SANITIZING THE NEWS: Force feeding the press
Conrad Fink, William S. Morris Professor of Newspaper Strategy and Management and director of UGA's James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies, is a former foreign correspondent and vice president of the Associated Press. Columns sought his response to news coverage of NATO's current bombing campaign in the Balkans.
Columns: Americans seem to feel blindsided by the crisis in Kosovo. Why?
Fink: Because they were blindsided. President Clinton, if he had a thought-out policy, was slow to reveal it and to seek public support. And, very importantly, officialdom effectively prevented the press from doing its job -- collecting news the public had a need and right to know.
Columns: But newspapers and television were filled with Kosovo.
Fink: Recall what you saw -- horrific photos of weeping refugees and footage of our high-tech bombers taking off for yet another clean, surgical strike in yet another far-off country. That inevitably created the impression that you're cold-hearted and unpatriotic if you don't support intervention on humanitarian grounds. And, anyway, our superb professional warriors (the world's best) will handle this little affair with precision bombs down just the right smokestacks, and the rest of us can get back to watching the Dow Jones averages and, on campus, the latest pizza-eating contest and all the hiring fun they're having over in the athletic department.
Columns: Are you suggesting the press failed in its obligation?
Fink: Not entirely -- our best guys predicted how things could evolve. But they were prevented from joining U.S. forces in the field and from seeing -- and thus reporting -- the reality of war, which is blood, broken bodies and the ever-present danger of escalation to full hostilities in an area -- the Balkans -- synonymous with terror, instability and war. Our reporters once went to war with our troops. This time, reporters were held to picking up bits and pieces from both sides. Primarily they had to funnel to the people the very sanitized official version spun out in Washington, Brussels and other points far from the action.
Columns: The military argues that there are good reasons for excluding the press from the battlefield.
Fink: Name one. Officials always say the press might spill secrets and get Americans killed. I've been in this business 45-years and never saw that happen. However, I have seen -- time after time - government blunders grow out of obsessive secrecy. The reality is that officialdom always wants to do the public's business without interference from the public.
Columns: Weren't reporters also restricted during the Gulf War?
Fink: Restricted? They were hog-tied, held in briefing rooms and force-fed the official version. At least the briefings contained important information -- number and types of missions, targets hit, along with video showing hits. And we -- press and public alike -- let them get away with such managing of the news. Pretty soon they'll be saying, "Just send us your sons and daughters and your tax dollars and we'll tell you when it's over" -- whatever "it" is.
Columns: You don't sound as though you're willing to trust our leaders.
Fink: In the 1960s, I wrote Associated Press coverage of the CIA's secret -- and disastrous --Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. I was involved in Vietnam coverage and the lies and duplicity of the Cold War. I sat 15-feet from Nixon at the press conference when he assured the American people their president was not a crook. During the Monica affair, I watched the commander-in-chief look America right in the eyes and lie. I trust leaders -- when they openly seek and receive the great and good common sense of the American people and engage in public dialogue and reach public consensus before big decisions are made. In our society, the dialogue historically has been conducted through the press. Not this time.
Columns: Should the press -- and the people -- influence military tactics?
Fink: No, global strategy. If young Americans are to risk dying in some distant and godforsaken fence corner of the world they -- and their moms and dads -- just maybe should have some input early on about precisely which fence corner and whether the sacrifice is in the national interest and is worthwhile. Then let our superb military handle day-to-day tactics.
Columns: Could the press have prevented escalation in Kosovo?
Fink: I'm not saying the press should have prevented it. I'm saying the American people should have had opportunity to agree or disagree. We deserved to know, early on, that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, devised as a defensive alliance against the old Soviet Union, somehow had evolved into an offensive instrument with widespread peace-keeping responsibilities in a 600-year-old quarrel. We should have known upfront that what was advertised as a humanitarian effort was escalating into something more dangerous -- whacking one of Europe's ancient capitals and questioning the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation. Even though the administration didn't lay all that out, I must say the press did signal warnings on it. A good job was done there.
Columns: How can government conduct foreign policy under such press scrutiny?
Fink: That's what Dean Rusk once asked me. He was secretary of state during Vietnam, and he said that after that one we'd never be able to fight a war in the national interest with the American people watching on television. He meant that war is too bloody, too terrible and nobody would support a war if, during dinner, they saw Johnny die on the battlefield. I said, Mr. Secretary, war indeed is bloody and the people who are asked to pay the price should know that. Besides, I said, it's the American way.
Professor Fink can be reached at 706/542-5031, or at [email protected]
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