Case Study - Reporting Conflict: 9-11 and the Invasion of Afghanistan

Reporting the September 11th Attacks

On the morning of September 11th 2001, militants associated with the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda based in the USA hijacked four American airliners. The hijackers flew two of the planes into the north and south towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC), which subsequently collapsed, and a third was crashed into the Pentagon, which was badly damaged. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania following a fight between passengers and the hijackers who were probably attempting to hit the White House in Washington DC. The attacks caused more than three thousand deaths and billions of dollars in destruction and triggered unprecedented military, economic and political developments both in America and around the globe.

Television cameras and reporters were on the scene near the WTC shortly after the first attack at 8.53 am and were soon broadcasting live pictures of the north tower on fire, showing a gaping hole where the plane had struck near the 91st floor. Speculation as to whether it was an accident or a deliberate attack was interrupted at 9.03 as the cameras filmed the second plane hitting the south tower. The news of the attack on the Pentagon followed some forty minutes later; then false reports about a car bomb at the State Department; the Pennsylvania crash and rumours (later discredited) about a fifth hijacked plane.

As the story was in progress most major broadcasters played video footage of the incident, either live or recorded replay sequences, with the voiceover of the newscasters who were providing commentary. At 9.30 President Bush went on-air to say: “Today we have had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Centre in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.” Some channels used a split screen to show the President next to images of the twin towers, both now on fire. Less than ten minutes later, at 9.43, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon smashing one side of the biggest building in the world. At 10.05 TV announcers were struggling to describe the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Centre, a giant landmark on the New York skyline, which was being broadcast live around the world. Five minutes later at 10.10 Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. CNN had the graphic ‘America Under Attack’ now strapped beneath live pictures of the destruction. At 10.28 when the second tower collapsed the CNN anchor Aaron Brown described the scene:

“And there as you can see perhaps, the second tower, the front tower, the top portion of which is collapsing….good Lord……..There are no words.”

In less than two hours the United States had been transformed physically and psychologically after the biggest peacetime attack on the American mainland in the country’s history. The image of the second passenger jet penetrating the south tower and the collapse of the two tallest buildings in New York was played in heavy rotation (up to 30 times per hour). As the day went by, with the same images being repeated on a seemingly continuous loop, the television networks began piecing together events and suggesting explanations. Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network were strongly suspected (they had previously attacked the WTC towers with a bomb in 1993) and terrorist experts were called upon to give background and suggest some possible explanations – explanations that became more credible as the huge investigation quickly uncovered the names of the nineteen hijackers.

The television images broadcast around the world on September 11th were traumatic for many people to watch. A survey by the RAND Health publications shortly after the World Trade Centre (WTC) attacks found that adults in the US had watched an average of eight hours coverage of the attacks on September 11th, with nearly a fifth of the survey respondents reporting that they had watched thirteen hours or more. Those who watched the most television reported the most stress. Parents reported that their children watched an average of three hours of TV coverage about the attacks, with older children watching significantly more than younger ones. Among children whose parents did not try to limit their television viewing, watching more television was associated with having more symptoms of stress. The RAND research adds weight to evidence of a direct ‘effect’ on (at least some) children viewing news reports of a catastrophic event:

‘Studies have shown that children who were exposed solely through television to such horrifying events as the Challenger disaster, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Gulf War experienced trauma-related stress reactions. We found that children were also profoundly affected by the events of September 11. Thirty-five percent of parents reported that their children showed one or more signs of stress, and 47 percent reported that their children were worried about their own safety or the safety of a loved one.’ (RAND, 2001)

Yet destruction on this scale was difficult to fully comprehend, except perhaps in relation to many Hollywood disaster movies. Slavoj Zizek argues, in an essay written shortly after the attacks, that our lives have become increasingly ‘virtualised’ because our experience is so often mediated, or ‘filtered’ via the media, computer simulations and other virtual reality experiences. In addition to simulated environments including 3D cinema, theme parks and computer games, Zizek counts ersatz food products such as decaffeinated coffee, alcohol free beer and fat-free cream. Consequently, what awaits us at the end of this process of virtualization is that we begin to experience “real reality” itself as a virtual entity.

‘For the large majority of the public, the World Trade Centre explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant cloud of dust from the collapsing tower, was the framing of the shot itself not reminiscent of the spectacular shots in catastrophe movies, a special effect which outdid all others […]?’ (Zizek 2001)

Zizek was one of many commentators to note that Hollywood had fantasised such destruction countless times. Other writers noted grotesque ‘intertextual’ similarities with films such as ‘Independence Day’, ‘Escape from New York’, ‘Armageddon’ and a host of disaster movies. The title of Zizek’s essay ‘Welcome to the Desert of the Real’ was, in fact, borrowed from a scene in the Wachowski brothers’ film ‘The Matrix’ (1999) where Morpheus, the resistance leader, greets Nero after he has woken from the ‘virtual experience’ of his life to stare at the smouldering ruins of Chicago after a global war. Zizek comments:

‘Was it not something of the similar order that took place in New York on September 11th? Its citizens were introduced to the “desert of the real” - to us, corrupted by Hollywood, the landscape and the shots we saw of the collapsing towers could not but remind us of the most breathtaking scenes of the catastrophe in major film productions.’ (Zizek 2001)

The Aftermath of the Attacks

As the days passed, the same story dominated the news but the focus began to change. The graphics at the bottom of the screen reflected the shift in focus: ‘America Mourns’ and then ‘America Unites’. William Uricchio, writing on the 16th of September 2001, notes the way television fell back on the use of conventions to organize a mass of information and news footage and provide a simple frame for the story. These conventions allowed television staff to turn from the stress of covering shocking live events to the predictability of recycling taped sequences and frame the issues in terms of the known and the familiar:

‘As TV anchors and hosts of breakfast shows interviewed survivors, replayed telephone messages spoken by now dead WTC office workers, and asked how it felt when they learned that their partners or parents were dead, one could see the familiar imprint of the “confessional” television genre’

Comparing the style of interviewing with that of programmes such as Oprah Winfrey, Professor Uricchio, points out that:

‘…they provide a vernacular, a way for people to work through complex emotional issues, and in the case of the attack on the Pentagon and the WTC, a way to humanize and make felt the abstraction of numbers. The banality (and downright stupidity) of some of the questions notwithstanding, this use of a broader televisual convention has helped a public feel the enormity of the loss caused by the attack.

