# data[].attributes.body
There is evidence suggesting that terrorists use the media to their advantage, and feed off of the images thrown around after an attack, for example. This is how they get their point out after an event (9/11 for example), by scaring citizens.

"There is a mutually beneficial relationship b/w terrorism and the media" (See "Terrorists Using the Media To Their Advantage slide)... Because the media gets many views when a catastrophic event occurs, AND the terrorist's actions are known and feared.

# data[].attributes.body
There is evidence for the media helping propagate the framing of the middle eastern "terrorist" image. When 9/11 hit, eyes turned to the middle east and the Arab population. Now, with the help of the media, Arab men and women are stereotyped into being "terrorists". Take airport security for example, many people are "flagged" by security and made to have a more thorough search in case they are related to terrorism.

# data[].attributes.body
Evidence suggests the War on Terror is just an image that was put out there by president Bush, and picked up by journalists and media sources. Some sources say it was absorbed by news reporters, and made it into something much bigger.

# data[].attributes.body
Articles suggest that the government was scared after 9/11 and decided to keep many things quiet, and tried to censor the media and the news. They tried to control what images american citizens saw, but the same images kept popping up everywhere. They thought terrorists could use what the media put out.

# data[].attributes.body
This is the case with terrorism; in order to spread fear and thus advance its political goals, a terrorist organization needs the media. In most cases, terrorist attacks are very localized, and affect only a few people. The goal, however, is to spread the message to more people than just those who were directly hit in the attack. The media play an important role in achieving this by spreading the news of the attacks or even by directly transferring the message of terrorist organizations.

# data[].attributes.headline
Terrorists Using the Media to Their Advantage 

# data[].attributes.subject
Terrorists Using the Media to Their Advantage 

# data[].attributes.body
...the perpetrators’ media-related goals are the same: attention, recognition, and perhaps even a degree of respectability and legitimacy in their various publics. Media, in return, receives the attention of the public that is vital for its existence and benefits from record sales and huge audiences.., It is, therefore, fair to argue that there is a mutually beneficial relationship between terrorism and today’s media.

Accordingly, winning the attention of the media, national and foreign publics, and decision-makers in a government is one of the primary goals of terrorists.

The problem does not lie in why the media covers terrorism, but lies in how the media covers terrorism. It is by and large the case that the media covers terrorist acts by writing sensation-seeking, enlarging anecdotic stories, especially on who is to blame, repeating the same images over and over again, separating physical and mental health consequences of disasters, and creating new syndromes (Vasterman, Yzermans, and Dirkzwager 2005). In addition, the media traumatizes the audience by exaggerating the threats, or, as it was in the case in the US after 9/11, showing nonstop footage of combat scenes (Long 2002).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Recent history, specifically the past decade, has provided plenty of examples of the mutually beneficial relationship between terrorist organizations and the media (Rohner and Frey 2007). As some remarkable terrorist attacks in history indicate, whether it is in the United States (US), Europe, or the Middle East, it is by and large the case that the architects of terrorism exploit the media for the benefit of their operational efficiency, information gathering, recruitment, fund raising, and propaganda schemes (Nacos 2006). In the words of Nacos (2002), whether it is the relatively inconsequential arson by an amateurish environmental group or mass destruction by a network of terrorists, the perpetrators' media-related goals are the same: attention, recognition, and perhaps even a degree of respectability and legitimacy in their various publics (Nacos 2002a). Media, in return, receives the attention of the public that is vital for its existence and benefits from record sales and huge audiences. To put it briefly, just as terrorism has to be communicated to have effect (Seib and Janbek 2011), the media has to cover the incidents in such a way to benefit from the public's eagerness to obtain information about terrorist attacks. It is, therefore, fair to argue that there is a mutually beneficial relationship between terrorism and today's media.

This symbiosis is indeed worth examining in greater detail, as it is as vicious and dangerous as it is largely overlooked. In this study, how and why terrorists utilize media tools, how and why the media covers acts of terrorism, and the coverage in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the US will be examined. To conclude, a way forward to counter the damaging effects of the symbiosis will be provided.
The Media-Related Goals and Means of Terrorists
As Hoffman (2008) argues to explain the above-mentioned symbiosis, "without the media's coverage, the act's impact is arguably wasted, remaining narrowly confined to the immediate victim(s) of the attack, rather than reaching the wider 'target audience' at whom the terrorists' violence is actually aimed." In a similar vein, Stohl (in Staci, Bennett, and Flickinger 2002) argues that terrorists are primarily interested in audience, not the victims, and emphasizes that how the audience reacts is as important as the act itself. Accordingly, winning the attention of the media, national and foreign publics, and decision-makers in a government is one of the primary goals of terrorists. To this end, terrorists carefully select the places in which they carry out their attacks in order to provide the best media coverage. As will be addressed later in greater detail, the obvious example of this is the 9/11 attacks in the US, where a wide variety of media covered the story immediately. Not only was the media able to capture this incredibly visual attack, but the people who were in New York City, residents and tourists alike, were also able to document this event with pictures, videos and personal stories (Baran 2008).

Indeed, the goals of terrorists are not solely confined to winning the attention of the masses. In addition to that, through the media, they aim to publicize their political causes, inform both friends and foes about the motives for terrorist deeds, and explain their rationale for resorting to violence (Nacos 2006). They further aim to be treated like regular, accepted, legitimate world leaders, as the media gives them a similar status. That is to say, for terrorists, the media functions as a tool to shrink the power asymmetry between them and the entity they fight against in an actual and ideological warfare, create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, legitimize their acts, and reach greater audiences. Given these motives, terrorists arguably carry out their attacks rationally and strategically with full awareness of the influence of the media coverage on almost every segment of a society and government officials of almost all levels. To illustrate this, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, argues that "[al-Qaeda is] in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. [Al-Qaeda is] in a media battle for the hearts and minds of the ummah " (Seib and Janbek 2011).

Terrorists' means of communication greatly vary. Indeed, technological advancements and changing audience behavior in the past decade enabled terrorist groups to utilize media tools with greater convenience. Specifically in the years since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union crumbled, the mass media of communication have changed in dramatic ways, mostly because of the global reach of the Internet and cellular phones (Nacos 2002a). The new and emerging media has made it easier for terrorists to publicize their messages to the world via websites at their own discretion and "new technologies have simply allowed the dissemination of terrorist messages to reach a broader audience with a more concise message" (Baran 2008). In the words of Moutot, "terrorists do not really need [printed media] anymore to convey their message. The 'official' media have been replaced by the Internet which, in the end, is much easier to use, much quicker and much more effective" (Nacos 2006). In other words, the Internet has arguably replaced the role of the printed media in the field of terrorism, as, for the first time in history, terrorists can take whatever message and images they decide to straight to the online world, which is global in reach (Klopfenstein in Kavoori 2006). As their stories and messages reach the general public either through the "old" media or the "new" media, terrorists use this publicity specifically in their recruitment efforts. In brief, the Internet clearly increased the scope of terrorist propaganda and activities, and became a perfect tool for terrorists in terms of advancing their operational goals with little expense and risk.

Despite this, the power of other media forms and technologies such as video and audiocassettes, DVDs, video games, popular music, and novels should not be underestimated (Nacos 2002b). Terrorists generally embrace the newest information, follow the latest technological developments to be innovative, and utilize the most up-to-date communication technologies; however, it does not necessarily indicate an absolute shift from old technologies and trends, as, for instance, some terrorist organizations even today rely on hawala, the informal network of money exchanges that dates back to 8 th century (Feldman 2006).

The picture above suggests that terrorists need the media to receive free publicity for their cause, transmit their messages, and garner support, recognition, and legitimacy. Given the emerging trends in the media and communications technology, it is likely that terrorists will employ more innovative tactics to achieve their goals. The following section will discuss how the other side of the equation-the media-portrays terrorism and benefits from it.
How and Why the Media Covers Terrorism-Related Stories
Needless to say, terrorism is an attractive boon for media coverage, mainly because terrorist attacks make viewer ratings surge and profits increase. To be more specific, terrorism has many aspects that make it a very attractive subject for the media, as it has the elements of drama, danger, blood, human tragedy, miracle stories, heroes, shocking footage, and action (Terrorism and the Media 2008). Another reason is that violence is a central and defining quality in contemporary television culture and is critical to the semiotic and financial momentum of contemporary media organizations (Lewis 2005). Indeed, the media has always been interested in reporting terrorism; however, the recent proliferation of television and radio channels, and the emergence of mega-media organizations have resulted in greater competition and insatiable appetites for shocking, sensational "infotainment" that is believed to keep audiences captivated, boost ratings and circulation, and increase profits (Nacos 2006). Also, the part of the reason why the media is that irresponsible and excessively profit-oriented in the context of terrorism is that a considerable number of top media executives today come from the corporate world, but not from the ranks of journalists (Biernatzki 2002).

The problem does not lie in why the media covers terrorism, but lies in how the media covers terrorism. It is by and large the case that the media covers terrorist acts by writing sensation-seeking, enlarging anecdotic stories, especially on who is to blame, repeating the same images over and over again, separating physical and mental health consequences of disasters, and creating new syndromes (Vasterman, Yzermans, and Dirkzwager 2005). In addition, the media traumatizes the audience by exaggerating the threats, or, as it was in the case in the US after 9/11, showing nonstop footage of combat scenes (Long 2002). In other words, as Altheide underlines, the politics of fear is a dominant motif for news and popular culture today. Moreover, within this framework, news reporting about terrorism is linked with "victimization" narratives that make crime, danger, and fear very relevant to everyday experiences (Altheide 2009).

