GULF WAR -- Vinaya Patil (9418) -- Ritika Dange (9403) -- Vinodhini Patil (9419)

1. GULF WAR -- Vinaya Patil (9418) -- Ritika Dange (9403) -- Vinodhini Patil (9419)

2. Introduction: • First major conflict involving the United States since Vietnam • Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 and the Iraqi forces quickly seized control of the small nation. • Immediately, Bush administration launched a campaign of diplomacy to gain international support. • Allied troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia.

3. Bush gave an ultimatum to Saddam: Withdraw from Kuwait by January, 1991 • When the deadline was ignored, an air campaign was launched against Iraq, devastating them. • Bush called a ceasefire in February, 1991. • The war officially ended on March 3rd with the victory of the U.S.

4. MEDIA COVERAGE

5. Media coverage of Gulf War: • Heavily televisioned war • Newspapers and Magazines all over the world covered the war. • But, U.S. policy regarding media freedom was restricted. • The media coverage of the Gulf war became a source of controversy, media outlets were accused of bias, reporters were casualties of both Iraqi and American gunfire.

6. Criticism: • Media coverage of Gulf war has been highly criticized. • Analysis show, corruption and duplicity of government’s media campaigns in support of the war. • It also blames the media for dismissing the actual human and fiscal costs of the conflict. • The organization, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) analyzed the media coverage during the Gulf War.

7. Coverage of U.S.: • American Society of Newspaper Editors advised journalists to be fair and unbiased. • But the question remained, how journalists and the public should assess whether fairness and balance have been achieved?? • A research conducted on the media, focuses on how daily newspapers treated pro and anti war advocacy during the height of the Gulf war. • Agenda setting theory suggests that if particular points of view are given more attention than others, their public salience will increase and alter public debates.

8. U.S. mainstream media coverage: • Most popular cable network in U.S. for news was Fox News. • Fox News was owned by Rupert Murdoch and was a strong supporter of the Gulf War. • It’s pro-war commentary was in contrast to many U.S. newspapers’ editorials, which were hesitant about going to war. • Western networks also gave some coverage to anti-war protests and rallies, anti-U.S. protests in Iraq and celebrities and politicians that were against the war. • Celebrities included: Actor Tim Robbins, Mike Farrell, Martin Sheen, Michael Moore etc.

9. Another media house, MSNBC ran a tribute called “America’s Bravest” • It fired people who critiqued Bush’s Iraq policy. • One such reporter was Phil Donahur. • Viewership from pre-war to post-war: • Fox News was at number One followed by CNN and then MSNBC. • A study compared the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq to the number of “anti-resolve” statements in U.S. media. • The results were termed as “emboldment effect” and concluded that insurgent groups respond rationally to the expected probability of America’s withdrawal.

10. Criticisms of pro-invasion Bias: • University of Maryland did a study on American public opinion. • 57% of mainstream media viewers believed the falsity that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaeda, or was directly involved in September 11 attacks. • 69% believed the falsity that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in September 11 attacks. • 22% believed the falsity that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. • In the composite analysis, 80% of Fox News viewers had one or more of these misperceptions, in contrast to 71% for CBS and 27% who tuned to NPR/PBS.

11. A study was released by FAIR: It states that current or former government or military officials accounted for 76% of sources for news stories about Iraq aired on news channels. • Journalists found it difficult to report from Iraq. • Many media bureaus were abandoned.

12. Pentagon Military analyst Group: • Investigation by New York Times – • Pentagon officials met with news analysts and gave them “special information”. • They convinced the media people to speak favourably about the war.

13. U.S. Independent media coverage: • Journalists from invading countries reported in a way that was difficult to control by any government or political party. • War in Iraq, for the first time in history, showed that military on front line was able to provide direct, uncensored reportage themselves. • Reporting sites such as Soldier blogs or milblogs were started during the war.

14. Non- US Media Coverage • Differed in tone and content- journalists were more cautious, and rigorously citied sources • HMS Ark Royal : British Naval Vessel, demanded BBC to be turned off due to its apparent “pro- Iraq” bias. • Sailors claim that BBC gave more credit to Iraqi reports, and questioned the reports coming from coalition sources.

