OMNI
US WARS AND US MEDIA, Control of Information
for Wars, Newsletter #3, November 25, 2014,
Compiled
by Dick Bennett. (#1 Jan. 26, 2011; #2 August 1, 2012).
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change. Here is the link to the
Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/
President
Eisenhower warned future generations of the danger of a
Corporate-Pentagon-Congressional (and he would add today: White House, Corporate Media, Surveillance),
National Security Complex. This nexus
of power dominates for all the obvious reasons; most people know it despite the
service by the mainstream media to the State.
They know the Story told by this complex (the Patriotic Imperialism
Story) are not true. The invasion of Iraq
In each case the
Story by Power, by the Dominators, the Warriors vanquished the stories by the
People. Today, six corporations own most
of our newspapers, TV stations, cable, and Internet companies. They are part of the Power. They determine whether we never learn the full story. They guide us to forget key facts. If you control the process of information,
you can shape the past and control the present and future.
Not forever, however;
eventually the truth comes out, unfortunately after millions had been killed,
treasures squandered, cities laid waste.
Until C02 increased vertically on the scale, warming became part of the
6th Great Extinction, and weather extremes demolished and burned
across the planet. Perhaps this time,
some fear, the Dominator Story will destroy us all permanently.
So Omni has its
newsletters. It is small, yet it is large combined with the
voices of the Peace-Justice-Ecology Complex.
Our stories contest the Story. Not
enough yet, of course. But the People
are billions now, and they are realizing it’s time to save the planet.
Contents of Numbers 1
and 2 are at end.
Contents of #3
Manning,
Control of Information During US Invasion and Occupation
of Iraq
Nobel Winners
VS. NBC Commodifying War
David Swanson,
Indoctrination in National
Museum
History
Norman Solomon,
US Warfare State
Congress, Corporate Media Complex
NYT, SundayReview| OPINION
The
Fog Machine of War, NYT (June
15, 2014)
Chelsea Manning on the U.S.
However, the concerns that motivated me have not
been resolved. As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again
contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to
the question of how the United States
military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.
I believe that the current limits on
press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans
to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance.
If you were following the news during the March
2010 elections in
Those of us stationed there were acutely aware
of a more complicated reality.
Military and diplomatic reports coming across my
desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the Iraqi
Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed.
Early that year, I received orders to
investigate 15 individuals whom the federal police had arrested on suspicion of
printing “anti-Iraqi literature.” I learned that these individuals had
absolutely no ties to terrorism; they were publishing a scholarly critique of
Mr. Maliki’s administration. I forwarded this finding to the officer in command
in eastern
I was shocked by our military’s complicity in
the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under
the American media’s radar.
It was not the first (or the last) time I felt
compelled to question the way we conducted our mission in
Among the many daily reports I received via
email while working in
The more I made these daily comparisons between
the news back in the States and the military and diplomatic reports available
to me as an analyst, the more aware I became of the disparity. In contrast to
the solid, nuanced briefings we created on the ground, the news available to
the public was flooded with foggy speculation and simplifications.
One clue to this disjunction lay in the public
affairs reports. Near the top of each briefing was the number of embedded
journalists attached to American military units in a combat zone. Throughout my
deployment, I never saw that tally go above 12. In other words, in all of
The process of limiting press access to a
conflict begins when a reporter applies for embed status. All reporters are
carefully vetted by military public affairs officials. This system is far from
unbiased. Unsurprisingly, reporters who have established relationships with the
military are more likely to be granted access.
Less well known is that journalists whom
military contractors rate as likely to produce “favorable” coverage, based on
their past reporting, also get preference. This outsourced “favorability”
rating assigned to each applicant is used to screen out those judged likely to
produce critical coverage.
Reporters who succeeded in obtaining embed
status in
There have been numerous cases of reporters’
having their access terminated following controversial reporting. In 2010, the
late Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings had his access pulled after
reporting criticism of the Obama administration by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and
his staff in
If a reporter’s embed status is terminated,
typically she or he is blacklisted. This program of limiting press access was
challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson, who
claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after
publishing adverse reports about the conflict in
The embedded reporter program, which continues
in Afghanistan and wherever the United States sends troops, is deeply informed
by the military’s experience of how media coverage shifted public opinion
during the Vietnam War. The gatekeepers in public affairs have too much power:
Reporters naturally fear having their access terminated, so they tend to avoid
controversial reporting that could raise red flags.
The existing program forces journalists to
compete against one another for “special access” to vital matters of foreign
and domestic policy. Too often, this creates reporting that flatters senior
decision makers. A result is that the American public’s access to the facts is
gutted, which leaves them with no way to evaluate the conduct of American
officials.
[REMEDIES –D]
Journalists have an important role to play in
calling for reforms to the embedding system. The favorability of a journalist’s
previous reporting should not be a factor. Transparency, guaranteed by a body
not under the control of public affairs officials, should govern the
credentialing process. An independent board made up of military staff members,
veterans, Pentagon civilians and journalists could balance the public’s need
for information with the military’s need for operational security.
Reporters should have timely access to
information. The military could do far more to enable the rapid
declassification of information that does not jeopardize military missions. The
military’s Significant Activity Reports, for example, provide quick overviews
of events like attacks and casualties. Often classified by default, these could
help journalists report the facts accurately.
Opinion polls indicate that Americans’
confidence in their elected representatives is at a record low. Improving media
access to this crucial aspect of our national life — where
Chelsea Manning is a former
United States Army intelligence analyst.
