And now for something completly different

[MichaelHarris]

The Loss of Journalistic Integrity
by Michael Harris

March 20th, 2003 somewhere along the Iraq Kuwait border soldiers await an order they hope never comes. Its 5:30 am, a morning sun begins to rise as a high-pressure ridge threatens to deliver much warmer temperatures to the region. The media, referred to as "embeds" scramble franticly for last minute interviews before the inevitable order. The directive comes, Operation Iraqi Freedom begins, and the Pentagon's "Shock and Awe" campaign has arrived. Journalists begin filing stories at a furious pace, not the slow chase footage of a fleeing O.J., but real war stories. It's this media we now must hold accountable for the disinformation, and lies broadcast to the world.

From Iraqi's welcoming soldiers with flowers to Marines painting schools, this is a media generation who has followed a political agenda to deceive the world. We no longer see the tumbling Saddam statues, the grateful children in the streets, and combat soldiers rebuilding schools. Those days are over. What we see now is more indicative of the truth that we all suspected. A truth, broadcast with images of soldiers hanging from bridges, gun battles in the streets of Fallujah, and American men and women dying in a civil war far away from home. The "feel good" stories are over, even for Fox News, America's finest are returning home wounded with the scars of battle or worse, entombed in aluminum coffins with labels like, "NOT FOR PUBLIC VIEWING".

Robert E. Lee once said, "It is well that war should be so terrible, otherwise men would grow too fond of it". Was it the media's goal to show the horror of battle? Certainly not, it was their goal to sell toothpaste, new cars, and male sexual enhancement products. The war was just a backdrop for the marketing departments. What the media has forgotten is journalistic integrity, the integrity of men like Edward R. Murrow, "The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems to take longer". Journalists like Walter Cronkite, "When seeking truth you have to get both sides of the story", who championed journalistic integrity. This integrity has been lost by today's media, today's war correspondents, known as embeds we're chosen by the Pentagon to broadcast George Bushes war.

A Pentagon program allowing for some 700 hundred journalists was the brainchild of Donald Rumsfeld and other officials where journalists sign a contract detailing what they can and cannot report. The list of what they can report is significantly shorter than what they cannot report. Maybe it was statements made by George Bush in a 2002 speech, "Surveillance photos reveal that the (Iraqi) regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons" or, in the same speech, "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren't required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it", that led these embeds to "knee jerk" erroneous reports such as Fox's Geraldo Rivera saying, "I'm feeling more patriotic than at any time in my life, itching for justice, or maybe just revenge". Revenge? Can a journalist seeking revenge be objective?

This wasn't Rivera's first attempt at "fair and balanced" war coverage, earlier, in Afghanistan he reported that he became emotional and choked up while standing on the "hallowed ground" in Afghanistan where "friendly fire took so many of our men and the mujahedeen yesterday." Rivera said he had recited the Lord's Prayer. Rivera later admitted that he was several hundred miles from the site near Kandahar where three Americans were killed by an errant U.S. bomb. By the time the war broke out the Bush/Rumsfeld machine had convinced most of the media that large stockpiles of banned weapons would be found despite years of UN weapons inspections. This led to zealous reporting among the embeds, reports such as Fox's News channel banner running, "HUGE CHEMICAL WEAPONS FACTORY FOUND IN SO IRAQ.... REPORTS: 30 IRAQIS SURRENDER AT CHEM WEAPONS PLANT.... COAL TROOPS HOLDING IRAQI IN CHARGE OF CHEM WEAPONS" continuously across the bottom of the screen on February 23rd 2003. Fox was not the only culprit here, NPR's embed, John Burnett reported, "an army unit near Baghdad had discovered 20 BM-21 medium-range rockets with warheads containing sarin nerve gas and mustard gas.". ABC's correspondent, David Wright reported on April 26th of the same year that, "Army soldiers had found "14 55-gallon drums, at least a dozen missiles and 150 gas masks" testing positive for chemical weapons, including a nerve agent and a blistering agent. He added that an Army lieutenant "says the tests have an accuracy of 98 percent."

We expected such reports by the likes of Rush Limbaugh who reported on his website in April, "We're discovering WMDs all over Iraq.... You know it killed NPR to report that the 101st Airborne found a stockpile of up to 20 rockets tipped with sarin and mustard gas.... Our troops have found dozens of barrels of chemicals in an agricultural facility 30 miles northwest of Baghdad.", but we didn't expect it from our most trusted journalists.

The media sometimes ignored the truth, facts that had been known by others for years. The failure by the media to do research led to stories such as, "Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex." reported by Fox News on April 11th. The site Fox mentioned had undergone examinations and scrutiny for years by the UN inspectors, never once turning up any signs of weapon production. Daily reports of discoveries poured onto our 24/7 airwaves, from empty moving vans suspected of being mobile labs to Geraldo Rivera holding mason jars of "anthrax" the media sold "Bushes War".