15. Al Jazeera: Arab Media Outfit civilian casualties referred to as “martyrs”, press conferences with Iraqi officials claiming to win the war and American and British POWs that the US Media refused to air. • Other Arab networks downplayed the scenes of Iraqi citizens cheering coalition forces entering their towns. • Referred to US and British forces as “invading forces” while Western media used “coalition forces”.

16. Emerging Competition • Abu Dhabi TV matured into Al Jazeera rival. • Other channels such as Al Arabiya

17. Iraqi Media Coverage • Was under tight state control prior to invasion. • Youth TV- most popular TV station - Uday (Saddam Hussein’s eldest son) • Saddam Hussein’s govt maintained “strangehold” on Iraqi Media outlets in which, “insulting the president or other govt authorities is punishable by death”.

18. In wake of invasion, Iraqi media changed drastically. Number of media houses started increasing both in and outside the country. • Many were closely linked with political or religious organizations and safeguarded the interests of their backers. This is said to have led to increased sectarianism in the country.

19. The budding Iraqi media was subject to US manipulation. • Los Angeles Times on November 2005 reported on secret Pentagon Program to pay Iraqi media outlets to publish articles favourable of the US invasion. • The Lincoln Group- subcontractors that wrote and placed stories with headlines such as, “Iraqis Insist On Living Despite Terrorism” and “More Money Goes to Iraq’s Development”. • In march 2006, General George , the Army's second in command, indicated that this practice, which did not "violate U.S. law or Pentagon guidelines," would continue.

20. “Embedded” Journalists • Around 600 journalists were "embedded" with military units, 80% being British or American. • Robert Entman, professor of communication at the George Washington University and critic of mainstream media for decades, indicated it was a very wise tactic from the Pentagon

21. He mentioned there were more chances for the journalists to make favorable reports whilst in Iraq with British and American soldiers than if they had been asking questions in Washington. • Entman indicated there is a natural cultural bias of American journalists in favor of military troops of their own country and that journalists do like to satisfy the government upon which they rely for information, as well as the public on whom they depend commercially.

22. Entman also mentioned the high number of retired generals making comments on TV, pointing out these could not be considered independent experts as they were still paid by the government. • He claims the BBC was much more neutral and informative on cultural and historical background than most American television reports.

23. The Ministry of Defense explained "maintaining morale as well as information dominance will rank as important as physical protection". • An MoD-commissioned commercial analysis of the print output produced by embeds shows that 90% of their reporting was either "positive or neutral."

24. Firdos Square Controversy

25. On April 9, 2003, a large statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square, directly in front of the Palestine Hotel where the world's journalists had been quartered, was toppled by a U.S. M88 tank recovery vehicle surrounded by dozens of celebrating Iraqis, who had been attempting to pull down the statue earlier with little success.

26. The M88 was able to topple the statue which was jumped upon by Iraqi citizens who then decapitated the head of the statue and dragged it through the streets of the city hitting it with their shoes. • The destruction of the statue was shown live on cable news networks as it happened and made the front pages of newspapers and covers of magazines all over the world - symbolizing the fall of the Hussein government. • The images of the statue falling came as a shock to many Arab viewers, who had thought that Iraq was winning the war.

27. The event was widely publicized, but allegations that it had been staged were soon published. • One picture from the event, published in the London Evening Standard, was allegedly doctored to make the crowd appear larger. • Los Angeles Times stated it was an unnamed Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians who had decided to topple the statue; and that a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team then used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist and made it all appear spontaneous and Iraqi-inspired. • According to Tim Brown at Globalsecurity.org: "It was not completely stage-managed from Washington, DC but it was not exactly a spontaneous Iraqi operation."

28. Operation Desert Scam • Desert Storm was the military operation but the whole operartion in itself turned out to be more of a scam due to levels of fraud involved . • The question : Why were people surprised at the weakness of the Iraqi ground resistance? • Answer : Because they trusted the media, and the media trusted the U.S. military.

