Pentagon's Strategy for the Press: Good News or No News

This article for the most part sums up the pool system and the way it worked during wartime. The U.S military gives the reporters restrictions and limited their way to get information and that's why they created the pool system. Reporters felt as though they were unable to do things by themselves and they thought that by them not being able gather information they would liked to have, it is blocking their reporting. Under the Pentagon rules, they decided which groups of people are able to go and visit the military. The Pentagon can also decide what can be shown on television and what can be written in a story. They can also tell the soldiers what they are aloud to say and that is because the soldiers do not want any information getting back to enemies and it gave them a lesson from Vietnam: to keep the wars short and keep the news media controlled in the first days of the war. Under the Pentagon, you had to be chosen to be in a pool and if you weren't part of a pool you would have to get your information from someone that was. Reporters has to be careful of what they said and did, because if the Pentagon did not approve they would take away their access to information. If they write an amazing story, but do something to upset the Pentagon, they will get taken out immediately. LeMoyne talks about an example of how the Pentagon took away the priviledge to talk to Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf because their last story that had been published has Army enlisted men who were talking badly of President Bush and was asking why they were being sent to Saudi Arabia. If you were in a pool, the Pentagon took care of all your needs and made sure that you were secure. A lot of the reporters in Saudi Arabia spend a small amount of time or no time in the field and have restricted knowledge of certain commanders and units. The pools system is a very smart system but does not work for large wars.

Dancing with the fetters

when we go over the news broadcasting during Gulf War, we can't fail to realize the atmosphere of propaganda around. images like yellow ribbons indicating support for the war, state-of-the-art weapons industriously conducting their sacred missions, valiant soldiers posing the victory gestures, to list a few, are everywhere at any possible time. the fact that all these images were repeated again and again is not only a clear indication of propaganda method that created such a frame for people to get into, but also to some extent revealed the reality of the lack of access to in-depth information about the war. in other words, the media could only dance with the fetters.

as we know, due to the strict restriction posed by the government, the media could only get very limited amount of biased inforamtion that Pentagon would like to convey to the general audience, however, they have to make full use of these pieces of imformation to devise a complete drama that can arouse emotion in the audience, therefore, control their eyes. thus, they explored all methods to dance well. with the help of high-tech graphic, music and image processing, they made themselves look like master of the war who present the war to the home front from all perspectives. they competed with their counterparts not by the contents, since most of them were from the government and theorfore the same, but by the their packaging skills. in other words, who got the most professional advertising experts, who would win the market. in this sense, the media made the dance which may originally look awkward seem natural and passionate. they did dance well, but with the fetters.

Selling Babies-Chapter 2

In chapter 2 in Second Front titled Selling babies it talks about the occupation of Iraq and hoe the army was systematically looting. The Iraqi army had gone to a hospital, went to the baby unit and drew all the babies out of the incubators and the soldiers stole the machines to take them back to Iraq. The war needed to be opposed by anyone who was humane. This story turns out to be un-true. What MacArthur is arguing is that Americans didn't know what Iraq was and didn't even know who Hussein was and needed to be convinced. The goal was to create a set of oppositions between good and evil. During the 1980's the revolution in Iran changed our relationship with the Middle East and we became afraid of the Shi'ite uprising. Hill and Knowlton talked about how you need experts to cover the war. The best way to shape a story like Chomsky said, is sourcing. They organized and facilitated experts to shape an image of Kuwait as an underdog. They took surveys to find out what people knew about Kuwait and they took the results to make a campaign and turn it into a positive image of Kuwait.

No News is No News

The Gulf War was not the only battle going during the early 90’s. There was another waging on American soil. That was the between the Pentagon and the Press. The United States government enforced heavy censorship prier, during, and after the war. It was I quote “A matter of national Security.” This was the way in which the government was able to funnel to the American people the information that they wanted them to hear and know. The Gulf war was one that was well planned, it was precise, technologically advanced, accurate and swift. Such was the propaganda and information that was released to the American people. The struggle that was experienced by the press was a difficult not only because of the limitations that was placed on them by censorship, but because of their own desire to gain power and economic greed. CNN was caught between a rock and a hard place I believe. Although it was only given limited and shallow blurbs and clips of information it did not make this clear to the American people. It is the duty of the media to fight for the right to free access of information for the American people. However, the government used CNN like a puppet. The Pentagon forwarded CNN first it’s analyzes of the war and vague information. CNN was forwarded maps and clips of the advanced technology for our clean cut war. It was given right to every press conference and every retired War General. For two months CNN and all other 24 hrs news networks rating sky rocketed therefore, there was no conversation about what they did not know. That would not help ratings…

