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Articles : IraqThe News Media and the Antiwar Movement
It’s reasonable to estimate that more than a quarter of a million people demonstrated against the Iraq war on Saturday in Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other U.S. cities. The next day, the Washington Post front-paged a decent story that described “the largest show of antiwar sentiment in the nation’s capital since the conflict in Iraq began.” But more perfunctory back-page articles were typical in daily papers across the country. And over the weekend, many TV news watchers saw little or nothing about the protests.
Hurricane Rita was clearly a factor. But even without dramatic natural disasters, the news media are ready, willing and able to downplay news about war — and the antiwar movement — for any number of reasons. Conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill or in newsrooms can tamp down media coverage of a surging movement. What’s crucial is that the movement not allow its momentum to be interrupted by media treatment.
If “journalism is the first draft of history,” the journalism of corporate media is usually the quickie top-down view of history that’s told from vantage points far removed from progressive movements. Media technologies and styles aside, what we’re experiencing now from major U.S. news outlets is not very different from the coverage of the Vietnam War.
A persistent myth is that mainstream American news outlets were tough on the war in Vietnam while boosting the antiwar movement. And these days — after a summer of plunging poll numbers for President Bush along with the profoundly important media presence of Cindy Sheehan — many people seem to think that the news media have turned against the war makers in Washington. But overall the media realities are something else. Actual history should make us wary of any assumption that the press is apt to be a counterweight to militarism.
Vietnam “was the first war in which reporters were routinely accredited to accompany military forces yet not subject to censorship,” media scholar Daniel Hallin wrote in his excellent book “The ‘Uncensored War’: The Media and Vietnam.” The authorities in Washington figured they could expect correspondents not to wander too far in terms of content; “the integration of the media into the political establishment was assumed to be secure enough that the last major vestige of direct government control — military censorship in wartime — could be lifted.”
Some reporters exercised a significant degree of independence. And, Hallin concluded, “this did matter: in 1963, when American policy in Vietnam began to fall apart, the media began to send back an image that conflicted sharply with the picture of progress officials were trying to paint. It would happen again many times before the war was over. But those reporters also went to Southeast Asia schooled in a set of journalistic practices which, among other things, ensured that the news would reflect, if not always the views of those at the very top of the American political hierarchy, at least the perspectives of American officialdom generally.”
Despite all the changes in news media since then, a systemic filtration process remains crucial. Strong economic pressures are especially significant — and combine with powerful forces for conformity at times of war. “Even if journalists, editors, and producers are not superpatriots, they know that appearing unpatriotic does not play well with many readers, viewers, and sponsors,” media analyst Michael X. Delli Carpini has commented. “Fear of alienating the public and sponsors, especially in wartime, serves as a real, often unstated tether, keeping the press tied to accepted wisdom.” Journalists in American newsrooms don’t have to worry about being taken out and shot; the constraining fears are apt to revolve around peer approval, financial security and professional advancement.
Interviewed in early November 2003, with the Iraq occupation in the midst of turning into a large-scale war against a growing insurgency, Hallin compared media treatment of the two wars and saw similar patterns. “As you begin to get a breakdown of consensus, especially among political elites in Washington, then the media begin asking more questions,” he said. In the case of the Iraq occupation, “the Democrats were mostly silent for a long time on this war, and when things began to bog down, they started asking questions. There were divisions within the Bush administration, and then the media starts playing a more independent role.”
To a notable degree, reporters seem to await signals from politicians and high-level appointees to widen the range of discourse. “They need confirmation that this issue is part of the mainstream political discussion in the U.S.,” Hallin commented. “Journalists are very keyed into what their sources are talking about. Political reporters define news worthiness in part by what’s going to affect American politics in the sense of who gets elected the next time around. But it isn’t absolutely only elites. I think it also makes a difference that polls show the public divided, and that there are problems of morale among soldiers in Iraq. But the first thing that the journalists look to is: ‘What are the elites debating in Washington?’ That’s what really sets the news agenda.”