29. The “Disinformation Campaign” • Newsday's Susan Sachs (3/1/91) reported how the Pentagon intentionally placed false estimates of Iraqi defenses in the U.S. press: "There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war," one senior commander boasted. "We've known for weeks that the lines weren't that formidable," Gen. Walter Boomer told Sachs. "But we wanted to let Iraqis think we still thought they were big.“ • The “Disinformation Campaign” was more for American citizens than for Saddam Hussein:1. Justifying a massive military build-up • 2. Then making the Pentagon into a hero for knocking down a straw man. • George Bush's unprecedented rating in the polls was the fruit of this deception.

30. “Victimisation” Of American Citizens & Public Opinion Formed By U.S. Media • Sometimes the deaths occurring in Iraq were literally forgotten, as when Ted Koppel (1/23/91), on a day when clearing weather allowed 2,000 bombing runs over Baghdad, said, "Aside from the Scud missile that landed in Tel Aviv earlier, it's been a quiet night in the Middle East.“ • The compassion that might have been extended to the innocents under U.S. bombing seemed reserved instead for another "victim"—the U.S. citizen. • In terms of forming public opinion experts on economics and psychology were brought on TV to explain how Saddam Hussein was hurting the American public, which helped to dissolve any residual guilt they might feel over the destruction of Baghdad.

31. Terror Theme Played By MediaThe way the media established the living-room participant as a sort of vicarious casualty was by the incessant repetition of the terrorism theme.Report after report about terrorism was based on nothing more than the speculation of self-styled terrorism "experts," Example: "Anti-terrorism experts say an attack in the U.S. can be expected.... [The question is] not if an attack, but when." (NBC, 1/22/91) The experts usually turned out to be either Bush administration officials or corporate security consultants for whom fear means business, or sometimes both. Example: Billie Vincent, a member of Bush's anti-terrorism task force and president of a company that designed security systems for airports, wrote a New York Times op-ed (2/26/91) piece with the unsurprising rallying cry, "Improve airline bomb detection."

32. Weapons Fetishism • Meanings:- Excessive devotion to one object or one idea.- An object regarded with awe - Excessive or irrational devotion to some activity.

33. A phenomenon related to the domination of the media discussion by retired military men was a near-worship of weapons. • Journalists revered U.S. weaponry—a CNN reporter (1/16/91) described the "sweet beautiful sight" of bombers taking off from Saudi Arabia—and attributed moral failings to Iraqi munitions, as when NBC's Arthur Kent (1/17/91) called the Scud "an evil weapon, but not an accurate weapon." While Peter Jennings talked about the "brilliance of laser-guided bombs," (1/21/91) he described the Scud as "a horrifying killer," (1/22/91) even though the effects of the U.S. bombs were demonstrably more deadly.

34. The ultimate in weapons fetishism came in discussion of the ultimate weapon—the nuclear bomb. During the Gulf Crisis, journalists gave serious, sometimes sympathetic consideration to the use of atomic weapons against Iraq. "Should a Nuclear Bomb Be Used Against Iraq?" was one of the "ethical dilemmas" Time magazine examined in its Feb. 4 issue. • In a lengthy segment that considered whether to use nuclear bombs against Iraq "to save U.S. lives," CBS's Robert Krulwich marveled over the advances made in tactical, low-yield nuclear weapons: "You can drop one over the Empire State Building and control the blast within five blocks and there'd be almost no significant damage in the rest of Manhattan. Even fallout is less of a problem."

35. How could Bush be doubted???? • "The mission of our troops is wholly defensive. Hopefully, they will not be needed long." —George Bush, 8/8/90"Our jobs are our way of life. Our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all suffer if all the world's great oil reserves fell into the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein." —George Bush, 8/15/90"Some people never get the word. The fight isn't about oil, the fight is about naked aggression." —George Bush, 10/16/90"We in the media have been slow to catch on on this issue of the Gulf crisis: For months, the president has meant what he said and done what he said he would." —Brit Hume, Nightline, 2/22/91

36. Coverage of U.S. casualties: • Media coverage of U.S. military casualties has been met by Bush administration efforts to downplay reports about soldiers’ deaths throughout the invasion. • The administration also scheduled the return of wounded soldiers to Dover Air Force Base for after midnight so that the press would not see them. • The U.S. toll reached 3,000 in December,2006. • Ban Lifted: • Soon after taking the office in January 2009, President Barack Obama asked Defence Secretary Robert Gates to review the ban on media coverage of coffins.

