Phil Taylor's papers
|
BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
Propaganda Wars from ABC Around the world the spin cycle has been set to war, but it's not just the hawks who are fighting for air space, anti-war activists are funding and making their own ads. This week we speak to the US advocacy organisation 'Moveon' about their attempts to break through the mainstream media barrage. John Pilger discusses the Australian media and how it is dealing with propaganda and the war. 
The Media Report, Thursday 30/1/2003 Mick O'Regan: Hello and welcome to our first Media report for the year. Around the world the media spin cycle has been set to war. And on the basis of George Bush's State of the Union Address, it's a question of when, not if. So today in the program, we'll consider conflict and propaganda. Journalist John Pilger will join me to explain his critique of the current situation. And we'll also go inside the offices of Malaysia's independent online newspaper, Malaysiakini, as a police raid is in progress. But first, amid the barrage of voices calling for military action, it's sometimes hard to hear alternative views in the US media. But they do exist. Take Wes Boyd, for example, a former Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, Boyd decided to do something about the priorities of the US government and the media, which he said echoed its call for war. So he formed a public interest group called MoveOn, and turned to the internet, appealing for money to fund an advertising campaign to put the case against conflict. In just 48 hours, he raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. The money paid for a television commercial modelled on the famous Daisy Petal ad from Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Presidential election campaign. Like the original, the new ad starts with the sound of a little girl counting flower petals, which becomes the countdown to war: [television advertisement soundtrack] Wes Boyd: We wanted to get across a number of different things and we looked at a number of different ways of doing that. We wanted to get across the breadth and depth of opposition in America and around the world to war as the solution. We wanted to amplify and highlight how risky was is as a solution. And in looking at the different options, we decided to highlight that second approach: that we would go with the risks of war as the primary message. Because it isn't something that's talked about enough in the mainstream media. Mick O'Regan: When you were negotiating with the creative people from the advertising campaign, how did you decide upon the remake of the daisy ad? Wes Boyd: The daisy ad came up very early, and it's funny that it's probably one of the most successful political advertisements ever done, because I think it was only played once, and yet got a tremendous amount of free media and so on. So almost everybody goes to people who do political advertising and say, hey, do daisy for me - meaning let's just do something that costs almost nothing and that gets us a lot of free press. In this case, that came up early in our discussions. I think I said, what about that kind of approach? And then the Creatives came back and said, you know what? In this case - it might really work. Because the message we're trying to get across really is about the risks we face here and it really is about - as Johnson said - these are the stakes. So the remake of the ad, we embraced that and then went into production. Mick O'Regan: Now Wes Boyd, is it a direct copy - is it the same image of a young girl innocently picking petals from the daisy, transposed to some sort of countdown to war? Have you been very careful in copying the original? Wes Boyd: No. No. In fact I don't believe the director even saw the original or even looked at the original again. I'm sure he'd seen it many years ago. We'd created the image of a little girl picking petals off a daisy and doing the count and then went to a series of quick cuts of what war really looks like - or what war could look like. And then cut to the countdown and the nuclear explosion. Mick O'Regan: Do you think it's worked? Have you generated lots of other media coverage? Wes Boyd: A tremendous amount of media coverage. More than we could have hoped. We've been on almost every national news program. Every punditry program - you know, the Sunday morning programs here in the US. Not to mention the fact that at the same time we had volunteers across the nation - MoveOn volunteers holding press conferences in each of those thirteen local media markets - holding their own press conferences and getting the local press to cover it too. So I have a reel here of more than sixty minutes of clips from the last week. Mick O'Regan: So just in the last week you've got an hour's worth of material from mainstream American television, covering your ad. Wes Boyd: That's right,. Mick O'Regan: What's been the response of the mainstream media generally, though - I mean they're obviously drawing attention to it, but have people criticised you? Have people said that this is an important step in putting a counter argument? Wes Boyd: We haven't seen a lot of criticism. For us it's served exactly the purpose we intended, which