Nygaard Notes

Nygaard Notes
Independent Periodic News and Analysis
Number 321, February 22, 2006

On the Web at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/

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This Week: Iraq and the Media, Part 1


1. “Quote” of the Week NOT
2. Analyzing the Media, Nygaard Style
3. One Week of News from Iraq
4. What The White House Press Corps COULD Be: Helen Thomas

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Greetings,

In 2003 the United States military invaded a sovereign nation that was no threat to the U.S. and, three years later continues its ongoing military occupation of that nation. As a result of this illegal aggression—and that’s what it is, make no mistake—untold numbers of innocent people are suffering and dying. Yet the population of the United States—really, the only people in a position to stop the carnage—are getting almost no ongoing information of the consequences of the actions taken in their names by the government of the most powerful nation on earth.

This week I analyze one single week of U.S. media coverage from Iraq—February 6th through the 12th— and draw some conclusions. I also publish an extended and inspiring exchange between the White House Press Secretary and a single, courageous member of the White House Press Corps. Next week I will look in detail at three of the most important of the unreported aspects of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq, and how the “lesson of Vietnam” is shaping media coverage of this latest projection of U.S. military force.

Stay tuned!

Nygaard

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1.
“Quote” of the Week

No “Quote” of the Week this week. No room. If you miss it, consider the Helen Thomas piece to be one really long “Quote” of the Week. Or something.

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2.
Analyzing the Media, Nygaard Style

I talk about “the media” quite a bit, and the performance of “the media” is again my focus this week. Why and how do I do this?

The “why” is easy. I’ll quote Noam Chomsky, speaking at a conference I attended a few years ago: “Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about what’s played up and what isn’t and the way things are structured.”

How I, personally, go about this is to read the print media. I know that most people get a lot of their information from electronic media, but I think the basic agenda is still set by the print media. There is an interaction between them, for sure, but it is a lot easier and faster to use paper or the internet to seek and find the key pieces that are relevant to what I am working on. Plus, I just love newspapers. I can’t deny it.

In terms of the media analysis that you see this week, here are a few words about why I did it the way I did:

I live in Minneapolis, so my daily paper is the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!). I read it fairly closely every day. I also read the New York Times (All The News That’s Fit To Print!) every day. I read other things, too, of course, but since these newspapers are the newspapers of record for my region and for the United States, respectively, a careful reading of these two sources can give one a fairly good idea of what the “news agenda” is for the nation, and also how it filters down into the provinces. That is, the national news agenda is set largely on the East Coast (specifically the political and economic centers of Washington and New York) and a little bit on the West (Los Angeles), and most of the smaller news organizations in the nation who are not in those cities take their cues from the Big Boys. As you’ll see later in this issue, almost every story about Iraq in the Star Tribune is from East Coast news organizations.

The New York Times isn’t the only agenda-setter, since the TV networks and a few other sources (The Washington Post, for instance) also have the power to “break” a story out of the realm of news junkies and into the realm of the everyday discourse of the nation. But, still, if you read the Times and whichever is the major daily paper in your part of the country, you’ll most likely get a fairly accurate idea of the things that “people are talking about.” You’ll know what to expect to hear about on National Public Radio, for example, whose editors often seem to pull their story ideas directly from the Times. And you’ll know what “they” will be talking about on AM radio, as well.

OK, on to One Week In Iraq.

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3.
One Week of News from Iraq

I have in front of me every issue of the New York Times and the Star Tribune for the week of February 6th through the 12th. Looking only at news of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq, what follows is a summary of what I found.

The Front Page

During this week, what news from Iraq was deemed worthy of the front page? Well, not much, according to the local paper. During the entire week, the Star Trib had only one story on the front page, on February 9th and it was a “local angle” story about a guy who “once served in the Minnesota National Guard” and who “is now a terrorism suspect” being held in Iraq.

The Times had four front-page stories on Iraq during this week. One story was about the Sunni Muslim population of Iraq being ill-treated by the largely-Shiite police, and how that is “feeding bitterness” on the part of the Sunnis. One story was about a Pentagon plan to “foil bombings in Iraq.” One was a story about the roughly one percent of the population that are internet subscribers, with the headline “Danger? Drabness? No Date? Iraqis Find an Outlet Online.” And the final one, a major story (3108 words) in the Sunday Times, was about the suffering of a wounded soldier, headlined “Healing, With New Limbs and Fragile Dreams.” (Did you assume that the “wounded soldier” was a U.S. soldier? I’ll bet you did. If so, you were correct.)