John Anthony Termini

Manipulating Hearts and Minds

A lot of times the media only report on what they want you to know and not what you need to know. The media is also another form of enertainment. There was one piece that really stuck in my mind in the is read and that was "a paid advertisting in the New York times, on march 18, 1991, weeks after the war's end, by a private group of japanese citizens made an impassioned statement against the use of military force in international disoutes. From the advertisment it can be learned what one whould never have know from eariler media covergae- that the war has been widely oppose in japan"" no recognition of this can be fount in the american media". this statement proves that the media reports on what they want you to know and now what you need to know.

Media Control:Noam Chomsky

The reading starts off with Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Creel Commission in WWI. It talks about how the media has come to serve as factor of propaganda for the governments in the West, particularly America. The Creel Commission, like Chomsky says, didn't only show the public relations industry the way, but it also turned "a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population", and set a example for future establishments. He looks at the relationships and roles of the media, controlling powers, and intelligent people at a blistering pace. Specific examples he looks at are the contrast in media coverage between the biography of Armando Valladares who was distorted under the Castro establishment, and a report by Herbert Anaya and other members of the Human Rights Group of El Salvador talking about numerous times they were tortured. The end of the reading shows how propaganda techniques have been used during the current and previous Gulf War. The reading is written from the perspective of the propaganda manufacturers and commissioners rather that of the disturbed civilian. He presents facts that will make you open your eyes and will make you realize things on your own.

Hotel Warriors

In Hotel Warriors I found the use of sepreate propaganda machines very interesting. Each department of the military having their own branch of public relations, in this war, gave us skewed accounts of the action during this war. I wonder if our view of the war would have been a different view if we had seen more of the Army's actions. Perhaps we would have seen through all the things telling us this was going quickly and easily.

More Viewing, Less Knowledge

Michael Morgan's article basically argues that the more people know about the war, the less likely they they are to support it. I believe this to be true because if more people were aware that the entire war is more about protecting oil than it was about going after Saddam Hussein, they wouldn't support it at all. I also think that it could go the other way. For example, if people don't know enough, some wouldn't support the war based on rumors. In the end, I think its best to keep the public informed. After all, isn't that what democracy is all about?

Hotel Warriors

Hotel Warriors is based on Fialka's own experiences as a reporter and other journalists who covered the Gulf War. The book is a un-rehearsed and frightening account of what if was like reporting and living the war. Fialka sees the media as something that can't be digested fed to the military-handling system that did not have adequate resources to cover the war. "As Mr. Fialka shows us, access and communications were what too many Army units failed to provide-and as a result, the public did not get a clear, timely picture of the crucial Army effort, and effort that revealed the troops, their equipment, and their commanders in the great test of combat." Fialks discusses this in the parts before the chapters. Basically the war did not have coverage that he felt an audience should see. He felt as though they should see what the soldiers actually do, and what they go through. The war is very important and needs the right coverage in order to hold an audience's attention. The war coverage to the media is also very important and they will do anything by any means necessary to get the information they want. They will try and beat the pool system to get coverage if that's what it comes down to.

Good News or No News

this article written by LeMoyne basically is talking about all of the restrictions that were put on the media and how they were really unable to tell the real story. The military would arrange these meetings or press pools where the story would be told to the media in the way that made the story persuasive and make the public support the war. The media then had to show its report to military censors and make sure that it was okay for television. The story that finally came out was a watered down version of what is really going on. "Reporters covering the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf region are operating under restrictions imposed by the United States military that, among other things, bar them from traveling without a military escort, limit their forays into the field to small escorted groups called pools, and require all reports to be cleared by military censors" (LeMoyne). The news coverage that we got during the first Gulf War was a more watered down than the coverage we have for this war. The news during the first war was almost like it was scripted and set up so that the military and government always seemed to look like it was doing the right thing so that public support would always be there. That is why the public could never really form a true opinion on the war, because the government was controlling what they saw and learned about the war. Although it is still going on today a little bit, we still are able to find out the truth about what is really going on through other sources.

