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EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION he lie?” The report leaned to a toned-down “all presidents use selective interpretation”. A week earlier, in contrast, the Economist in London put a picture of Tony Blair on its cover with less equivocation and beating around the bush. It blared about Blair: “LIAR.” In testimony before a Parliamentary Committee, Clare Short, one of Blair’s Minister who resigned in protest, catalogued deliberate distortion in her former Government’s position. She called it – echoing the title of this book – “Honorable Deception.” In the United States, the focus has been on intelligence failings and how the Administration abused its spy agencies and concocted a threat that was not there to stage a war that may not have been needed. This focus has been misplaced – and even so – not fully pursued. As Maureen Dowd put it in late June: “They’re scrutinizing who gathered the intelligence rather than those who pushed to distort it.” For more detail on this whole sordid tale, see the New Republic’s take out, Deception and Democracy in its June 30th, 2003, issue. The magazine focuses on government deception. This book looks at how media outlets bought this whole distorted story, and then brought it to the rest of us. This book was rushed out almost like a Samizdat publication in the old Soviet Union; clearly, it lacks the more considered perspective of the many that will follow. There is more to dig up and some of it may lead believers in a free press to throw up, That does not mean that many American journalists are willing to concede they had been used and had their trust abused. Few see a connection between the June 2nd, 2003, FCC rule changes that sailed through a body headed by the son of 260 the Secretary of State as a reward to media companies for a job well done. Many media people remain defensive, far more willing to point their fingers at government deception than their own. “I really want to read a book by someone who wasn’t there,” was the dismissive response I received when I offered to send this book to a military correspondent on a newspaper in Atlanta. That may sound like fair point. But, the fact is that many of those who were there had no idea of the picture that most of were getting, or how it was hyped, exaggerated and shorn of context. The value of news has to be evaluated by its consumers, not its originators. Writes Chris Hedges who has covered many wars for the New York Times: “I doubt that the journalists filing the hollow reports from Iraq, in which there are images but rarely any content, are aware of how they are being manipulated. They, like everyone else, believe. But when they look back, they will find that war is always about betrayal.” He believes that journalists are used to disseminate myths, justify war and boost the morale of soldiers and civilians. “The lie in war time is always the lie of omission,” he wrote in The Nation. Perhaps it’s too soon for many in the media to recognize these truths. At the same time, I am sure that much of what I have to say, and perhaps even how I say it, is far too “unobjective” for many in the media trenches to “get.” Most distrust personality-inflected commentary from independent journalists who deviate or dissent from the straight and narrow, or even from the more predictable left-right divide. In the words of Lord Tennyson, “Theirs is not
to reason why.” Sometimes, not to reason at all. So Ed, I just wanted you to you to know that war reporting today has become just as controversial as some of your programs on the red scare were way back when. I am writing to you on my 61st Birthday. I am thinking of how in the early l960s, you left broadcasting to lead the Voice of America. (A few years later your partner Fred Friendly who went on to head CBS News would quit when the network refused to broadcast an important hearing on the Vietnam War and instead ran reruns of I Love Lucy). WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 261 War coverage built your career, Ed. A war ended your partner’s network presidency. And, it is war and its coverage that still defines the media in these times. My hunch is that the analysis offered in these pages may have seemed too far out to some in the war’s immediate aftermath, but will, in its essentials, be accepted down the line. As you put it once, “the obscure we see eventually. The completely apparent takes a little longer.” Danny Schechter June 27, 2003
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EMBEDDED . WEAPONS OF MASS HOW THE
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EMBEDDED
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EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTI
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DEDICATION To all who fought and th
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PROLOGUE TO A POST LOG IT is safe t
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or was persuaded by its storyline.