If one only looked at the front pages, what impressions would one have about Iraq? 1. “Terror” suspects are in Iraq, and may have connections to MY state; 2. There is a lot of sectarian violence in Iraq; 3. U.S. soldiers are suffering; 4. There is a lot of violence, and it is a result of insurgent bombings and killings; 5. The U.S. military is trying to stop the violence.

The Inside Pages

There were a total of 8 stories about the occupation of Iraq on the inside pages of the Star Tribune during this week All of them were reprints of stories from the NY Times, the LA Times, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post. It’s worth noting that the Star Tribune sent four reporters to Italy to cover the Olympics. There are no Star Tribune reporters in Iraq.

Here are a few phrases from the headlines in the Star Trib: “11 Killed in Violence;” “Prominent Sunni Cleric Gunned Down; He Was Slain Because He Urged Iraqis to Vote and Join the Police, a Colleague Said. Four Marines Were Reported Killed.” “3 More Troops Killed in Iraq, Military Command Says” “8 Killed in Blast at Sunni Mosque; Foreign Elements of the Sunni-led Insurgency Are Blamed.”

Looking beyond the headlines, I searched the articles themselves, looking for the word “killed.” Here is a representative sample of what I found: “killed in attacks by militants;” “killed by gunmen;” “killed when militants detonated a bomb;” “Explosions have killed 1,123 American service members in Iraq;” “Three of the Marines were killed Monday ...and a fourth was killed elsewhere in Anbar Province;” “an Iraqi Army soldier killed a member of the Mahdi Army;” “police officers shot and killed a man who had fired a machine gun at Shiites.”

In midweek the Times ran an article headlined “Report Says Number of Attacks By Insurgents in Iraq Increases.” The “report” is a report by the U.S. Government, and the article was complete with graphs showing the number of attacks against “Iraqi Security Forces,” and “Civilians” and “Coalition Forces.”

The Times has a regular feature—now appearing almost daily—which is a special box in which appear the “Names of the Dead.” It’s not only names, but age, hometown, rank, and branch of the military. Again, the only “names of the dead” worth mentioning are U.S. soldiers. Certainly these ARE worth mentioning. But there are, after all, other people being killed, many of them at the hands of the U.S. forces. How many, we don’t know, because it is almost never reported, with some startling exceptions that I will mention next week.

The reporting from Iraq in the U.S. media also tends to focus on so-called “political” developments: elections, parliamentary debates, and so forth. For example, during this week the headlines included these: “Shiites May Nominate a Premier Today” and “Iraq Struggles to Agree on a New Prime Minister” and “Iraqi Politicians Still Deadlocked on Premier.”

The overall impressions one would get from reading the inside-page articles in the two newspapers echoes the impressions from the front pages: 1. The only noteworthy “violence” is committed by Iraqis and other “militants;” 2. The causes of “violence” are sectarian “bitterness” and the “fact” that, as Mr. Bush says, “our enemy is brutal”; 3. The occupying forces are victims of violence, not perpetrators; 5. This is essentially a ground war, with most deaths coming from roadside bombs, suicide attacks, and house-to-house fighting.

What Is Missing?

I’m fairly certain that the ongoing war propaganda has been sufficiently effective that many people don’t even notice what is missing from all of these articles. What is missing is actual war reporting. That is, reporting on the consequences of the actions of our military forces. Almost all the news is about the actions of one side in the conflict, and comes from official sources of the other side. What does this mean? Let us assume that it is true, as it seems to be, that the central fact of life for many Iraqis is that their country is being occupied by a foreign military force. In that case, it seems to me that the most important news for the people responsible for that occupation—that is, the population of the democracy that is doing the occupying—is news of how that occupation is affecting the population. And that is precisely what we are not getting.