The pain of losing loved ones remains a trauma that few of us will escape. But the vicious and arbitrary way that so many died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania is horrifying in a very different way. Carried by a medium so often filled with simulated images of death and destruction, horror of this magnitude easily reads as spectacle. Flattened on the small screen and consumed in our livingrooms far from the sounds, smell and dust of lower Manhattan, the images seem fantastic, even surreal. Somehow it seems only appropriate that talkshow conventions, televisual forms designed to embrace the most banal of human situations, be used to puncture this distance, and move us from gawking spectators into a more empathetic mode of engagement.’ (Uricchio, 2001)

However, use of TV conventions to organize news material also had less positive consequences. By the 15th of September the mood on the news networks was becoming more aggressive with subdued martial theme music and the first signs of war ahead in the coverage. For CNN the caption became ‘America’s New War’, while Fox used the belligerent ‘America Strikes Back’. A clear enemy was emerging in the form of the Al Qaeda network and news ‘conventions’ (particularly a reliance on official sources) were moving to contain complex and unruly details, thereby suppressing unnecessary questions.

Clearly the television stations could not cover every angle of a story that had so many consequences and so many lines of investigation. Nevertheless, while every press conference or briefing by any government official was thoroughly covered there was little space for opposing viewpoints or independent information. The news networks’ largely uniform and somewhat narrow account of the events of September 11th and how to respond to them remained unchallenged as, day by day, an invasion of Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda bases and capture Osama Bin Laden became more likely.

By framing the story in terms of a war against the fanatics who had committed such a crime, other questions remained unanswered or even unasked. What were the origins of Al Qaeda and why were they at war with America? What were the business links between the Bin Laden and Bush family and how was Osama Bin Laden connected to the CIA? How had such a colossal failure of intelligence and breach of security occurred on September 11th? It transpired that the US government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks on Washington and New York from a number of countries. American intelligence had also been made aware since 1995 that planes might be used in suicide attacks following threats to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and the Pentagon (Washington Post, 23/9/01) yet urgent recommendations to improve security of airports in the US and particularly flight cockpits had been repeatedly ignored.

The possible ‘culpability’ of the US government in allowing the 9-11 attacks was the subject of much (detailed, if sometimes wild) speculation in several books and on hundreds of websites, but almost never on television. The question how to prevent future attacks was also limited to one of ‘winning a war’ - a government policy that was unquestioned from the start. The possibility of using legal means to bring the terrorists behind the attack to trial, as had happened with the bombing of the FBI building in Oklahoma, was never discussed. This despite unanimous international agreement that the attacks were ‘a crime against humanity’ and universal readiness to use the UN and bodies such as the International Court of Human Justice to bring the perpetrators to justice and take effective co-ordinated action to prevent further outrages. The US’s unwillingness to recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Human Justice and its disdain for multilateral co-operation on a whole range of issues may account, in part, for its reluctance to follow this route.

Patriotism and the Drive for War

Media critic Norman Soloman, writing shortly after the attacks, regards much of the initial news coverage as ‘poignant, grief-stricken and utterly appropriate’. But, he adds, many news analysts and pundits lost no time conveying – sometimes with great enthusiasm – their eagerness to see the United States use its military might in anger. Examples of such ‘eagerness’ were to be found in many media outlets, but Murdoch’s Fox news was particularly bellicose. According to an report by the organisation Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):

Fox News Channel’s Bill O`Reilly, the channel’s most popular host, declared on his September 17 broadcast that if the Afghan government did not extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S., “the U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble—the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, and the roads.” O’Reilly- went on to say:

‘This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country are ultimately responsible for the government they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians. But if they don’t rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.’

O`Reilly added that in Iraq, “their infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain…. Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow Saddam.” If Libya’s Moammar Khadafy does not relinquish power and go into exile, “we bomb his oil facilities, all of them. And we mine the harbour in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand.” (FAIR 2001)

In response to this and similar outbursts in the US media the authors note that ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’ or that attacking ‘water and food supplies’ constitute clear violations of the Geneva Conventions. Violating these strictures, which are legally binding in the US, would constitute a war crime, and might be considered a crime against humanity.

In an article entitled ‘America’s New War Party’ Titus North comments on how the media ran with a jingoistic agenda:

‘…parading a multitude of ‘experts’ in front of the cameras who invariably contribute to the hype and paranoia of the situation while praising the president for saying the right things and his administration for doing the right things. Meanwhile the networks do their best to screen out any discussion of the underlying causes for the widespread hostility towards the United States and this country’s responsibility for creating the deplorable situation in Afghanistan in the first place. Indeed Fox’s Bill O’Reilly self-righteously pulled the plug on one of its guests while on air the moment it became apparent that this guest would raise these issues.’

There was virtually no broadcast discussion of alternative agendas to those suggested by the US government and secret services. Yet these very agencies had spent four billion dollars in Operation Cyclone helping arm and train Bin Laden and other Muslim fundamentalists in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. For some commentators, such as John Pilger, the CIA - through intermediaries in the Pakistani Secret Service (ISI) and with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia - ‘had effectively created the Islamist war party that attacked America’ (Pilger, 2002).

Other writers, by contrast, suggest the univocal nature of the media was only to be expected after such a national trauma. Pat Aufderheider suggests in an article entitled ‘Therapeutic Patriotism and Beyond’ that the TV networks met a need for ‘national reassurance’ by adopting a more patriotic and uncritical stance. Nevertheless, she suspects that cost-cutting may also have played a part in the association between the authority of TV networks and political authority. This association, she believes, was:

‘…boldly cultivated, before as well as after September 11, with computer-generated logos, brass trumpetry, red-white and blue colour schemes, and portentous newsreaders, not to mention deference to official spokespeople, marginalizing of dissent, and adoption of official news agendas. The association has been useful while cutting costs and creative energy. But it forms an obstacle to the work of building relationships with viewers that can challenge their curiosity and conscience as well as tickle their self-regard.’ (Aufderheider, 2001)

In some cases these viewers exerted pressure on media personnel to conform to a uncritical, ‘patriotic’ stance set elsewhere. Many newsreaders wore American flag pins but when the anchors of Newshour with Jim Lehrer (a PBS show) refused to wear pins, arguing that reporters needed to maintain a distance from the government on which they reported, viewers called and wrote in to denounce them as unpatriotic.