37. Attack on Al Jazeera: • On April 8, 2003, U.S. aircraft bombed the Baghdad bureau of Quatar satellite TV station Al Jazeera. • The U.S. gocernment had criticized Al Jazeera as “endangering the lives of American troops”. • In a speech given in New York city, British Home secretary David Blunkett commented on what he believed to be sympathetic and corrupt reporting of Iraq by Arab News sources. • In a conversation between Prime Minister Blair and President Bush, Bush, according to British media, proposed bombing the Quatar central office of Al Jazeera.

38. Attack on Palestine Hotel: • Due to what the U.S. states was a communication error, the tank mistakenly fired at the Palestine Hotel on the same day as the destruction of Al Jazeera. • After interviewing a dozen reporters who were at the scene, the Committee to protect Journalists said, the facts suggested “that attack on journalists, while not deliberate, was avoidable.”

39. Journalist Casualties: • There have been a number of journalist casualties during the invasion, including fourteen deaths. • A few noted ones: • Michael Kelly • NBC’s David Bloom • ITN reporter Terry Lloyd.

40. How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf "If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it."--Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the United States and Canada

41. The Mother of All Clients • Waging a war to push Iraq's invading army from Kuwait would cost billions of dollars and require an unprecedented, massive US military mobilization. • Selling war in the Middle East to the American people would not be easy. • Prior war, a retired army PR official, Hal Steward warned that, "If and when a shooting war starts, reporters will begin to wonder why American soldiers are dying for oil-rich sheiks," • Steward needn't have worried. A PR plan was already in place, paid for almost entirely by the "oil-rich sheiks" themselves.

42. Packaging the Emir • US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana - a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War - later estimated that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein. • Participating firms included the Rendon Group, Neil & co. , Sam Zakhem, front groups: Coalition for American at the risk and freedom task force. • Mastermind for the Kuwaiti Campaign- Hill &Knowlton, World’s largest PR firm. • By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it.

43. “Citizens for a Free Kuwait” – PR front group. • Hill & knowlton produced dozen of video news release at a cost of well over half a million dollars worth of “free “ air time. • TV stations and networks simply fed the carefully-crafted propaganda to unwitting viewers, who assumed they were watching "real" journalism. • Unreliable Sources-Martin Lee and Norman Solomon. • Throughout the campaign, the Wirthlin Group conducted daily opinion polls to help Hill & Knowlton take the emotional pulse of key constituencies so it could identify the themes and slogans that would be most effective in promoting support for US military action.

44. Suffer the Little Children • Every big media event needs what journalists and flacks alike refer to as "the hook." • In the case of the Gulf War, the "hook" was invented by Hill & Knowlton. • The Congressional Human Rights Caucus served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which - like all front groups - used a noble-sounding name to disguise its true purpose.

45. Only a few astute observers noticed the hypocrisy in Hill & Knowlton's use of the term "human rights." • John MacArthur, author of The Second Front, • MacArthur also noticed another telling detail about the October 1990 hearings: "The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied. ... Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations."

46. In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. • Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. • "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.“

47. The story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. • None had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City.

48. At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. • If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action. • Public opinion was deeply divided on Bush's Gulf policy.

49. Given the narrowness of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush's favor. • Following the war, human rights investigators attempted to confirm Nayirah's story and could find no witnesses or other evidence to support it. • When journalists for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation asked Nasir al-Sabah for permission to question Nayirah about her story, the ambassador angrily refused.

50. Front-line Flacks • The military build-up in the Persian Gulf began by flying and shipping hundreds of thousands of US troops, armaments and supplies to staging areas in Saudi Arabia, yet another nation with no tolerance for a free press, democratic rights and most western customs. • Deputy Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Pete Williams served as the Pentagon's top flack for the Gulf War. • This strategy kept news organizations competing with each other for favors from Williams, and kept them from questioning the fundamental fact that journalistic independence was impossible under military escort and censorship.