Intel Failures Point To Larger Problems
Involving An Increasingly Reactive Media

By William Finucane

With great external, media illumination and a continuing lack of internal, government transparency, it appears there will nonetheless be some sort of future resolution regarding the intelligence failure in Iraq, and perhaps of even more importance, the question of how the United States did not properly understand or seek to develop intelligence reports relating to Arab conspiracies prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy.

Naturally, people will differ as to why this was the case.

The Sept. 11, 2001, study committee will issue its report in June. But the intelligence committee report will be timed so as not to be finished until after next election. Surprise.

President George W. Bush didn’t want either investigation. Only when public opinion swelled did Bush suddenly see the light and decide to appoint the study groups. Since he is the appointing authority, obviously results will be questioned roundly. One key issue is how our sharpest people studying Iraq completely misread the intelligence.

But whatever the answers, no matter how foolish the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) may appear, and even if the inescapable conclusion is that Mr. Bush started the Iraq war on no truly supportable grounds, there remains another factor in all of this that has yet to be taken seriously; that is, the press.

Who is going to do an in-depth probe of the American press?

Print, radio broadcasts and TV reportage are all culpable. How did they get caught so terribly unprepared? One can say that the press simply missed a story. No big deal. They’ll catch up soon. Yet this is not acceptable.

The American press is the only bulwark between senseless war and reasonable discussion. That is not an exaggeration. And this truism is all-important at this point in world history.

Without the threat of Russia, the United States is earth’s power, just like Rome was for a thousand years. Whatever the American president decides is particularly provocative may now become material proof of the worthiness of war. If the American president declares weapons of mass destruction are present in a country, Americans may now invade the nation and crush the threat. This is the new, pre-emptive strategy of war through executive power: Right or wrong, true or false, it doesn’t matter. If it follows a presidential decree, Americans will march.

Why? Because the president says so, that’s why.

Of course there has always been a presumption that the president knows what he is talking about, since the chief executive is privy to the best and most comprehensive information. Further, we largely base our certainty on the premise that the press is keeping close watch and not letting the president pull the wool over the national eyes.

In this case, as it actually worked out, the press already had pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes. It blinded even itself by a sort of self-serving reactiveness.

Sept. 11, 2001, was horrible. After the attack, some newsmen actually announced that one of the two towers at the World Trade Center might soon start to fall – this after half the building had collapsed. So cautious, so uncertain were the reporters that few plain facts like that one were delivered directly, as simple truth to be delivered without frills.

But that reporting was nothing compared to the coverage of the assault on Iraq. Many units had "embedded" news reporters with them. "Embedded" of course means they are performing public relations functions for the military. "Embedded" reporters are in bed with their unit, in more ways than one. Yes, some of them strove mightily to overcome the built-in restrictions and covenants, but the concept nonetheless worked to the favor of the administration. And of course there were regular reporters, too, who worked independently in the country and followed no commanding officer’s orders.

But the non-embedded journalists, as a group, simply stayed where some bombs were falling and showed their journalistic muscle by remaining despite the danger. Some of course ventured further, but without U.S. military assistance and often in defiance of attempts to curtail any travel.

But while these displays of bravery are in the best news traditions, Americans could have done with less last minute bravado by individual journalists committed to the concepts of a free press and more regular news stories during the build-up to the pre-emptive attack. Before the Iraq war, the United States press did precious little to find out what was actually happening in that nation. No news group sent reporters to check on weapons and so forth. Why?

One factor is simple press math; there are far fewer newspapers being published today than even a few years ago. Those that still are printed are in fewer and fewer ownership hands. And almost all of those press owners are Republicans. No, not necessarily the editorial writers and the like, but the money people – the owners and policy people are Republicans.

Back when Vietnam broke out, lots more papers were on the racks. Not now.

Making up for the lack of print media, of course, is broadcast journalism. Far more of that is around now. Tons of news shows, special news broadcasts and the like are all over the television and radio airwaves. But here, just like the newspapers, the Republicans also do most of the owning.

What has happened is that the reporters in the big papers and the broadcast media simply do not have any leadership from the corner office to go out and get the stuff that is much harder to find and publish, and which is time consuming and therefore expensive to run down and prove. Also, it takes a willingness to risk lawsuits for the sake of public awareness when what you publish is likely to catch powerful people with their pants down and their true interests revealed..

Obviously no big names in press ownership are calling for any kind of investigation of their industry’s part in all this post 9-11 quagmire. Americans were so utterly thunderstruck by the jet hijacks and the hitting of the World Trade Center and Pentagon that they never even considered trying to get inside the minds of the terrorists. To do this would have required journalistic expertise, grounded in facts and history.

