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Blindsided by the Right
Danny Schechter, News Dissector
March 31st, 2005
Hear Danny Schechter's latest recording in the Audioblog. It's a reading of his essay "Making Media Matter" from the book "What We Do Now." (Melville Books)
AIM ATTACKS, I RESPOND
WILL THE PENTAGON PROBE JOURNO KILLINGS?
THE LATEST TO DIE
I guess it's a sign of backhanded respect when the targeting-meister of that rightwing hit-squad Accuracy in Media (AIM) runs out of bigger "liberal media" fish to fry and decides to take a shot over my bow. With Dan Rather out of the limelight, another Dan would have to suffice.
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They don't have any tank shells or mortars at their command, so they have to resort to insinuation, name calling, guilt by association and selective denigration.
For years, fired up by the animus of Reed Irvine, Accuracy in Media (sic) was numero uno among the rightwing media bashers but, in recent years, it's been relegated to the minor leagues, what with Brent Bozell's better-funded Media Research Center and the ditto heads on talk radio, and now the Foxoids blasting away on the hour.
Yesterday, they cranked up their old smear machine with a smarmy blog or whatever it is by Cliff Kincaid, denouncing your News Dissector as "Eason Jordan's Friend."
FRIENDS?
Needless to say, they didn't call me to ask if indeed I was his friend, which I am not. (Friends of mine who have worked closely with him hold him in the highest personal regard as an experienced and concerned newsman and exec.)
I worked briefly at CNN but in a different area, programming, not news.
The truth didn't seem to matter as Kincaid set out to tie the now-departed CNN news chief to this pinko lefty commie terrorist lover, which would complete the circle (jerk), and "prove" once and for all that CNN is hopelessly compromised by radicals.
Of moi, he says, "It's not clear when he made his far left turn, but he is not shy about advertising it these days." That's research? The last time I looked, there were 180,000 documents on me listed on Google alone, and I am sure if they called their friends at the CIA or FBI they could have come up with more. (The first FBI file I saw was a report on my civil rights activism whileI was in college back in 1961. I was spotted associating with small n, "negroes.")
CHARGE AND REBUTTAL
First, read what they say happened, and then let me reveal the totally bizarre reality of what actually did happen. I may have written about it before, but no matter.
AIM: "CNN news executive Eason Jordan resigned after he couldn't back up his charges that the U.S. military deliberately attacked and killed journalists in Iraq. Jordan tried to talk his way out of the controversy, but when that failed he quit. However, a former CNN employee came forward to take up Eason Jordan's cause. Danny Schechter says that he asked Jordan if 'he could help me get on CNN to discuss and debate the issue.' Contacted by one of Schechter's associates, Jordan replied, 'I will let my colleagues know of Danny's availability as an on-air guest. I thank you and wish you well.'"
I believe we emailed Jordan along with other CNN people to pitch my coming on to discuss the question of journalists being targeted that I raise in my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception). Low-budget filmmakers like myself have to seek out every opportunity to promote their films, and Jordan's remarks at the World Economic Forum provided a perfect news peg.
We first asked him if he would elaborate on his remarks, which he declined to do.
I later learned he was under tremendous pressure from CNN to shut up, which pissed him off after almost a quarter of a century of working for the company. I later also heard that he left because CNN was being smeared for his remarks and wouldn't stand by him. His critics and CNN's critics , especially Fox, saw an opportunity to discredit their competition and went for it.
The insinuation was that Jordan had charged that U.S. soldiers deliberately killed journalists. But as I learned from someone who was in the room during the off-the-record discussion up in the Swiss Alps in Davos, and who took notes, Jordan never said that. The whole issue came up in a discussion of safety for news people, something he was very concerned about.
CNN knew that and when the heat came, they did not back him but instead decided to get out of the kitchen. Jordan left. CNN might have launched a journalistic investigation of their own. They chose not to.
(In a statement announcing his resignation, Jordan wrote that he was stepping down 'to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.' He added, 'I never meant to imply US forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise.' (Many critics found this groveling. I was disappointed because there are important questions here that must be raised.)
GAGGED?