is to make sure the discussion is had. Make sure that people do talk about the risks. For example, George Stephanopoulos on Meet the Press, who's a commentator, was interviewing Donald Rumsfeld, who is Secretary of Defense, and he put the commercial up, in its entirety, and then basically asked the Secretary of Defense what he thought about it and what kinds of issues that raised about the risks of war. You couldn't do any better than have that happen. Mick O'Regan: What did Donald Rumsfeld say? Wes Boyd: I shouldn't characterise his response, because it would be unfair. Mick O'Regan: But just on that, the way that the anti-war movement and its media message is characterised, is there a sense almost that to be opposed to the North American effort in raising a coalition of willing allies; that to be opposed to that is to be somehow unpatriotic? Wes Boyd: Well there's certainly an undercurrent of that. We heard that a few times from important administration spokespeople. And for me, it's deeply worrisome, because the most healthy thing about our system is the loyal opposition and the opportunity to dissent. And we are out there proving that that can be done. And proving that especially when there's such broad opposition, when even the poll numbers show that a unilateral pre-emptive strike is more than a majority of opposition in the United States. We can get out there and say that, and if you do it right, it gets repeated on the media. Mick O'Regan: Wes Boyd: one of the founders of the US public advocacy group, MoveOn. And their address on the web is moveon.org. **** Now to another voice often raised against the agenda of the mass media and government. Investigative journalist John Pilger has devoted much of his professional life to exposing abuses of power. He's a relentless critic of the moves to war, and of the failure of the media to expose the distortions that justify it and the excesses that characterise it. I asked him for his opinion on the quality of debate in our media over the issue of impending war. John Pilger: Well I think the quality of the debate is very high among the public. But you have to turn to the letters page or you have to listen to people in their homes and shops. I don't think the media has contributed a great deal to it. I think the public are well ahead of the media. There's a kind of critical public intelligence especially about sending Australian troops to attack Iraq that has really analysed the situation quite clearly itself, and come out with some very strong oppositional views. With the exception of radio, I think that the general level of debate in newspapers and television in Australia is poor. It's poor because so much space and so much time is given to channelling and echoing what I would call the official viewpoint. Howard does something - he farewells some ships or Senator Hill makes some statement - that is channelled as if that is all that we pretty well need to know. And the so-called debate around that is confined, generally speaking, to likeminded people. I don't find anything on the television news that would enlighten me, generally speaking, and I think the newspapers reflect - I suppose - the structure of the Australian press, when you have a restricted ownership, such a lack of diversity; then that's going to be reflected in the debate. Mick O'Regan: But don't you think that there is a perennial issue that separates reporting from commentary, and that many people are arguing that what the media should do is to report on official decisions, and they should give people a sense of what is happening at government level, without necessarily going in to opinionated commentary. John Pilger: Yes. Of course official positions should be reported, but they're only one position, and as I. F. Stone once said, famously, all governments lie. And that has been my experience of governments, especially at a time like this. They lie. They lie to their public. In Britain it is quite clear that Blair, over a period of time, has lied to the public. Now simply channelling those lies is not good enough. Certainly the statements of prime ministers, and the official statements, have to be reported and I agree with you, they should be reported in an unalloyed way. But apart from that, there are other positions. There are other perspectives. Frankly, if I had to rely on the newspapers and the television to find out what was going on, I wouldn't. And it's my job to do that. Mick O'Regan: Just on that I. F. Stone position - that's a very strong comment to make, that governments lie, and that for example the Blair government lied. What lies have been told? John Pilger: Well that's been my experience. I don't think it's a strong statement. I think the fact that you're even surprised to hear it perhaps suggests something. Governments have been lying since probably there were governments. And especially when they want to, a government, for all sorts of spurious reasons, wants to go against the popular will and engage with a foreign power in an unprovoked attack on another country; then governments lie. I mean we'd be here all day, talking, describing and analysing the number of lies. I think I've spent half my career writing about government lies. I. F. Stone's