To understand how the media portrays terrorists and covers related stories and news, one should take a closer look at the mediums the media employs. The media generally uses agenda setting and framing to highlight and make certain issues more prominent than others. Agenda setting is the theory that the more attention a media outlet pays to a certain phenomenon, the more importance the public attributes to such an issue (Terrorism and the Media 2008). Framing, on the other hand, is "selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described" (Papacharissi and Oliveira 2008). Thus, the words and images that make up the frame can be distinguished from the rest of the news by their capacity to stimulate support of or opposition to the sides in a political conflict (Entman 2003).

To illustrate this, Muslims and Arabs were discussed and apprehended either as suppliers of oil or as potential terrorists after 9/11. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Islamic world (Nacos and Torres-Reina 2002). In a similar vein, the media covered the 9/11 attacks in such an immediate way that, through its lens, the problematic effect was the death of thousands of civilians in an act of war against America, the cause was terrorists, and the remedy quickly became war against the perpetrators (Entman 2003). As both examples point out, public perception may be negatively affected by the media's rhetoric, its bias toward certain groups, and framing of certain ethnic and/or religious groups as terrorists, and of events as acts of terrorism.

The media indeed profits from the drama terrorism creates, and covers the terrorism-related news in a sensational way. Through employing the above-mentioned mediums, however, the media may directly or indirectly serve the interests of terrorists by simplifying stories for the viewer to the point that it has little to do with the actual events. Repeating the traumatizing scenes and stories may also serve them, as the goal of the terrorists is to be in the media as often and long as possible. In addition, the media's bias and obsession of sensationalism may help them get the upper hand in using media as a tool, create an atmosphere and politics of fear, and create ripe conditions for propaganda and recruitment following any terrorist attack. Given these, it can be argued that the goals and objectives of terrorists are highly related to agenda setting and framing, and that the way media covers news and stories has a crucial impact on the way terrorists communicate, carry out attacks, and gain a foothold in the audiences' daily lives. The better terrorists understand this mechanism behind the media, the more coverage they may receive and take further steps for massive publicity and the opportunity to showcase their ability to strike. One of the most remarkable examples of this, the 9/11 attacks, will be examined in the following section.
The 9/11 Attacks and the Media
Without a doubt, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon near Washington, DC were shocking global media events that dominated public attention and provoked reams of discourse (Kellner 2004). Obviously, terrorists were aware of the fact that attacking the symbolic targets in the US, killing thousands of citizens, and causing a tremendous amount of damage to the American and international economy, as well as the image of the US would be sensational news around the globe.

The response of the media in the US was often far from being objective, calm, and prudent. Instead, media organs oozed hatred and hysteria, calling for action against mainly Arabs and Muslims and crying for revenge, as terrorists would have planned. The major corporate media tended to support the patriotic discourse and the policies of the then president George W. Bush, who was leading the nation against the forces of "political and cosmological evil" (Lewis 2005). This way of media coverage after a traumatic event dramatically changed the public perceptions, discourse at government and public levels, and the way people perceive events and "other" people, specifically ethnic and religious minorities who can be perceived as a "threat". As a result, as Altheide (2009) argues, the discourse of fear has been constructed through news and popular culture accounts and the main discourse of fear has clearly become terrorism in the post 9/11 era. In other words, "9/11 was used by the media and politicians to promote fear related agendas and ideologies. Citizens became accustomed to 'safety rhetoric' by police officials, which often required them to permit police searches, condone 'overaggressive' police action, as well as join in a myriad of crime-prevention efforts, many of which involved more human as well as electronic surveillance of work places, neighborhoods, stores, and even 'bodies'" (Altheide 2009).

The picture above suggests that the architects of the 9/11 attacks achieved their media-centered objectives, as the media conveyed the message that even the US was vulnerable to terror attack, that terrorists could create great harm, and that anyone at any time could be subject to a deadly terror attack. They also succeeded in immersing the US government in "a global information war to promote the interests, values, and the image of the US" (Kavoori and Fraley 2006). Terrorists were obviously aware of the magnitude of sensation their attacks would create; however, the way media covered news and stories rendered it possible for the terrorists to conceive an unimaginable victory in terms of penetrating into the daily lives of a huge audience. They attracted global attention, obtained global recognition, received a degree of respect among sympathizers, and gained legitimacy in the eyes of supporters and potential recruits, through the fear narrative the media employed.
Recommendations
The media plays a central role in the calculus of political violence and are put into positions where they can magnify or minimize these kinds of acts and their perpetrators, or, of course, they can provide coverage that avoids either one of those extremes (Nacos 2002a). Under this light, the recommendations below can be implemented to minimize the media-related effects of terrorism:

1. Desecuritization - There is no doubt that terrorism must be reported. However, the way the events are framed and the extent to which it is covered is also important. Accordingly, in order to alter the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media, it is of high importance for the media to reevaluate and change its rhetoric when covering the terrorism-related news and stories. Just as the security elite can desecuritize issues in international affairs through speech-acts, media can adopt the same approach and desecuritize terrorism-related acts and stories through covering those incidents just as any other story in a more responsible and less "sensational" manner. Achieving this may not only prevent terrorists from using media coverage as an important publicity and recruitment tool, but may also prevent the emergence of an atmosphere of fear at the public level. It may also force government and security elite to make more rational decisions regarding countering terrorism and dealing with public outrage. Hence, news coverage with less repetition of horrific scenes, less traumatization, less sensation and more information and prudence are essential in the first place to break the symbiosis.

2. Objectivity - The media should have a conscious sense of its responsibilities to the public, as one of the goals of terrorists it to shake public confidence in their own security. Thus, objectivity and bipartisanship should be key when reporting a story. The media should present both sides of the story to the audience fairly and accurately without bias, so that the audience can make their own opinion of the news and/or story independent of the media's negative influence. The media coverage of success stories should be balanced with the coverage of failure stories without speculation and dramatization in order to add to the credibility of the source and public order in the aftermath of an attack.

3. Clarity - Since a critical part of counterterrorism is information warfare, it is among the goals of terrorists to misinform the public and exploit the uncertainty and suspicion emerged afterwards. Given these, the media should provide the clearest, most factual, and most balanced information to the extent it is possible to prevent the misinterpretation of terrorism-related incidents by the public and government officials who can possibly make suboptimal decisions regarding the countering moves. The media should especially avoid presenting extreme and blindly partisan viewpoints to raise ratings and use a plain language that everybody can understand in order not to invite panic.

4. Selective use of soft power - Even though some advocate the use of media tools for propaganda against terrorists, specifically in the narrative warfare in radical extremism, this is generally fruitless, given that the media has certain limits and legal and moral obligations, while terrorists do not. It is also counterproductive, as media propoganda amplifies the perceived power of a terrorist organization. Instead, media can be employed as a public affairs and public diplomacy tool instead of a propaganda tool to influence foreign publics and potential recruits. To this end, without propaganda, through the "new" and "traditional" media tools, the extremist narrative can be countered with an equally clear and appealing narrative to deny access to the public terrorists draw their support from.

5. Differentiation - Since no terrorist group is alike, the media should differentiate between different types of terrorism and terrorist groups in order not to provoke and mobilize public against certain ethnic and/or religious minorities. In other words, it is of high importance not to cover news and stories in such a way to contribute to the "otherization" of the group in question and create an "us vs. them" scenario. Such dichotomy can give way to social unrest in multicultural societies that fail to integrate certain groups and trigger further attacks, as the anger and hopelessness become pushing forces for potential recruiters, sympathizers, and even moderates to uprise.

6. Counter cyber-terrorism - The Internet has become a central forum in a global scale for debate among numerous communities that are being directly affected by the global political violence. The communication of violent and oppressive groups has also heavily relied on the Internet. In other words, the age of the Internet has brought an age of online terrorism and enabled terrorists to use the web to recruit, raise money, and spread their messages. Even though the regulation of the media, specifically the Internet, presents a fundamental dilemma due to the inherent tension between censorship and the democratic tradition of free speech, privacy, and press freedom, it is crucial to take countering measures against the cyber activities of terrorists. These measures can include tracking their activities on online forums, following their conservations and activities on social media, and prevent the spread of radicalizing materials from specific websites. In addition to that, enacting laws at national level to punish the ones using the Internet to provoke the public, recruit and train, and propagandize can identify terrorists and prevent a potential attack.

7. Government assistance - Governments can give assistance to media organs by giving the political context and background of any terrorism-related act or story, as it is ideally the ultimate goal of the media to correctly inform the audience. To this end, a government-media partnership that is better informing the public, refuting the arguments of terrorists, and depriving them of the publicity they need can be formed.

