MediaWatch: February 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: February 1991
- Patriots Prove Media Myopia
- NewsBites: Kudos for Quayle
- Revolving Door: War Talkers
- More Concerned About Selves Than Soldiers
- Jennings Just As Wrong
- Legitimizing Propaganda
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC: Sanitized Protest
More Concerned About Selves Than Soldiers
MEDIA MAKE WAR ON PENTAGON
Modern satellite technology created a new challenge for the Pentagon: how to wage war when the TV networks can transmit information around the world, and to the enemy, in an instant. Sadly, in the Persian Gulf War, not all television executives, producers and reporters put the interests of the U.S. armed forces ahead of their self-interest in knowing everything.
Many reporters incessantly whined about press restrictions, arrogantly portraying themselves as the "conveyors of truth" who were better qualified than the Pentagon to decide what should and should not be reported.
ABC reporter Judd Rose took ten minutes of the January 24 Prime Time Live to criticize the press pool system. Rose pompously declared, "what's at issue here is the public interest." Rose complained that the Pentagon didn't let his pool go where it wanted and concluded: "While many people think that we as reporters are whining and that this is a time of war, we are really the conveyors of truth in a very critical time and people need to know that truth."
On CNN the next day, Walter Cronkite assumed the Pentagon would sugarcoat the war: "It is a political lesson they've learned, that if you show the public too much of the gore and the horror of war, they're going to turn against that war. Sanitizing the war for the purpose of keeping American morale, interest in the war, support for the war high is almost criminal." In a January 27 special, The Realities of War, Dhahran-based NBC reporter Arthur Kent pounced on Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams, demanding: "Why are you trying to put your hands so far into our business? We're not trying to tell you how to run the war. We're just trying to cover it. Why do you want to control us so completely?"
Not all reporters were so arrogant. "The security review is just common sense review. It started off very restrictive and they boiled it down. Now it's just basically not talking about any-thing that would endanger Allied troops, which is basically the same restrictions we had in Vietnam. I don't find that's an obstacle to working here at all," Los Angeles Times reporter David Lamb explained on NBC's January 19 Saturday Today special.
Despite reporters' insistence they represented the public's "need to know," the public disagreed. "A 57 percent majority believes that the military should increase its control over reporting of the war," a late January Times-Mirror poll found. Another 78 percent said "they believe the military is not hiding bad news." A February 1 Good Morning America call-in poll asked: "Is the news media doing a responsible and fair job of covering the Gulf War?" No, said 83 percent.
