Чинники активно-динамічного порядку

Дата добавления: 2015-09-15; просмотров: 855

“A lie,” according to a 19^th century epigram, “will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots.” This assumes, of course, that the boots can give chase eventually. But what happens when the lies and truths (and half-lies and half-truths) are pouring off satellites?

Before the Iraq war, the US government had been carrying on a huge propaganda campaign for months. That’s why the Pentagon allowed reporters – including Arab correspondents – to “embed” with troops, and why top officials like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wined and dined Al-Jazeera. But they lost that campaign badly. Saddam Hussein turned out to be a Madison Avenue Machiavelli, the Pentagon’s ingenious embed system didn’t work and Washington’s “message discipline” broke down. Even as the US military strove to avoid Iraqi civilian casualties, it found itself depicted as a bunch of baby killers in the only air war most of the world saw – the one that appeared on TV.

Al-Jazeera was to the Iraq war what CNN had been to the 1991 gulf war – the primary source for news worldwide. From the Middle East to Asia to South America, its reports were used by scores of networks that needed raw information and didn’t much care what Donald Rumsfeld had to say about it. This rendered many of the decisions made on what to air in the United States less relevant. At least two of the families of American POWs learned of their loved ones’ fate from satellite dishes that picked up foreign-language broadcasts using Al-Jazeera or one of the four other Arab satellite channels.

Al-Jazeera’s chief, Mohamed Jasem Al Ali, met personally with Saddam Hussein before the war. “Whether you like him [Saddam] or don’t like him, being a good reporter is about having good contacts,” Ali told NEWSWEEK’s Martha Brant from the network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

The Pentagon tried to play the ball with Al-Jazeera. It offered the network four embedded positions with American forces, though only one – with a Marine unit in southern Iraq – came through because of difficulties with the Kuwaiti government. (Many Arab regimes loathe Al-Jazeera for its aggressive coverage of them.) The US State Secretary gave Al-Jazeera an exclusive interview, and the CENTCOM officers provided Al-Jazeera and other Arab reporters with plenty of personal attention, including a special room for prayer. Al Jazeera, in turn, said it would consult with the United States before airing pictures of dead Americans.

But it was no use. Statements from Iraqi officials were covered on Al-Jazeera as facts; comments from American officials were portrayed as “claims”. The phrase “so-called” always preceded “war on terror”, and the crawl line under the screen kept a running tally on civilian Iraqi casualties. Rumsfeld’s news conference was split-screened by Al-Jazeera with a wounded girl in an Iraqi hospital bed. While the Al-Jazeera reporter covering CENTCOM, Omar-al-Issawi, is professional and fair, his network downplayed many of his reports. At its best, Al-Jazeera treated the United States roughly the way the Fox News Channel treated anti-war protesters – with a half-hearted effort at balance, followed by withering commentary.

So it was not surprising that the war was playing poorly for the United States even in the countries where the governments supported it. “The trauma is unimaginable,” wrote the Indian daily Asian Age. “The suffering acute.” The Mirror, a London tabloid, juxtaposed a grinning President Bush next to a distraught Iraqi woman amid the rubble with the headline: HE LOVES IT. Italy was one of the only nations in the world with a consistently pro-American view on TV, and that’s because billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns 90 percent of the stations.

To keep the focus on brave American soldiers, the Pentagon was relying on the embed system, which both the military and the news media considered a huge improvement over the 1991 gulf war, when the Defense Secretary Dick Cheney blacked out most coverage. But after a week video from the front that looked fresh worldwide in the early days of the war – of tanks rolling through the desert or soldiers brushing their teeth – was more ho-hum, even for American viewers.

With the news turning worse for the Pentagon, some of the sheen was wearing off the system. Commanders in the field were giving embedded reporters realistic appraisals at odds with the rosier assessments of the briefing room – a gap that was angering Washington. Quite soon many embedded reporters found their satellite phones blocked for unexplained reasons. And the prohibition on identifying dead American soldiers for 72 hours (to allow for notification of kin) was informally extended even to pictures of unidentifiable bodies, where time to contact the family was not at issue.

This was part of a larger debate within the American news media. “Any time you show dead bodies, it is simply disrespectful in my opinion,” Charles Gibson of ABC News said to Ted Koppel on the air. Koppel, embedded with US forces in southern Iraq disagreed: “I feel we do have an obligation to remind people that war is a dreadful thing.” The rest of the world agreed with Koppel and aired unsparingly images of dead American POWs and Iraqi civilians.

The holy grail of coverage – still rarely achieved – is context. That’s why the minute-by-minute live reports during the day proved more disorienting and less useful than a traditional TV format – the evening news programs (both broadcast and cable), which filter, clarify and package developments rather than flinging them at the viewer.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

Choose the best answer to the following questions.

1. What does the quotation from the epigram “A lie will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots” imply?

A. A lie travels faster than the truth.

B. Lies are more widespread than the truth.

C. People are likely to believe lies rather than the truth.

2. In its pre-war propaganda campaign the US government

A. sent top officials to parties with Al-Jazeera journalists.

B. tried to win the support of Al-Jazeera.

C. provided reporters with complete information about what was going on.

3. What is implied by “message discipline” mentioned in the article?

A. Reporters should only give the information approved by US officials.

B. Reporters must be disciplined.

C. The messages sent by reporters must be accurate.

4. During the Iraq war Al-Jazeera news was

A. as good as CNN news programs.