Judy, it’s been so many wars since we’ve talked.
Now people are hailing your dedication to the principle of
journalistic independence. For many, you will always be the courageous
reporter who went to jail. But I’ll always remember what happened when we
met under hot lights and you showed your stuff.
Far from today’s headlines, what will endure is your approach to
journalism in a time of war. (And in this era, what other time is there?)
Long before your current stratospheric fame, you were upholding the media
spirit that has made you emblematic of the nation’s press.
Of course there are some who still recall how you pushed stories about
Saddam and WMDs onto the front page of the New York Times. And they
remember that officials who helped to funnel disinformation into your
articles grew fond of going on television to cite them as evidence that the
Iraqi regime was a menace to the world.
But you were no overnight sensation. Your type of zeal about war was
long apparent to those who cared to look.
Judy, we all know that memory can be foggy. But a transcript can help
bring it back. The way we were...
[CNN -- Friday, April 9, 1999:]
ROGER COSSACK, HOST: Norman Solomon, rate for us how the coverage has been
so far in this adventure that we have in Yugoslavia.
NORMAN SOLOMON, MEDIA CRITIC: I would rate the fourth estate as functioning
more like a fourth branch of government. We just saw this Pentagon briefing
in the last half-hour, where the Pentagon officials did their thing, which
was video games trying to depict the dropping of 2,000-pound bombs as
though it was just some kind of blip on screens. But we also saw the press
corps in that room -- in the Pentagon -- beamed around the world, not
posing even softball question -- I would call them beach-ball questions --
in which the press corps uses, adopts, internalizes and puts out into the
world similar assumptions and terminologies used by the military.
Now generals are going to talk in terms of collateral damage, degrade,
bombing campaign, air campaign, to try to use euphemisms, to turn this into
something where Americans can distance from the destruction being wrought
in our name with our tax dollars. But all those phrases I just mentioned
were used by reporters without any reference to the underlying meanings
underneath those euphemisms.
So I would have to rate the journalists of this country very poor in
covering this war, and frankly it dovetails with the strategy that has been
implemented by the White House and the State Department and the Pentagon.
Fourteen months ago, they learned when you go to the public, as Albright
and Cohen and Sandy Berger did at Ohio State University, and you raise
these issues, ask for public response and debate, they didn’t like what
they got. This time they haven’t taken the risk. They have retreated to the
briefing rooms and the TV studios with non-stop propaganda. We can expect
that from government officials. We should demand more of that from the
press.
COSSACK: Judith Miller, Norman Solomon says that the press has become an
ally of NATO in what is being accomplished in Yugoslavia. Do you agree or
disagree?
JUDITH MILLER, “NEW YORK TIMES”: I couldn’t disagree more. I mean, I think
that what we’ve just seen is one small part of the day’s coverage, which is
a Pentagon briefing. I mean, if you look at, certainly, my newspaper, you
see reports from all over the world, not just from the Pentagon briefing
room. And I think that, if anything, this was a war that was kind of
prompted by public outrage to the pictures that were shown on CNN, to the
stories that were told in “The New York Times” and other papers.
COSSACK: But, Judy, isn’t that exactly what the argument is: that this was
a war that was prompted by pictures that the public has seen, and the
public only sees certain pictures, which causes us to think a certain way?
MILLER: I think it’s hard to take pictures of the Serbian ethnic cleansing
of Kosovo when we were kicked out of there. That, too, is a form of
manipulation of the press. And I think the journalists are doing the best
they possibly can to bring all sides of the story to readers and to
viewers, but there are limits set, in part, by the people we’re covering.
DANIEL SCHORR, NEWS ANALYST, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: May I agree with my
friend, Judy? Hello, Judy.
MILLER: Hi, Daniel.
SCHORR: Let me say this: During the Vietnam War, we used to get briefings,
which came to be known as “the 5 o’clock follies,” about body count --
grossly exaggerated -- about successes that weren’t there. What happened
was we got a whole generation of journalists, starting, say, with people
like David Halberstam, Peter Arnett, who say, “Let me go out there and see
what’s happening.”
The result of that was the Pentagon’s ability to lull the public may have
collapsed, maybe forever as a result of the fact that a reporter said,
“They’re lying to you. They’re lying to you. Let’s show you what’s actually
happening here.”
