Foreign
media have generally been more
skeptical of the war in their
coverage.
|
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0202/20/world/world103.html
Sydney, Wednesday, February 20, 2002
[images
added by this
website]
Uproar
over new US covert propaganda
plan
Washington: US media
watchdogs reacted with dismay today to
news that a little- known Pentagon office
was considering influencing international
opinion on the war on terrorism, with a
broad campaign possibly including planting
false stories in foreign media.
Should the proposals offered by the
cloistered and well-funded Office of
Strategic Influence (OSI) be approved by
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
it bodes ill for both US journalists and
perception of US operations abroad,
several experts said.
"Setting out to deliberately lie or
'spread misinformation' can't have
anything but a terrible impact down the
road for any nation that claims to be an
open and democratic society," said Freedom
Forum analyst Paul McMasters.
"The only thing more dangerous than
reacting in panic is to set out on a
deliberate policy of lying and deception,
where it is next to impossible for
ordinary people, Americans or otherwise,
to know what is the truth and what is a
lie."
Air
Force General Simon Worden was
quietly installed as the head of the OSI,
established after the September 11 terror
attacks, to wage a campaign to shape
international opinion, defence officials
said today, confirming a report by the
New York Times.
The office envisions its mission as
ranging from overt public diplomacy to the
covert use of disinformation such as false
stories to wage a secret propaganda war,
Pentagon officials said.
"This is terrible," said Reed
Irvine, the founder of the
conservative watchdog Accuracy In
Media.
"It's true that Winston
Churchill said the truth was so
precious it should be guarded with a
bodyguard of lies, but there is no
justification for this. There are great
disadvantages in the (US) government
copying the communists and the old Soviet
Union in the battle of
disinformation."
That foreign media outlets are the
potential vehicles for deliberate
misinformation is not surprising, said
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting analyst
Peter Hart, as "foreign media have
generally been more skeptical of the war
in their coverage".
"And it's readily acknowledged by
anyone paying attention to this, from the
White House point of view, that there is
some effort to undo some of that."
Revelations of the existence and
function of the Office of Strategic
Influence are only the latest on the Bush
administration's campaign to obfuscate the
US war on terror and manipulate media
coverage, noted McMasters.
Warnings to news agencies from US
officials not to air full interviews with
top terror suspect Osama bin Laden;
a request from Secretary of State Colin
Powell to the emir of Qatar to monitor
the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera network;
and pressure on federally-funded Voice of
America not to air an interview with a
Taliban official are all part of the same
campaign, he said.
"That, combined with the real,
heightened attention to secrecy... at the
Pentagon and the unprecedented
restrictions on press covering the war...
means that essentially, Americans are
being asked to trust their government
while government at the same time is
saying emphatically that it does not trust
the American public," he said.
Such policies could also put US
journalists in harm's way while they are
reporting overseas "even more than they
are now", McMasters added.
"There is already the perception among
some abroad that American journalists are
instruments of American foreign policy, in
league with government agencies," he said,
pointing to the kidnap of Wall Street
Journal reporter Danny Pearl in
Pakistan as an extreme example.
Journalists, both American and foreign,
either working in the United States or
abroad, will have to redouble efforts to
ensure that "the integrity of (our) work
is more important than any other
propaganda campaign", said Hart.
"Journalists in other countries are on
notice now, to be even more skeptical of
official and unofficial claims coming from
American sources," he added.
-
Pentagon
Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment
Abroad
-
Pentagon's Bin Laden "tape": French
TV satire spoofs US reliance on
tape | Iraqi
newspaper calls it a US fake |
Leading
German TV program reveals carnage
caused by reckless US bombing, alleges
that Pentagon forged parts of
translation of the tape | Full
transcript of programme with details of
falsification |
-
Bin
Laden's mother says video is
"doctored"
| Pentagon
deliberately mistranslated Osama Video
- German Press investigates, US is
silent
-
|