director of communications
for the Republican National Convention, which will take place from Aug.
30 to Sept. 2 next year. His office, on the 18th floor over Madison
Square Garden, is furnished with the essentials: leather-bound Bible,
Yankee cap, Fox News on the flat-screen TV.”
There are signs that media organizations are waking up -- or more likely
-- being unleashed from the handcuffs of patriotic coverage rituals
embedded in war coverage the way those 7th inning renditions of “God
Bless America” infiltrated baseball games.
According to Smith, there was rage in the press corps at those Doha
briefings, even though US viewers didn’t get to see it. The BBC
film War Spin captured it, but the movie was not shown in America. New
York Magazine media critic Michael Wolff’s on camera challenge
to General Vincent Brooks did come through but only as an isolated instance.
Smith says he had plenty of company, “Plenty of reporters seethed
at him during the war, and not covertly. Reporters there barked and
protested-many are still brutally angry-at the ‘No comment’
after ‘No comment’ they received in Doha as their embedded
colleagues broke news in the field and Mr. Rumsfeld gave press conferences
at the Pentagon. Doha was, to them, a kind of biosphere of non-news.”
Now that some in the press rediscover their skepticism, the Bush Administration
is shifting strategies -- from seducing journalists to bypassing them
all together. Frank Rick writes about this in New York Times. He begins
by noting that the President himself says he doesn’t even read
the press or watch TV. He told Fox News’ Brit Hume: ‘The best
way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective
sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening
in the world.’”
After nearly three years, reporters who cover politics are realizing
there is no objectivity there. Writes Rich: “Until recently, the
administration had often gotten what it wanted, especially on television,
and not just on afternoon talk shows. From 9/11 through the fall of
Saddam, the obsequiousness became so thick that even Terry Moran, the
ABC News White House correspondent, said his colleagues looked “like
zombies” during the notorious pre-shock-and-awe Bush news conference
of March 6, 2003.
As criticisms of his policies could no longer be contained, Bush went
over the heads of the Washington Press corps by doing interviews via
satellite with local TV anchors who presumably follow the details the
least. This little trick was first used by his father during the l992
presidential campaign. The word has now gone to his “team”
not to book Administration Bigs on hostile shows like Nightline or Frontline.
Instead they will continue to rely on the Sunday Beltway blather talk
shows as their venue du jour. This prompts Rich to observe, “When
an administration is hiding in a no-news bunker, how do you find the
news? The first place to look, we’re starting to learn, is any
TV news show on which Ms. Rice, Mr. Card, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell
and Donald Rumsfeld are not appearing. If they’re before a camera,
you can assume that the White House has deemed the venue a safe one,
a spin zone.”
In this media war, the Administration seems to still be way ahead but
the upstart Marlins of the media could still vanquish the powerful imperial
Yankees in the next game or the one after that. Think of the upset at
the World Series as a political metaphor; just as Iraq policy is unraveling,
the Administration’s media management strategies unravel with it.
Those of us with a memory remember Vietnam, the war in which the media
began as a cheerleader and ended up presiding over its funeral.
The war has come home.
This is not a parallel that is lost on Rich of the New York Times who
concludes, “At the tender age of six months, the war in Iraq is
not remotely a Vietnam. But from the way the administration tries to
manage the news against all reality, even that irrevocable reality encased
in flag-draped coffins, you can only wonder if it might yet persuade
the audience at home that we’re mired in another Tet after all.
News Dissector Danny Schechter writes daily for Mediachannel.org.
His latest book; Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception is out this week
from Prometheus Books.
Source: ZNet
