Presswatch/Dispatches
Eastland, Terry
PRESSWATCH DISPATCHES by Terry Eastland fter meeting with news executives tivities, more and more reporters were Bernard Shaw asked his two colleagues tory said to have been bombed by allast...
...insisted it was a military communicaton Post told the world that, in the view CNN appears to have been gulled by tions center...
...The Saddam...
...It was CNN's ace, Peter Ar- the question was why those women and next day the New York Times joined the W hen the bombs fell on Baghdad nett, who in late January showed the children were there...
...At the same time, many non-journalists THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 would find astonishing CNN's view that in wartime a good journalist is someone who keeps his feelings to himself...
...A good case can be made for the primarily because of the nature of some sense of what was going on was "The Pentagon's Censors," read the ground rules...
...Are reporters who seem determined to rid the world of war in the best position to cover it...
...There was Saddam seemed to have a single use Iraqi capital...
...While other conveyed was disinformation, because Post op-ed piece by Ron Nessen of form of combat that is hardly condu- American media eventually got into that, too, was worth knowing...
...it is quite according to news accounts of their ac- another to be an inducement to mass murder...
...it moved Charlton Heston to ask on CNN: "Who does he think he is—Switzerland...
...It is moved about as they wished (and faced one thing (however dishonorable) to be no security reviews...
...Were CNN and Arthe media, invoking (as usual) the First in a huge desert battlefield), even as dad...
...Richard Harwood, "ombudsman" for the Washington Post, reminded us in early February of this basic fact: "The collection of news, whatever our self-serving claims, is not beanbag played selflessly by romantic bohemians...
...It ought to be almost compulsory to sit in front of the television set and have to view the horror that they're enduring...
...tures of dead women and children One rap against pools was that the shown worldwide via CNN—as he knew military made mistakes running them...
...Asked a similar question on "MacNeil/Lehrer," ginner said he hoped every journalist could be a "good journalist" and a "good American...
...This didn't please military porting to the world...
...This only confirms their suspicion that some journalists do not feel strongly about anything other than First Amendment protections and feel no responsibility for anything beyond themselves and their work...
...he's definitely against it...
...The media in Saudi Ara- CNN, a global network that supplies better than no sense, even if what was headline of a January 12 Washington bia initially had to cover an air war, a news to 103 countries...
...The most plausible big-paper lobby with a piece headlined: that first night, CNN anchor pictures of an alleged baby milk fac- explanation is that Saddam wanted pic"Correspondents Protest Pool System...
...It wasn't, of it was in fact a biological weapons facilreporters escorted by the military...
...And what is good journalism, anyway...
...Amendment, began publicly complain- they agreed to increase the number of networks the same way, in part because The usual argument for the Western ing about both rules, notwithstanding pools to sixteen (from fourteen...
...A larger issue was raised by Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg, who during a "Live with Larry King" show asked Ed limier, vice president of CNN: "Does a [neutral journalist] ever confront a situation where he can no longer just be a dispassionate observer . . . ? Let's say, for example, he's in a position where he is in the presence of POWs who are being abused in some way...
...only CNN pressed for a secure line, but media's presence in Baghdad was that their earlier quiet acceptance of them...
...The secu- Baghdad, CNN was, in the view of Sad- gument had some merit, in that the January 17, the day after the first bombs rity reviews were not unreasonable, since dam Hussein, the most important media reports of many correspondents who hit Baghdad, Eric W. Ober, president of so many reporters in the theater had had outlet, providing him, among other spent time in Baghdad before leaving CBS News in New York, wrote in the no experience covering a war...
...the media quit complain- bureau chief of a major news organiza- censored or prepared exclusively by the they were spending the night was ing about the security reviews...
...In a front- pool—were reporters going to find the see all that might have been seen and it was a bomb shelter, but the Pentagon page piece on February 11, the Washing- right airstrip or battleship...
...is he still a dispassionate observer or does he then become an American...
...It is one of many profitable and vital activities of an American communications industry that accounts for more than six percent of our GNP and boasts of revenues greater than the Pentagon budget...
...Shaw no doubt meant that he did not regard himself as an agent for any government...
...besides, things, round-the-clock access to the in early February did balance the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon there were journalists from some thirty Arab world he needed to reach...
...The Iraqis didn't treat the other nett, at times, Saddam's deadliest Scuds...
...Would a few hundred IraThere was also the precedent of Viet- qi women and children be alive today, nam, where the media had generally had CNN stayed out of Baghdad...
...It is questionable whether CNN On February 12, more than 300 IraAs the days passed, the military edited ural cover or military protection...
...Still, the problem of jour-that would make it difficult, if not im- also the matter of the potentially awe- for CNN (and other Western) "cover- nalism, especially television journalism, possible, to give Americans a precise ac- some firepower journalists could have age" of Iraqi "stories' to propagan- involved more than disinformation...
