Perhaps I can finally put up a post everyone can agree on (yeah, right), and especially on a day like today when I get comments like this
Unreal. You sir, will never qualify for “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?“
Or this one
You and Rumsfeld should enjoy a martini together.
If this article wasn’t free to read, I’d cancel my subscription today. Not because of your opinion, but because you possess no expertise in the field in which you report on.
Alright, here you go guys: Journalists (like me) suck
So says a new report from the Joan Sorenson Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University though not in such pedestrian terms.
In a thorough analysis of media coverage during the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah war (which I covered from Cyprus and Beirut for the Military Times newspapers and USA Today), media sage — and no friend to its critics on the right — Marvin Kalb paints a disturbing picture of media bias, manipulation and outright advocacy for the Hezbollah cause.
I remember telling my colleagues back home that from my perspective at the US Embassy in Beirut, you couldnt tell there was a war going on at all. Life continued as normal on the streets and civilians went about their daily business unencumbered. There was no smoke rising from the hills, no explosions, no panic. My observations fell on deaf ears, most suspecting I was a right-wing, Israel-loving nut.
The exhaustive Harvard study calls into question the rapid assertion by Human Rights Watch that the Israeli military committed war crimes and the medias reluctance to hold Hezbollah to account for its own criminal behavior. The various instances of doctored photos (such as the above Reuters photo) and exaggerated casualty claims are mere sideshows to the outright failure to adhere to the journalistic mantra of balanced coverage without editorializing opinion.
Because Hezbollah functioned as a quasi-military force within its populace, protecting it, feeding it, housing it, and in general caring for its needs, the Israelis were quickly accused of hitting civilian targets with an indiscriminate callousness amounting to war crimes.
On August 3, Human Rights Watch specifically accused Israel of war crimes. Few seemed to note that before the war, on May 27, Nasrallah had actuallyand publiclyembraced the guerrilla tactic of hiding soldiers among civilians. [Hezbollah fighters] live in their houses, in their schools, in their churches, in their fields, in their farms and in their factories, he said, adding, You cant destroy them in the same way you would destroy an army.
By wars end, it was clear that Nasrallah was right. Hezbollah, though severely wounded, remained a fighting force in defiant objection to all U.N. resolutions calling for it to be disarmed.
Israel defended its military operations by citing two relevant articles in international law: using civilians for military cover was a war crime, and any target with soldiers hiding among civilians was considered a legitimate military target. Israels foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, framed her governments argument in cold language. When you go to sleep with a missile, she told The New York Times, you might find yourself waking up to another kind of missile.
Israels defense, though, fell on deaf ears, not only among diplomats but also reporters, as daily evidence mounted of civilian deaths. Hezbollah, whenever possible, pointed reporters to civilian deaths among Lebanese, a helpful gesture with heavy propaganda implications. Early in the war, reporters routinely noted that Hezbollah had started the war, and its casualties were a logical consequence of war. But after the first week such references were either dropped or downplayed, leaving the widespread impression that Israel was a loose cannon shooting at anything that moved.
Theres also a disturbing passage about possible complicity by the United Nations in Hezbollahs many deadly ambushes of Israeli troops.
UNIFIL was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It consisted of roughly 2,000 troops stationed along the Lebanese-Israeli border from 1978 until the end of the 2006 war. Its mandate required full impartiality and objectivity.
During the war, it published information on its official website about Israeli troop movements, information that in military circles might well be regarded as actionable intelligence.
Take, for instance, its posting of July 25, 2006:
Yesterday and during last night, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north towards Bint Jubayl and south towards Yarun.
Or, its posting of July 24, which disclosed that IDF forces stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers.
It was part of UNIFILs responsibility to report violations of the ceasefire, including troop movements, to the U.N., but presumably this information was to be conveyed through confidential channels, not on the Internet, where the information in wartime could be as valuable as hard, military intelligence suddenly exposed to the light.
These postings, similar to others during the war, coincided with heavy fighting in the region. Israeli units came under severe Hezbollah attack.
