[Reader-list] Embedded media present this war as 'fun' and almost bloodless

[Harsh Kapoor]

Globe and Mail    April 1, 2003

The bright side of war

No wonder Americans are surprised; embedded media have presented this war as
'fun' and almost bloodless

By John MacArthur

Coming up the elevator of my office building last Thursday, a bicycle
messenger spied me and (perhaps sensing a sympathetic ear) blurted out:
"We're getting our asses kicked over there, and they're not telling us
what's going on."

I'm not much for man-in-the-street generalizations, but my excitable new
acquaintance was clearly channelling something significant about the media
coverage of Gulf War II — namely that expectations and reality have collided
in a way not seen in this country since the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Except for the brief moment of clarity brought on by the photograph of the
U.S. Army Ranger corpse being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in
1993, Americans have pretty much forgotten that war is about death — the
bloody kind. Or that the natives, whoever rules them, don't often take
kindly to foreigners with guns.

Which isn't to say that the U.S.-led forces are losing Gulf War II in a
conventional military sense, or that the "embedded" reporters' coverage has
been particularly good. But so many PR man-hours were devoted to promoting
American military invincibility during the prewar sales campaign, that the
ordinary citizen (and journalist) might be excused for thinking that "shock
and awe" could, by itself, conquer another country.

Certain things haven't changed about U.S. war correspondents since the last
gulf war. Credulity and misplaced patriotism remain the rule; dispassionate
reporting meant to inform rather than inspire remains the exception. If you
compare the BBC or French channels and CNN, the French and British appear to
be suitably sober, while the CNN reporters and anchors seemed thrilled to be
along for the ride.

On the first Saturday of the war, Walter Rodgers of CNN actually said he was
having "great fun," in response to anchor Aaron Brown's unwarranted praise
for Mr. Rodgers's "terrific ... reporting" (which included such extrasensory
observations as "there were whole families standing up there waving white
pieces of cloth that looked like pillow cases indicating they surrender.
They had no hostile feelings"). Perhaps Mr. Rodgers's enthusiasm might have
diminished had he recalled on camera that this same 7th Cavalry Regiment
with whom he rode toward Baghdad had once been led by General George Custer.


But with the sandstorm and paramilitary counterattacks came shock, if not
awe. Even skeptics like myself expected to see at least some Iraqis
welcoming GIs with grateful smiles; instead, we found a surprisingly hostile
landscape (They're shooting at our guys? They don't love us? Even in
Basra?).

Most U.S. war reporting has been, by government design, remote from combat —
reconstructions by spokesmen in the rear. The absence of hard news has led
to endless feature stories about lonely soldiers far from home, supplies
being loaded and unloaded, armoured vehicles and infantry moving from hither
to yon, and, inevitably, videos of smart bombs precisely hitting their
targets.

Nevertheless, Ted Koppel's presentation of two Iraqi corpses on ABC-TV has
already revealed more about the consequences of organized violence than we
saw in all six weeks of the first gulf war, with its tightly controlled pool
coverage. And a few reporters, like Newsday's Letta Tayler, have actually
described combat and death the way it's supposed to be done: "'It was kind
of nice to get it out of the way,' Marine Corporal Mark Hylen said of his
first killing of an Iraqi. He paused for a minute, then appeared to dismiss
whatever thought was emerging. 'Screw him,' he said. 'He died.'"

American casualties are another matter. The Pentagon's hosting of 500 hacks
has engendered enough goodwill or gratitude that self-censorship seems to be
accomplishing the public relations mission that overt censorship did during
Gulf War I. U.S. TV networks and newspapers, for the most part, obscured the
gruesome Iraqi footage (via al-Jazeera) of U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush
on March 23. The PoWs got more play, but the U.S. media continued to treat
war reporting as a matter of taste rather than a constitutional
responsibility to inform the citizenry.

The highbrow newspapers have been similarly squeamish about exhibiting the
gore of war. Last Thursday, March 27, morning newspapers everywhere carried
front-page stories about the explosions (possibly caused by errant American
bombs) in a working-class neighbourhood of Baghdad, which killed at least 17
civilians and wounded 45. The New York Times and Paris's Le Figaro both ran
photographs of the devastation taken by Goran Tomasevic of Reuters. The
Times selected a colour picture of an anguished young man, very much alive,
in front of the burning wreckage of two cars; Le Figaro ran a different shot
by Mr. Tomasevic — a black-and-white one of a hideously charred corpse, face
partially visible, prostrate in front an anguished child.

War reporting will tend to improve if the military situation stagnates or
deteriorates, which is paradoxical good news for the American people. I
think the most realistic war coverage is the best war coverage — not just
because I'm against this war and would like people to be revolted by it —
but because I think it's better for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
Realism and candor can save lives, because it puts political pressure on the
civilian commanders to fight more intelligently, and at least to think about
trying to minimize casualties.

And candor is seeping out everywhere, such as the recent admission by
Lieutenant-General William Wallace that "the enemy we're fighting is a bit
different than the one we wargamed against." Gen. Wallace's remark
emboldened the normally docile Pentagon press corps into challenging Donald
Rumsfeld on military strategy (he responded as petulantly as any dictatorial
CEO contradicted by a subordinate). When officers start complaining to
journalists, it usually means they're covering their backsides by talking
over their bosses' heads to the politicians and the people.

We're not quite at the Vietnam-style five o'clock follies stage, but the
nervousness of the military is starting to show. All the nicey-nice
treatment of the "embeds" looks a little hollow after four "unilateral"
journalists (two Israeli, two Portugese) were roughed up and expelled from
Iraq by the U.S. Army because they posed a "security threat."

During Vietnam, a so-called "credibility gap" developed when military claims
diverged more and more widely from easily viewed reality on the ground. With
dozens of reporters in Baghdad and hundreds more with American forces, the
longer this goes on, the harder it will be to suppress the real story.


John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, is author of Second
Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.