As the country lurches into a frightening and uncertain war against terrorism, the news media find themselves in an extraordinarily difficult position: wedged between a White House that would prefer to wage war in secret and a public that loathes the press.

President Bush, in his address to Congress, made it clear that the coming military campaign -- which may have already begun -- will depend heavily on covert operations whose existence will remain hidden "even in success." At his side are Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, two of the principal architects of military censorship during the 1991 Gulf War. And the public, which has conferred upon Bush a 90 percent approval rating in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, can invariably be counted on to support the military against the media when it comes to what journalists still plaintively call "the public's right to know." Witness last Friday's report in USA Today that American and British special-operations units were already in Afghanistan -- a report that some disparaged as irresponsible even

though the news had already been carried in the Pakistani press.

Yet it's vital that we learn as much as possible about this war, which will, after all, be waged in our name, on our behalf. "Precisely because of the amorphous nature of this campaign as it has been described so far, the American people really need to be more informed rather than less informed," says Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum. "An open society is supposedly what we're fighting for. That is not to say that our leaders do not have to have some latitude for getting things done. But secrecy for secrecy's sake has to be resisted."

What we need is as much information, and as open and robust a debate, as possible. Unfortunately, what we may get is a press that is both hampered by military censorship and cowed by its fear of offending the public and the government.

The logistics of covering the war on terrorism could prove to be nightmarish. Unlike the Gulf War, which had a clearly defined enemy and battleground, the war on terrorism is more an idea than a concrete reality, with even administration officials reportedly disagreeing on who, other than Osama bin Laden, should be targeted. This new war could be fought in many countries -- including the United States -- and is exceedingly unlikely to feature any set battles that the media could observe.

The media must also deal with a White House dominated by Cheney, Powell, and George W. Bush, whose views of how to handle the press in wartime were shaped by the highly successful censorship campaign during the Gulf War. Ever since the Vietnam War -- lost, according to critics, because the media turned the public against it -- the Pentagon has managed to keep reporters at bay. Reporters were kept away from much of the action in the invasion of Grenada, in 1984, and in the capture of Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega, in 1989.

In attempting to avoid a similar information blackout, media representatives and the Pentagon worked out a protocol for the Gulf War under which a press pool would be allowed to observe the fighting, and their reports would be subject to military censorship. As it turned out, the pool reporters saw little, and what the public saw was shaped largely by the daily briefings given by top government and military officials. Viewers were treated to video-game-like footage of so-called smart weapons finding their targets -- they saw an antiseptic war that appeared devoid of dead bodies or suffering of any kind.

At the heart of the military-media conundrum is the assumption that the media will reveal secrets that put operations and troops in harm's way. This image of reporters as dangerous blunderers was lampooned in a classic Saturday Night Live sketch during the Gulf War in which journalists were depicted asking military officials questions such as "Where would you say our forces are most vulnerable to attack?" and "Are we planning an amphibious invasion of Kuwait? And if so, where?"

But University of Arizona journalism professor Jacqueline Sharkey, the author of Under Fire: US Military Restrictions on the Media from Grenada to the Persian Gulf (Center for Public Integrity, 1991), says the history of wartime reportage shows that such worries are misplaced. During World War II, she notes, a number of reporters knew when and where D-Day would take place, yet none revealed those details. During the Vietnam War, she adds, thousands of journalists passed through, yet only nine were ever accused of security violations. Besides, Sharkey says, journalists who tag along on military operations could be required to withhold certain types of information until the security of the operation is no longer at risk. What's important, she says, is that journalists accompany troops so that there is an objective, independent account of what happened, regardless of when it is released. Otherwise, she argues, the lack of media access will be used "not for military purposes but for political purposes" -- to cover up mistakes rather than protect lives and operations.

Of course, there were enterprising reporters during the Gulf War who evaded military censorship by striking out on their own. CNN kept Peter Arnett in Baghdad -- a decision that engendered considerable criticism but enabled the network to provide a valuable perspective. Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly, then a freelancer for the New Republic, simply drove across the desert with another reporter, producing a memorable piece in which he recounted how Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to him. Neither Arnett nor Kelly ever put American troops at risk, and their willingness to operate outside of military censorship restrictions produced some of the more compelling reportage from the Persian Gulf. Kelly suspects that similar opportunities will arise in the war on terrorism. He notes that, even now, reporters are arriving in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and other front-line states, hoping to hook up with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

"If you want to cover the war, and you want to do field stuff, you're best off going your own way and hoping you get lucky," Kelly says. "What makes reporters uncomfortable is that it's such a gamble" -- that is, there might be no story -- "but there's no other way to do it."

