Presswatch/Self-Deceptions
Ledeen, Michael
PRESSWATCH SELF-DECEPTIONS by Michael Ledeen rr he greatest triumph of Soviet disinformation is undoubtedly the spread of "moral equivalence," according to which there is no substantial...
...Mugabe cannot impose sanctions unless others, especially neighbouring Zambia, do so too...
...The image of Soweto in the media is that of utter squalor, a festering, insect-ridden, stinking area of misery to which the only appropriate human response is rage...
...That this utterly false and dangerous distortion of reality has crept into the conventional wisdom can be documented in dozens of ways, but there was one telling piece of evidence on November 15 in a "local color" piece in the New York Times...
...And that's not a matter of opinion...
...So much for socio-economic fantasy...
...Why Did the Media Fail to Discover the Iran-Contra Story...
...National-security jitters (fear of placing the hostages at greater risk...
...In August or September of 1986 I was approached by a Newsweek correspondent who claimed to have considerable detail about the story, including my role in it...
...Yet every journalist missed the one obvious clue that could and should have pointed them in the right direction: the release of the Reverend Benjamin Weir...
...and Nureyev's defection can be explained only on the basis of individual perception...
...The latest—as of this writing—was written by Eleanor Randolph ("How Newshounds Blew the Iran-Contra Story") in the Washington Post on November 15...
...It comes as a shock, therefore, to see that Soweto is a bustling city of some two and a half million people, with, to be sure, a filthy area populated by squatters (there is still a considerable influx of blacks from neighboring countries), but with vast middle- and upper-class neighborhoods as well...
...The story broke a couple of months later, Newsweek never called to check its facts, and the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 33 article they published was full of errors...
...Since there was no basic understanding of terrorism, these questions were not posed, and hence the clear lead (Weir was out, so the government of the United States must have done something to get him out) was not followed...
...The Ndebele who live along the country's south-western border are tempted to accept help from those South Africans who believe that a weakened Zimbabwe will not dare permit military incursions, or economic sanctions, against them...
...So if American sources don't presentour journalists with "the story," it doesn't exist...
...Have the terrorists had a seizure of Christian charity...
...The story could have been obtained from other governments, but our journalists weren't in a position to get the information from such sources...
...Why can't we view the reality of South Africa in context...
...Mr...
...There were, however, at least two major exceptions to this general rule...
...Randolph has Newsweek's Richard Sandza saying that there was one reporter from the magazine who "was being quietly briefed about U.S...
...ORDER FORM Please send me the following LAWS ON DISK on IBM or compatible diskette: C.O.B.R.A...
...As you can imagine, there has been a Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies...
...But you won't learn about it by reading the Post...
...Why are hostages taken...
...The first and last points are important and correct, while the middle three are simply elegant ways of accusing the press of failure to dig vigorously enough...
...efforts to win back the hostages" on the understanding that "Newsweek would not write until the hostages were released...
...It is all relative, you see...
...Every law and unenacted bill since 1985 is available...
...Winnie Mandela has just built herself a gorgeous mansion in Soweto, with Pei-like architecture, that would go for several million dollars in an American suburb...
...False bravado (the media pretended to be tough guys but were actually soft on Reagan...
...We've achieved fantastic things in seven years—reconciliation, a mixed economy, a positive balance of payments...
...Listen to the Economist of November 7: Mr...
...After all, during the Carter period, American journalists kept secret the fact that some American officials were being hidden in the Canadian embassy in Tehran, and those journalists were praised for their self-restraint...
...Richard Harwood, recently went to Zimbabwe and found a happy country, with a flourishing white minority, and "a stable economy and a functioning society that stands in sharp contrast to the chaos and economic collapse in such African countries as Zambia, Angola, Uganda and Mozambique...
...Jack Anderson had the outlines of the story(a "tilt toward Iran" and the shipments of American weapons by Israel), and, even earlier, John Wallach, the excellent diplomatic correspondent of the Hearst chain, had provided accurate information on Israeli weapons sales and on a changing attitude toward Iran in the White House...
...What is required to obtain the release of hostages...
...He keeps power by constantly balancing its Shona factions, and unites the Shona (his own tribe) by repressing their Ndebele rivals...
...Having made a tactical alliance with his own country's hard-line whites, Mr...
...In the course of the article, we find the nasty sentence: [Nureyev's] celebrated dash to what he saw as greater artistic freedom was followed by a rash of defections by stars of the Soviet arts, including Mr...
...Baryshnikov, Alexander Godunov and Natalia Makarova in ballet...
...No Soweto I didn't get to Zimbabwe but I was in South Africa in October, and spent a few hours touring Soweto...
...LAWS ON DISK allows lengthy portions of text to be included in your work products, without retyping, or the possibility of typographical errors...
...Mandela as a symbol of the poor, downtrodden Africans suffering under apartheid...
...Zimbabwe today, compared with its neighbors, is an island of prosperity, stability and social harmony...
...Apartheid is evil, but the material suffering has been considerably overstated...