Concluding Remarks
Terrorism is a category of political violence, which is intended to influence foreign and domestic governments, as well as communities. Terrorism uses its immediate victims and material targets for semiotic and symbolic purposes (Lewis 2005). Attacks are designed to create an atmosphere of fear or a sense of threat. In the same vein, terrorism can also refer to politically motivated deeds perpetrated by groups or individuals for the sake of communicating messages to a larger audience (Nacos 2002a). In any case, the terrorists' need for media publicity and media's need for a greater audience and profits form a symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media.

This symbiosis is not inevitable. Implementing certain policies that are different than the previous failed policies can facilitate the breaking of that cycle by forcing at least one side of the equation-the media-to act in a more responsible, more conscious, and more cooperative manner. Only then starving the terrorists of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend can become possible and more robust steps can be taken to win the ideological and actual battle against terrorism.
Bibliography
Altheide, David L. 2009. Terror Post 9/11 and the Media. New York: Peter Lang.

Baran, Jessica. 2008. "Terrorism and the Mass Media after Al Qaeda: A Change of Course?" The Peace and Conflict Review 3. Available at: http://www.review.upeace.org/index.cfm?opcion=0&ejemplar=7&entrada=63

Biernatzki, William E. 2002. "Terrorism and Mass Media." Communication Research Trends 21.

Entman, Robert M. 2003. "Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House's Frame After 9/11." Political Communication 20.

Feldman, Robert. 2006. "Fund Transfers - African Terrorists Blend Old and New: Hawala and Satellite Telecommunications." Small Wars and Insurgencies 17.

Hess, Stephen and Marvin Kalb, eds. 2003. The Media and the War on Terrorism. Washington, DC: Brookings.

Kavoori, Anandam P. and Todd Fraley, eds. 2006. Media, Terrorism, and Theory. USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Kellner, Douglas. 2004. "9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation: A Critique of Jihadist and Bush Media Politics." Critical Discourse Studies 1 (April).

Lewis, Jeff. 2005. Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence. London: Pluto Press.

Long, David E. 2002. "Coming to Grips With Terrorism After 11 September." Brown Journal of International Affairs 8 (Winter).

Nacos, Brigitte L. 2002a. Mass-Mediated Terrorism. USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Nacos, Brigitte L. 2002b. "Terrorism, the Mass Media and the Events of 9-11." Phi Kappa Phi Forum 82.

Nacos, Brigitte L. 2006. Terrorism/Counterterrorism and Media in the Age of Global Communication. United Nations University Global Seminar Second Shimame-Yamaguchi Session, Terrorism-A Global Challenge.

Nacos, Brigitte L. and Oscar Torres-Reyna. 2002. "Muslim Americans in the News before and after 9-11." Prepared for presentation at the Symposium "Restless Searchlight: Terrorism, the Media & Public Life," co-sponsored by the APSACommunication Section and the Shorenstein Center at the John F. Kennedy School, Harvard University.

Palmer, Nancy, ed. 2003. Terrorism, War, and the Press. USA: Hollis.

Papacharissi, Zizi and Maria de Fatima Oliveira. 2008. "News Frames Terrorism: A Comparative Analysis of Frames Employed in Terrorism Coverage in U.S. and U.K. Newspapers." The International Journal of Press/Politics 13.

Rhine, Staci, Stephen Bennett, and Richard Flickinger. 2002. "After 9/11: Television Viewers, Newspaper Readers and Public Opinion About Terrorism's Consequences." Presentation at the Annual APSA Meeting.

Rohner, Dominic and Bruno S. Frey. 2007. "Blood and ink! The common-interest-game between terrorists and the media." Public Choice 133.

Seib, Philip and Dana M. Janbek. 2011. Global Terrorism and New Media. GB: Routledge.

"Terrorism and Media." 2008. Transnational Terrorism, Security, and the Rule of Law.

Vasterman, Peter, C. Joris Yzermans, and Anja J. E. Dirkzwager. 2005. "The Role of the Media and Media Hypes in the Aftermath of Disasters." Epidemiologic Reviews 27.
Written by: Arda Bilgen
Written at: The George Washington University
Written for: Peter Faber
Date written: April 2011

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Terrorism and the Media: A Dangerous Symbiosis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Recent history, specifically the past decade, has provided plenty of examples of the mutually beneficial relationship between terrorist organizations and the media (Rohner and Frey 2007).

# data[].attributes.body
"While it has been stressed that terrorists, Islam, and the Middle East are not closely related terms, the media has continued to misrepresent each one. The most blatant anti-Middle East imagery was utilized on the day of the terrorist acts when images of cheering Afghanis were flashed on the screen in between images of the collapsing world trade towers. Such images have been toned down over time, but broadcast journalism still creates and perpetuates stereotypical images the Islamic religion. It has failed miserably to represent the diversity among those who practice it, glossing over the fact that of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, only 20% live in Arab-speaking countries, while the largest population resides in Indonesia."

# data[].attributes.headline
ESRB Video Game Ratings by Year, 2003-2007

# data[].attributes.subject
ESRB Video Game Ratings by Year, 2003-2007

# data[].attributes.body
Cause of violent nature may be parallel with media violence or video games

# data[].attributes.headline
Arab Stereotypes From Media and Propaganda

# data[].attributes.subject
Arab Stereotypes From Media and Propaganda

# data[].attributes.body
Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public.

Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.

Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.

# data[].attributes.body
One network executive told the New York Times that the action, the first time in the history of the television medium that all the networks agreed to a common limit on news coverage, was a “patriotic” decision. A CNN official said the all-news network would “consider guidance from appropriate authorities” in deciding what news to broadcast about the war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bush's war at home: government censorship, secrecy, and lies

By Patrick Martin
13 October 2001

The month since the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington has seen dramatic changes in the day-to-day functioning of the US government and the open emergence of powerful tendencies toward antidemocratic and dictatorial methods of rule.

The Bush administration has sought to impose greater secrecy than that which prevailed during World War II, pressured the media to censor coverage of opponents and targets of the war drive in Central Asia, and engaged in arbitrary arrests and detentions without trial on a scale not seen in America for more than 80 years.

The Democratic Party has been a willing partner in this onslaught on democratic rights. Last week the House Judiciary Committee voted 36-0 for a package of repressive measures sought by the Bush administration in the name of combating terrorism. The Senate approved a similar bill by 96-1 on October 11, and final passage by both houses is expected in the coming week.

The House bill significantly expands the power of the FBI to spy on wireless telephone calls and the Internet, to circulate the information obtained to other government agencies, and to detain immigrants on the orders of the attorney general, all without court review.

The Senate approved its version of the anti-terrorism bill after a series of overwhelming votes to defeat amendments introduced by Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, the lone dissenter on the legislation. Feingold said the measure would authorize FBI surveillance of vast areas of American life that have no conceivable relation to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

One provision authorizes FBI surveillance of Internet usage by anyone who accesses a computer "without authorization." The language is so broad that it would apply to any employee who uses a company or government computer to make an Internet purchase, or a teenager who uses a library computer to visit an unapproved site.

The Senate bill represents the effective militarization of the FBI and other federal police agencies. As Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, declared, "If there is a single goal of the intelligence components of this anti-terrorism bill, it is to change the focus from responding to acts that have already occurred to preventing acts that threaten the lives of American citizens. We cannot continue to use critical information only in a criminal trial." In practice, this means these agencies will no longer be engaged in "law enforcement," as conventionally defined, but will act as arms of the Pentagon in the "war on terrorism."

Both pieces of legislation bear Orwellian titles. The Senate bill is the "Uniting and Strengthening America Act" (USA), while the House bill, named the "Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001," was so labeled because the acronym is "PATRIOT."

Both bills define terrorism so broadly that those engaging in many forms of peaceful political activity, including picketing and civil disobedience, could be targeted for electronic surveillance, Internet spying, indefinite detention and secret court proceedings.

Repression and cover-up

What the new anti-terror powers of the federal government will look like in practice can be judged by the experience of thousands of Arab-Americans and Muslim people over the past month. More than 600 people have been arrested or detained by the FBI and other police agencies, under conditions of a systematic denial of civil liberties.

Only a handful of those arrested or detained have obtained legal counsel, an indication that these prisoners have either not been informed they have the right to a lawyer or have simply been denied the exercise of this right. One lawyer, Mitchell Gray, described to the Washington Post a Catch-22 situation in which federal jailers demanded that he present an authorization form, signed by his client.

"I talked to the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] several times, and nobody would tell me where he was," said Gray. "They said, 'Do you have a G-28 signed by this man? We can't let you see him with without a G-28.' Well, how can I get a G-28 signed unless I see him?"

Police officials have kept virtually all information about those arrested under seal. Only a few names have been released, and families are not being told where the prisoners are being held or what charges have been lodged against them, if any. One fact is clear: not a single one of the more than 600 has been charged with any offense tied to the September 11 suicide hijackings. Most are being held on technical violations of immigration law or traffic charges that would never have led to jail time before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

With a series of vague and ominous warnings about further terrorist attacks, the Bush administration is seeking to create a popular hysteria to support, not only short-term repressive measures, but the creation of an entirely new institutional framework for targeting domestic political opponents of American military intervention in Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The newly established White House Office of Homeland Security is to be one focal point of this police-state buildup. By installing Governor Ridge as a White House aide, Bush bypassed Congress entirely-there will be no Senate confirmation of the appointment and no congressional oversight of his activities.