A version of this op-ed
appears in print on June 15, 2014, on page SR4 of the
Nobel laureates call for
end to TV's 'Stars Earn Stripes'August
13, 2013 (Reuters) - Nine Nobel Peace
laureates, including retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, on Monday
called on television network NBC to cancel its "Stars Earn Stripes"
reality show, calling it a bid to "sanitize war by likening it to an
athletic competition."
The competition show, due to air for the first time
on M onday evening, puts eight celebrities such as singer Nick Lachey and
politician Sarah Palin's husband Todd, through military-style training,
including helicopter drops and long-range weapons firing.
The celebrities are paired with former members of
the U.S. Marines, Green Berets and other forces to compete for a cash prize
that would go to a charity of their choice. Producers say the show, hosted by
retired U.S. General Wesley Clark, will "pay homage to the men and women
who serve in the U.S.
In an open letter to NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob
Greenblatt, the Nobel Prize winners said that "preparing for war is
neither amusing nor entertaining."
"It is our belief that this program pays homage
to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of
glorifying war and armed violence.”
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/nobel-laureates-call-for-end-to-tvs-stars-earn-stripes/
·
YOU ARE HEREBlogs / davidswanson's
blog / Teach the
Children War
Teach the Children War By -
Posted on 20 March 2013 [Similar version
in The Humanist (May-June 2013—Dick]
The
The exhibit opens with these words: "Americans have gone to
war to win their independence, expand their national boundaries, define their
freedoms, and defend their interests around the globe." Those
foolish, foolish Canadians: why, oh, why did they win their independence
without a war? Think of all the people they might have killed! The
exhibit is surprisingly, if minimally, honest about imperialism, at least in
the early wars. The aim of conquering
The most outrageous part of the opening lines of the exhibition,
however, may be the second half: ". . . define their freedoms, and defend
their interests around the globe." The exhibition, to the extent
that I've surveyed it online, provides absolutely no indication of what in the
world can be meant by a war being launched in order to "define our
freedoms." And, needless to say, it is the
The exhibit is an extravaganza of lies and deceptions. The
U.S. Civil War is presented as "
The exhibit
helpfully provides a teacher's manual (PDF), and its entire coverage of the past 12
years of warmaking (which has involved the killing of some 1.4 million people
in
"September 11 was a modern-day tragedy of immense
proportions. The devastating attacks by al Qaeda terrorists inside the
[Resistance
to pro-war indoctrination. –Dick] If you talk to non-sociopathic teachers, you
discover that the sort of "teaching" engaged in by our museums has a
horrible impact on students' understanding.
A new book called Teaching
About the Wars is a great place to start. It's written by teachers who try
to present their students with a more complete and honest understanding of war
than what's expected by common text books, many of which are far worse than the
museum exhibit described above. These teachers / authors argue that when
a teacher pretends to have no point of view, he or she teaches their students
moral apathy. Pretending not to care about the world teaches children not
to care about the world. Teachers should have a point of view but teach more
than one, teach critical thinking and analysis, teach skepticism, and teach
respect for the opinions of others.
Students should not be taught, these teachers suggest, to reject
all public claims as falsehoods and the truth as absolutely unknowable.
Rather, they should be taught to
critically evaluate claims and develop informed opinions. Jessica
Klonsky writes:
"One of
the most successful media-related lessons involved an exercise comparing two
media viewpoints. First I showed the first 20 minutes of Control Room, a documentary about Al Jazeera, the international Arabic-language television network headquartered
in
[Civilian deaths.
–Dick]
Another important lesson is who engages in war and why.
Bill Bigelow presents a model lesson through which teachers can present
students with true situations, but with the names of the nations changed.
They can discuss what the nations ought to have done, before learning that one
of the nations was their own, and before learning what it actually did.
Then they can discuss that reality. Bigelow also begins his teaching
about the "war on terrorism" by asking students to work on defining
"terrorism" (and not by attacking each other, which is presumably how
the National Museum of American History would recommend "defining"
such a term).
One teacher ends such a lesson by asking "What difference
do you think it would make if students all over the country were having the
discussion we're having today?" Clearly, that question moves
students toward becoming potential teachers wanting to share their knowledge to
a far greater extent than, say, teaching them the dates of battles and
suggesting they try to impress others with their memorization.
[Pentagon-corporate
pro-war indoctrination. –Dick] Can good teaching compete with the Lockheed
Martin-sponsored Air and Space Museum, the U.S. Army's video games, Argo, Zero Dark 30, the slick lies of the recruiters, the Vietnam
Commemoration Project, the flag waving of the television networks,
the fascistic pledges of allegiance every morning, and the lack of good
alternative life prospects? Sometime, yes. And more often the more
it spreads and the better it is done.
One chapter
in Teaching About the Wars describes a project that
connects students in the
David Swanson's books include War Is A Lie and When the
World Outlawed War.
Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America 's Warfare State
Blending personal history
and social commentary, Made
Love, Got War documents five decades of rising American
militarism and the media’s all-too-frequent failure to challenge it. The
author’s unique weave of personal narrative and historical inquiry, Daniel
Ellsberg notes in the foreword, “helps us understand where we are now and how
we got here.”
Drawing on 40 years of intense activism, Solomon
shows how the mainstream media have shaped our view of war, technology, and
national purpose. In the process, he also shows why he is considered “one of
the sharpest media-watchers in the business” (Barbara Ehrenreich) and “a
formidable thinker and activist” (Los Angeles Times).
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