...of 1985 $325.00 Tax Reform Act of 1986 $900.00 Age Discrimination in Employment Amends...
...And a number of its white citizens think the whites of South Africa have a great [sic] to learn from their experience...
...Laws are usually available long before the GPO has them available in hard copy...
...Now the South Africans are once again lending their locomotives to help move Zambian copper across Zimbabwe to their own ports...
...of 1986 $ 25.00 Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 $ 35.00 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 $ 90.00 Water Quality Act of 1987 $ 90.00 Surface Transportation Act of 1987 $135.00 Competitive Equality Banking Act of 1987 $ 115.00 Superfund Act Amendments of 1986 $175.00 Balanced Budget Act Amendments of 1987 $ 90.00 ^ Please send me a free price quote on the following law(s) ^ Please send me more information on your other legislative services such as legislative monitoring, research and legislative history compilation...
...Nureyev dashed to greater freedom, as did the others (interestingly, Clines leaves out the Panovs, the only ballet stars who went to Israel...
...But you will not find a picture of it in the American press, for that would destroy—in a few seconds—the image of Mrs...
...An editor with his wits about him would have eliminated the relativistic "what he saw as...
...Pricing for LAWS ON DISK is based upon the size of the law or bill...
...What Clines is saying is that there is really no substantial difference between the United States and the Soviet Union in the matter of artistic freedom (and why only "artistic...
...lot of soul-searching and breast-beating by journalists, editors, and publishers for their failure to uncover and publish the inside story about the Iran-contra affair before it was revealed by Attorney General Edwin Meese (would that there were more agonizing self-reappraisals over their abysmal coverage of the story even after the revelations...
...Francis X. Clines of the Times's large staff in Moscow told us about Rudolf Nureyev's trip to the Soviet Union to visit his sick mother...
...His conclusion...
...Since most word processors can find strings of text, LAWS ON DISK can also be used to search for terms of interest...
...Thus, people who ought to know better end up arguing that, as between the Soviet Union and the free world, any meaningful differences depend upon the eye of the beholder...
...The success of Zimbabwe is in what has not happened...
...Neither side will mistake such cooperation for goodwill...
...Changing standards (the media have shied away from true investigative reporting...
...I told him that 80 percent of what he had was wrong (as it was), that I could not discuss my role, but that if Newsweek decided to publish something, I would be happy to go through it with him or his editors to point out at least some of the things that I thought were wrong...
...What was required of our journalists was a simple mental exercise...
...One tentacle stretched to the Middle East . . . the other tentacle was in Central America . ." This isn't much of an explanation (coverage of a "two-tentacled story" has been managed before, after all), and so Randolph gives us some of the reasons the story "got lost": •Coziness with sources (McFarlane didn't tell, Poindexter didn't talk to journalists, and North "mesmerized some journalists who dealt with him on a regular basis...
...That business about "what he saw as greater artistic freedom" is moral equivalence at its most sinister...
...In this case, there were very few American officials who knew the facts, and by and large they weren't talking...
...They had to ask themselves, "Why has this man been released...
...To take the last point first, to the extent that publications refused to write about the Iran matter because of fear of the murder of American hostages, they should be applauded, not condemned...
...Why don't we see pictures of all of Soweto...
...PRESSWATCH SELF-DECEPTIONS by Michael Ledeen rr he greatest triumph of Soviet disinformation is undoubtedly the spread of "moral equivalence," according to which there is no substantial difference between us and our enemies...
...In other words, they had to start with the basic questions: "Who are the terrorists...
...Randolph grants that it was a tough story to get: "Uncovering the . . . affair wouldn't have been easy—even for the best of journalists...
...That is the real sin...
...However, I am skeptical of claims that American publications withheld information from the public for such laudable reasons in this case...
...Or has something happened to make them do this peculiar thing...
...Robert Mugabe . . . is moving decisively to create a one-party state with himself as its all-powerful president, and is forging some new alliances which have raised eyebrows...
...Randolph's first point—l`coziness with sources"—is rather more interesting, because it points to one of the basic flaws in American coverage of international news...
...Zambia's poverty rules that out...
...LAWS ON DISK LAWS ON DISK are the text of a law or bill in the ASCII format, which can be read by most word processors...
...Mugabe, by far the cleverest and most imposing figure in the government, has many rivals...
...If you have been with me for a while in these pages, you have heard ad nauseam that our journalists' basic sources are invariably Americans, no matter where the story comes from...
...It's a fact...
...Now for the simple political facts...
...Zimbabwe Another of the Post's aging stars, Mr...
...Time pressure (it would have taken a lot of work to dig out the story, and editors wanted their journalists to cover more immediate matters...
...A white industrialist . . . expressed that attitude: . . . "We're obviously looking at a serious (economic) situation...
...Send to: 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 Mugabe may yet use his one-party state to make a similar deal with his neighbours to the south...
...But I'm still tremendously positive...
Vol. 21 • January 1988 • No. 1