...His conclusion: "Viewers will have to get used to reports of this nature...
...Later, Cronkite suggested that there is a correlation between the amount of war horror Americans are shown and their support for the war...
...In other words, a good journalist is neutral in disputes between his country and an enemy country, and that makes him a good American...
...and public affairs officers, who continued course: in September, CNN had made ity, Arnett, in a later interview with (2) their stories would be subject to a to argue for pools on grounds of safe- arrangements with the Iraqi government Newsweek, remained of a different "security review...
...Saddam, it would seem, soon made sure they did...
...Arnett might have been neutral in choosing between the allied forces and Iraq, but not when it came to war...
...Although the Pentagon said elusively by "pools" of six to ten of the war...
...If the Pentagon was right, of journalists, pools don't work...
...Pacifism seems to beat in the heart of this former anchor...
...Postwar presswatchers will ask how Arnett's reporting was affected by his intention to "lessen the hostilities...
...What does a journalist on the job owe his country during wartime...
...Note that when Arnett in late January reported the destruction of a residential neighborhood in which twenty-four civilians died, allegedly as a result of allied bombs, he made a point of denying that the tragedy could have been "staged...
...PRESSWATCH DISPATCHES by Terry Eastland fter meeting with news executives tivities, more and more reporters were Bernard Shaw asked his two colleagues tory said to have been bombed by allast fall, the Pentagon decided taking off on their own to look for while on the air from his Al-Rashid Ho- lied planes, commenting that the site that (1) print and television coverage of news, a la Bob Simon and his CBS crew tel room, "Has it occurred to you that "looked innocent enough, from what I the Gulf war would be carried out ex- (captured by the Iraqis in the first days it is not accidental that we are still re- could see...
...Consider Peter Arnett, in his January 29 interview with Bernard Shaw: "After thirty years of covering wars all over . . . the world, I I. . . am sick of wars, and I am here [in Baghdad] because maybe my contribution will be to—to somehow lessen the hostilities, if not this time, maybe the next time...
...count of the conflict...
...More- provided viewers sufficient alerts to the qi civilians—mostly women and chilmore and more lightly and intelligently over, as a non-complaining Washington effect that the material being shown was dren—died when the facility in which and speedily...
...R eturning from Baghdad after those first few days, Bernard Shaw refused the military's request for a debriefing on grounds that he was a journalist and had to remain "neutral...
...Early in the war, Walter Cronkite let it be known that if the nation sends "our young men into battle," American citizens have got "a duty to watch...
...The very definitions of a "good journalist" and a "good American" have changed rapidly during the past twenty years, and definitions cannot be assumed but have to be argued for...
...If it were compulsory to watch the horror of war, his positions imply, then citizens would not support it...
...But the tion told me, how else—except via a Iraqis, or that "this reporter" did not bombed by allied planes...
...nocent life...
...Given the power of pictures to Terry Fostland is resident fellow at the tempt cruel dictators, it will not be easy Ethics and Public Policy Center in Wash- for televison executives next time ington, D.C...
...Still, he expressed hope that the journalist would keep "his own feelings to himself...
...they would be...
...By early February, a tool of disinformation...
...did not know how an event occurred...
...ty (for the reporters) and practicality for a secure international line, the only view, saying he thought it "was a misAs the January 15 deadline drew near, (you can't have 1,200 journalists at large one that survived the bombing of Bagh- taken -bombing...
...One can't imagine CNN taking sides this way: "good journalism"—i.e., neutrality—forbids it...
...the biggest came when pools formed to Was CNN's presence in Baghdad a cover the liberation of Khafji arrived factor in Saddam's decision to take ina full day after the fighting had begun...
...But his choice of the word "neutral" was striking...
...around to keep moral and humanitar28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 ian considerations out of decisions regarding coverage from an enemy capital...
...wally, a question that goes to 1-1 money...
...But does it...
...ABC policy, reported at the time, prohibits use of anything said by hostages that may endanger them or, in ABC's words, "further the aims of those holding them...
...This arNBC Radio/Mutual Broadcasting...
...We here are as good Americans as the next person," Turner replied...
...These journalists seem to be men and women "without chests," in C. S. Lewis's memorable phrase...
...0 29...
...faced in a flat landscape without nat- dize...
...On cive to on-the-spot reporting...
...In the weeks ahead, it will be interesting to see just what the profits are from war—for CNN in particular...
...In late January, ABC refused to broadcast the audio portion of the Iraqi-videotaped interviews of captured American pilots...
...He was not alone...
...In a hypothetical case one has to wait and see...
...A sharp analyst will also check with the book publishers, to see which reporters now in Saudi Arabia—and Baghdad —have bagged the big advances for the big books...
...skewed transmissions coming out of the "has placed restrictions on journalists nations—why take chances...
...Saddam said pools were another matter...
Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