CNN, I was told by someone in the know, gave him a payoff, but with a gag clause. In other words, he agreed to keep his lips sealed. That type of chilling of the First Amendment is, unfortunately, quite common in our unbrave media world. CNN had done it before when settling a lawsuit with the producers in the infamous Tailwind Story who insisted their account of the Pentagon's use of chemical weapons in Vietnam was true. (See Mediachannel's archive for an extended discussion from all sides, including the right.)
CNN is not alone. This is done all the time in every business. It's been reported that CBS recently offered a big payout to Dan Rather's producer Mary Mapes if she would go quietly into the night. She wouldn't play, and has now signed a contract to do a tell-all book. The same practice was in place at ABC when I worked there.
Anyway, Jordan wasn't talking to me or anyone. Executives tend to be shrinking violets when controversies erupt. He figured he had dug his own grave by then.
We also asked if he could tell bookers about my availability for interviews. That is no crime, but it led nowhere. He may or may not had time to follow up. No CNNer called me. The network "most Americans trust" was tighter than a mosquito's tweeter on the story. They battened down the hatches until the storm blew over. (I did get on CNN two weeks later, appearing on the International Correspondents Show with the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad.)
"DANNY, FOX IS ON THE PHONE"
When I found CNN was a no go, guess what happened? Fox called and I was promptly booked for that night. Yes, Cliff -- FOX! I went on the air, and ended up debating Bozell and Sean Hannity. They even showed a clip (sans sound) from WMD, and Hannity at the show's end even half urged viewers to see it. I described this encounter in my blog, and you can still hear the audio of that media tete-a-tete on my audioblog.
Since then, as we know, the issue returned to the front burner as a result of what happened to the Italian intelligence agent and the journalist he freed. The U.S. refused to let the Italians see the car that soldiers shot up.
"IMPRESSIVE BACKGROUND"
But none of this seemed to rate the attention of the Accuracy mob. Their critique goes on:
"Schechter has an impressive background in journalism, having worked for CNN and ABC, among other news organizations. It's not clear when he made his far left turn, but he is not shy about advertising it these days. He recently participated in a so-called 'World Tribunal on Iraq.' The group's website features a complaint filed by somebody named Matthew K. Owen with the International Criminal Court. It asserts that President Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and other U.S. leaders are guilty of war crimes because of what happened at Abu Ghraib and other facilities. But two official investigations, one conducted by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and one conducted by Vice Admiral Albert Church, have said there is no evidence that top U.S. officials approved or condoned a policy of torture.
"Schechter provided testimony for this tribunal on the role of the media in covering the Iraq war. He insists the media were too pro-war in their coverage. After hearing Schechter and others, the tribunal found the media 'guilty of deception' and contributing to the commission of war crimes by the U.S. Schechter has also produced a film that asks, 'Were Journalists Targeted in Iraq?' This was produced before the controversy over Eason Jordan. We have requested a copy of the film to review. Schechter says that his film points to Kate Adie of the BBC, who 'was told by the Pentagon that independent journalists would be targeted.'"
Interesting that they criticize a film they admit they haven't seen or seem to know the name of, pissed that I wouldn't give them a free copy to trash me with. God forbid that they used their largesse from rightwing funders to actually buy one.
Kincaid continues:
"We tracked down these comments, which were made before the Iraq War, and that's not exactly what she said. What she claims to have been told by an unnamed 'senior officer in the Pentagon' is that 'if uplinks - that is, the television signals out of... Baghdad' were detected by U.S. military aircraft 'they'd be fired down on,' even if they were journalists. It's clear from the comments, if you make the assumption that they are accurately reported from a real person, that the military had targeted unauthorized transmissions out of Iraq that were perceived to be aiding the enemy. What's more, the reference is to taking out satellite uplink positions, not the journalist themselves.
"Adie's comments were posted on a website devoted to independent media under the headline, 'Pentagon Threatens to Kill Independent Journalists.' Someone with common sense responded by saying, 'The Pentagon has a legitimate interest in controlling information in the war zone. [Independent] reporters carry the risk of revealing information that could prove deadly to our troops and therefore ultimately to Iraqi civilians. Any uplink that provides uncleared information is a legitimate target, and the chaos-mongering fool who sets it up must accept the risks associated with being nearby.'
"Since Adie's quotation is not as authoritative as he claimed, perhaps we can anticipate that Schechter's film will be updated with a contribution from Eason Jordan, his old friend."