Perhaps the biggest media bungle of the war was the Jessica Lynch story. With confidence in the war waning the Administration needed a hero, they fabricated one in Jessica Lynch. Lynch, a 19 year old Army supply clerk had been captured on March 23rd near Nasiriyah. Reports of her capture and subsequent rescue were molded and shaped by the Administration and its "back pocket" media. On April 1st the US Central Command released a statement that they had rescued a prisoner of war held by the Iraqii's. The following day the media blitz began with the New York Times leading off with a story about Ms Lynch. In the story an Army official is quoted as saying, "she had been shot multiple times". On April 3rd, the right wing Washington Post ran a story titled, "She Was Fighting to the Death': Details Emerging of W. Va. Soldier's Capture and Rescue". The world's media was having a field day, a true American hero when we needed one most. Citing "unnamed sources" the Washington Post delivered us Bushes war hero. The problem here was a simple one, the lack of any kind of research and credible witnesses. All of Ms Lynches comrades had either been captured or killed during the assault, all the Post had was its unnamed source. One news agency, not in the pocket of the Pentagon chose the research route, on May 15th the British Guardian published a different version of the events, "Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.". The Guardian goes on to say, "Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated". As the story unfolded we began to learn more and more. First from the staff at the hospital where she was held, and finally from Jessica herself. Dr Harith al-Houssona was quoted as saying, "We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical staff because there was no blood at this time, I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only RTA, road traffic accident". This what is known in journalism as "primary sources", not sources such as The Washington Post's "unnamed source", sources the Post decided they didn't need because they had been supplied their information by the War Machine. The video shown to the world, shot through night vision, shows America's Hounds of War swooping into the hospital area to "rescue" Ms Lynch. The truth is a much different picture once one uses "primary" sources. Dr Anmar Uday, interviewed by the Guardian is quoted as saying, "We heard the noise of helicopters, they must have known there would be no resistance. We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital." He goes on to say, "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame." The Pentagon has refuted this last part with the statement, "no soldier would go into a hot zone with blanks". Using that argument how many combat soldiers jump into battle with a video camera set up to shoot in the dark? When asked to release the full video, Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman replied, "I understand there is some conflicting information out there and in due time the full story will be told". Time had come, Jessica began to tell her story, once again a primary source speaks. According to Jessica she was the only survivor in her humvee, she was unable to return fire because her M-16 had jammed. She never fired a shot. We don't have The Washington Post's "unnamed source" to question the validity of Jessica's story, we have Jessica herself. The Post's "fighting to the death" unnamed source seems to have disappeared, along with the Post's integrity. "Jessi, crouched in the backseat, her arms around her own shoulders, her forehead on her knees, did not feel the round that finally punctured Lori's control and sent the Humvee bouncing off the road, straight at the five-ton tractor trailer. The last thing she remembered was praying... 'Oh god, get us out of here'", (Rick Bragg, "I Am a Soldier Too, p78). The Pentagon spin of torture and abuse was also refuted by Jessica, "No one even slapped me... No one asked me anything about our troops. I couldn't answer anyway" (I Am A Soldier Too, p. 115). Jessica has gone on to admonish Bush and the War Machine for using her, "They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff, It hurt in a way, that people would make up stories that they had no truth about." (ABC interview). How does the right wing Bush controlled media spin this? "Rescued POW Jessica Lynch says she can't remember anything about her time in captivity in Iraq -- a huge obstacle for military investigators who were hoping the 19-year-old soldier would be the key to revealing Iraqi war crimes" (Fox News, May 5th, 2003).


There are other stories to be told in Mr Bushes Oil war. Stories that are not as useful in selling toothpaste, stories the right-wing spin machine would rather you not see. "They come here 19, 20 years old and when I see them leaving, missing limbs -- I've seen up to three limbs gone off people, and I don't think in our generation we've seen this amount of harm done to young people," Maj. Delaume, Walter Reed Medical Center, (Zdechlik, Mark. "U.S. soldier injuries mount in Iraq." Minnesota Public Radio, 14 Sept 2003) Stories of pain and suffering, "Explosions shatter and sever legs and arms. They char flesh and drive debris deep into the soft tissue that remains. Unattached muscles, nerves and tendons dangle. Red-hot shrapnel sometimes punctures torsos below waist-length body armor, ripping bowels and bladders. Concussions bruise skulls and brains. Soldiers thrown into the air are injured again when they hit ground", (Wood, David. "Amputees Returning to Duty." Times-Picayune, 12 Oct 2003).

There are consequences when the media promotes a political agenda, using patriotism as a tool for right-wing causes. "Just a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks Brandon Olson joined the Army, his mother jokingly told him that she would give him $10,000 to reconsider, but he had been moved and enraged by the death in New York and at the Pentagon. He was eventually deployed to Iraq as part of the 101st Airborne Division, and on Halloween night an explosive went off about two feet from him while he was on foot patrol in Mosul. His right leg had to be amputated just below the knee." (Fernandez, Manny. "A Pause on the Road to Recovery.")


America's "feel good" season has ended, our children are in harms way. Our future is returning home broken and battered by an unnecessary war, sold to us by a deceitful president, and promoted by an unethical media. It is truly time for this madness to end.

Michael Harris