Two decades of cost-cutting in the newsroom have eroded the resources to cover international news adequately, although the blame is usually laid at the feet of the public whose appetite for foreign stories is regarded as historically low. US public television – a dismally funded phenomenon with only a 2 percent of the US viewing audience in an average week produced possibly the only extended background information on Osama bin Laden and the regional politics that helped create him, Frontline’s 1998 Hunting bin Laden or its 2000 Future of War. (Aufderheide, 2001)

Reporting the Anthrax Attacks

Several media commentators have suggested that post 9-11 many western governments have decided that informing the public is a ‘dispensable luxury’ and that the media have been compliant in this decision. An interesting example is the case of the anthrax attacks which began only one week after the September 11th attacks with anthrax letters mailed to the NBC television network and New York Post, but which were not reported until more than two weeks after they were opened (Rosenberg, 2002). It was a further week after the death of the first victim before reports on NBC and elsewhere acknowledged that letters had been received by media organisations containing anthrax spores and threats of more attacks. By this time more deadly letters had already been posted to Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.

From the middle of October to the end of November the threat of bio-weapons was almost constantly in the headlines, stoking fears of a major terrorist strike. It also helped persuade Congress to rush the USA PATRIOT Act into law. The Act was passed despite real concerns that the Act was an unconstitutional extension of police powers that allowed, for instance, the indefinite detention of immigrants simply for violating the terms of their visa, eavesdropping on all electronic and wireless communication, the right to monitor conversations between lawyer and client, and to carry out secret military trials of suspected terrorists (Kellner, 2003). During this time four or five letters bearing the same handwriting and containing lethal, ‘weaponised’ anthrax were sent, resulting in eighteen cases of infection and five deaths. Following the intense media coverage that began in October, police had to respond to 2,500 anthrax scares, which proved to be false alarms. Two hundred hoax anthrax letters were sent to abortion clinics around the country, containing white powder, some with the message: "This is Anthrax, have a nice death." Thirty-three thousand Americans were administered anthrax vaccines or other drugs, many of which had severe side effects and the postal service was forced to spend billions of dollars to protect their workers from possible attacks.

However, almost as soon as it became clear that the anthrax had originated in an American US germ warfare laboratory, media interest in the case appeared to fizzle out. Television networks and newspapers that had been direct victims of the attacks seemed unperturbed two months later that those responsible for the deaths of five people, an assassination attempt on the leadership of the Democratic party and the temporary shut down of parts of the US government and postal services were still at large. No suspects were ever apprehended and put on trial and yet no teams of investigative reporters looked at the bungled FBI investigation or the possibility that the same killers might strike again. It seems the media were unwilling to follow the trail of the killer into what Tom Engelhardt describes as

‘ the darkest heartlands of US bioweapons research, and so into the heart of Cold War military r&d from which so much has emerged to endanger our world.’ (Engelhardt, 2002).

The media has remained almost silent on possible motivation for attacks from within the ranks of American military weapons researchers on television stations, newspapers and political figures. Professor Barbara Rosenberg, Chair of American Scientists Working Group on Biological Weapons in 2002 admits that US biodefence received substantially greater funding following the attack. Perhaps this was the intention of sending the anthrax-contaminated letters? Professor Rosenberg also makes clear her own deep concerns at poor security at US biodefence labs and her conviction that the culprit was one of perhaps fifty employees with the degree of technical knowledge to be able to carry out the attacks. There are many who conjecture that instead of the FBI’s trail of the terrorist running cold, it ran too hot.

Rosenberg is highly critical of the secretive US weapons programme where she argues the murderer must have worked. She adds that in addition to making weaponised anthrax the US army was involved in the construction of bomblets designed for dispersion of biological agents, also in breach of the Biological Weapons Convention. She is also clearly unhappy that the US government has opposed every effort ‘to strengthen the toothless Biological Weapons Convention’ and its deliberate blocking of ‘peaceful efforts supported by all its allies to deter bioterrorism’. (L.A. Times Op-ED, 22nd September 2002)

For some commentators, the media’s silence and the FBI’s systematic failure to apprehend a culprit, or even properly investigate the evidence, can only be understood in the context of the US military’s illegal weapons development programme and the threat any suspect might make to disclose unwelcome information about such programmes at a trial. George Monbiot, one of the few British journalists to explore this story after 2001 argues: The army's development of weaponised anthrax, for example, directly contravenes both the biological weapons convention and domestic law. So does its plan to test live microbes in "aerosol chambers" at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, also in Maryland. So does its development of a genetically modified fungus for attacking coca crops in Colombia, and GM bacteria for destroying materials belonging to enemy forces. These, as the research group Project Sunshine has discovered, appear to be just a tiny sample of the illegal offensive biological research programmes which the US government has secretly funded. Several prominent scientists have suggested that the FBI's investigation is being pursued with less than the rigour we might have expected because the federal authorities have something to hide. The FBI has dismissed them as conspiracy theorists. But there is surely a point after which incompetence becomes an insufficient explanation for failure. (The Guardian, May 21st 2002)

I have dealt with this unsolved crime at some length as an example of how what is regarded as a major story can just as suddenly disappear from the media’s agenda, particularly if a detailed investigation reveals embarrassing details about long-standing national policy. This is not to suggest that there is, necessarily, a coordinated ‘conspiracy of silence’ on this or any other issue relating to the war on terrorism. Merely that when certain inconvenient facts are in danger of becoming public knowledge, the media (and particularly television where news airtime constrains coverage) is liable to be far less pro-active in their reporting. The mechanisms by which this happens are discussed below in the section entitled ‘media conspiracy?’.

The War in Afghanistan

Following the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001 the US, supported by Northern Alliance and British army troops, launched a campaign in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government, which had offered a safe haven for Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda training camps. The war was initially entitled ‘Operation Infinite Justice’, which was reluctantly changed to ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ when it was pointed out by Muslim leaders that only God can dispense infinite justice. After several weeks of intense aerial bombardment thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were killed, surrendered or escaped across the mountains into Pakistan and the Taliban government in Kabul fell. Coalition leaders declared the campaign a victory in the war against terrorism, but the Taliban’s spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and Bin Laden himself are thought, by some, to have escaped the US led assault.

