Critical Times

This is an article written a while back by MediaStrike when the anti-war movement was still kicking. There’s a lot of information in it that’s still relevant.

Proportional to the length of the conflict, there has been more footage recorded of the current phase of the Iraq war than of any other war in history. The potential for delivering an accurate account of war has never been greater. Despite this, the overwhelming majority of the images that the media presents us with are sanitised and misleading.

The bloodless image of the occupation that people receive in today’s mainstream media is starkly contrasted to the gritty reality that was beamed into living rooms during the Vietnam War. At this time, television was a new invention. The US thought that it could use it to show the world the might of their military. More often it showed the senseless destruction of communities. These images of the human cost of the war, combined with the huge list of US casualties, are seen as one of the major contributing factors that turned public opinion so dramatically against the war.

The US military recognised this mistake, and since the Vietnam War has sought to completely remove journalists from the battle field. Complete black out was tried during the US intervention into Grenada. When this failed, the US sought other methods that would restrict journalist access in a way which would prevent a Vietnam style backlash against new military interventions.

After experimenting with different systems, the US found the technique of Embedding journalists allowed them the greatest control over what got reported. Embedded journalists are under contract to the US military and as a result can be dismissed by them at whim.

But the US doesn’t just rest at filtering reports through an intimidated body of “imbeds”, it creates staged events for them to film as well. For example, the now iconic images of Iraqis toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein were not the result of a spontaneous outburst by the civilian population, as it was portrayed in the majority of the media. In reality, as the Los Angeles Times revealed when it published a military report on the incident, a US psychological operations unit was the true inspiration for the event.

The unit arrived to an empty square and using a loud speaker called out Iraqis and journalists to act out their parts. It was thought that the images would promote the idea that the invasion of Iraq was a war of liberation. Unfortunately, for the operation, few Iraqis responded, and as a result the crowd was largely composed of journalists and military personnel. But it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a few tight shots of the few Iraqis that were present. No embed was ever dismissed for releasing the footage of the “event” to the press.

The US military is well aware of the necessity that they be seen as a heroic and liberating force, by both the international audience and the domestic people. Unfortunately for them, the press in Iraq has not portrayed them as well as they would have hopped.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the US military found a solution to this problem by paying Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of pro-American articles written by a special military unit. USA Today also reported that “A $300 million pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the US government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.”

The Los Angeles Times also reported that the US “Information Operations Task Force” in Baghdad has actually brought an entire Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to disseminate pro-American views as well. One has to wonder how contaminating the press with US propaganda equates to spreading democracy in Iraq.

But what about our newspapers? Surely, in democratic Australia, the press is asking probing questions about the occupation. Regrettably it seems that paying to have US propaganda inserted into Australian papers would be redundant.

At a shareholder’s meeting in 2004, Murdoch explained to an ABC journalist that, “With our newspapers we have indeed supported Bush’s foreign policy. And we remain committed that way.” This could hardly have been more obvious. Roy Greenslade, Guardian journalist, found that of a sample of 175 Murdoch owned papers world wide, only one briefly opposed the invasion of Iraq in its editorials.

It seems that Murdoch creates a pro-US consensus amongst his editors in much the same way that the US military does with its “embeds”. One Murdoch owned paper, the Hobart Mercury, published an anti-war editorial on 12 September 2002. Four months later, after some pressure, and the reassignment of a senior editorial writer, the paper fell into line championing the invasion of Iraq. This served as a fresh reminder to the rest of the employees that the Murdoch press does not tolerate such dissent.

To understand the full effect of Murdoch’s loyalties, one needs to understand the landscape of the Australian media. The largest media conglomerate in Australia, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and its affiliates, own the only daily newspapers in Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane, Perth and the only national daily, The Australian. In these areas it goes completely unchallenged, in Melbourne and Sydney were there is ‘competition,’ News Corp. still dominates.

Combined, Murdoch’s papers reach more than 7 million readers every weekend. This means that more than one third of the Australian population can be directly expose to the (almost inevitably pro-war) message of the Murdoch media in a 48 hour time period. None of his competitors could hope to achieve a similar result. This is a monopolisation of media power which is unmatched in any other western country. One has to look towards dictatorships to find a comparable concentration of press.