At the same time, the Pentagon has been instructed to create, for the first time in US history, an office of Commander-in-Chief USA, a headquarters for controlling all military operations in the western hemisphere, focusing on the continental United States. This would integrate four existing military commands, including the Southern Command, responsible for Latin American operations and notorious for fomenting of military coups, and the Strategic Command, which controls US nuclear forces.

The political implications of this military reorganization were spelled out by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who told a congressional committee last week that he favors reexamination of the legal doctrine of posse comitatus, adopted after the American Civil War, which bars the use of the armed forces for domestic policing.

Already the Bush administration has approved the stationing of National Guard troops at airports-a measure that does little to increase the security of air travel, but accustoms the general public to armed soldiers as an everyday sight. The next step will be the deployment of regular military forces in domestic operations for the first time in more than a century.

These moves are not merely in response to the September 11 attack. They were worked out as part of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, a long-term planning effort on which Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have focused since they took office early this year. This underscores the fact that the Bush administration has seized on the terrorist attack to bring forward an anti-democratic political agenda of long standing.

Whipping the press into line

An integral part of the buildup of repressive forces is the curbing and disciplining of the press. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer gave the signal with his well-publicized declaration that Americans should "watch what they say" about US military, intelligence and police operations. The White House campaign to whip the press into line has met little or no resistance from the giant corporations that control the television networks and daily newspapers.

In comments reported by the New York Times October 7, Fleischer claimed that the public was up in arms, not over excessive government secrecy, but over undue inquisitiveness by the press. "It's not what government officials are saying that's the issue," he said. "It's the type of questions that reporters are asking that's the issue. The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked, or answered."

On October 10 National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice held a conference call with executives of the five networks to urge them not to broadcast taped statements produced by Osama bin Laden, or to air them only in heavily censored form. Rice told them that airing propaganda by bin Laden would undermine the US war effort, while other White House officials claimed that the tapes might contain coded messages to terrorist cells.

Both the political and the military arguments for this act of self-censorship are absurd. No one can claim that the tape-recorded comments of bin Laden, hailing the destruction of the World Trade Center and the killing of more than 5,000 innocent people, will arouse any significant political support in the American viewing audience. As for the suggestion of coded messages, US television censorship would have no effect. Anyone interested in receiving such messages can get bin Laden's statements on the Internet and through the broadcasts of Arabic-language and other overseas media.

When a member of the White House press corps asked Fleischer if there was any evidence to back up the claim that the tapes might contain coded messages, Bush's press spokesman admitted that the supposed threat was based on mere "suspicions."

On Thursday morning, October 11, executives of the five networks issued a joint decision essentially capitulating to the government demand. One network executive told the New York Times that the action, the first time in the history of the television medium that all the networks agreed to a common limit on news coverage, was a "patriotic" decision. A CNN official said the all-news network would "consider guidance from appropriate authorities" in deciding what news to broadcast about the war.

There have been a number of previous acts of self-censorship:

* Knight-Ridder refused to publish a report-later made public by USA Today -that US special forces were on the ground in Afghanistan well before the start of the bombing campaign. The newspaper chain acceded to a Pentagon request to withhold the information from the American people, even though it was no secret to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

* In response to phone calls from Fleischer, officials at all five television networks, as well as the wire services, agreed to stop reporting in advance on the schedule and appointments of Bush and Cheney, on security grounds.

* Some 17 US news organizations had advance knowledge of the beginning of bombing raids on October 7, and all agreed to withhold any reports until after the strikes began.

* The entire US media has agreed not to use the names of military personnel engaged in combat missions, including sailors on board ships in the Arabian Sea, 2,000 miles from Afghanistan. This has nothing to do with preserving operational secrecy or protecting soldiers from terrorist retaliation, since commanding officers are named and freely quoted. Rather it serves to distance the American public from the ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen, to lessen the effect of the expected battlefield casualties.

* The media has for the most part placidly accepted the refusal of the Pentagon to provide any description of bomb damage or casualties in Afghanistan. This follows the precedent of the Persian Gulf War, where the US never made an estimate of Iraqi losses, believed to have numbered in the tens of thousands.

These measures add up to a systematic effort to block any expression of opposition to the US military intervention, and to accustom the media and the American public to more overt measures of government censorship.

The Bush administration is seeking to withhold information, not only from the public at large, but also from Congress. On October 5, Bush instructed the entire national security apparatus to limit classified briefings to only eight of the 535 members of Congress-the Senate majority and minority leaders, the House speaker and minority leader, and the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

White House aides said congressmen were guilty of leaking classified information from a briefing by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who told them there was "100 percent likelihood" of further terrorist attacks on US targets. Ashcroft had made similar statements in television interviews during the week, but that did not stop the administration from using the reports on the congressional briefing as a pretext to halt further disclosures. Bush virtually accused congressmen of treason, declaring, "I want Congress to hear loud and clear, it is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk."

The Bush administration only agreed to less sweeping restrictions on the dissemination of classified information after Republican members joined Democrats in opposition, citing the legal obligation of the executive branch to be accountable to the legislature for its administration of laws and handling of appropriated funds.

One of the most sinister features of the new regime is the virtual disappearance from public view of Vice President Dick Cheney, who was said to have been removed to "a secure location" on October 7, when US bombing raids on Afghanistan began.

The following day Cheney did not appear at the ceremony swearing in Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as the director of the new Office of Homeland Security, held in the White House East Room. Cheney had been scheduled to officiate, but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas substituted for him.

The vice president was evacuated from his official residence, and he reportedly participates in daily meetings of the National Security Council by secure videoconference, rather than in person. By Friday, October 12, Cheney had not been seen in Washington for six days.

This is especially significant given Cheney's prominence in the Bush administration. The vice president has been described as playing the role of CEO to Bush's chairman of the board. He is the man in charge of day-to-day operations, and a particularly influential figure in national security issues, given his history as secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

When Cheney was absent from the usual vice presidential position, seated behind the president on the speaker's rostrum, during Bush's nationally televised speech to Congress September 20, White House officials declared that he had been sent elsewhere because of the security threat facing the government.

Some press reports have suggested that Bush political aides sought to lower Cheney's profile out of concern that his greater experience in foreign policy, and more serious demeanor, might prove an embarrassing contrast to Bush. But much more than symbolism or petty jealousy are involved in Cheney's disappearance. By removing him from view, the Bush administration is shielding its chief decision-maker from any public scrutiny or accountability. Cheney heads what is, in effect, a secret branch of government.

In attacking Afghanistan, the United States is positioning itself in one of the most strategically critical and resource-rich regions of the world, Central Asia. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, American imperialism had virtually no access to this region. In the decade since the dissolution of the USSR, the Pentagon, CIA and State Department, and the giant oil companies whose interests they protect, have moved in aggressively. The mass murder at the World Trade Center became the pretext for the unfolding of a long-planned and long-prepared military intervention in the region.

In a similar fashion, the domestic side of the Bush administration's war represents the culmination of a protracted assault on constitutional principles and democratic procedures in America. Throughout the 1990s, the Republican Party, increasingly dominated by extreme right-wing elements, laid siege to the Clinton administration, using fabricated charges and bogus investigations in an attempt to bring down his administration.

This campaign produced the impeachment of an elected president for the first time in American history, and though it ultimately failed to remove Clinton from office, it revealed the impotence and paralysis of the Democratic Party. The impeachment drive created the conditions for a fundamental breach with democratic processes in the theft of the 2000 presidential election, in which the US Supreme Court intervened to halt vote-counting in Florida and installed George W. Bush in the White House.

A man who was elevated to the presidency despite losing the popular vote is now leading the American people into a war of unknown dimensions and duration, and claiming that this war, allegedly for "freedom and democracy," requires the suppression of basic democratic rights at home.

To fight this blacklisting:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bush's war at home: government censorship, secrecy, and lies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Patrick Martin 13 October 2001 The month since the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington has seen dramatic changes in the day-to-day functioning of the US government and the open emergence of powerful tendencies toward antidemocratic and dictatorial methods of rule.

# data[].attributes.body
The coverage of 9/11 was quite homogeneous in all media worldwide: outrage and expressions of dismay and horror; and this is true for Arab and Western media alike. What was slightly different in Arabic speaking media is the small room it gave for different perspectives; perspectives that would have been considered inappropriate by Western media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Walid El Khachab is an Associate Professor in Arabic Studies at York University. We asked him to compare and contrast how the Western media and the Arab media covered significant war on terror events.

Operation Desert Storm

Desert Storm was the code name of the operation lead by the US and some 30 allied nations to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation. Coverage of Desert Storm in Arabic varied according to the political position adopted by each newspaper or TV station. Few venues adopted the Iraqi position: that Kuwait has always been part of Iraq, therefore the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is just confirmation of sovereignty. These venues would not repeat their views bluntly, but would focus on the Iraqi casualties ― particularly the civilian ones ― to indirectly condemn the US lead military operation.

Most of Arabic media did not agree with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but still were opposed to Desert Storm because they had correctly foreseen the destruction of Iraq and the thousands of civilian casualties that would be the result of the operation. Therefore, most of Arabic media focused on the brutality of the US operation, even though it had a humanitarian claim ― that of the liberation of Kuwait.