Media coverage of the war was intense for the months of October and November 2001 and then rapidly tailed off following the fall of the Taliban. Since then the story counts and airtime minutes have fallen dramatically. According to an article in American Journalism Review in January 2002, the networks' weekday nightly newscasts aired a total of 106 minutes on Afghanistan. In January 2003, the count was down to 11 minutes. In March, it was a mere 60 seconds. (Robertson, 2003)

There are several likely explanations for the apparent loss of interest in the story of Afghanistan. The war was an extremely difficult and expensive one for news organizations to cover. Initially the Taliban government banned western journalists from its territory making it difficult for reporters to get close to the action. Consequently many were based in Pakistan or in remote northern areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Northern Alliance where conditions were very primitive. News organizations tried to keep expenses down by sharing resources, but transporting staff and equipment close to Afghanistan was extremely costly. As Variety reported:

‘CNN has occupied 30 rooms in the Islamabad Marriott for $ 200/night each. That's nothing compared to the cost of $ 8,000 satellite telephones and as much as $ 70,000 for shipping and set-up costs for satellite equipment.’ (October 8-21st, 2001)

There was also a high price to pay for insurance of equipment and security to meet the constant threat to the safety of television personnel. The war in Afghanistan was, at the start of the campaign, a more deadly assignment for journalists than for western fighting forces. Between the beginning of the bombing by American and British forces on October 7 and November 20th, no allied troops were confirmed lost in combat, yet seven journalists lost their lives covering the war. (PBS Online Nov 20th 2001).

Ironically, given this high price, many journalists ‘on the ground’ were kept away from the fighting by the military and relied on agency copy being fed to them before they went on-air. BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall said that at times the war coverage had descended into farce: “Often people were being employed to do live reports just so they could say ‘that person was in Afghanistan’, when in fact quite a lot of the reports were coming in either on a laptop or from people reading Reuters copy down the phone,” (Guardian, 26 April 2002)

Keeping reporters away from the action was regarded by some journalists working in Afghanistan as an indirect form of military censorship. Vaughan Smith, the director of Frontline Television and the cameraman who accompanied BBC correspondent David Loyn into Afghanistan, said he believes journalists were deliberately given limited access to areas of the country where there was fighting. ‘This was a hidden war that we didn’t see,’ he told an audience at the 2002 Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference.

“I think we did a terrible job in Afghanistan and I think there are some lessons which need to be learned,” he said, adding that the coverage was “misleading”’’ and, in the case of the US networks, “almost McCarthyist in approach”. (Guardian, 26 April 2002)

Military censorship of media coverage in Afghanistan took many forms, but was rarely direct except, perhaps, in the bombing of the Al Jazeera station, which is discussed later. In fact, US military control of information has a long history that is briefly summarised below in order to make sense of the restrictions in operation during the war in Afghanistan and the continuing ‘war on terrorism’.

US Military Censorship - The Historical Context

The history of military censorship in America extends back to the American Civil War of 1861-65 where it was a regular feature of the conflict. In World War I, correspondents who arrived in France with the first American troops in 1917 were strictly controlled and heavily censored, though the restrictions gradually abated. In World War II US the Office Of Censorship was created to control the flow of information. Only accredited journalists could report from the battlefield and were subject to military and naval censorship. The media did not report on classified information such as D-Day, the atomic bomb and the breaking of Japanese communication codes - in exchange for wide access to the front lines.

However, starting with the Korean War and then Vietnam, the media took an increasingly independent and critical view of the military. In Vietnam, more than 2,000 accredited reporters roamed freely throughout battle zones interviewing ordinary soldiers rather than relying on the Pentagon’s normally positive view of events. There were few incidents of news stories endangering U.S. troops or military operations, but negative press accounts fueled anti-war feelings back home.

When the war in Southeast Asia finally ended, many in the military blamed the press for "losing Vietnam." Following the example of the British government’s tight control of news from the Falkland’s War in 1981 some Pentagon officials resolved to restrict press coverage of future American wars. Thus, the 1983 invasion of Grenada marked an historical break. The Pentagon did not permit correspondents to join in the invasion force, because, it said, their presence would jeopardize security and "complicate the forces' logistical problems." (Kirby 2001) In fact, the military refused to grant unrestricted access to Grenada until six days after the initial invasion, by which time the operation was nearly complete. Then in 1989, the Pentagon selected a dozen reporters to cover the invasion of Panama and restricted them to an airport in Panama until nearly all fighting ended.

The problem of media access came to a head during the first Gulf War of 1991 when the US government returned to direct censorship of radio, photography, print, and television news. The Department of Defense issued new regulations governing media coverage of events, which were the strictest in history. About 1,400 journalists were sent to the Gulf but only 200 were allowed to operate from about a dozen "pools," of up to 18 reporters each. News organisations selected journalists for the pools, who were given exclusive permission to visit U.S. army units in the field, accompanied by military escorts. Pool reporters distributed their dispatches to their news organizations and to all other non-pool reporters who were required to remain in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, near the Kuwait border, or in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The reporters also had to submit their copy for "security review" which caused delays and further bitter complaints. The U.S. or Saudi military detained at least two dozen reporters for not following the pool procedures.

With the conclusion of the first air war against Iraq, the media demanded that the regulations be lifted. The Pentagon eventually responded by imposing a complete news blackout immediately following the start of the ground offensive. In spite of new technology to speed transmission of news, there was an astonishing lack of photographic and television footage of the war itself. Video material of an alleged massacre by US pilots of fleeing civilians and soldiers along the road to Basra (see Kellner, 1992) was never released and many in the press accused the censors of limiting First Amendment rights.

According to the organization Constitutional Rights Foundation (http://www.crf-usa.org/) after the first Gulf War, Washington bureau chiefs and defense officials met to try to arrive at common ground, resulting in the 1992 Pentagon guidelines on coverage of combat operations. The guidelines called for, among other things, providing journalists with access to all major military units and to special forces where feasible; allowing news organizations to use their own communications systems to file reports; and using press pools only when specific circumstances require, such as when military action is conducted in remote areas. (The complete guidelines are at rtnda.org/news/2001/rumsfeld.shtml.)