There are three huge aspects of the occupation that remain—for a variety of reasons—essentially invisible to readers and viewers of the U.S. media. They are: 1. The costs, in both death and human suffering, of the U.S. invasion and occupation; 2. The intensifying air war being conducted by the United States in Iraq, and the fact that this air war is responsible for some unknown fraction of the unreported (unknown?) level of death and human suffering in that country; and 3. The ongoing construction of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and what that means in terms of “winning” in Iraq, which Mr. Bush says is what the U.S. forces are doing.

Next week’s issue will be devoted to a closer look at each of these three issues.

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4.
What The White House Press Corps COULD Be: Helen Thomas

On January 3rd the United States bombed a house in Baiji, Iraq, killing as many as 12 innocent civilians, mostly the family of Ghadban Nahd Hassan. The Agence France Press news agency reported that “an unmanned [U.S.] drone saw three men placing a roadside bomb who then fled into the building.” So, based on what this flying machine supposedly “saw,” the U.S. sent in Navy F-14s and killed who-knows-how-many innocent people. This most likely happens all the time, although we rarely hear about it.

I found it very encouraging to read the transcript of the following day’s “daily briefing” by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. McClellan’s words were not encouraging—on the contrary, they stand as a shining example of the evasion and dishonesty that has unfortunately become the standard for this Press Secretary, and for this White House.

But the doggedness and courage of 85-year-old Helen Thomas, dean of the otherwise criminally negligent White House press corps, is inspiring. If you don’t know about Helen Thomas, she worked for 57 years with UPI, only quitting when it was bought by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Now she works for the Hearst Newspapers as a syndicated columnist.

The following exchange will give you a hint of what the White House press corps could be. Imagine if Thomas had the backing of her colleagues, and imagine if they all insisted on asking the same question until it was actually answered! (I’m dreaming...)

So, here is Helen Thomas as she tries to get the White House to talk about bombing a family home in Iraq, and whether such savagery is actually the policy of the occupation forces. The press conference always starts with the Press Secretary making some sort of statement, and we pick up just at the end of that. This is all from the official White House transcript:

SCOTT McCLELLAN: “And with that, I will be glad to go to your questions.

HELEN THOMAS: When the President went to the Pentagon today, did he ask about the dropping of a bomb on a home, killing nine children and grandchildren, and so forth? I mean, is this how we go after the rebels?

McCLellan: The President talked about the update that he received at the Pentagon earlier today. And let me just back up, because, first of all, as I understand it from the military in Iraq, they have put out a statement saying they are looking at the facts surrounding this matter. Second of all, our military goes out of the way to avoid civilian casualties. They target the enemy. They target the terrorists and the Saddam loyalists who are seeking to kill innocent civilians and disrupt the transition to democracy. In terms of this individual matter, it's something that's being looked into in terms of the facts surrounding it.

Helen Thomas: Why did they do that --

McClellan: I don't think that's an accurate characterization, first of all. The military has put out --

Helen Thomas: They didn't find any so-called terrorists.

McClellan: The military has put out additional information and you need to look at what they've said. It's still being looked into. I encourage you to wait until the facts are learned.

Helen Thomas: How can you justify killing children and grandchildren at home?

McClellan: Look at what took place in Iraq last month; successful elections, where you had nearly 70 percent of the voters turn out --

Helen Thomas: That has nothing to do with my question.

McClellan: -- and if you look at the pictures from that election, the Iraqi people are determined to live in freedom. They want to chart their own future. And the President talked about that earlier today. And it's --

Helen Thomas: -- bomb innocent families.

McClellan: -- the terrorists and Saddam loyalists who are going out killing innocent civilians. We saw that again today, with some suicide attacks on a funeral procession of Iraqi civilians.

Helen Thomas: So why are we there --

McClellan: I disagree strongly with your characterization of our military. They go out of the way to target the enemy --

Helen Thomas: I didn't say they did --

McClellan: Well, your implication is certainly that.

Helen Thomas: In this case, there have been several --

McClellan: That's your implication. No, that's your implication. Our military --

Helen Thomas: That's not my implication. I'm telling you what --

McClellan: -- uses technology to target the enemy and avoid civilian casualties.

He then cuts off Ms. Thomas and calls on a different reporter. No more is heard from Helen Thomas.

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Jeff Nygaard
National Writers Union
Twin Cities Local #13 UAW
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