Few Arabic media were aligned with the American narrative and embraced the US claims. These, like the Western media, framed Desert Storm as a just war lead against an invasion launched by a blood-thirsty dictator, the destruction and casualties being collateral damage.

9/11

The coverage of 9/11 was quite homogeneous in all media worldwide: outrage and expressions of dismay and horror; and this is true for Arab and Western media alike. What was slightly different in Arabic speaking media is the small room it gave for different perspectives; perspectives that would have been considered inappropriate by Western media. Some media mentioned, a few times, the conspiracy theories claiming that some level of US government was involved in the attacks, or let the attacks occur without preventing them ― or that Jewish employees of the twin towers were advised not to go to work on 9/11. While it is professional to present different views and opinions on events, it is unfortunate that these irrational theories were not always introduced with enough critical context in Arabic media ― even though they received minor attention.

Another difference ― in the analysis portion of news ― was the small space devoted in Arabic media to those who believed the attacks were simply another round in a history of violence putting the US at odds with populations who feel being victimized by the West. These observers argue, for example, that the US have violently bombed civilian populations in Vietnam and have backed the Israeli army who bombs Palestinian civilian populations; that 9/11 is some sort of retaliation.

Osama Bin Laden

Usually, Western media present Osama Bin Laden as more than the leader of an organization that views the US and its allies as imperial powers exerting colonial violence against predominantly Muslim societies. They present him more or less like a fanatic; a somehow deranged hater of the West and its values, or simply as the Devil.

In general, Arabic media are more neutral in their depiction of Bin Laden. Depending on whether they are pro-Western or critical of Western hegemony, Arabic media emphasize Bin Laden's violence or imply that this violence is a resistance or a retaliation to Western imperialism. But in all cases, they do not demonize him. They are closer to the factual reporting of his ideas and actions ― which is enough for one to form an opinion about the man. Al Jazeera, in particular, served as a tribune for Bin Laden because it constantly played his audio messages. The US accused Al Jazeera of supporting Bin Laden; but Al Jazeera considers that its professional ethics dictate it gives equal attention to narratives coming from opposite sides in a war. For example; they cover G.W. Bush's speeches, and they cover Bin Laden's also.

The war in Afghanistan

Initially, Western media presented the US attack on Afghanistan as a just retaliation, because this country under the leadership of the Taliban regime served as a basis for Al Qaeda, which is responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US. Then, after the defeat of the Taliban regime, Western armies maintained their occupation of the country. From that time on, Western media in general present the war in Afghanistan as part of a civilizational mission, where the West is fighting the evil Taliban to protect the good non-Taliban Afghans (particularly women).

The build up to the 2nd gulf war and the US efforts to build support for its plan to invade Iraq

Most of Arabic media were suspicious of the US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or had connections with Al Qaeda and therefore had to be attacked by the West. Most of them focused on the inconsistencies plaguing these claims, which claims later turned out to be totally baseless.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Love, Hate & Propaganda: War on Terror - Reporting the War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Walid El Khachab is an Associate Professor in Arabic Studies at York University. We asked him to compare and contrast how the Western media and the Arab media covered significant war on terror events. Desert Storm was the code name of the operation lead by the US and some 30 allied nations to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation.

# data[].attributes.headline
War in Iraq: Media Coverage- Western vs. Arabic

# data[].attributes.subject
War in Iraq: Media Coverage- Western vs. Arabic

# data[].attributes.body
The divide between Western and Arabic media in the coverage of Iraq unfolded along the same lines of the divide over Afghanistan, only more obviously because no one in the Arab world believed there were any grounds for the US to attack Iraq. Those Arabs who supported the invasion of Iraq did so because they were happy the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was going to be toppled.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Covering 9/11

Twelve years after 9/11, the reporters and anchors who covered the worst tragedy in U.S. history remember it all too well. From holding back tears on screen to watching bodies fall from the towers, here are their stories.

On September 11, 2001, people across the globe gathered around their TVs to watch one of the worst tragedies in U.S. history unfold before their eyes. For viewers, it was unfathomable. For the anchors on the other side of the screen, it was reality. Twelve years later, they can still smell the stench of dust and death, hear the sound of buildings crumbling, and feel the thick smoke that cloaked the city. Here are their stories.
Pat Kiernan, a morning anchor for NY1, was one hour from finishing his shift when the first tower was hit.
We had just gone to commercial when my assignment editor told me that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers and there was a fire and that we had a shot of it-from our camera perched on the top of the Empire State building. When we came back, I had to ad-lib: "There's smoke coming out of the building ..." I had no idea what was happening. So we sent one of our reporters, Kristen Shaughnessy, to the scene. And she was telling me what was happening. But suddenly sounding afraid, she said, "Pat, I gotta go, it's billowing." In the meantime she had to drop the phone. It was one of the more terrifying things for me personally. Kristen was a friend of mine and colleague for eight years; I had no idea if she was a block away from the towers or 10 blocks away. I could see on the live picture that the field of debris was spreading. That was the longest 25 minutes ever before I heard that she was OK. We had taken someone who was out of harm's way and put them in it. There was a lot of guilt there.

But that's not to discount my fear for the first responders and people who I knew were probably still in the building. The information was so sketchy. I had no idea. I began thinking-and I mentioned it on the air earlier-that the structure of the building might pose a problem. But I didn't expect it to become one so quickly. When the towers fell, I was shell-shocked, struggling to find words. How do you tell people watching that any hope for people in that building is gone? The first two minutes I was searching for words, the smoke and debris were filling lower Manhattan. Suddenly, we got a guy who's an eyewitness on the phone. A minute later he's on the air and he's right there. Airplane debris, dust, smoke. It was so hard to sit up there and stay composed and keep track of everything-to process what the facts were. We kept getting false reports of survivors. It just kept coming, coming, coming.

The emotion of the day didn't hit me until hours after, when my thoughts were my own. I went home to my apartment at 75th and Broadway. It was empty because my wife-who was eight months pregnant-was in Chicago. I remember feeling glad that she was there, safe. I heated up leftovers. The apartment was quiet. I turned the TV off and tried to just breathe. But as I was sitting there, I saw the smoke rising. It was suddenly just this inescapable reminder.
Rick Leventhal, a Fox News correspondent, was working uptown when his boss called to see if he could get downtown. "Why?" he asked. "Turn on your TV."
I saw the images and honestly my first thought was, accident. Small plane. I ran down to the subway and was on the train downtown when the second plane hit so I didn't even know until I emerged at Canal Street and ran to the scene. I was a block north of the North Tower, looked up and saw it in flames and asked a female police officer, "What happened to the second tower?" She said "That's where the second plane hit." and I immediately knew it was a terror attack. I didn't sleep much. We worked 16-hour days for the first couple weeks. The second morning I woke up with a nasty cough, which I think was from breathing the dust at the scene (I was four blocks north with our satellite truck when the towers fell), but the cough went away and the NYPD kept moving our position further from the scene, which probably saved us from greater physical harm.

I still get chills every time I think about it. We were about to go live and were standing in the intersection of Church and Warren when we heard the rumble of the first tower coming down. We didn't know what it was because even though we were only four blocks away, the buildings blocked our view. Then a 20-story-high mushroom cloud of smoke came rolling up the street toward us. People were screaming and running from the cloud. I saw police officers and first responders and pedestrians including a woman with a baby carriage racing toward us. My engineer/photographer Pat Butler and I jumped inside the satellite truck just as the cloud enveloped us. It got completely black inside; we had no cell service and had no idea what might happen next. It was the longest, most unsettling 10 minutes of my life. The hardest part was being in a city I loved and called home, knowing we were under attack. Knowing innocent people died for no reason. And fighting to maintain my composure and remain calm and stay focused on reporting the facts despite the chaos all around us. It was by far the hardest assignment I've ever faced, but I couldn't have been more impressed with the fortitude and dedication of my colleagues. We got on the air and stayed on the air under ridiculously horrible circumstances and did our best to discount the rumors and keep our viewers informed.
Nic Robertson, senior international correspondent for CNN, was one of the only Western journalists in Afghanistan that day.
The emotional impact was huge. None of us knew what was coming next and no one could tell when or how the day would end. From where I was in Kabul I felt isolated from what the rest of the world was experiencing, but at the same time I was worried about my young family. I told my wife-who was a CNN reporter in London at the time-to get our kids home from school. Because the Taliban banned televisions, I had no way of seeing the devastation. But I knew the story was going to come to us in Afghanistan, and that was troubling. I'd never experienced anything so unpredictable, everything changed so fast. Our local fixers ran away, the Taliban wanted to throw us out of the country, and it took a lot of soul searching to know we wanted to stay even though all other journalists had left Afghanistan. It was an emotional roller-coaster.
Rose Arce, a producer at CNN, was getting coffee and toast at a deli in downtown NYC when she overheard on the radio that the Twin Towers had been hit. She dropped her coffee and ran to the towers. Her reporting that day would eventually win her an Emmy.
That morning was nearly identical to [yesterday] morning. It was the morning of the New York primary. It was this glorious day. I stopped at a deli near my apartment in the West Village to get a coffee and toast before voting when I heard on the radio that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers. I walked out into the street with my coffee, looked downtown, and there was just a hole in one of the top of the Twin Towers. And everything just changed, in that moment. Everything. It just went from being this glorious day to being something out of a really horrible action movie. Everything after that moment was a whole series of things that just seemed unbelievable.