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BLOGGING THE WAR AWAY ew of us esca
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aging the perceptions” of those w
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The embedded journalist THIS book f
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as if it was the property of, and i
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Middle Eastern studies and internat
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world. Clearly some of it brought b
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“Can there be a democracy when th
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TRAINING MEDIA FOR WAR By KATHLEEN
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unprecedented access to the war in
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depicted people hit by weapons. Med
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The data confirming that we were il
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what really transpired in the brief
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What is the connection between the
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emain in Afghanistan, and they may
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studs? Were readers and viewers wel
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competitors, like CNN and MSNBC, to
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NEW YORK / FEBRUARY 24, 2003 IRAQI
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WAR CALLS AND THE NEWS BIZ RUSHES T
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seem to want to be in the media mor
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more can be made of.” Underscore
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dent would only go to Strasbourg to
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The media is the illusion I LOVE th
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to the problems facing journalists
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major organs, and clostridium perfr
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nalism.” The problem is that abse
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Redstone [chairman, CEO, Viacom] ha
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And what about Arab news outlets wi
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“[A] NEW and subtler instrument m
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NEW YORK,MARCH 17,2003 WASHINGTON D
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(who, overseas readers should be aw
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PBS to the Rescue SURELY there were
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can we do here? 1) Rumsfeld has alr
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Phillip Rochot, a respected reporte
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attlefield. So having journalists h
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NEW YORK,MARCH 19,2003 RIGHT WING L
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CNN later quietly settled with them
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War dances or not, there clearly is
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sources, military types, other CC n
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which missed the signals for 9/11.
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oadcast industry are now seeking, i
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most of the rest of the world out o
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the time? According to Samantha Pow
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By GREG MITCHELL THE war is only a
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NEW YORK, MARCH 25, 2003 IS THE INV
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demoralized by the enemy’s fierce
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eral Wesley Clark, former supreme a
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www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm
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500 embedded reporters, who natural
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Put this warning on your TV set FIN
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interest up close and personal stor
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Reporting or distorting? HOW do we
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lessly by a stable of resident ‘e
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ians, torn to pieces before they co
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emphasized that bombing a televisio
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cated surveillance equipment and is
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Myers yesterday blasted critics of
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interviews that Secretary of Defens
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information is probably more freely
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BATTLEFIELD BLUES WAR AS ONE BIG JO
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NEW YORK, MARCH 25, 2003 INVADERS F
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clients. “Air the National Anthem
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“The right-wing media and politic
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eporter as they come. They used a r
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Their Master’s Voice YEARS ago, R
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alongside the reporters in Iraq,”
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What are we seeing? Last night Aaro
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cell door was closed and the click
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SURROUNDING BAGHDAD WORDS OF THE WI
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NEW YORK, APRIL 3, 2003 DEATH TOLL
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APRIL 4: WHAT WOULD DR. KING SAY AB
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ance, bad weather and vulnerable su
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It’s an invasion, not a war. It
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Arnett back on the air PETER ARNETT
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eport is compromised.” “When a
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Red Cross horrified IT was in the C
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military conflict, it is getting ug
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offer a useful framework to integra
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eporters and photographers out of t
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Peter Wilson, London correspondent
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used on television). J - Jihad, Jih
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NEW YORK, APRIL 10, 2003: LOOTING E
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EMBEDDED: SO, WEAPONS THIS IS OF VI
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could see bullets flying and then w
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in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussei
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could this all be part of the plan?
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Off the charts IN FACT, there was a
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The CIA role: Out of sight, not out
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assess each market whenever a compa
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although we never met. It was his b
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Page 213 and 214: Off with their heads JOURNALISTS wh
Page 215 and 216: esearcher David Miller of Stirling
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Page 223 and 224: or downloading video games that are
Page 225 and 226: its case. If it does not, the world
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Page 235 and 236: NEW YORK, MAY 30, 2003 AFTER THE WA
Page 237 and 238: As Linda McQuaig wrote in the Toron
Page 239: REMEMBERING THE FALLEN SOME FACTS F
Page 243 and 244: A CALL FOR MEDIA ACTIVISM Now’s t
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Page 247 and 248: A MILITARY VIEW EVEN experienced mi
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Page 251 and 252: “media.” That is a dangerous wo
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Page 261: had when our voices could reach onl
Page 265: “March 10. Pro-Government rallies
Page 269 and 270: MEDIA TENOR (BONN) THE WAR AGAINST
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Page 273 and 274: actions to that of international po
Page 275 and 276: But, surprisingly, protests did not
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Page 279: of the war,” citing Nielsen Media
Page 283 and 284: NEW YORK, OCTOBER 10, 2003 COVERING
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Page 287 and 288: BBC and the leading lights of the A
Page 289 and 290: had taken off. This time, there wer
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Page 293 and 294: they play to engineering consent, a
Page 295: LAST WORDS
Page 299: CREDITS
Page 302 and 303: EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
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