Controlling the news flow in Afghanistan

Journalists in Afghanistan were not subject to direct military censorship but were required to sign and adhere to a ‘ground rules’ agreement. This included stipulations that journalists reporting on US armed forces must be escorted by Public Affairs Officers at all times and that no interviews with detainees or ‘off-the-record’ interviews with soldiers would be allowed. Pre-censorship of stories did not occur, although certain specific information that might jeopardize a military mission was agreed as off-limits. However, according to one report by CBC (Corporate Radio Canada) journalists who wrote stories considered ‘demoralising’; who took pictures of body bags, injured soldiers or damaged US military equipment without ‘approval’, or made reference to American detention facilities, such as those at Kandahar Airbase, could find their credentials revoked (Vernon, 2002)

At the beginning of the campaign many journalists felt their access to the conflict was being limited. CNN's Christiane Amanpour, compared reporting on Afghanistan to her experiences in the first Gulf War:

"We were subject to Draconian censorship during the Gulf War, nonetheless, we were able to see more than we've been able to see in this instance. This too may change depending on the progress of the war." (Bernstein and McClintock, 2001)

In fact, the progress of the war did seem to affect journalist’s access to the frontline. After initial concerns that precision bombing was not an effective weapon against the Taliban army the coalition turned at the beginning of November to high altitude carpet-bombing with B52s. In addition, enormous bombs such as the BLU-82 ‘daisy cutter’ which can clear a three mile radius, and BLU-113 ‘bunker busters’ were used to destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda positions in the mountains. Televised reports were usually conducted many miles from the positions attacked and journalists were rarely brought on the ‘mopping up’ operations conducted by the army or special operations forces (which journalists were not allowed to film). The war now appeared to turn to the coalition’s advantage and as the Taliban and Al Qaeda began to surrender or slip away journalists were sometimes able to ride to the frontline with Northern Alliance troops.

With coalition forces now advancing rapidly on Baghdad there was little need for the military to control information being broadcast. Most western television channels, particularly in the US and UK were transmitting, legitimising and sometimes openly championing the ‘military advance’ – described elsewhere as an ‘invasion’. Particularly strident support came from Murdoch’s Fox News Channel. Just as CNN came to national and international prominence with its coverage of the first Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan is now considered an important milestone for Fox News. Fox effectively reshaped the way wars are covered with its aggressive support for the U.S. armed forces and their allies, and its hostile portrayal of their opponents--who were described by Fox personnel as "rats," "terror goons" and "psycho Arabs."

The organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) noted Fox’s radical departure from broadcast journalism’s supposed objectivity in their coverage of the war. Fox’s management appeared to lampoon traditional notions of journalistic impartiality. "We don’t sit around and get all gooey and wonder if these people have been misunderstood in their childhood," Fox News chair Roger Ailes told the New York Times (12/3/01). "What we say is terrorists, terrorism, is evil, and America doesn’t engage in it, and these guys do."

Fox’s position on reporting Afghan civilian casualties was that they did not merit much media attention. Fox’s lead anchor Brit Hume told the New York Times (12/3/01), "The fact that some people are dying, is that really news? And is it news to be treated in a semi-straight-faced way? I think not." Geraldo Rivera, on moving from CNBC to become Fox News’ primary war correspondent signaled his new approach to journalism when leaving: "I'm feeling more patriotic than at any time in my life. Itching for justice--or maybe just revenge." (Washington Post, 10/2/01 – quoted by Hart and Naureckas, 2002)

Yet while Fox made no pretence at impartiality other stations that did also moved to underplay ‘collateral damage’, or were pressured to do so. CNN came under conservative criticism for airing footage of dead or injured Afghan civilians and devastated Afghan buildings such as a red Cross warehouse and a senior citizen’s centre apparently caused by American bombing. According to a widely reported meeting with the CNN journalists, Walter Isaacson, the chief executive told his staff that it was ‘perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan’. (Collings 2001, Arnove, 2003)

In fact, the estimate for civilian casualties in the Afghan war appear to be a matter of dispute. The New York Times reports that the US air campaign killed about 400 civilians (54 civilians were killed while celebrating a wedding). Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, credited the campaign with fewer losses of civilian life than any other modern war. However, New Hampshire University’s economics Professor Marc Herold has compiled a list from press reports and eyewitness accounts and estimated that between 3,100 and 3,600 Afghan civilians were killed as a direct result of U.S. bombing (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/), approximately the same number of people as died in the 9-11 attacks.

Whatever the exact figure, television images of bombed or starving Afghan civilians were relatively rare despite protests from many NGOs about the disastrous effects of blocking food aid (Ackerman, 2002). Television coverage tended to concentrate on the effects of precision-guided bombs rather than carpet bombing or the use of cluster bombs. One exception to this was an interview on CNN on November 1st:

‘JODY WILLIAMS, CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR, PRINCESS DIANA MEMORIAL FUND: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: One of the things that sticks out in my mind with cluster bombs is this dud rate of 5 percent. You know, so if there's 200 cluster bombs , and its 5 percent, that means, in theory, there's at least -- well, I have to my do math very quickly.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAMS: Too many.

O'BRIEN: That would be about 10 bombs.

WILLIAMS: 10 bombs is 10 too many.

O'BRIEN: 10 bombs per. And you know, that's why I went into television, because of the math thing. But let's press on. And, that means there's a lot of unexploded ordnance on the ground. And I want to just show you a quick graphic, here, to show you how closely these bombs -- which look like yellow soda cans -- there you have it, right there. This is the CBU-87. One of the bomblets, that's Cluster Bomb Unit 87. And that's about the size of soda can, because there's no real scale there.

Now let's move and show you a picture of the food packets which are being dropped in some cases in close proximity. Now, it's yellow and it's square, but nevertheless, if you're a child, this might be a difference without a distinction. I assume that's part of your concern.

WILLIAMS: That is a huge part of the concern, that we are dropping yellow cluster bombs and yellow food packets is certainly going to be confusing to many in Afghanistan. ….’

