[infowar.de] Harpers 07.07.06: "I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military"

[Georg Schoefbaenker <schoefbaenker -! - aon - at>]

http://harpers.org/sb-i-was-a-mouthpiece-1152219764.html




I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military





An embedded TV producer's frank assessment

Posted on Friday, July 7, 2006. By 
<http://harpers.org/sb-i-was-a-mouthpieKenSilverstein.html#sb-i-was-a-mouthpiece-1152219764>Ken 
Silverstein.
<http://harpers.org/sb-i-was-a-mouthpie#>Sources

In an interesting interview published this week in 
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3525>Foreign Policy, 
Newsweek's Rod Nordland spoke about the difficulties of reporting from 
Iraq. He said that the Bush Administration has been largely successful in 
managing the news to the extent that most Americans are not aware of just 
how dire it is and how little progress has been made and revealed that some 
embedded reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasnâ??t 
happy with [their] work.

Many embedded reporters have managed to do fine work from Iraq, but there 
are significant obstacles for even the best and most determined 
journalists. I recently spoke with a former senior TV producer for Reuters 
who worked in Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The producer, who asked that she 
not be identified by name, arrived in Tikrit soon after the capture of 
Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, and was embedded with American troops 
for 45 days. She told me that, over the years, she has worked closely with 
the French army, NATO troops in the Balkans, and UN peacekeepers in 
covering war and conflict, but she said had never faced the sorts of 
restrictions imposed by the Pentagon on journalists in Iraq. I was, she 
said, a mouthpiece for the American military.

In Tikrit, she was based with U.S. troops at a military compound 
established at one of Saddam's former palaces, where she provided pool 
coverage for Reuters TV and AP TV (which was fed to other media outlets). 
When insurgents attacked civilians, she told me, the American military 
would rush her to the scene so she could record the carnage and get shots 
of grieving Iraqis.

When it came to other stories that were clearly sympathetic to the U.S. 
side, such as funerals for American soldiers killed in combat, the U.S. 
military was extremely helpful?indeed, encouraging. In such cases, she was 
granted full access and allowed to film speeches by officials honoring the 
dead, the posthumous awarding of medals, and other aspects of the ceremony.

But when this producer wanted to pursue a story that might have cast the 
war effort in an unfavorable light, the situation was entirely different. 
Every few days, she said, she would receive a call from the  Reuters 
bureau in Baghdad and discover that reporters there had heard, via local 
news reports or from the bureau's network of Iraqi sources, about civilians 
being killed or injured by American troops. But when she asked to leave the 
compound to independently confirm such incidents, her requests were 
invariably turned down.

Reuters had an armored car, she told me, and we wanted to go out on our 
own, but I would ask the PIO [Public Information Officer] for permission 
and he would say he needed to get more information before we could go. 
Hours would pass, it would get dark?and in the end we were never able to 
get to the scene. Even getting an on-camera comment from a military 
spokesman was impossible in such cases, she said.

The producer said that it was impossible to pursue stories frowned upon by 
the military?for example, on how the local population viewed the occupation 
and American troops?because she was not permitted to leave the base on her 
own. The height of absurdity came when the Tikrit compound came under 
serious attack one evening and the producer was asked by the Reuters bureau 
in Baghdad to phone in a report on the situation. We couldn't find out 
anything [from the U.S. military], she said, so Reuters had to cover the 
fighting from Baghdad, despite having a TV producer and reporter on the 
ground at the compound in Tikrit.

The producer frequently filmed foot patrols and nighttime raids. She said 
that for the latter, the military and the embedded journalists would drive 
for long stretches in pitch darkness. The raids themselves, she said, were 
blurry and confusing, and afterwards soldiers would round up suspected 
insurgents and sympathizers for interrogation. It was routine for the 
producer to wait in one room of a house while detainees were questioned in 
another. Not always, but there were times when I would hear detainees 
screaming during the questioning, she said. I'm not sure what was happening 
but they were screaming loudly?they weren't just being slapped around. 
Because she obviously was not permitted to film the interrogations, none of 
that material could be included in her pool feeds.

She and the other journalists stationed at the base in Tikrit grew cynical 
about their work and came to believe that they were being used. Other 
reporters in Iraq, she said, especially local Iraqis [working for Western 
outlets], were able to get both sides of the story, but we were getting 
only one side. During her 45 days in Tikrit, she told me, she didn't file a 
single story critical of the American project in Iraq. There was no 
balance, she said. What we were doing wasn't real journalism.