It is impossible for outsiders to know whether Hezbollah used the information provided by UNIFIL, which was available to anyone with a laptop, or whether Hezbollah depended primarily upon information provided by loyal local supporters. However, no UNIFIL posting during the war contained any specific information relating to Hezbollahs military movements, perhaps because they were not visible to UNIFIL or perhaps because UNIFIL did not choose to see the movements.
Frida Ghitis at World Politics Watch has an outstanding write up on the report. She points out the increasing role media coverage plays in a non-state strategy of asymmetric warfare.
Before long, Hezbollah had achieved a definitive propaganda victory. The media had not only acquiesced to tell Hezbollah’s version of the war, they had started contributing to the creation of the narrative, with at least one Reuters photographer altering photographs to make Israeli attacks look more damaging. And many reporters simply failed to offer much context. The study quotes the New York Times’ Stephen Erlanger commenting on a satellite picture published by his paper. The picture showed a southern suburb of Beirut, which was largely destroyed. Erlanger said it “bothered me a great deal,” because the image with no context failed to show that this was a small part of a Beirut, and the rest of the city was largely undamaged by the war.
The Harvard paper shows the need for journalists to brace themselves and remain vigilant when they cover conflicts between open societies on one side, and media-controlling militias on the other. These conflicts, which we will undoubtedly continue to see, demand that journalists make a greater effort to provide context and to keep from become willing collaborators with one side. Islamic militant groups, such as al-Qaida and others, have openly described their strategy of manipulating the media and winning on the “information battlefield.” Hezbollah, too, had a well crafted, and ultimately successful media plan.
I cant help but recognize the timing of this report, which comes as Congress votes to cede the battle of Iraq to Islamic extremists based on coverage of daily carnage and continued U.S. military deaths. As Kalb sums up:
In an open society, ground rules may be announced, but they are not likely to be observed or enforced. During the 2006 summertime war in the Middle East, it was Israel versus Hezbollah, led by the charismatic Hassan Nasrallah, and because Israel did not win the war, it is judged to have lost. In Iraq, in the not too distant future, it may well be the United States versus the Mahdi Army, led by the equally charismatic Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr. The challenge for responsible journalists covering asymmetrical warfare, especially in this age of the Internet, is new, awesome and frightening.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting critique of the journalism surrounding the affair, and I appreciate the overall advice of remaining objective (though that’s rather vague). But I’m curious on what can our warfighters do better to ensure that they succeed on the “information front” as well as others?
For example, on the topic of casualty reports, what is the reasoning behind our stance of making no official estimates, and even criminalizing the attempt to do so? If we had *some* number it would seem to show that we at least are tracking it and trying to minimize it over time. But without an official number the journalists have few options but to go with comes from the other side.
Are there any other examples of areas we can improve our information and thereby improve its objective coverage?
-david
Mr Barret, I don’t think that our side releasing estimates of enemy casualties is a good tactic in the “information war”. Civilians are very sensitive to those figures and many people would share your view that we should be trying to minimize enemy casualty rates. But, and I hope I don’t sound glib, that is precisely the wrong way to win a war. Building armies and then not using them to full effect is good for civilian morale, because they get to feel safe behind such a force, and there are fewer moral questions about casualty rates. But as far as winning a war goes, full effect is what needs to be done. I believe it was Patton that said “There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.”. Unfortunately, that simple truth when turned into a decontextualised number, in a vain attempt to quantify the effects of war, looks bad in the morning paper.
Regards,
Jim Harvey
I believe the reason we don’t keep a running tally of killed enemies has something to do with Vietnam body-counts. Try reading “The Best and the Brightest” by the (now) late-David Halberstam. When you’re fighting an asymmetrical war, body counts don’t really matter, and it’s easy to get hung up on numbers which are essentially abstract (although gruesome).
Now, forgive me here cuz what im goin to say is quite politically incorrect. So, the liberal and faint of heart should turn away.