Actually Jordan is in my film, but he is criticized for that op-ed piece he wrote in the NY Times admitting that CNN did not report Saddam's abuses. But why let facts get in the way of their argument? Kate Adie made her comments in an interview on RTE in Ireland. Her reference to the uplink was part of the Pentagon's strategy of bullying non-embedded journalists out of Baghdad. In fact, many networks did pull their people out and CNN, I believe, was thrown out briefly. The Pentagon not only wanted to control the battlefield, but all the coverage of it as well. In the end, most networks ran footage from Al Jazeera stripped of its narrative. Peter Arnett was there working first for National Geographic and later NBC-MSNBC. He stayed.
Many other journalists say independents were harassed. Some were killed in "friendly fire" incidents.
HOW I SAW IT
In that article in TV WEEK, a trade magazine for TV executives, I wrote:
The reality is that Jordan's concerns have a background and context that were under-reported in our media. Before the war, the Pentagon issued warnings that sounded like threats, saying it would not guarantee the safety of journalists who were not officially "embedded" into assigned U.S. military units.
Pentagon publicist Victoria Clarke, around the time the war began, said that journalists who went out on their own were "putting themselves at risk."
On March 8, 2003, 12 days before the invasion, Kate Aidie, then a war correspondent for the BBC, said on RTE radio in Ireland that she was told by Pentagon officials "that any [satellite] uplinks by journalists would be fired on" by coalition aircraft.
What they were doing was creating an environment of intimidation and threat. This was a ploy to ensure that the reporters who did go to Iraq without Pentagon cooperation would be blamed when anything happened.
This was part of a larger strategy to keep the media in line. It was no secret that an administration that insisted "You are with us or against us" was determined to keep the media "on message" by implementing an intrusive "information dominance" strategy to monitor coverage and "manage perceptions."
Int his plan for the Iraq war, according to published reports, out of patriotic correctness, the major U.S.-based news networks went along. Jingoism often displaced journalism. Flag-waving replaced objectivity.
Phillip Knightley, a respected historian on war and media and author of "The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker From the Crimea to Kosovo," correctly said, "There will be no investigation." He added, "I believe that the occasional shots fired at media sites are not accidental and that war correspondents will now be targeted."
You can read my whole piece again on Mediachannel -- and I was surprised that no one in the TV business had the guts to write back to me about it. Talk about a silenced and cowed bunch. But then, who would be dumb enough speak up publicly after the public beheading of Eason Jordan? It would be suicidal.
FOR MORE ON THIS STORY
See this week's Village Voice:
Hard Target: U.S. Military is pressed to probe run-ins between reporters and troops in Iraq
Jarrett Murphy looks into the Palestine Hotel incident and quotes the brother of a cameraman who died there:
"Javier Couso ... is not convinced it was an accident. Couso, younger brother of Spain's Telecinco cameraman Jos? Couso, one of the men slain at the Palestine, says that according to U.S. military guidelines on urban combat, 'they have to get authorization from the head of division' to fire.
"'There was an order that came down from above to silence, to blind, to take out those cameras,' Couso tells the Voice. The reason for such an action might have been to prevent any broadcast of U.S. troop movements.
"Couso says he's willing to believe the shelling was a mistake but not the Pentagon version that it was self-defense. 'This has direct consequences for reporters -- colleagues and friends of my brother -- who are afraid that if they go to report on another war, the U.S. military will attack them,' Couso says. He is touring the U.S. to urge an independent investigation and the prosecution of five soldiers involved in the incident, including General Buford Blount, the division commander.
"Recent news gives Couso little hope. Even as it OK'd the Sgrena investigation, the Pentagon said it has decided not to reopen the case of three Iraqis working for Reuters who claim they were detained and abused by U.S. troops in January 2004."
AND THERE IS MORE
These stories keep coming. This was in my email just last night:
Intentional Targeting of Independent Journalists
--An archive of articles.
Also:
US admits killing Arab journalists in Iraq
"The U.S. military has acknowledged it was responsible for killing two journalists working for Dubai-based satellite channel al-Arabiya who were shot close to a checkpoint in the Iraqi capital earlier this month. Al-Arabiya cameraman Ali Abd al-Aziz died on 18 March from a gunshot wound to the head. Correspondent Ali al-Khatib died from his wounds in hospital the next day. Both were Iraqis.