It takes it time to get started. The fact that the reporters can’t get
everywhere in Yugoslavia right now makes it more difficult, but even after
the Gulf War, with all of the smart bombs you heard about, later we heard
that most of the bombs were dumb and that most of the Patriots didn’t find
their target. In the end, they can say what they want. We’ll catch up with
them.
SOLOMON: Let me say that there’s always an excuse that journalists use when
they attach themselves to the basic assumptions of the Pentagon and the war
planners and in this case the war makers. You can have tactical debates
until you’re blue in the face -- and we have plenty of those -- but the
realty is that certain pictures get on television through the prompting and
the urging and the showcasing of the Pentagon and the White House and
certain pictures don’t get on.
COSSACK: Norman, is that necessarily wrong that certain pictures are put on
because of the prompting of the White House and the Pentagon?
SOLOMON: Well, you know, that -- those judgments -- I think those judgments
need to be made by independent journalists, not by spin masters who work in
the White House and the State Department day after day, precisely trying to
come up with, featuring, and setting the stage for pictures like this, on
the cover of “Time” and “Newsweek,” which preach very well into their spin.
COSSACK: You’re not making a claim -- you’re not making a claim that the
pictures that we see regarding the refugees...
SOLOMON: They’re very real. They’re very important.
COSSACK: ... that they’re untrue, are you? You’re not claiming that they
are untrue, are they -- are you?
SOLOMON: No, they’re very important pictures to see. There are other
pictures that need to be seen, including ones of the devastation underneath
the bombs, which are being reported by the London “Independent” today, by
and other news agencies around the world...
SCHORR: Oh, you mean the pictures...
SOLOMON: There are also pictures that have been shown in other parts of the
world about the effects of the Turkish government’s ethnic cleansing, if
you will, of the Kurds in Turkey, and you don’t see, in this case, Ms.
Miller or Mr. Schorr going on and on on the air or in print day after day,
year after year, about the fact that the U.S. government is aiding and
allied with their NATO partner Turkey in crushing the people who are Kurds
in southeastern Turkey, in some ways similar to what that demagogue and
brutal dictator Milosevic has been doing to the Albanians in Kosovo.
SCHORR: I think that’s an amazing point of view. If you want to see what’s
happening in Belgrade, Milosevic will be very to show you every place where
there was -- excuse me -- collateral damage, where civilian targets
happened to be hit. I suggest that you’re telling me that I’d rather
believe Milosevic than believe the Pentagon?
SOLOMON: No, what we need is independent journalists, not those who serve
as functionaries for the propaganda machinery in Washington.
MILLER: You know, you keep making that charge, Norman,...
COSSACK: All right, let me...
MILLER: ... but I don’t see anything that supports that, where enough of
the nation’s newspapers...
COSSACK: Let me just interrupt you all...
MILLER: That’s just not true.
SOLOMON: I’m looking at the pattern of coverage. ... I think the problem is
selectivity. All of the suffering that’s being depicted that the
Albanian-Kosovars have gone through is very newsworthy. So is the suffering
of the Kurds in Turkey. But we are not seeing those pictures, we’re not
seeing those pictures, we’re not hearing journalists raise that to a
high-profile issue, precisely because Turkey is a part of NATO.
COSSACK: Judith Miller are we seeing...
MILLER: No.
COSSACK: Judith Miller are we seeing enough of what the damage that is
being caused in Belgrade to the Serbs? Have we seen enough of that?
MILLER: I think we have. I think we’ve seen a lot of it, and I thought we
saw a lot of it from Baghdad, when American bombers were dropping payloads
and bombs, and we didn’t call it “collateral damage.” Those terms are used
in quotation marks. We don’t use those euphemisms for war -- which is
ugly -- and I think the media are showing as much of it as they possibly
can.
But the issue is all forms of suffering are not equal, I’m sorry. It seems
to me that Americans are being told that this bombing was brought about by
Mr. Milosevic’s refusal to accept a political settlement that had been
agreed upon by everyone except him, and that is what has caused the
bombing, and therefore the ethnic cleansing and the pictures that you see
are not comparable in terms of a political calculation to the bombs that
are falling, because the leader of that country will not accept the
Rambouillet accord that could have prevented this violence. It is a huge
problem for the world.
SOLOMON: Well, I think we’re...
COSSACK: All right, let me jump in here and take a break for a second.
Do you believe everything you see? We’ll talk about how images can change
public opinion next.
Stay with us....