Anyway, I say that the civilians are not the Sailors avoiding torpedos; are not the Airmen takin AA fire; and are not the Soldiers keeping their guard up every minute of the day so they can stay alive for another day of hostile fire. When you are blowing up the ship/SAM/soldier shooting at you, your morals are not on your mind, but rather you are thinking, “who is going to be faster? Which one of us is goin to be able to come home again?” I just wish that more civilains would realize that war is the most Darwinian of all situations; most every scenario in war is “If i dont kill him, he will kill me”. Once the civilians truly understand that before they complain, then i cannot be annoyed with them when they whine about us. Its when they get whiney about the war without realizing that we put our lives on the line every day that i wish they would just shut their damn pie holes.
At the risk of provoking another little tantrum from Christian — did you ever stop to think that anti-Israeli “bias” is inherent, inevitable, inescapable with the disposition of forces as they are? I doubt very much that Hezbollah is a pack of beautiful souls — but they aren’t the guys flying helicopter gunships. For good or ill, to most observers they at least appear to be underdogs, and that’s an enormous advantage in a conflict in which psychology and perception is so central. As Martin Crevald points out, behemoth militaries that take on “weaker” irregulars are in a no-win situation, at least in a moral sense.
But does Christian even know who Crevald is? It’s hard for me to believe that he does, given his apparent determination to discredit this hitherto fine site.
I personally think people that get their panties all in a bunch about the freakin media coverage – and think THAT is the most critical factor in ‘winning’ an asymetrical conflict – are losing their perpective about the tactical situation on the ground.
The MSM is almost always clueless and prone to sensationalize and reduce any complicated situation to something they can fit in a headline… and every 5th grader can understand.
The fact is, if you control the tactical situation the ground, YOU control the conflict.
and Israel did not control the tactical situation in that conflict. If they would have, the MSM’s narrative – either way – would have meant nothing.
For the first 30 years of Israels exsistance it was always the underdog, always surrounded. Since the intial 80′s invasion of Lebanon, thru the “uprisings” where IDF were seen as using guns against rocks (in the media) to the current Lebanese operation there has been a shift in perception. While I agree with their need and right to use whatever force necessary the framing in the media has really turned against them, making them out to be the bullies. It’s crap but it is what it is, unfortunately.
I was more interested in your comment at the end, asking if American coverage of our own war in Iraq was unfair, and causing a premature retreat.
I have two comments:
First, the Bush administration, and the American government in general, has lost a great deal of respect during this war. Sadam Hussein was a dangerous, evil man who would have loved to have and atomic bomb, but he didn’t. He associated with many dangerous evil me, but Bin Laden wasn’t one of them. Iraqis hated him but weren’t ready to greet us with open arms and have a pluralistic, democratic state. After hearing our leaders get it wrong for so long, I generally look on any good news out of Iraq with a jaundiced eye. Currently voters and politicians have to choose between eating defeat now and hanging on for a possible victory, years away at best. At this point I don’t think there is anyone left in government I trust to tell me exactly what the cost of victory is so I can weigh the benefits.
The second point is simpler. There’s been a lot of bad news out of Iraq because there are a lot of bad events to report. When reporters tell me that extremist Shiites are using the Interior Ministry to run death squads, I suspect it’s because that’s the truth.
Positive reporting will come from significant improvement on the ground not the other way around. From what I can see, that success can only come from the Iraqi government , not our military.
The odds of that seem low and the reporters know it.
-Alexander Gray
PS Feel free to criticize but be gentle. It’s my first post.
Ok. here is the deal with Isreal and Palastine.
The media is biased. If you say otherwise, you are ignorant. Lets look back to WW2. Hitler f*ks with the Jews. We win the war. We feel bad for the Jews. So, we think to ourselves(the UN), “hmmm. I know what we can do. lets give ‘em their own country”. So what do they do? They decide to give them their country from like 2000 years ago. Since the Jews were there last, the Palestinians moved in. Well, our brilliant UN decides to tell the Palestinians, who have now been living there for centuries, to f**k off and go away. So, due to their brilliant idea, everyone goes home happy. Except for Palestine, because we gave their homes to the Jews. Great idea. Why do you think Palestine is pissed? I would be too. Dont get me wrong though. Hezbollah is a bunch of assholes as far as Im concerned, but i cant dissagree with their cause. So, if its all the same, I agree that we should have done something for the Jews after WW2, but i cant blame Palestine one bit.