statement is not in any way an extraordinary one. It's simply a fact. One of the problems that we have is that journalists are far too close to governments. We have lobby correspondents. We have Canberra correspondents. We have people who become part, almost, of a court and know the politicians personally. And themselves become echoers and channelers. It's a system, rather than blaming any individual, because within that system there are people who do very good work. But it's a system that allows governments, if you want to use the softer expression, to spin something. To deceive. And journalists end up being the vehicles for that, when in fact they should be the people who are keeping the record straight - or trying to. Mick O'Regan: Is that capacity of governments to spin - do you think that reflects a sort of breakdown in the relationship between the military and the public? Would it be better if, say, the Australian defence force media people were able to put to the public specific issues that were of concern? Obviously acknowledging that operational matters are sensitive. But is it the process of the filtering through the political and bureaucratic process that changes the nature of the information? John Pilger: Well I don't think it's really the military's job to do that, to even engage in public relations, frankly. I think they should do as they're told. We saw the recent enquiry into the boat that went down taking 350 men, women and children asylum seekers with it, and we found out that the whole top echelon of the military and the navy - well if they weren't lying, they were doing a good job of getting close to it. So before we start talking about media relations, we simply need people in public service to tell the truth. But I don't think it's the military's job is to defend the country. To go off and fight wars when the government of the day decides that's what it must do. And I've never been one of those that really blames the military for giving us a whole series of porkies about what they're doing in the field and what they're not doing. That's their job. I mean propaganda is part of their job when a war has started. I think we should recognise that. Our interest should be directed at governments and the deceptions that governments tell. There are always two truths. There is an official truth and then there is the real truth. There is a façade that governments will erect, and they do it now very, very skilfully, because Public Relations is almost becoming something like a science. And behind that façade, then, is generally the truth. And that's what's missing from what you described as a debate. I wouldn't even call it a debate at the moment. Mick O'Regan: The issue of propaganda - is it the case that in Australia things like the Tampa affair, the issue of refugees - that there has been a politicisation of information regarding security matters - that it's very hard for people to get accurate information? John Pilger: Oh, absolutely. But most information is politicised anyway. Just going back to the point about the military, which touches on the question you've just asked. I do think that the military, because it has been forced to be involved, by the government, in the whole issue of asylum seekers; I think there is now a degree of politicisation. I think it has become immersed in a corruption as well. And that should be worrying us. Again we saw that in the recent Senate Inquiry. We saw that in the revelations about the Children Overboard. Now that politicisation of the military - who should be simply public servants - is worrying. Yes, the politicisation of information is something that is always there. You would expect governments to politicise it, and the point is not that they shouldn't politicise it, or won't politicise it; it is that journalists should recognise that they do. And not simply become a kind of echo chamber for them. That's terribly important. And the problem of journalists being close to politicians, having a kind of milieu, a lobby around them; is that they become part of that system. And that's really, I think, the issue here. The point about journalists is that at their best they're independent minded. That they represent in the work they do - and it could vary right across the spectrum - but they represent people; not power. And too often, journalists are drawn close to power and they represent the people in power, not their readers and viewers and listeners. And I think the very sophisticated way that public relations has now developed, with all the technological aids at its disposal - that's becoming a real danger. Mick O'Regan: In the last conflict in the Middle East, and in a variety of other conflicts around the world, there's been the organisational pooling of journalists in order that information can be shared between various media outlets. If we looked at the situation that prevailed in the Gulf War, can I ask you your opinion of how that pooling works, and what implications it has for the sort of information that the public receives? John Pilger: Well the implication is very simple. This was the most covered war in history. And pretty well everyone missed the story. That's how organised it was. It was organised to the point that