From The Editor’s Desk

Journalist Beware

Andrew Garib, Turn Left | You’ve heard of ‘buyer beware’, and most political observers understand ‘reader beware’, but there’s another twist to the means and complications through which we receive our information about the world around us. It can be similarly encapsulated as the phrases warning consumers and news-watchers: it’s ‘journalist beware’, and in a time when media savvy is of extremely high value for politicians, the electorate, and governments alike, this warning comes with particular immediacy. ‘Wag the Dog’ conspiracy theories aside, it has become increasingly burdensome on journalists to produce accurate, precise and contextual news with as much objectivity as possible, as governments, special interests groups and news corporations have with alarming facility morphed our political worldview into something more conducive to their needs.

This is not something done covertly. A careful observer noted very well the growing accumulation of lies and rhetoric behind the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq. Many of us less keen on domestic issues miss out on less grand but certainly equally important manipulations in relation to domestic policy, for example, the word-twisting and special-interest packing of the recently-passed Medicare bill. The administration’s logic is that even if what they say is blatantly wrong, if said enough times and in the right way, it would be reinforced as the truth in the minds of viewers and readers. In the Iraq war, their gambles paid off – and an overt lie became the overt truth for long enough to lead a nation into a quick war and a long, drawn out and bloody occupation.

The overt lies make one wonder just what has been happening under the table at the White House and Pentagon. This week, we got a glimpse from an Eric Schmitt article in the New York Times on Defence Department attempts at international media manipulation for strategic ends. The Pentagon shut down a project known as the Office of Strategic Influence (a more honest designation than the Ministry of Truth, granted) early last year after it became known it was planning to give false news reports to foreign journalists in order to influence both policymakers and public sentiment abroad – perhaps even in Europe.

With such festering anti-Americanism abroad, it’s no wonder Donald Rumsfeld feels the need to lie at a more effective level in order to sway public opinion towards his Orwellian wars. Instead of genuine attempts at multilateral signs of goodwill and cooperation, this United States government insists on pushing its own agenda with or without legitimate and widespread support, and feels it has the licence to perpetuate lies and empty rhetoric in order to placate the masses. It is an attempt to bypass the hindrances (hindrances to myopic hawkish and arrogant plans, that is) of open society by making press the instrument of government rather than the informant of democracy.

As you may have guessed, the deception is never over. The Department of Defence recently awarded a $300,000 contract to study how the DoD could design an ‘effective strategic influence’ campaign against global terrorism – perhaps the same ‘perception management’ program of its defunct predecessor. ‘Winning the War of Ideas’ – yet another War of Something-or-other to digest and distract while real solutions to our nation’s and the world’s problems are swept aside – is not just information warfare against hostile regimes. It is an active manipulation of news and opinion at an organized, government-instituted level – terrain traditionally only tread by unscrupulous independent journalists and media. It is tantamount to thought control and is not to be tolerated.

Journalists are like doctors. You always need a second opinion. The Pentagon’s targeting of news just makes it that much clearer to all citizens how important journalism is to societies and common beliefs – or manipulation thereof. It’s plain irony that while publicly the administration downplays international hatred for both America and what it stands for (and in particular, what it has stood for in the past few years), the DoD prepares for an important part of its worldwide campaign of foreign interventions and unilateral action: winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of citizens of the world by lying to them though their local news outlets. The very news you may be reading – forget the spin thereupon – may well be tainted with a touch of essence of Karl Rove. We’ve seen it before. We’ve seen their attempts to do it systematically abroad. We’re sure ready to see it on an ongoing basis.

This interpretation may be overly alarmist, but we cannot ignore the sustained and effective attempts by this administration to skew our view of world politics towards their interests. It is clear, then, that journalists, too, have a fundamental responsibility to be highly circumspect of the information they propose in their media. Journalists must be as aware of underlying contexts and nuanced histories behind their stories as much as subtle government spin and overt Department of Defence misappropriation of facts. Journalists beware. End.