no subject

[beowabbit]

A kind of interesting article from the Wall Street Journal: Army Orders Troops to Seize TV Station in Northwest Iraq: A Major Balks at Directive And Gets Relieved of Duty. Evidently we don't mind local warlords filling the airwaves with self-serving propaganda, but when they start carrying Al-Jazeera we get upset.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

Since when is it the Army's job to ensure balanced media reporting?

[beowabbit]

I didn't say they weren't doing their job, I just think it's interesting that they were assigned this particular job. There's a difference between "ensuring balanced media reporting" and actively suppressing it; suppressing it suggests that you believe you can't successfully make your case in a fair debate.

In general, I think the Administration's animosity towards Al-Jazeera is pretty stupid. The thing is, Al-Jazeera is the closest thing the Arab world has to evenhanded reporting. (I'm not arguing that it is evenhanded, just that it's a lot better than most of its competition.) If we destroy it (not that we can in general, but we can do a reasonable job of suppressing it in our puppet states), that leaves a gap that will be filled by less responsible media and by rumour. By and large, arabs don't trust what the US says. If we want them to believe us when we're telling the truth, it's useful to foster a station that will actually say so when we're telling the truth. Granted, that means people won't believe us when we're lying, but they wouldn't believe us when we were lying anyway. Having an independent Arab station like Al-Jazeera means being believed some of the time instead of none of the time.

(Disclaimer: I don't know more about this than I read in that article. I'm not presuming I know the whole situation; I just thought the bits that I read were interesting. Not surprising, not more dismaying than firing on demonstrators, just kind of interesting.)

To look at this from another angle, it's a lot easier (well, quicker, anyway) to send people with guns into a TV station than it is to persuade people of your case in open debate. I don't want the administration and the Pentagon to get addicted to that feeling.

On another topic related to the press, dje points folks at this Guardian article about the rescue of Private Lynch. I thought that story had an odd smell to it when it came out.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed the Guardian story a few days ago. The BBC also picked it up. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm)

It looks like the "rescue" was literally staged for the embedded Fox News cameraman. There were no Iraqi troops in the area, the Americans were shooting blanks, and they'd sent in a scout a few days prior to find out exactly where she was staying.

But don't expect the US news media to give this any sort of mention, let alone the saturation coverage it had during the war. Questioning the government is unpatriotic.

[queue.livejournal.com]

Sorry if I wasn't clear in my comment. It was meant to be a question to the Army, not to you. I don't think it should be their job to do that. I find it ironic that we're trying to make sure there is democracy in Iraq at the same time we're denying them a free press.

I can just see the Army coming home and deciding they need to do the same thing to the American press. Now that would be funny.