Viewers on the front lines By:Caryn James

This article really brought to light what viewers were going through during the Gulf War. People were watching bombings, and getting mixed or unreliable reports from the front line. "For viewers watching the war means staying alert, reading between the censored lines, sorting through partial information, decoding reporters messages... a passive medium". Watching television during this time was not as simple as one might think. People couldn't really believe what they where hearing on the news until they were sure it was true, this to me seems like a lot of work for just wanting to hear/see the news.

Watching the War

In this article by Caryln James, he talks about a bomb that fell on Tel Aviv and how the the television and people were glued to the tv to see what happened. One channel (CBS) cut from its regualary televised showing to show clips of the bombing that was going on. During this there were censors show the reporters had to watch what they had said. The reporters were doing everything they could to get the story and make sure it was right. "For viewers, watching the war means staying alert, reading between the censored lines, sorting through partial information decoding reporters messages". Since they had the censoring they really had to watch what the said and were nervous to say something that might get them into trouble. Censoring is a big deal in a war. One viewer that was on the "Donahue" show and didnt want to hear anything about what was going until the newpeople could say it was true. Lastly he states in the article about how sometimes a reporter is limited to the war so he will use pictures as visuals if they cant get anything. Reporters want to try to get anything they can as long as they cant get into trouble.

No News Is No News

In Schiffer and Rinzler's article they talk about restrictions and the little information they are getting from the Gulf war. The pentagon are putting a lot of restrictions on the media. "The restrtictions are presented as necessary to protect the national interest, and few would argue in favor of media reports that place the troops in danger". They want to try their hardest to put these restrtiction on the media so the viewers would not have to see raw footage of the war. Also because of the Pentagons restritctions they can't get their storys right. " The U.S. Government has a long tradition of imposing wartime restrictions on the press". This shows how the government has the power to control the press especiallu during the war. The Pentagon put this restrtictions on after the Vietnam war when their was no censorship and states that it was to horrifying to see such clips on television. After this they placed the restrictions on the media on Grenada and Panama.

The first FUCK of a Soldier

The first FUCK of a Soldier

"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."
-----Anthony Swofford, "Jarhead", 2003

For both pro-war organizations and anti-war campaigns, veterans will always be the pop-star. They will be highly decorated and welcomed in most public demonstrations; their opinions about war and the war efforts were often citied. For American public, no matter how much books a scholar may have read about one specific war, their opinions are much less persuasive that of those veterans from the battlefield. If the veteran was actually shot in the battle, his words often carries more weight than anybody else.
However, being shot does not mean higher intelligence, and more than that, it does not even mean definite braveness.
However, most veterans do not know much about the reasons of war. Their experience from the battlefield were for most of the time, subjective and emotional, when they general public take their opinion as the standard about the war, they often neglect one thing about those veterans that as participants of the war, they often have no clue about how the war was about as a whole.
Anthony Swofford did an excellent job in giving us an idea about what a war is really about for a soldier in it. Ironically, when reporters were all so eager to have direct contact with G.Is on the battlefield, those soldiers were actually taking interviews as an opportunity to be a show star instead of offering voices of their own as people in the role of soldiers.
The military were anxious about complaints from soldiers about the righteousness of the war, however, for soldiers, that is the last thing they want to consider.
For soldier like Swofford, human rights abuses done by Iraqi soldier were nothing astonishing. Instead, they don't care about people from another country to be abused or even tortured by Iraqis--a group of people they have never heard about. As a normal participants of the war, if granted the opportunity, they will do more than the Iraqi had done. They will "rape them all, kill them all, sell their oil, pillage their gold, sell their children into prostitution."
And when we recall the fact that those war-related campaigns often use these people as their prove of their ideas about the war, we should all be astonished that we use to be so attentive about their opinion.

"I don't care about the Flag and God and Country and Corps"

"I don't care about a New World Order. I don’t care about human rights violations in Kuwait City. "

"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."