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSSACK: The CNN/”USA Today” Gallup poll might demonstrate how images on
television can influence public opinion. The poll taken this week shows 47
percent now favor the use of ground troops in the Yugoslavia conflict if
airstrikes are not effective, compared with just 31 percent on March 25.
The reason they give for that support, 67 percent say to help the refugees.
Well, Daniel Schorr, I think that that is a great example of how our
thoughts are manipulated, if you will, by what we see. Let me give you an
example: Do you think -- many people, many Serbians, believe that KLA, the
Kosovo Liberation Army, if you will -- believes that they are -- calls them
terrorists, yet we never really saw images of what they did. Is that fair?
SCHORR: Sure it’s fair, because what they did now doesn’t matter any more;
they’ve been destroyed, more or less, as a fighting force.
And I don’t know what you call fairness in a thing like this. If you have a
band of people out there, some of whom may have been gangster, some of whom
are rebels, some of whom are motivated by nationalist ideas, trying to
fight against a tyrant sitting there in Belgrade, well clearly you’ll find
that the American has more sympathy for the one who’s fighting for his life
than the one who’s trying to kill him.
But what really influenced the Americans, more than the KLA or more than
what was happening in Belgrade, were the pictures of -- these terrible,
terrible refugee pictures. Americans, on the whole, are a fairly
sentimental people about things like that, and when they see a half a
million people there huddled in the rain dying, having either -- they were
shot, or if they get there have to live there in that kind of misery, an
American will say, “I don’t think we ought to stand for that,” and it’s a
very good, hearty impression that you get of Americans.
COSSACK: Norman, your response to that -- my question, of course, was we
never saw the other side of what the KLA has been charged with doing by the
Serbs. The question of fairness is, Americans have to make informed
decisions so they can vote; are we able to make informed decisions from
what we see?
SOLOMON: Well, we’re getting part of the picture, and I think this is an
example of how so much media coverage is policy-driven out of the Oval
Office and out of Foggy Bottom.
The reality is that there’s another part of the picture that needs to be
seen as well. It doesn’t negate at all the horrible realities that do need
to be exposed that the Kosovar-Albanians have gone through, but, again, if
the same pictures were shown of the victims of the KLA; if the same
pictures were shown of the victims of a U.S.-supported regime in Colombia,
which is one of the most murderous, deadly countries on the planet; if we’d
seen similar heart-rending pictures -- and they are available -- of the
Kurds inside Turkey, that would also evoke enormous compassionate response
from the American people.
The Oval Office has a man in it who is making policy not to show those
pictures to the American people. And I think we’ve heard, in this last few
minutes, another example of how fine American journalists are very good at
articulating the premises of U.S. foreign policy, but guess what? That’s
not supposed to be their job as journalists. They’re supposed to function
independently. They’re not just supposed to show us a window on the world
that is tinted red, white and blue, but unfortunately that’s most of what
we’re getting.
COSSACK: Judith, is the window on the world tinted red, white and blue?
MILLER: No, I think Norman’s is tinted anti-red, white and blue, but that’s
irrelevant.
SOLOMON: There you are baiting me as not patriotic because I’m raising
questions to journalists.
MILLER: Excuse me, when you call us -- when you call Dan and me shills for
the White House...
SOLOMON: Your word.
MILLER: ... we think we can object to that.
SOLOMON: It’s your word.
SCHORR: The White House objects.
MILLER: I’m not going to do this. I’m simply going to say that if you just
open your eyes and look at television or read the papers you can find, not
only descriptions of what’s happening there and around that area, you can
find many, many descriptions of tragedies, of human rights crises in many
parts of the world.
The fact of the matter is the concentration right now on Yugoslavia and on
Kosovo is because the United States is at war there, and that is our
preoccupation at the moment.
I would like to be in different places. I have stood with the Kurds, as
they flooded out of Iraq. I have been with the Sudanese, when they -- when
no one cared that they were dying. I’m very grateful that the media are
there with their cameras to capture these human rights abuses so that
Americans will get upset about them, and will want their government to do
the right thing.
___
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents
and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” A review in the Los Angeles Times
last week said the book “offers 16 brutally persuasive chapters, each
centered on a perennial falsehood, such as ‘If This War Is Wrong, Congress
Will Stop It,’ ‘This Is About Human Rights’ and ‘This Is Not at All About
Oil or Corporate Profits.’” The first chapter is posted at:
www.WarMadeEasy.com