The short, if well-informed, interview continued with O’Brien putting forward the military justification for using cluster bombs and allowing Jody Williams to respond with the arguments used by the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and other international bodies attempting to outlaw these devices. Williams was clearly a credible expert in the field and was given the opportunity to run counter arguments to the coalitions claims that the weapons were a necessary weapon in the Afghan campaign. However, the piece was also typical of how television deals with war casualties largely in abstract or statistical terms. It is very unusual to hear from the victims themselves (civilian or military), or prioritise their view of the conflict or of the weapons that have maimed them, often for life. With thousands of cluster bombs dropped over Afghanistan and new victims every day the opportunity to do this kind of interview is still open.

The CNN discussion was also too brief to include reference to the legacy of US and British cluster bombs in Iraq from the first Gulf War where according to Human Rights Watch:

‘More than 1,600 Kuwaiti and Iraqi civilians have been killed, and another 2,500 injured, by the estimated 1.2 million explosive cluster bomb duds left following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which saw the most extensive use of cluster bombs in history. Some 62,000 air-delivered cluster bombs, 100,000 DPICM artillery shells, and 10,000 MLRS rockets were used, containing a total of 24 to 30 million submunitions.’ (Human Rights News, 2001)

Any discussion of civilian casualties was regarded by many US channels in particular as ‘coddling the Taliban’. This was clearly the chairman of CNN’s concern when he ordered his staff to balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbours murderous terrorists (Washington Post, 31st October 2001). Anthony Collings writing for the Chronicle Review argues that this was a feature of most US coverage: ‘The Pentagon must surely have been pleased to learn that whenever its planes killed the wrong Afghans, CNN would quickly provide the administration with PR damage control. In contrast, the BBC made no such effort to neutralize the negative impact on public opinion of realistic war coverage.

Often when the Taliban have alleged civilian damage, American television news reports have quickly noted, in a kind of mantra, that there was "no independent confirmation of the claim." But when the Pentagon made its own claims, such as a statement that none of its commandos on a night raid suffered major casualties, by and large, American TV omitted the chant of no independent confirmation. In contrast, the BBC simply reported what the Taliban said and what the Pentagon said.’ (Collins, 2001)

As Collins observes, viewing figures for BBC World in the USA rose sharply during the war, which he attributes to the more ‘detached, nuanced and sophisticated approach to news’ than the ‘simplistic fare normally doled out by American networks’. In addition to finding the BBC coverage more detailed, with more journalists speaking Pashto, Urdu or Arabic, he commends the BBC’s willingness to stand up to pressure from governments (as in resisting pressure not to broadcast tapes by Bin Laden and other extremists). He also quotes one New York Daily News journalist who says ‘Watch BBC World News broadcasts for one day, and you realize how narrow our focus is.’

The kinds of broadcasts not found on US networks included Rageh Omaar’s BBC report of the US bombing of the town of Gardez, a week after the Taliban had fled. In fact, such reports constituted a minority of typical news items from British broadcasters. Only those with access to non-western channels were likely to see really extensive coverage of civilian casualties during ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, or hear arguments against the US led attacks. One such channel was the Qatari-based Al Jazeera, which raised its international profile dramatically during the war. Al Jazeera broadcast interviews from every end of the political spectrum, including US military personnel and politicians, Afghan citizens, Taliban officials and even Bin Laden himself. It also showed far more civilian casualties of the bombing campaign than any western station and was critical of the US ‘campaign’, which was described as an ‘invasion’. The US government had expressed its unhappiness with Al Jazeera’s coverage (see Case Study: Al Jazeera) because of the impact of their broadcasts on public opinion in Muslim countries. The Western media and politicians had warned that the US was in danger of losing the propaganda war, and Steve James (2001) asserts, it seems that the US decided the best way to win the battle for hearts and minds was to take out its critics.

On Monday November 12th, the day before the Northern Alliance marched into the capital, the US airforce dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Al Jazeera studio in the capital. The same attack damaged nearby offices of the Associated Press and the BBC who caught the effect of the giant blast on camera while filming one of their reporters William Reeve at his desk. Immediately after the raid, the station’s London bureau chief, Muftah Al Suwaidan, told the Guardian newspaper, “Al Jazeera’s office is in the heart of Kabul. The building is the only one to have been hit so it looks like it was deliberate.” The station’s managing director, Mohammed Jassim al-Ali, said that the US had been previously informed of al-Jazeera’s location.

The Pentagon denied the claim saying they did not have the co-ordinates of the station and adding that, “The US military does not and will not target media.” However:

‘On November 17, al-Jazeera’s chief of Arab language broadcasting, Ibrahim Hilal, again accused the US of deliberately targeting their Kabul office. Hilal said that the station had been on a list of US targets ever since the start of the bombing campaign, and that transmissions between Kabul and the station’s headquarters in the tiny Middle Eastern emirate of Qatar were routinely monitored by US intelligence.’ (‘Why the US bombed al-Jazeera’s TV station in Kabul’, 2001)

Further doubt on US claims that it never targets media organizations were made by journalists, such as the BBC’s Nic Gowing, who reminded a Newsworld conference of news executives in Barcelona of the deliberate (and officially justified) targeting of the Radio Television Serbia (RTS) studios in Serbia in 1999 when thirteen journalists and staff were killed and many more injured (James, 2001).

Attention soon shifted from the bombing of Al Jazeera’s station with the fall of Baghdad the following day (November 13th), which proved to be a turning point in the war. Veteran BBC's world affairs editor, John Simpson who advanced to the city with the Northern Alliance claimed to be the first western journalist in the capital after the Taliban had fled. Simpson, well known for putting himself at the centre of the story (often at great risk to his own life) strode ahead of the camera surrounded by laughing and cheering children: "It's an exhilarating feeling to be liberating a city," Simpson declared "It was BBC people who liberated the city - we got in ahead of the Northern Alliance," he told Radio 4's Today programme. (The Guardian 14th November, 2001) His comments caused some hilarity and much comment amongst fellow journalists at the time.

The fall of the Taliban regime proved quicker than many had predicted. The Taliban were guilty of many human rights abuses while in power, including violence to and the murder of several journalists. Pressure, threats and targeting of journalists by all sides seemed to characterize the US led campaign in Afghanistan. In October the world's largest journalists' group, the International Federation of Journalists, called for governments to lift pressure on journalists reporting events surrounding the military action in Afghanistan. "Once again, journalists are being bullied and harassed by all sides in a conflict that calls for professionalism and independence from media - not propaganda and censorship," said Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. (BBC Worldwide Monitoring October 12, 2001)

Alleged War Crimes - A Complicity of Silence?