And as far as the media coverage and the war in Iraq and oil, i agree with Killroy. Every word he just said.
I do not believe that any war saw ever accurate press coverage.
The Arabs were more proficient than the Israelis in the manipulation of the press? Well, the Israelis manipulated media for decades in their own interest and the Arabs learned a bit .. slowly. Shit happens.
Everybody tries to manipulate the media as soon as he’s engaged in politics.
If you want o get accurate information on a war then you have to wait for a generation and go to a country that was neither involved nor allied with one party. You might find unbiased information. Probably.
For this conflict, I’d read some Indian or Brazilian history acounts by 2040. Well, Indian accounts would probably be in English, so more likely the Indian one.
BBS, you have it a little wrong on Israel my friend. Sure the “palestinians” (Syrians, Turks/Ottomans, Persians, Kurds-Saladin was a Kurd, Christians, any many more in and out over the years)had been hanging around (or squatting depending on your POV)since the diaspora, but the Jews had purchased something like 50-60% of the land the UN ended up “giving” to them in the mandate during the British period. There was an immediate war, in which they “won” what they had been given and of course have had to fight tooth and nail to keep it ever since.
Kilroy, bring it down a notch bro. And BTW Noah’s got his own issues at his new site so chill on Christian will ya?
Israel, the worlds second most advanced military, is just pissed off it lost the war. This is extremely damaging to it’s image. Excuses must be found, attention must be diverted, blame must be placed on “others” etc.
“second most advanced military”?
It bases its reputation on a war 34 years ago, another war even 40 years ago and a couple commando actions since then,.
It uses top modern equipment as well as very old junk and cannot adequately equip its reserve troops.
Old conventional warfare skills have degraded due occupation duties and long peacetime. They had quite the same difficulties in 2003 as in 1982 – apparently they’re quite incapable to fight in rugged, hilly terrain and even incapable to keep lessons learned and consequences for two decades.
A weakness that makes 34-40 year-old combat records quite useless, especially when we consider that about any force in the world seems to be able to beat Arab armies in conventional combat.
Sorry, but the IDF is imho one of the most overrated militaries in the world, together with what I guess you think of the most advanced one (I think of the one which loses against underequipped light infantry opponents all the time but costs more than almost every national state budget).
Before anybody complains; yes, I believe that my nation’s military is also somewhat overrated.
Look at the number of civlian casualties on each side during the conflict to get to the core of the matter.
How many Israeli civilians were killed?
43
And how many Lebanese?
1,123
(plus an additional 29 killed since the conflict by mines or cluster bombs.)
Christian,
On UNIFIL ‘aiding’ Hezbollah – how about noting to readers who might not know that, UN military observers use non-scrambled radios for the exact purpose that all sides can listen in on the communications. If they used scrambled ones the Israelis could with some effort listen in, but noone else could – in effect being partial to Israel. Posting their sitreps later onto the website really isn’t giving anyone who is interested anything new.
What I’d like to know is why the report doesn’t mention with one word the fact that the Israeli Air Force specifically targeted a UN MilObs Observation post. At least much of the U.S. media seemed to eat up the Israeli argument that it was a mistake. Some mistake: first you shell the place for over six hours – and despite at least five requests-demands to cease fire continue – and then put a guided munition on the house, getting away with calling it a mistake is crap journalism. That they bombed the OP because it was one of the ones doing its job, reporting on troop movements, is very likely, but obviously not an excuse.
“There
Kilroy,
Thanks for the comment and continued interest in Defense Tech. But do me a favor bro. I don’t mind all the insults aimed at me, but please keep the four-letter words to a minimum. We try to keep the discussion civil here.
Thanks…
I am shocked by the number of people even here on a military site can’t seem to get there mind around that fact that 99% of the time the Media is talking out it’s ass and giving it’s opinion.
Here’s a test. If you are listening to the news and you here the ‘reporter’ say the words I or me or We. 90% of the time or more they are not the people you want to listen to.
Opinion is not news, it’s important and people should listen to others opinions but they are not news. News is the facts, as many and as truthful as they can be made.