So, with the autumn of 2005 underway, what are the elites debating in Washington? With rare exceptions, they’re debating how to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
High-profile Democrats and even some Republicans like to bemoan “mistakes” and bad planning and the absence of an “exit strategy.” The prevailing version of Washington’s debate over Iraq still amounts to disputes over how to proceed with the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Top officials and politicians in Washington won’t change that. The journalists echoing them won’t change that. The antiwar movement must.
GNN contributor Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
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i was at this protest, it really was enormous
A decent column that raises necessary questions.
But how relevant is the point you make?
“The prevailing version of Washington’s debate over Iraq still amounts to disputes over how to proceed with the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Top officials and politicians in Washington won’t change that. The journalists echoing them won’t change that. The antiwar movement must.”
No thinking person can deny that genuine war and peace issues are not swept under by a stage-managed D.C. and its lapdog MSM.
With real national debate and policy discussion systematically killed before birth, an anti-war movement has more to confront than war and its blood money capital base.
War is a symptom, not a root cause or even an agenda.
When I see images of the antiwar protests – I wonder – how many of those people drove to the site? How many of them are still consuming vast quantities of oil and oil based products? What parts of their lives have they changed in order to stop creating demand for the root causes of the war?
So the answer is, only total revolution will change our predicament. Discussion and showing up outside the White House for a day is nice for some fresh air, but realistically when all the power cards are in the wrong hands theres only one way to change it.
And that is…...Start the process of supporting ourselves instead of leaving it up to the so called powers that be.
Lush, The amount of oil spent to drive to the protests in Washington, DC. is infinitesimal compared to the amount of oil wasted to wage the war in Iraq. In fact, 80% of the cost of the war in Iraq ($125 billion?) is for oil to “drive” hummers, trucks, tanks, planes, etc. It is an ironic situation. We waste the very oil we fight to secure. Your point is, however, well taken so I will turn off my computer and a couple of lights after I finish this entry. By the way, I would wager that those demonstrators DO conserve in small ways. They just feel that the stopping the war is an important enough objective upon which spend natural resources.
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Well, Guerillaman. I think thats exactly the kind of thinking that makes us think that change our lives is not useful. Our cities were built one step at a time due to supply and demand for goods and services and gradually those systems got bigger and bigger with more support. In New Zealand for example, vegetarian food was practically impossible to find 30 or so years ago. As people asked for it and it became more popular, vegetarian restaurants became more common and every restaurant has a vegetarian dish or more than one. The more we support systems alternative to the ones that are currently in existence – the stronger those systems will become. WE have the power to change and advertise to each other the changes that will point us in the direction of a lush future.
According to leftgatekeepers.com Norman Solomon is a Left Gatekeeper.
No wonder the ‘Left’ is so ineffective.
Mr. Solomon particularly dislikes conspiracy research, e.g.:
“...”[it] encourages people to fixate on the spectre of a diabolical few plotters rather than on the profoundly harmful realities of ongoing structural, institutional, systemic factors…”.
He is eloquent. Here he is in 2002 convincing a radio station not to
amplify Mike Ruppert:
“......For progressive media outlets and progressive movements, this kind of stuff is potentially very destructive. Many listeners will be understandably put off and as a result some are likely to question the station’s overall credibility…”
So, yawn, don’t look at the flash, says Mr. Credibility.
So the answer is, only total revolution will change our predicament.
Most people in the US are too stupid to realize/learn that the constitution and the system it set up is a large part of the problem with the country/politics in the US. Where a national government would probably have been best, the constitution set up a federal government. Just looking at how fucked up the US government is, and how the only things it does well are take taxes and kill people, it should be obvious that the constitution set up a system that was flawed from the start. Yet dispite a “civil” war and the government taking 40% of most people’s paychecks and giving nothing but headaches in return, people refuse to consider changing the entire system, and starting over, or rewriting the constitution completely.
People in the US seem to think that just because the founding fathers came up with it, and it’s been the system in US for 200+ years, that we must keep the constitution, and can amend the problems inherent in it away. People refuse to see that we don’t have to live under a system that we didn’t agree to live under, and which was written hundreds of years ago by rich slave owners. Just because it is our (the US of A’s) system, that doesn’t make it the best system, or the best system for America.