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

I didn't have anything with me. I don't even know what I was thinking. I just had my cellphone. I just ran. Eventually, I stopped a car and told the woman I needed to get downtown. She drove me to Duane Street. When I got there, there were all these kids running around. It was the first day of school. People were frantic. People were just losing it. I kept calling in to CNN to tell them what I was seeing, and it wasn't until the second phone call that I realized they were taking me live on the air. They didn't have anybody down there. When I realized that, I became very focused on getting to the Twin Towers.

As I was moving south, there was this guy with a big camera in his hand, holding his daughter. I was asking him if he had taken any pictures when all of the sudden there was this ... ROAR. It was kind of like when you walk over a grate and you can hear the subway barreling in. It was a roar like that. And then, I remember, there was just a shadow in the air ... and it was a second plane. Everyone's head snapped up at once. And the man's little girl pointed up at the sky, she must have been no more than 5, and she said, "Daddy, they're doing it on purpose." To this day, it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. The second she said that, all the people around us heard it. Reality sunk in. Until that moment, we all thought this had to be some kind of a weird accident. We probably knew it wasn't, but who wants to believe that?

But that's really the moment when I realized, this is an attack. The man and his daughter started running, and I followed, and somehow we ended up in his apartment (I don't even remember how). It was a penthouse, really high up, and it looked out over the towers. Soon after his wife came home with their other kid. And the five of us, just staring in disbelief. He kept zooming in and zooming out with his camera, and it looked like there were people at the top of the tower. But it was hard to see because the towers were so high, just looming over us. Suddenly, we saw someone jump. Then it wasn't just one person, it was hundreds. It happened over and over again. They were holding each other's hands. They were so close together. They were helping each other jump. It took a little while to internalize what it was. We just kept looking at each other, the man and me. And I remember vividly, his daughter kept asking him what those dark objects were. "Sweetie, they're birds," he said.

On September 11, 2001, people across the globe gathered around their TVs to watch one of the worst tragedies in U.S. history unfold before their eyes. For viewers, it was unfathomable. For the anchors on the other side of the screen, it was reality. Twelve years later, they can still smell the stench of dust and death, hear the sound of buildings crumbling, and feel the thick smoke that cloaked the city. Here are their stories.
Pat Kiernan, a morning anchor for NY1, was one hour from finishing his shift when the first tower was hit.
We had just gone to commercial when my assignment editor told me that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers and there was a fire and that we had a shot of it-from our camera perched on the top of the Empire State building. When we came back, I had to ad-lib: "There's smoke coming out of the building ..." I had no idea what was happening. So we sent one of our reporters, Kristen Shaughnessy, to the scene. And she was telling me what was happening. But suddenly sounding afraid, she said, "Pat, I gotta go, it's billowing." In the meantime she had to drop the phone. It was one of the more terrifying things for me personally. Kristen was a friend of mine and colleague for eight years; I had no idea if she was a block away from the towers or 10 blocks away. I could see on the live picture that the field of debris was spreading. That was the longest 25 minutes ever before I heard that she was OK. We had taken someone who was out of harm's way and put them in it. There was a lot of guilt there.

But that's not to discount my fear for the first responders and people who I knew were probably still in the building. The information was so sketchy. I had no idea. I began thinking-and I mentioned it on the air earlier-that the structure of the building might pose a problem. But I didn't expect it to become one so quickly. When the towers fell, I was shell-shocked, struggling to find words. How do you tell people watching that any hope for people in that building is gone? The first two minutes I was searching for words, the smoke and debris were filling lower Manhattan. Suddenly, we got a guy who's an eyewitness on the phone. A minute later he's on the air and he's right there. Airplane debris, dust, smoke. It was so hard to sit up there and stay composed and keep track of everything-to process what the facts were. We kept getting false reports of survivors. It just kept coming, coming, coming.

The emotion of the day didn't hit me until hours after, when my thoughts were my own. I went home to my apartment at 75th and Broadway. It was empty because my wife-who was eight months pregnant-was in Chicago. I remember feeling glad that she was there, safe. I heated up leftovers. The apartment was quiet. I turned the TV off and tried to just breathe. But as I was sitting there, I saw the smoke rising. It was suddenly just this inescapable reminder.
Rick Leventhal, a Fox News correspondent, was working uptown when his boss called to see if he could get downtown. "Why?" he asked. "Turn on your TV."
I saw the images and honestly my first thought was, accident. Small plane. I ran down to the subway and was on the train downtown when the second plane hit so I didn't even know until I emerged at Canal Street and ran to the scene. I was a block north of the North Tower, looked up and saw it in flames and asked a female police officer, "What happened to the second tower?" She said "That's where the second plane hit." and I immediately knew it was a terror attack. I didn't sleep much. We worked 16-hour days for the first couple weeks. The second morning I woke up with a nasty cough, which I think was from breathing the dust at the scene (I was four blocks north with our satellite truck when the towers fell), but the cough went away and the NYPD kept moving our position further from the scene, which probably saved us from greater physical harm.

I still get chills every time I think about it. We were about to go live and were standing in the intersection of Church and Warren when we heard the rumble of the first tower coming down. We didn't know what it was because even though we were only four blocks away, the buildings blocked our view. Then a 20-story-high mushroom cloud of smoke came rolling up the street toward us. People were screaming and running from the cloud. I saw police officers and first responders and pedestrians including a woman with a baby carriage racing toward us. My engineer/photographer Pat Butler and I jumped inside the satellite truck just as the cloud enveloped us. It got completely black inside; we had no cell service and had no idea what might happen next. It was the longest, most unsettling 10 minutes of my life. The hardest part was being in a city I loved and called home, knowing we were under attack. Knowing innocent people died for no reason. And fighting to maintain my composure and remain calm and stay focused on reporting the facts despite the chaos all around us. It was by far the hardest assignment I've ever faced, but I couldn't have been more impressed with the fortitude and dedication of my colleagues. We got on the air and stayed on the air under ridiculously horrible circumstances and did our best to discount the rumors and keep our viewers informed.
Nic Robertson, senior international correspondent for CNN, was one of the only Western journalists in Afghanistan that day.
The emotional impact was huge. None of us knew what was coming next and no one could tell when or how the day would end. From where I was in Kabul I felt isolated from what the rest of the world was experiencing, but at the same time I was worried about my young family. I told my wife-who was a CNN reporter in London at the time-to get our kids home from school. Because the Taliban banned televisions, I had no way of seeing the devastation. But I knew the story was going to come to us in Afghanistan, and that was troubling. I'd never experienced anything so unpredictable, everything changed so fast. Our local fixers ran away, the Taliban wanted to throw us out of the country, and it took a lot of soul searching to know we wanted to stay even though all other journalists had left Afghanistan. It was an emotional roller-coaster.
Rose Arce, a producer at CNN, was getting coffee and toast at a deli in downtown NYC when she overheard on the radio that the Twin Towers had been hit. She dropped her coffee and ran to the towers. Her reporting that day would eventually win her an Emmy.
That morning was nearly identical to [yesterday] morning. It was the morning of the New York primary. It was this glorious day. I stopped at a deli near my apartment in the West Village to get a coffee and toast before voting when I heard on the radio that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers. I walked out into the street with my coffee, looked downtown, and there was just a hole in one of the top of the Twin Towers. And everything just changed, in that moment. Everything. It just went from being this glorious day to being something out of a really horrible action movie. Everything after that moment was a whole series of things that just seemed unbelievable.

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

I didn't have anything with me. I don't even know what I was thinking. I just had my cellphone. I just ran. Eventually, I stopped a car and told the woman I needed to get downtown. She drove me to Duane Street. When I got there, there were all these kids running around. It was the first day of school. People were frantic. People were just losing it. I kept calling in to CNN to tell them what I was seeing, and it wasn't until the second phone call that I realized they were taking me live on the air. They didn't have anybody down there. When I realized that, I became very focused on getting to the Twin Towers.

As I was moving south, there was this guy with a big camera in his hand, holding his daughter. I was asking him if he had taken any pictures when all of the sudden there was this ... ROAR. It was kind of like when you walk over a grate and you can hear the subway barreling in. It was a roar like that. And then, I remember, there was just a shadow in the air ... and it was a second plane. Everyone's head snapped up at once. And the man's little girl pointed up at the sky, she must have been no more than 5, and she said, "Daddy, they're doing it on purpose." To this day, it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. The second she said that, all the people around us heard it. Reality sunk in. Until that moment, we all thought this had to be some kind of a weird accident. We probably knew it wasn't, but who wants to believe that?

But that's really the moment when I realized, this is an attack. The man and his daughter started running, and I followed, and somehow we ended up in his apartment (I don't even remember how). It was a penthouse, really high up, and it looked out over the towers. Soon after his wife came home with their other kid. And the five of us, just staring in disbelief. He kept zooming in and zooming out with his camera, and it looked like there were people at the top of the tower. But it was hard to see because the towers were so high, just looming over us. Suddenly, we saw someone jump. Then it wasn't just one person, it was hundreds. It happened over and over again. They were holding each other's hands. They were so close together. They were helping each other jump. It took a little while to internalize what it was. We just kept looking at each other, the man and me. And I remember vividly, his daughter kept asking him what those dark objects were. "Sweetie, they're birds," he said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New York Journalists Remember the First Moments of 9/11

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Covering 9/11 On September 11, 2001, people across the globe gathered around their TVs to watch one of the worst tragedies in U.S. history unfold before their eyes. For viewers, it was unfathomable. For the anchors on the other side of the screen, it was reality.