If the early days of this war are any indication, the White House is going to use the outpouring of patriotism following the terrorist attacks to try to bend the media to its will. Last week, Salon reported that the White House tried to pressure NBC into canceling a planned interview with Bill Clinton (that story was denied by NBC). The State Department reportedly leaned on the government's own propaganda organ, Voice of America, not to broadcast an interview with a Taliban official. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer criticized foot-in-mouth comedian Bill Maher -- and warned, portentously, that "all Americans . . . need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

Victor Navasky, publisher and editorial director of the Nation, worries that the range of acceptable opinion expressed in the mainstream media will be so narrow that most of the public will not be aware of what options are available in waging war -- or, as Navasky might put it, waging law -- against terrorism. "There is this thing called the United Nations," Navasky says. "To me, the first thing we should have done was go to the Security Council and get a resolution authorizing a response to what was done." The problem, he adds, is that the mainstream media unfairly characterize the UN as "a joke" and "an Arab-dominated organization." The chill of censoriousness goes even deeper than that: last week, columnists at newspapers in Texas and Oregon were fired, reportedly because they had criticized the president.

There is also a real danger that the media will be victimized by government attempts at disseminating disinformation. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that he could foresee no scenario under which he would lie to the media. Ari Fleischer, confronted by the legendary correspondent Helen Thomas, testily made a similar pledge. Yet last week the White House was forced to confirm that Air Force One had not been the object of a specific threat on September 11, despite the administration's repeated assertions otherwise -- including a blow-by-blow account that Bush adviser Karl Rove gave to the New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann. And it could get worse -- much worse.

Author/journalist/academic Michael Ignatieff, at a recent forum at Harvard sponsored by the Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, warned journalists against letting themselves be used by government officials seeking to put out disinformation. Ignatieff, director of the Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, said, "Sources will feed us things that they know to be untrue. You could end up being disgraced trying to do an honest job."

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, openly wonders whether the USA Today report that special forces are hunting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan may be an example of precisely that kind of disinformation. "It's still unclear to me how much of that information was new, how much of it was true, and how much might have been disinformation" put forth "as a way of flushing him out," he says. Adds Jane Kirtley, the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who wrote about military censorship in the current Media Studies Journal: "I can tolerate them not telling us everything they know, but I can't tolerate them deliberately lying to us and expecting us to pass it along." The solution, she says, is "to be relentlessly skeptical about what we're being told."

Unfortunately, the media -- and big media, especially -- have incentives not to probe too deeply. Veteran
media critic Danny Schechter, executive editor of
MediaChannel.org, notes that some of the country's largest media conglomerates are currently lobbying the FCC to remove the few ownership restraints that still exist -- and that the chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, is the son of Colin Powell. "What media company is going to take on this administration, not only in the face of public opinion, which they've very skillfully mobilized behind them, but also when their own economic interests are at stake?" asks Schechter.

To be sure, just as the war on terrorism is an entirely new kind of conflict, so, too, are the media entirely different from what they were even 10 years ago. In the Gulf War, a Michael Kelly could take off into the desert, but he couldn't transmit reports back home instantaneously. These days, anyone armed with a cell phone or a satellite link can report in real time.

Because of such technological advances, Tom Rosenstiel says, military authorities have come to believe that the censorship rules of World War II and Korea are "no longer possible," because the cost of someone's breaking those rules is far higher than it would have been in the past. Instead, Rosenstiel says, "they're going to try to censor us by controlling access."

Rosenstiel's hope is that at least a few reporters -- experienced veterans from respected news organizations -- will be allowed the sort of access they need to tell the whole story. Like Jacqueline Sharkey, Rosenstiel says it's not necessary that they be allowed to report everything they know as soon as they know it. Rather, their job would be to produce an independent, objective record that could be revealed when it is safe to do so.

Right now, when the country is understandably frightened, it's all too easy to say that the government and the military should be able to wage war the way they see fit, free from a meddlesome media. But the media are the public's representatives, and their role in ferreting out the truth is absolutely crucial in a time of crisis. The media are the guardians of a public trust, guaranteed by the First Amendment.

It's a trust that the media themselves have belittled and betrayed far too often in their quest for celebrity, scandal, and profits. But look around. Like it or not, they're all we've got.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: October 5 - 11, 2001