We are now entering the 7th month of the US war/occupation of Iraq. To date no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Thousands of Iraqis are dead and a growing number of US soldiers are being added to the "killed in action" list. Anti-war/anti-occupation activity has been sparse and more and more military families are wondering when their loved ones are coming home. Everyone I speak with is disgusted at how the Bush administration has been handling this issue, yet people are hesitant to mobilize. How is it that there is such political paralysis in the US? Where are the masses of people that took to the streets before the war? These are not easy questions to answer, but let's look at the role that media has played in this ongoing war to see how much of a factor it is in determining how the public responds.
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq is the title of a new book by PR Watch co-founders Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber. It is the first book that takes a critical look at the government and media messages prior to the beginning of what the Pentagon called its "Shock and Awe" campaign. The whole pretext of the war was the Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he might use them against us. In February, Colin Powell went before the UN to provide the evidence needed to get the Security Council's backing. Even though the UN Security Council never signed on to this war, enough of the American public did. Why? Much of it had to do with how the news media framed the issue, what context the WMD story was placed in, and what sources the news media relied on.
Let's start with what sources the media tended to rely on. In the last 9 months the majority of experts and news sources have been former generals, the Pentagon or the Bush administration. My own research of the GR media reflects the same thing, the use of "officials" sources. How is it journalism when you just report what people in power tell us, without questioning it? In addition to the lack of journalism, it was also not well known what role the public relations industry played in the US going to war in Iraq.
Remember Torie Clarke? She was the main Pentagon spokesperson during the first weeks of the war. Ms. Clarke, prior to flacking for the Pentagon was the head of the Washington office of Hill & Knowlton, one of the largest global PR firms. Hill & Knowlton was also responsible for the major PR deception campaign that got us into the first Gulf War. They pushed in story that Iraqi soldiers were killing Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of incubators and throwing them on the floor. It was later discovered that this was a fabricated story that Hill & Knowlton used to sway Congress (see John MacArthur's book The Second Front). Then there was Charlotte Beers, who was named the State Department's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Beers' office was responsible for creating campaigns both here and in Muslim countries in order to change public opinion about America. Beers, formerly known as the "Queen of Madison Avenue," was former CEO of two of the world's top ten ad agencies. Then there was the Rendon group, another PR firm that was hired to provide information to news agencies from the front lines. When you saw Iraqi citizens waving little US flags after they entered Baghdad, it was Rendon's job to distribute them before the news cameras showed up. In the words of company founder John Rendon "I am a perception manager."
What about the framing of news stories from Iraq? Once the war started there was never any questioning of the US military intentions. It was reported as fact. But let's look at one example the most everyone is familiar with. The day that the statue of Saddam Hussein was brought down. NBC's Tom Brokaw compared the event to "all the statues of Lenin that came down all across the Soviet Union." Fox News anchor David Asman said "If you don't have goose bumps now, you will never have them in your life." For days all we saw were images of the statue coming down and comments from a few Iraqi civilians praising the US. But there was more to the story.
The rest of the world had a slightly different take on the statue toppling. The BBC reported that the crowd was quite small, that US tanks surrounded the perimeter of the plaza, and that pro-US factions were brought in for the photo op. If you look at all the footage used in the US media of this event, they are fairly tight shots. Any wide-angle photos would reveal that the numbers in the plaza that day were small. Other sources reported that Iraqi National Congress members were the ones brought into the plaza that day, particularly Ahmed Chalabi, who has been the recipient of much US aid over the years and was working with the PR firm of Burson-Marsteller.
Lastly, what kind of context was given about this war in the US media? Let's look at the issue of WMDs. From the very beginning of the Bush administrations pitch for war they claimed that Saddam had WMDs and that he had used them before. Over and over again we were told how Iraq gassed their own people and Iranian soldiers in the 1980s. This is true, Iraq did gas both the Kurds in Iraq and Iranian troops. What was almost never reported about these incidents was that Saddam committed these atrocities while he was our ally. Iraq was an ally in the 1980s because of their war against Iran. And not only did the US support Hussein at the time, we provided him with the materials to make those chemical weapons. Just ask Donald Rumsfeld, he met with Saddam in 1983 just months after Hussein gassed the Iranians. In September of 2002 Sen. Byrd asked Rumsfeld if the US helped Iraq obtain WMD, in which Rumsfeld responded "Certainly not to my knowledge." Byrd read a passage from Newsweek which detailed the US role. Rumsfeld's response was "I have never heard anything like what you are reading." Two days later CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre raised the topic again, including footage of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. Rumsfeld caught off guard said "where did you get this footage?" "We dug this out of the CNN library," McIntyre replied. "I see, isn't that interesting. There I am." Then Rumsfeld said "I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact." Declassified documents don't report such a statement from Rumsfeld to Hussein.
Two things are important to note about this incident. First, see what happens when the news media doesn't just report what people in power say, but ask questions. Secondly, if this type of reporting were the norm, how do you think it would have impacted public opinion before going to war?
It is an understatement that we need to think critically about issues like war, but we also need to seek out independent sources of information. Several good websites on the ongoing US occupation are Electronic Iraq, Occupation Watch, and Z Net. For more on the PR industry go to www.prwatch.org. Lastly, attend a Sept. 20th Teach-in here in GR with keynote speaker Rahul Mahajan, who's latest book is Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond. For details on the Teach-in go to www.mediamouse.org.