# data[].attributes.body
"If the United States is embarking on the first war of the 21st century, and one that the president has said may be "secret even in success," then the damming up of information out of Washington is part of the strategy. Although the administration says it is not engaged in censorship, officials throughout the government readily say they have been ordered to be circumspect about their remarks. The caution extends even to the sanitizing of government Web sites as agencies remove information — including large-scale digital maps and a report on the poor security at some chemical plants — for fear that it could be used for terrorist attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/national/07PRES.html?pagewanted=1

# data[].attributes.body
"The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked, or answered. Is the White House staff going to keep secret sensitive or classified information? I certainly hope so."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The current secrecy is reminiscent of the government management of information during the Persian Gulf war, a strategy overseen by Dick Cheney, then the secretary of defense. ''If we had to do it tomorrow, I would start with what we've just done,'' Mr. Cheney said about press restrictions and censorship in an interview after the war.

Last week a senior aide to Vice President Cheney, Mary Matalin, dismissed any comparison between the Gulf War restrictions and those of the moment as ''apples and oranges'' and said that there was ''no new directive'' to limit information. But she acknowledged that there was a ''new consciousness'' among White House advisers to be disciplined in what they said.

Although the clampdown on information is justified as a way to protect lives and military operations, it can also be used to avoid scrutiny of government action. The effects are felt all over Washington.

At the White House, Mr. Fleischer has asked newspaper editors and wire services not to publish the president's schedule or describe any additional security measures at the White House, among other things.

At the Pentagon, there has been sparse information about the movements of troops and weapons, far less than during the gulf war. ''It's not that this place has not for decades tried to keep things quiet,'' said Charles Aldinger of Reuters, the dean of Pentagon correspondents. ''But it's become much more strict.''

Officials at the Pentagon even expressed private aggravation when the White House, eager to show that it was moving ahead against terrorism, released very general figures on Monday cataloging the military buildup so far. The Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, seemed to dismiss the figures publicly when she called them ''approximate.''

On Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declined an invitation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on the state of the coalition against terrorism because, officials said, it would have been awkward while Mr. Rumsfeld was in Saudi Arabia and headed to three other key partners -- Egypt, Oman and Uzbekistan -- for closed-door talks. Instead, Mr. Powell took the unusual step of inviting the senators to lunch last Wednesday at the State Department, where they were given information in private. And when evidence of Osama bin Laden's connection to the Sept. 11 attacks was finally made public, it came from Britain.

Along with Mr. Cheney during the gulf war, it was Mr. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who helped make the decision to manage the information flow in the Persian Gulf in a way that supported the operation's political goals. Newspaper articles were vetted by military censors, and reporters were confined to escorted pools. Mr. Powell said at the time that the restrictions were necessary to stop security lapses.

''It isn't like World War II, when George Patton would sit around in his tent with six or seven reporters and muse,'' he said, adding that ''if a commander in Desert Shield sat around in his tent and mused with a few CNN guys and pool guys and other guys, it's in 105 capitals a minute later.''

Marlin Fitzwater, who was White House press secretary to the first President Bush during the gulf war, later expressed regret over the decision to censor. ''I don't like the idea of anybody in the government ever reading a piece of copy by a reporter,'' he said.

But last week Mr. Fitzwater said in an interview that he did not necessarily feel the same way about the war against terrorism. ''I think this conflict is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we have seen, at least since World War II,'' he said.

Mr. Fleischer argued that the current White House had made top government officials -- Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Powell, Mr. Cheney -- more available than ever through frequent news conferences, and that Mr. Bush, who until now rarely veered from a script, was taking far more questions from reporters. Mr. Fleischer acknowledged that the officials were not always forthcoming, but said the public liked it that way.

''It's not what government officials are saying that's the issue,'' he said. ''It's the type of questions that reporters are asking that's the issue. The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked, or answered. Is the White House staff going to keep secret sensitive or classified information? I certainly hope so.''

There has also been wrong information that has come out of the White House during the crisis, most notably a statement by a senior official that a credible threat had been phoned in to the Secret Service on Sept. 11, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that ''Air Force One is next.'' The official gave the information to reporters on Sept. 12 to explain why Mr. Bush, who was on Air Force One when the threat was received, had delayed his return to Washington. Mr. Bush was criticized for spending the day zigzagging across the country, mostly out of sight, before arriving at the White House at 7 p.m.

But by Sept. 26, a senior administration official said last week, the administration had determined that the threat against Air Force One was not real. ''What was said about Air Force One was said because it was accurate at the time,'' the official said. The reluctance of officials to admit the threat wasn't credible has fed criticism that the White House was passing out disinformation to protect the president politically.

Certainly there is a recent history of disinformation in Washington, if not outright lying. In April 1980, when the Carter White House was about to launch a rescue mission of the hostages in Iran, Jody Powell, the White House press secretary, was asked by Jack Nelson of The Los Angeles Times if the administration was planning such a mission.

''And I said, 'No,' '' Mr. Powell recalled last week. ''And then I went on at some length to try to make convincing arguments about why we weren't about to do that.'' Mr. Powell said that had he replied simply ''no comment,'' it would have tipped off Mr. Nelson. He said he was still disturbed about his words, but had decided that ''I did not have the right to endanger people's lives.''

In conclusion, Mr. Powell said, ''If you are prepared to lie to protect people's lives, not to be too flip about it, but it had better be a good lie.''

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A NATION CHALLENGED: FLOW OF INFORMATION; The New Slogan In Washington: Start Watching What You Say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Article discusses paucity of information coming from government and, while there is no specific directive, government officials say they have been ordered to be circumspect about their remarks; clampdown is justified as way to protect lives and military operations, but article notes it can also be used to avoid scrutiny of government action; photo (M)

# data[].attributes.headline
Journalist Peter Arnett interviewing Osama Bin Laden

# data[].attributes.subject
Journalist Peter Arnett interviewing Osama Bin Laden

# data[].attributes.body
Anything for a good story?

# data[].attributes.body
"Consider how the War on Terror became a socially shared organizing principle through its transmission via the US press. Captivated by a powerful master narrative after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq war, American journalists found it difficult to resist being drawn into the national anxiety and general pro-Bush patriotic fervor... We are concerned here with precisely how the War on Terror has been absorbed into media (and therefore public) discourse and grown beyond its original policy usage to take on a life of its own. Arguing that the news media have been active participants in propagating the framing, we examine reporting of the War on Terror from its launching after 9/11..."

# data[].attributes.body
Throughout the Persian Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein permitted only one foreign journalist to remain in Baghdad—CNN's veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett. Arnett had to obey Iraqi press-censorship rules. "From the beginning," Arnett later revealed, "I accepted the constraints that the Iraqis laid down. They said, 'Anything you do, you put on paper. We go over it, and we alter it. We change it if we wish to, and that's what you're going to use.'"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Much of the war on terrorism involves gathering highly sensitive information about terrorists. In addition, the U.S. and other governments are developing new strategies to contend with terrorism at home and abroad. There has been considerable discussion about what information about terrorists and the strategies to combat them should-or should not-be released to the press. Is it important for people in a democracy to know what the government is doing? Can the media print or broadcast all information they receive? What press policy should the military use in wartime?

Throughout the Persian Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein permitted only one foreign journalist to remain in Baghdad-CNN's veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett. Arnett had to obey Iraqi press-censorship rules. "From the beginning," Arnett later revealed, "I accepted the constraints that the Iraqis laid down. They said, 'Anything you do, you put on paper. We go over it, and we alter it. We change it if we wish to, and that's what you're going to use.'" Once the war began, the Iraqi government selected Arnett's reporting locations and monitored his interviews. As a result, many of Arnett's stories dwelled on bombing damage to civilian areas and the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Many Americans, including members of Congress and even fellow journalists, severely criticized Arnett for reporting material provided or censored by Iraq. But at the same time, hundreds of American reporters sent to Saudi Arabia had to deal with attempts by the U.S. military to control information.

Press vs. Military

During the short, successful Spanish-American War of 1898, reporters, if anything, led cheers for the military. Throughout World War I, journalists considered themselves part of the war effort, not independent observers. This pattern of press and military cooperation continued through World War II.

But starting with the Korean War and then Vietnam, the press took an increasingly independent and critical view of the military. In Vietnam, more than 2,000 accredited reporters roamed freely throughout battle zones interviewing ordinary soldiers rather than relying on the often rosy picture of the war presented by the Pentagon. There were few incidents of news stories endangering U.S. troops or military operations. But negative press accounts fueled anti-war feelings back home.

When the war in Southeast Asia finally ended, many in the military blamed the press for "losing Vietnam." Some Pentagon officials resolved to restrict press coverage of future American wars. In 1983, the Pentagon barred all journalists from the initial invasion of Grenada. Then in 1989, the Pentagon selected a dozen reporters to cover the invasion of Panama and restricted them to an airport in Panama until nearly all fighting ended.