Personally I think a good reporter is alot like a good scientist. When a good scientist does an experement he doesn’t care how it turns out, he is just in it to find out the facts. When a good reporter does the news they don’t care about right and wrong, or if the side they like is winning, they just want to find the facts.
Where’d you get that photo? Whoever photoshopped it should have used the clone stamp so the smoke didn’t repeat exactly.
;)
Keep up the good work
Dont let the sheep grind you down.
Nobody should trust journalist all hte way, but some are better then others. One has to be carefull on what one believes or takes as a truth, everyone has a certain bias, aware or unaware, it’s up to the reader to decide how much he trusts it.
A great danger is the news that is picked up by one journalist, and then is reporduced again and again but all kinds of media, until it reaches the big news outlets, and then usually it’s all skewed and turned into a marketing material.
Of course there’s allways people that arent straigt up and are deliberatly trying to influence with non-truths for there own agenda. Groups with a political motivation cant be trusted, same as groups like Human Rights Watch: they do good work but are sensitive to the need to exagerate (so to make more impact and maybe get more good thing done).
Politicans, mainstream journalists, speechgroups and the lot cant be trusted: they are no gentleman.
A grain of salt anyone?
“Kilroy”
“I just can’t talk about Iraq without getting upset anymore. And am sick to death of hearing ‘talking points’ regurgitated at me. ”
Then why are YOU repeating the talking points?!! Why do you regurgitate them to us-when they don’t reflect the situation.
You are a huge hypocrite, who likes to cherry pick quotes to suit your own ends. You’re sick.
As for the reporting, it’s edited to sensationalize-pick on Fox News if you want-they do it too, but I don’t care what reporters think anymore-the’ve been the big failure here. From the NY Times editing stories about 3rd ACR because soldiers were “too heroic” to Newsweek flushing Korans down the toilet they’ve been a failure.
When I left Iraq I was shocked to see news reports that bore no resemblence to what was happening. People like Kilroy eat that up.
Keep it up Christian.
Someone has been using the photoshop clone tool to enhance the amount of smoke in their photos.
John and Phillip Shade,
Where you been? That photo is old news from AP in Lebanon, one of many doc’d pics.
Ok,
I am not a fan of Hizbollah, but quite the oposite.
I was there during the war sir. Not in Cyprus where you cannot see the smoke on the hills or hear the bombs falling on Lebanon. I was’nt either in the US Embassy which surrounding area was a no flight zone (and consequently not a bombing zone).
What can I say more. There was a war. Life was not going on as normal, and we where like zombies, disgusted, trying to “live normally” as a sign of resignation.
Life was going on normally there. What you wrote os not true. It is distorded… in a sick manner. But hey, what can say. You are free to say what you waant. The only thing I regret is that the picture you are showing, even though it was manipulated (to make the smoke look darker) it doesn’t let you feel the burning of your eyes when it comes down on residential areas.
Next time you want to cover a war, just dont stay in a remote area and give your opinion.
I am not surprised you didn’t see bombs, hear explosions… Cyprus is some 275 Km away from the war theater.
Keep up the good work and pretend to be a journalist.
N.
This proves they are dark ones indeed!It’s called,
the worship of “The god of fortresses,”whom their
fathers knew not!”They are literally,revealing,Anti-Christ…
Others playing RO, I also play RO, but I played the RO is very different of others. I have not practiced my own, did not earn my own IRO zeny. There are even some time even transferred I do not what is.
Premium characters of level 20 or higher Tibia money can be promoted to a veteran rank which results in several important advantages over regular characters.
In deep space lies a space ship called the Leviathan, and the Fallen are trying to power it with Requiem gold the souls of all the innocents of Creation for an evil purpose. Recognizing the Fallen’s plot, the Chosen (the good angels) have sent you, the angel Malachi, to Creation to stop the Fallen.
I was a sad loss of the same things will be long, so I order to commemorate the my 17 days of the 2moons. I only know that in the game the 2moons dil is very important.
I played this game already have more than one year, at that time I do not want to spend my time to the game, but later I met her, in my life she was very important, we together to earn the dofus kamas, I think this lifetime I will never forget.