journalists ceased to be journalists. They became functionaries. And the few journalists who were able to escape this pooling system and to escape this organisation did so at their peril. Robert Fisk has told me of his rather precarious adventures in trying to get away from this iniquitous pool system. They missed the story, because the story was something like 200,000 Iraqis were killed. And many of them were killed at night. And many of them were buried alive in their trenches. There was the most awful carnage. But at the end of that war we came away with the idea - or rather the public, I can be excused for coming away with the idea - that casualties were light, that it was something of a kind of high tech surgical strike type war; and that it was a great victory. But in fact it was a great slaughter. And the documentation is voluminous now on that. But that ought to have been reported at the time and it wasn't reported at the time because the powers who were running that war succeeded in managing and in controlling the news that came out, of tailoring it - often to their lies. We remember the very dramatic press conferences, where the reporters watched a missile blowing up a bridge with great precision. It later emerged that many of the missiles had missed the bridges and had hit civilian targets. But people weren't told that at the time. Mick O'Regan: Well given what we know from the research and analysis that was done after the Gulf War, what sort of position does that put us in any conflict that might occur in the near future? And what's the solution to that blindness? John Pilger: Journalists have to really examine just what they do. If they're interested in being independent, it's quite a hard road, especially in Australia, where 70% of the capital city press is controlled by Murdoch and so on. You know that better than I. It's a hard road. But I think it is about independence. It is about departing from the pack. It is about understanding that you really can only ferret out fragments of the truth - seldom the whole truth but fragments of it - by doing it independently. And above all, not accepting the word of authority. I think that's what I'm trying to say here, is that the scepticism that one hears journalists aiming at the public - you know, they're apathetic, they don't care - often there's an almost contemptuous edge. That scepticism should be aimed at anybody in authority. Anybody in power. Anybody in government. That's called democracy. The whole struggle for freedom of the press is now 400 years old and still going on. That's what it is about. It is about a press that doesn't believe. It's all too comfortable now. If journalists aren't convinced by that they should go to countries where it is not comfortable, like Turkey; where the whole staffs of newspapers are put behind bars for simply doing their job, where journalists work at great risk to their lives. I often feel when I go to countries like Turkey, Indonesia under Soeharto, and many other places; that it's worth a western journalist simply visiting these countries and talking to their colleagues there to get an understanding of what journalism really is about. Mick O'Regan: John Pilger, thank you very much for your time. And that was an edited version of our conversation. We'll put the audio of the full interview on the web page. **** Now to the sort of difficult media environment that John Pilger mentioned. Malaysian police last week raided the independent newspaper Malaysiakini.com. And the Editor, Steven Gan, is now facing charges of sedition. All nineteen of the company's editorial computers were taken by police following a complaint from the youth wing of the ruling political party that a letter published by the news service was seditious and could incite racial hatred. Antony Balmain was at the Malaysiakini offices on the day the police turned up without warning. Antony Balmain: Malaysiakini staff stand by in silence, shaking their heads. Photographers are taking photos, as several plain clothes police of the Computer Crimes Division are carrying computers out of Malaysiakini's offices. As the last computers are carried out of the office Malaysiakini Editor-in-Chief, Steven Gan, and a company lawyer, Sivarasa Rasia, are negotiating with police about the computers. The police are also demanding that Gan must attend the police station the next day for questioning. Earlier, at least four police officers, including several plain clothes Special Branch Intelligence operatives, arrived at Malaysiakini with one key demand. Lawyer Sivarasa Rasia: Sivarasa Rasia: They came here with the stated purpose of wanting Malaysiakini to identify details of the person who sent them this letter, which they published. Now Malaysiakini is a newspaper. They are professional journalists who believe in the ethics of journalism, and quite rightly they told the police, we're sorry, we can't do that. We cannot disclose the identities of people who have written to us in confidence. And we are not prepared to do that. Then of course the police response to that was to say, right, we're taking away all your computers. Knowing at the same time, of course, that taking away all the servers and the computers used in the editorial newsroom