Policy #1: Press Pools

When U.S. military units went to Saudi Arabia in the fall of 1990, about 1,000 journalists eventually joined them. The Pentagon set ground rules for the press. It authorized about a dozen "pools," of up to 18 reporters each, to visit U.S. military units in the field. News organizations selected reporters for each pool and military escorts accompanied them into the field. Pool reporters distributed their dispatches to their news organizations and to all other non-pool reporters who were required to remain in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, near the Kuwait border, or in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon accredited all American journalists and required them to observe the following battlefield press rules:

1. No reporters could visit any U.S. military unit or travel outside of Dhahran or Riyadh except in a press pool.

2. No pool was permitted in the field without an escort, usually a U.S. military public-affairs officer (PAO).

3. No interviews of U.S. military personnel were permitted without an escort present.

4. All pool dispatches must first pass through the "military security review system." (PAOs at each pool location reviewed all dispatches and could delete or change any "military sensitive information." Reporters could appeal any censorship to the military pool coordinating office in Dhahran and then to the Pentagon.)

5. Violations of the above rules could result in arrest, detention, revocation of press credentials, and expulsion from the combat zone.

The Pentagon explained that these rules protected American troops, military operations, and the journalists themselves. One high Navy official, Rear Admiral John Bitoff, remarked: "There is a clear and present danger in today's instant-communications age, which may put our troops at risk. Our enemies are watching CNN-TV."

Most news organizations and journalists complied with the Pentagon's pool-and-review system. But the Pentagon heard many complaints-not about outright censorship, but about the military's strict control of the press. Reporters protested that escorts intimidated soldiers being interviewed, sometimes even speaking for them. The media objected when the military kept pool reporters from visiting scenes where Americans had been killed.

The press complained most often about delays in getting dispatches from the field through the military-review system. Many pool reporters writing late-breaking stories found their stories hopelessly out-of-date by the time they finally reached the United States. In some instances, stories were lost by the military-communications network.

Soon after the Pentagon's pool-and-review system went into operation, some news organizations filed a lawsuit charging the military with violating the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. They argued that a free press should have access to a war zone, because the people have a right to know what is happening. In previous cases, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the press access to prisons, but has granted the press a right to cover trials. The right of access to a war zone has never been decided by the court.

The news organizations also contended that the Pentagon's press-reporting rules constituted an illegal "prior restraint" and therefore should be eliminated. Prior restraint occurs when the government censors material before its publication or broadcast. Except in rare cases, the First Amendment prohibits prior restraint. One exception recognizes the necessity of imposing government censorship when a "clear and present danger" threatens the country. In 1931 in the case of Near v. Minnesota, the U.S. Supreme Court cited an example of permissible military censorship: "No one would question but that a government might prevent . . . the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the location of troops." Before the lawsuit against Gulf War press restrictions could come before a judge, however, Desert Storm had ended.

During the war, a few reporters, called "unilaterals," broke away from the military's press pools and struck out on their own. Using cellular phones, they filed uncensored reports. These reports were not necessarily more critical of the military than pool reports. But they often seemed more realistic, because independent journalists usually reached battle scenes before pool reporters. Sometimes unilaterals were arrested, detained, and sent back to Dhahran by military authorities. But many managed to elude discovery, often with the help of American soldiers and officers.

When the ground war started, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney ordered a blackout of battlefield news. "We cannot permit the Iraqi forces to know anything about what we're doing," Cheney warned. But the blackout failed to hold as hundreds of reporters in Dhahran broke for the desert. An ABC News team even took its own satellite dish to broadcast directly from the battlefield. This gross violation of Pentagon press rules did not seem to matter because the United Nations' forces rolled to a dramatic victory in a ground war that lasted barely 100 hours.

A Model for Future Wars?

After the fighting ended, many journalists continued to criticize the Pentagon's press rules. "They created a system of enormous control," wrote Clark Hoyt, Washington bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Others expressed fears that such a system would become the model for future American wars. Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams responded that "the press gave the American people the best war coverage they ever had."

According to the military, control is necessary, especially in this age of rapid communications. Unlike World War II and Vietnam, the press can broadcast directly from the battlefield. Within seconds, the whole world-including the enemy-can see the report. Without controls, a reporter could unintentionally compromise U.S. forces. The military views its control over the press as a matter of life and death.

For the most part, Americans supported the military's control of the press during the Gulf War. In a Roper public-opinion poll after the Gulf War, 68 percent of those surveyed believed military control of the news was about right, 17 percent wanted more control, and only 13 percent wanted less.

But some advocates of free expression worry that military control of the press encroaches on our basic freedoms. They make the following arguments: The First Amendment's protection of the free press should not be thrown out whenever the military starts shooting. People in a free society should decide whether to go to war, whether to stay at war, and whether a war is just. To decide, people need information from a free press, not from a press controlled by the military. Otherwise, Americans might fight wars knowing only what the military wants them to know. And the military might not want people to know any bad news, anything critical of the military, or anything that might turn them against a war. Americans could then find themselves in the position of citizens in a military dictatorship-like Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Policy #2: Proposed Rules by News Media

Several months after the Gulf War, a committee representing most of the nation's major news media issued a report stating that independent and uncensored reporting should be "the principal means of coverage" for all future wars and military operations. The report also proposed some battlefield press rules, including the following:

1. The Pentagon should accredit independent journalists, who must observe "a clear set of military security guidelines that protect U.S. forces and their operations." Violators of these guidelines should be expelled from the combat zone.

2. Press pools should be used only during the first 2-36 hours of any major military operation.

3. Reporters should have free access to all major military units.

4. The military should not monitor or interfere with press interviews or any part of the reporting process.

5. Written dispatches and pictures from the field should not be subject to any "military security review."

The press thinks these rules ensure press freedom and offer security to our military forces. The military favors press rules similar to those in the Gulf War, which give the military more control over the press in wartime.

For Discussion and Writing

1. Is it possible to carry on a war with a free press? Why or why not?

2. Do you think the press should have access to war zones? Explain.

3. What are the similarities and differences between the two sets of battlefield press rules discussed in the article?

The GRADE Test

As citizens in a democracy, you'll be confronted with policy questions relating to information. Is it important for people in a democracy to know what the government is doing? Can the media print or broadcast all information they receive? What press policy should the military use in wartime? Government policies can profoundly affect our nation and your life. In a democracy, you have a say on government policies. It's important that you take a critical look at them. Use the following GRADE Test to evaluate a policy:
Goal. What is the goal of the policy? If you don't know what it's supposed to do, you can't measure its success or failure. Policies are designed to address problems. What problem or problems is this policy supposed to address? Rivals. Who supports the policy? Who opposes it? Knowing the rivals can help you understand who the policy might affect and whether the policy favors special interests. Also, rivals are terrific sources for information. Be sure to check their facts, though. Advantages. What are the policy's benefits? What is good about the policy? Will it achieve (or has it achieved) its goal? Will it achieve the goal efficiently? Is it inexpensive? Does it protect people from harm? Does it ensure people's liberties? Disadvantages. What are the policy's costs? What is bad about the policy? Is it inefficient? Is it expensive? Does it cause harm? Does it intrude on people's liberties? Are there any potential consequences that may cause damage?Evaluate the alternatives. One alternative is to do nothing. Most serious problems have various policy proposals. Evaluate them. Look at their goals, advantages, and disadvantages.
Once you GRADE the competing policies, weigh their advantages and disadvantages and decide which you favor.

Press Rules for the War on Terrorism: A Presidential Commission

Step 1. Divide students into groups of three or four.

Step 2. Tell students to imagine that they are members of a commission appointed by the president to recommend press rules as America responds to terrorism. Explain that their commission has been presented with two different sets of press rules-the two in the article.

Step 3. Tell them their task is to evaluate the two policies using the GRADE Test above and decide which to recommend to the president. Briefly review GRADE.

Step 4. Have each group assign roles: a commission chairperson (who leads the discussion), a recorder (who writes the group's answers to each GRADE test on a sheet of paper), a reporter (who reports the commission's findings to the class), and, if the group has four members, a responder (who answers any questions the class may have about the group's findings).

Step 5. When the groups finish, call on reporters from different groups to answer GRADE tests for Policy #1: Press Pool Rules. Then call on reporters to answer GRADE tests for Policy #2: Proposed Rules by News Media. Ask which policy the groups favored. Hold a discussion over why they favored one policy over another.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Press Freedom versus Military Censorship - Constitutional Rights Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Much of the war on terrorism involves gathering highly sensitive information about terrorists. In addition, the U.S. and other governments are developing new strategies to contend with terrorism at home and abroad. There has been considerable discussion about what information about terrorists and the strategies to combat them should-or should not-be released to the press.

# data[].attributes.body
"The most obvious and mainstream argument is that in this era of worldwide media proliferation, the "terrorists" utilize propaganda to its fullest and in order for the civilized world to emerge victorious, we must in turn harness the power of media for all its worth" hilo.hawaii.edu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
War on Terror Mainstream Media and Propaganda - Global Issues

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a reposted article offering a look at a perspective of the terrorist attacks in the U.S.A. that destroyed the World Trade Center and a part of the Pentagon and the resulting war on terror.