More significant, however, than any official interference and restriction on reporters in Afghanistan has been media self-censorship. This includes, as already described, uncritical reporting of ‘coalition’ policy, lack of investigation of military claims, over-reliance on official sources and under-reporting of civilian casualties, starvation, disease and other negative consequences of the campaign. This self-censorship apparently continued even after the end of major hostilities. When evidence of the US army’s apparent complicity in the torture and murder of thousands of Taliban fighters shortly after they surrendered came to light, there was almost no coverage or further investigation by any of the major media organisations. This despite sworn testament supplied in a documentary film ‘Massacre at Mazar’ produced by BBC veteran filmmaker Jamie Doran and autopsy evidence that has subsequently backed up these claims.

Jamie Doran’s film, only broadcast in America on a small independent TV channel called Democracy Now claims that, after surrendering to US and Northern Alliance forces at Kundun, 8,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners were herded, 200-300 at a time, into airless containers and transported to the Qala-I-Ziebi fortress and to Sherberghan prison. 5,000 of these prisoners suffocated in the containers or were shot according to eye-witness accounts. Doran’s film includes footage of enemy remains and grave sites at Sherbergan and Mazar-I-Sharif as well as the testament of an Afghan general and civilian drivers who claim US soldiers were present at executions at Dasht Leili. Yet ‘no newspaper or TV station in the United States broke ranks to even mention this film’ (Herman, 2002)

These events, and subsequent US interrogation and mistreatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan and later on Guantanamo Bay, caused UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson and Amnesty International to call for an investigation of apparent major violations of international law. Following this call, the highly respected, Mary Robinson (popular former President of the Republic of Ireland) was effectively ousted from her position under US pressure. Yet, as Herman observes:

‘Neither Robinson’s exit, nor the early evidence of serious war crimes involving Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners, elicited noticeable media comment or criticism’ (Herman ‘News Not Fit to Print’ 2002, pg 1)

Media Conspiracy?

It seems extraordinary that a claim (with documented supporting evidence) that up to 5,000 prisoners of war were murdered, possibly with US military connivance, was not considered newsworthy enough to investigate by western news organisations. Does this suggest a ‘conspiracy of silence’ by the media? The term ‘conspiracy’ implies that decisions were made to knowingly withhold information or falsify information in an organised manner between a large number of media organisations. The work of American physicist Jeff Schmidt suggests that this is not the case. In his book ‘Disciplined Minds’ Schmidt shows how professionals throughout society, journalists included, come to promote the agenda of the powerful without awareness. He points out that professionals are trusted to run organisations in the interests of their employers:

‘Clearly employers cannot be on hand to supervise every decision, and so professionals have to be trained to “ensure that each and every detail of their work favours the right interests – or skewers the disfavoured ones” in the absence of overt control. Thus the whole process of selection, training, and even qualification [..] has evolved so that professionals internalise the basic understanding that they should “subordinate their own beliefs to an assigned ideology” and not question the politics built into their own work. […] “The qualifying attitude, I find, is an uncritical, subordinate one, which allows professionals to take their ideological lead from their employers and appropriately fine-tune the outlook they bring to their work. The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorise, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology.’ (Schmidt, 2000)

This ‘adjusted curiosity’ – creating and theorising within an ideological ‘box’ is illustrated in some detail by a recent survey of British foreign policy since World War II and its reporting in the media.

Elite Perspectives of Foreign Policy

In Web of Deceit (2003), a history of British foreign policy since World War II, Mark Curtis explores how Britain’s foreign policy role is generally reported by the British media as one of ‘basic benevolence’.

‘Mainstream reporting and analysis usually actively promotes or at least does not challenge, the idea that Britain promotes high principles – democracy, peace, human rights and development – in its foreign policy. Criticism of foreign policy is certainly possible, and normal, but within narrow limits which show ‘exceptions’ to or ‘mistakes’ in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence.’ (Curtis 2003, pg 380)

The rare exceptions to this favourable presentation of British foreign policy by the media are usually so out of step with mainstream reporting as to be regarded as eccentric or sensationalist and the journalists, such as John Fiske, Seamas Milne, George Monbiot and Jonathon Pilger, dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists’ reporting from the ‘fringe’ of acceptable political analysis. Furthermore, dissident reporting of this kind is rarely expressed beyond the confines of print media and is almost unheard of on television because it would upset what program controller regard as the ‘middle ground’ of opinion.

Noam Chomsky describes this journalistic subservience as a guiding principle of intellectual culture:

‘We must devote enormous energy to exposing the crimes of official enemies, properly counting not only those literally killed but also those who die as a consequence of policy choices; but we must take scrupulous care to avoid this practice in the case of our own crimes, on the rare occasions when they are investigated at all.’ (Chomsky, 2002)

In much the same way as Chomsky has examined the US media’s highly selective reporting of US foreign policy, Mark Curtis looks in detail at the number of big stories that have been ‘buried’ by the mainstream British media. This includes what the author describes as the British government’s ‘complicity’ in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 that killed a million people; the slaughter of a million people in Indonesia in 1965 and the same nation’s invasion of East Timor in 1975. He also examines the expulsion of the people of Diego Garcia; support for repressive governments in Israel, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia and overthrow of governments in Iran and British Guiana. For Curtis, the media’s silence on these major events and others is ‘akin to the destruction of history’. Important stories are swept into a ‘memory hole’ and whole populations become, ‘unpeople’. In addition to the media’s selective coverage of events, muted reporting of clear violations of UN charter obligations by the UK government in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Iraq lead Curtis to conclude that ‘people are being indoctrinated into a picture of Britain’s role in the world that supports elite priorities. This is the mass production of ignorance.’ [author’s emphasis]

Part of this selective coverage of events can be ascribed to the decline in investigative reporting and the media’s almost total reliance on official sources:

‘To avoid the controversy associated with determining what is a legitimate news story, professional journalism relies upon official sources as the basis for stories. This gives those in power (and the public relations industry, which developed at the exact same time as professional journalism) considerable ability to influence what is covered in the news.’ (McChesney, 2000)