"Colleagues said U.S. troops fired on their car near a checkpoint in central Baghdad. The US military initially said it was unlikely its bullets had killed them.
"On Monday, a U.S. military official said an investigation into the deaths showed troops were responsible, but had acted "within the rules of engagement".
"U.S. soldiers were aiming at a different car, a white Volvo that had driven through the checkpoint at high speed, the investigation said. Al-Arabiya's grey Kia car was 50m to 150m down the road, trying to turn when it was accidentally hit, the military said.
"'The investigation concluded that no soldiers fired intentionally at the Kia,' the U.S. military said in a statement.
"Iraq 'most dangerous'
"Last week, an Iraqi cameraman working for U.S. network ABC was shot and killed while covering clashes west of Baghdad. Witnesses said he was shot by U.S. troops.
"A senior military official said on Monday that the U.S. military was considering whether to investigate the incident."
For more, see my book EMBEDDED (Weapons of Mass Deception) and WMD.
Doug Carlson writes from Hawaii to tell us about his Tsunami Lesson site which is a MUST READ?? Brilliant:
"Hawaii State Senator Les Ihara forwarded your 'Tsunami Questions, Few Answers' e-mail. I've been blogging since Jan. 2 on this issue and would welcome your visit to my site.
"I'm a former reporter and former corporate communications manager who had to reach mass audiences in a timely fashion, so we naturally used the mass media. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center doesn't see much of a role for the mass media in issuing warnings, as three months of writing on this blog documents. My visit to the Center and two-hour meeting with its director last Friday revealed that the National Weather Service "won't allow" the PTWC to proactively engage the news media as another channel to send tsunami warnings to regions in peril. It seems inconceivable. I've written today to a NOAA communications officer and asked several policy-related questions.
"Interesting that you used Lila Rajiva's column on your site today; while she's 'out there' pretty far, I thought enough was pertinent to my premise that I linked her from my site back on January 7.
"My post today pans the NOVA show, which was nothing more than a travelogue and VNR -- video news release -- for the Center. At the bottom of today's post please note that scientists this week made it clear they believe any quake 8.0 or above will probably generate a major tsunami. Back in December, with the same assumption (presumably), they waited for over an
hour to kick out a bulletin that mentioned a possible tsunami. This time it only took 19 minutes.
THEY KNEW THE QUAKE WAS COMING
Check this out from a site on the current crisis:
Today's Quake Was Predicted 2 Weeks Ago
Seismologists are getting better at calling their shots:
"Paris (March 16) - Seismologists say there is a heightened risk that a major earthquake may soon strike the western coast of Sumatra as a result of the monster quake that generated the December 26 tsunami. The Indonesian city of Bandar Aceh, which was already badly hit by the killer wave, could be at risk from a quake measuring up to 7.5 on the Richter scale and there is a potential for a tsunami-making 8.5 quake offshore, they warn."
Now that he has our attention, Professor John McCloskey is saying today another massive quake is to be expected in the region.
So, as you can see, there is so much more on this story and other news to dissect.
Sorry I got carried away on Iraq today, but I felt that I should respond to the AIM attack lest it get picked up elsewhere, and the targeting of journalists is an issue that gets my back up and I that am still following.
I also managed not to forward all your letters and comments from my office computer to my computer at home, so I will have to post them when I get back from Boston.
IF YOU ARE NEAR BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY TODAY AT 1 ...
I am up at Brandeis today, speaking and screening WMD at 1:30 PM at Golding Auditorium. I also expect to be on the New England Cable Network, a great regional TV news service, at 8:45 PM.
Share comments at dissector@mediachannel.org
If you can help us sell our DVDs; write David@wmdthefilm.com.
If you haven't seen The Making and Mission of WMD, it's online still at Hi-Movie.com in DVD quality. Special thanks to Jody Kolodzey, who is now editing this blogothon from her base in the City of Brotherly Love.
Hear Danny Schechter's latest recording in the Audioblog. It's a reading of his essay "Making Media Matter" from the book "What We Do Now." (Melville Books)
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