Some attempts were made, surely. But the consistent media drum roll defined Osama Bin Laden and his followers as devils who needed killing, quickly. And of course since this was the first time in modern history that Americans at home were actually under fire from abroad, the press forgot its own history and froze. It reacted like a bitten baby. There was much to learn or relearn here.

Muslims have a zealous strain that hates America because America seems in control of the rest of the world. This hatred is exacerbated, of course, by the fact that the Islamic world has failed its people; it has remained attached to the social crudities and intellectual absolutes of early human development. Women are submissives, men are absolutely in control, modern views are unacceptable and ancient axioms are inviolate. This is not because the ancient ways are correct, but because to alter, review or upgrade them would mean a change in power. In many ways, Arab culture is the very definition of the worst of conservatism.

But then, in contradiction to such conservatism, American influence and power seems ubiquitous, but its actual effectiveness is most often subtle and elusive; it is an indirect power that can seem ineffective but which over time directly influences other populations and cultures.. In many ways what is now happening in the Middle East and elsewhere is a culture war where the symbols are McDonald’s, Coke, music videos and programming that illustrates freedom for both men and women, which of course is in direct contrast to the actual politics of so many nations where established norms involve totalitarian rulers invoking ancient and dogmatic rules.

America does not control many other parts of earth, but it influences people everywhere.

Yet ironically, where America has exerted direct control, it has often shown a capacity for ruthlessness. It has for years put its power behind wretches like Saddam Hussein – which it did because pragmatic (or cynical) decision makers judged that approach to be in America’s strategic interest during the ‘Cold War’ – and the nation has turned a blind eye toward people starving who were often being tortured or killed because of the self-serving policies of dictators like Hussein, the Shah of Iran, the Diem brothers in Vietnam, the Greek junta, and the array of South American dictators, etc., etc.

Americans have been able to ignore such consequences of "statecraft" and international policy, largely because Americans have felt safe at home. Yet any American who cares about the rest of the world, and how policies may come home to roost,  simply must think of the horrors that are worked in other places for American benefit. To ignore those realities is to be an absentee butcher.

People like Osama bin Laden have exploited those philosophical and intellectual 'blind spots' for political gain, usually working up a great hatred for America in the process and then seeking to exploit those emotions for both political gain and to derive personal power from it.

Bin Laden got America’s attention. America answered blindly with guns and planes, and so far Mr. Bin Laden is still free to expound his doctrine of jealousy and hatred for all things modern and most of all, for all things American.

Instead of such a blind reaction, Americans need to use their ears, hearts and brains to change the history that their nation will write over the next few years. If  Americans don't develop a more realistic view of world politics - if they are entrapped by self-serving government rhetoric and, as is currently the case, by what appears to be clearly a policy of disinformation - then the process will be bloody for years on end. But it doesn’t have to be. To bring such action/reaction to an end, the bottom line is addressing the issues through human conversation – talk – and from that will come hope based on increasing understanding of different points of view.

Mr. Bush has declared a "war on terrorists" that will last as long as needed to defeat them. Yet any journalist knows that waging a "war on terrorists" is impossible. They will always be there. They cannot be wiped from the face of the earth. Democracy, on the other hand, can be done away with all too easily. All that is needed is enough fear mongering to make a majority in any democracy decide to support security over personal freedom. Once that happens, democracy is over in that nation, and totalitarianism replaces it, often with a fascistic philosophy of government.

Step one on this proverbial ‘slippery slope’ is to let the press become such a big-business that bottom-line consciousness leaves no room for active news gathering, therefore the press doesn’t bother defining issues, whether far-away or close to home, but rather reacts to the actions and reactions of the public and the government.

 In other words, a weak press is reactive in the dictionary sense, not the political sense; that is, it reacts to whatever emerges dramatically on the scene, either through government of public activity. It does nothing to clarify or enhance the debate, it simply waits for an action and reacts to it.

This is the grossest press failure, and flies in the face of what the Founding Father’s intended and envisioned. They lived with a vibrant free press that often vilified them, but they respected the process because it engaged the public through its great variety of specific and blunt opinions, and it made the public think.

The press in our democracy remains our best defense against autocracy and the modern political curse, fascism. But we have to demand that it live up to our expectations; we must make it clear we want to see diverse opinions aired bluntly, and that we expect editorial pages to articulate clearly why one position is supported over another.

Finally we must contemptuously reject all media that tries to mix opinion with news coverage for the political gain of the press owners, such as the policies of The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and all Murdoch publications, together with so many other newspapers, radio stations and TV outlets whose owners have come to believe that safety and profitability are tied to the exploitation of a right-wing agenda. We are at the 11^th hour in trying to reverse this situation, but it is not too late.

2/04