Essentially, if senior government sources have nothing to say on an issue then it is much less likely to appear as a news story. For example, there has been very little coverage in broadcast news on American and British use of depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo, Iraq and allegedly in Afghanistan. Where the story is covered and investigative research conducted it often receives a low priority and may only be ‘broadcast’ fully, if at all, on an associated website, such as BBC Online. Such is the case with the on-going war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan - The War Continues

At the time of writing (2003) a low-level war in Afghanistan continues with increasing numbers of attacks by Taliban on coalition forces and ‘collaborators’. It seems that America is now in much the same position as the Soviet Union following its invasion of the country on Christmas Day 1979. It is unlikely that the Taliban will return to power without the kind of superpower support the US gave the mujahedeen, but coalition forces are encountering similar resistance to ‘foreign occupation’ as faced by the Soviets during their 10 year stay. Media coverage of this conflict is currently sporadic and consists mainly in briefly cataloguing the most recent attacks.

The final success of the war in Afghanistan is difficult to measure. Large scale Al Qaeda camps no longer operate from within its borders with impunity. The brutal and backward Taliban regime, responsible for countless human rights abuses has been removed. Osama Bin Laden may have escaped but his operational base has been weakened. The position of women has improved in some areas where they now have access to schooling and work, denied them by the previous authorities.

However, since October 2001, thousands of fighting men on both sides of the conflict have lost their lives or have suffered severe injury. In addition to more than three thousand civilians killed, between ten and twenty thousand Afghans may have died from cold, disease and hunger as UN Aid, which supported 3.8 million people in September 2001, was disrupted. (Steele 2002, Herold 2002). Cluster bombs continue to kill and maim dozens of civilian each week adding to the legacy of Russian mines from their failed invasion of the 1980s. Furthermore, with only Kabul under the effective control of the country’s new appointed leader Hamid Karzai and warlords controlling the countryside, western promises of massive aid and reconstruction for war-torn Afghanistan have been largely abandoned. The country’s infrastructure is in dire condition, crime and human rights abuses are widespread and Afghanistan is once again the heroin production capital of the world. The question also remains as to whether the war, which cost billions of dollars and left thousands dead or injured, made future terrorist attacks more or less likely. According to some media reports Osama Bin Laden is alive and planning more destruction as Al Qaeda attracts a new generation of sympathisers and recruits vowing to halt ‘US imperialism’. Finally, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali in October 2002, which killed more than 200 tourists and locals and drastically affected the island’s economy, shows that the war did not prevent future deadly attacks.

Sources

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Engelhardt, T. (2003) ‘Tomgram: A list of my own – connecting the media dots’ www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/

Engelhardt, T. (2003) ‘The Embeds on the Bus’ www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/

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Variety, October 8, 2001 - October 14, 2001 ‘Journos battle governments, costs for vantage point’ by Bernstein, P. and Mcclintock, P.

Vernon, M. (2002) ‘The War We Could Not Report’, CBC News Viewpoint, August 13, 2002 http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_vernon/20020813.html

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Suggested Reading

http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/

www.bufvc.ac.uk/itnstudy

www.britishpathe.com/

http://pilger.carlton.com/

Exercises

In our mediated world the borders between reality and fiction, news and entertainment are increasingly blurred. Following the September 11th attacks Pentagon officials invited Hollywood scriptwriters in to discuss possible terrorist scenarios and how to deal with them (see Zizek, 2001). Many in the media also noted the similarity between live broadcasts from embedded journalists from the Gulf and reality TV. How can journalists ensure the differences between reality and fiction on our screens remain clear?

For Discussion and Writing

1. Is it possible to carry on a war with a free press? Why or why not? 2. Do you think the press should have access to war zones? Explain. 3. What are the similarities and differences between the three sets of battlefield press rules discussed in the article? The GRADE Test As citizens in a democracy, you'll be confronted with policy questions relating to information. Is it important for people in a democracy to know what the government is doing? Can the media print or broadcast all information they receive? What press policy should the military use in wartime? Government policies can profoundly affect our nation and your life. In a democracy, you have a say on government policies. It's important that you take a critical look at them. Use the following GRADE Test to evaluate a policy: Goal. What is the goal of the policy? If you don't know what it's supposed to do, you can't measure its success or failure. Policies are designed to address problems. What problem or problems is this policy supposed to address? Rivals. Who supports the policy? Who opposes it? Knowing the rivals can help you understand who the policy might affect and whether the policy favors special interests. Also, rivals are terrific sources for information. Be sure to check their facts, though. Advantages. What are the policy's benefits? What is good about the policy? Will it achieve (or has it achieved) its goal? Will it achieve the goal efficiently? Is it inexpensive? Does it protect people from harm? Does it ensure people's liberties? Disadvantages. What are the policy's costs? What is bad about the policy? Is it inefficient? Is it expensive? Does it cause harm? Does it intrude on people's liberties? Are there any potential consequences that may cause damage? Evaluate the alternatives. One alternative is to do nothing. Most serious problems have various policy proposals. Evaluate them. Look at their goals, advantages, and disadvantages. Once you GRADE the competing policies, weigh their advantages and disadvantages and decide which you favor.

A C T I V I T Y

Press Rules for Future Wars: A Presidential Commission In this activity, students role play a commission recommending rules for the press in future military actions. 1. Divide students into groups of three or four. 2. In each group, students are to imagine that they are members of a commission appointed by the president to recommend press rules as America responds to terrorism. Their commission has been presented with three different sets of press rules—the three in the article. 3. Each group should: A. Assign roles to each member of the group: a commission chairperson (who leads the discussion), a recorder (who writes the group's answers to each GRADE test on a sheet of paper), a reporter (who reports the commission's findings to the class), and, if the group has four members, a responder (who answers any questions the class may have about the group's findings). B. Evaluate the three policies using the GRADE Test above and decide which to recommend to the president. C. Prepare to present their decision and reasons for it to the class. 4. When the groups finish, call on reporters from different groups to answer GRADE tests for Policy #1: Press Pool Rules. Then call on reporters to answer GRADE tests for Policy #2: Proposed Rules by News Media. Ask which policy the groups favored. Hold a discussion over why they favored one policy over another. Return to War in Iraq Main Page