meant that this organisation will basically come to a halt today - until it manages to put itself back operationally. Anthony Balmain: This is not an isolated event, according to Editor, Steven Gan. He believes the police had another motive for the raid, because they were told only one computer in the Malaysiakini office handled letters. Steven Gan: Over the past three years there has been a lot of harassment. There have been threats from the government to shut us down. There have been police reports made against us. There have been attacks of course from the traditional media and all that relating to our finances, relating even to the point of personally accusing me of fabricating stories and all that. So I think this is a combination of all that, really. I think that in the final analysis this is what they want to do. To shut down Malaysiakini. While the government has time and again promised not to censor the internet; I think this particular action is really showing the true face of the Mahathir Government. Antony Balmain: The Youth Wing of the ruling United Malays National Organisation, or Umno, denies that there was any collusion between its members and the government over the police complaint. So what is written in this controversial letter, titled Similarities between New Americans and Bumiputra - which means ethnic Malays. Malaysiakini Chief Executive Officer, Premesh Chandran: Premesh Chandran: What the letter did was compare race relations in Malaysia with race relations in the United States. Of course you know that in the United States there's long debate about race relations, basically between whites and blacks and others and also Native Americans. And the privileges and the rights of various races in the US. In Malaysia there has been a similar debate. In Malaysia the case is that the Malays are more privileged constitutionally. They have more rights than other races in Malaysia. And this letter basically took up that debate, comparing the two. Antony Balmain: The letter also states that the Malay Government has granted its indigenous people far less rights than the United States has granted Native Americans. Umno Youth Wing Executive member, Affendi Zahari, says they complained about this part of the letter because it could provoke civil unrest in Malaysia. Another point in the letter says Zahari incites racial hatred because it alleges the majority ethnic Malays have perpetuated special rights for themselves, including in business and education, while indigenous Malaysians and poor Chinese are disadvantaged. Affendi Zahari: What we do not want in this country is another situation where one race feels so small, so degraded, that they will take things into their own hands. Antony Balmain: The Malaysian Senior Assistant Police Commissioner, Kamaruddin Matdessa, has confirmed to The Media Report that the investigation is being sent to the Public Prosecutor to determine whether charges will be laid. He also says that ten Malaysiakini computers has been released. Malaysiakini lawyer, Sivarasa Rasia, says the crime of sedition is outdated and should be changed. Sivarasa Rasia: The sedition act, like many other laws we have in this country, are quite oppressive laws. The laws in themselves are violations of human rights, just going by their content. To give you an example, if we ratified the Civil and Political Rights Covenant of the United Nations, all these laws, including the Sedition Act, would have to go, because they don't stand up to international standards of human rights. So in this draconian law, which has this very broad, vague offence of sedition - it is really a colonial type of offence - they also have included wide powers of investigation. So in other words, whilst it provides that they cannot search without a search warrant, it also provides that in certain limited circumstances they can come in and search without a search warrant. And that's what they did today. Antony Balmain: Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and several in Malaysia, have condemned the raid on the Malaysiakini offices as a direct attack on freedom of the press. Elizabeth Wong is General Secretary of the Malaysian Human Rights Society: Elizabeth Wong: I think we need to send a very clear message to the Malaysian Government that this cannot go on. That aside from having just empty promises that we will have opening up democratic spaces in Malaysia; we need to see some real concrete steps. Press freedom in Malaysia is quite appalling, especially when we compare ourselves with other countries in South East Asia. It's one of the worst, in fact. Mick O'Regan: Malaysian lawyer, Elizabeth Wong, ending that report from Antony Balmain. And the latest development in that story is that Malaysiakini have now received an eviction notice. Tough times for Malaysian new media. Guests on this program: Wes Boyd Founder of advocacy group MoveOn
John Pilger Author and Journalist Steven Gan Editor in Chief, Malaysiakini.com Premesh Chandran CEO Malaysiakini.com Affendi Zahari Umno Youth Wing Executive member, Malaysia Sivarasa Rasia Lawyer, Malaysiakini.com Elizabeth Wong General Secretary, Malaysian Human Rights Society Presenter & Executive Producer: Mick O'Regan Producer: Caroline Fisher |