Tonight and tomorrow, the
Illinois Initiative for Media Policy Research is hosting a conference entitled "Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation?", in lovely Champaign-Urbana (a blue town in a red section of a blue state; in basketball, we're #2!). Tonight's speakers are Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Naomi Klein from The Nation, and future Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Tomorrow's panelists include, among others, Phil Donohue.
The opening lecture was presented by Sy Hersh, famous for breaking stories about the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam era and the Abu Ghraib scandal more recently. I missed the first half hour, but thought I'd report in this, my first diary, about what I caught from the rest of his talk, which went for over an hour.
As part of the unconsolidated press, Hersh focused primarily on the policies of the current administration, rather than mediacentric issues; given his wide background in investigative reporting, no one in the audience seemed to mind.
Here are his points, as I was able to record them.
- The news media consistently speaks of "insurgents", but this is responsible for obscuring the fact that we are likely seeing the beginnings of an Iraqi civil war.
- Wolfowitz leaving DoD for the World Bank seems to represent diminishing ambitions on the part of the administration. While private enterprise may take on an importance there never seen before, "at least we won't be killing people" (gallows humor, but said with a purpose).
- Hersh is absoutely convinced that Bush is a true believer in his message of freedom, freedom, etc., and is not disconnected from the outside world, merely a puppet pulled by Rove. Instead, Hersh suggests that Bush has almost no ability to absorb information, believing wholeheartedly in simplistic notions, even if they don't stand up to intellectual criticism.
- According to Hersh, the Da'wa party in Iraq used a very decentralized structure to fight Saddam, so that no person could reveal much info if captured. Saddam copied this format for his own side, and many of these people disappeared in April 2003 as the war was underway, now forming a significant part of the resistance.
- Hersh helped to break Abu Ghraib, and his book goes into great detail, so a couple quick points. The administration refused to do anything to actually discipline top officials, at the cost of a great deal of Arab support (I have personally never been able to understand why they didn't try to scapegoat someone; it's cynical, but it would have helped the US and I'm not convinced it would have hurt his re-election chances, but then again, I'm not a political advisor either, for good reason). Hersh indicated a good deal of sympathy for the low-level troops, saying that it is the job of officers to, in part, act in loco parentis for a bunch of well-trained but very confused 18-year olds in a situation that no person can handle well.
- Audience question: oil? Hersh: a major role, but not the defining feature of Bush's ideology.
- Kurds? Hersh: They fully expect their own state. Infighting between Talabani and Barzani is going to be a very, very serious problem in the near future.
A few of my own thoughts, inspired by the talk, but representative of my own opinions, and not necessarily his.
I honestly think a great deal of the trouble we have with the news media is their own perception that by the time a story has its course in the press, people actually understand the relevant issues. Professors learn quickly that there is a vast difference between explaining something to a class and having them understand it fully. The media doesn't get this. They haven't done their job reporting progressive indexing of SS benefits if the public doesn't understand it, for example, but how many people out there really can tell you what it means for them in a quantitatively accurate way? Same for any issue, but they are pretty equally sloppy in everything.
The most important thing, as far as I am concerned.
When we went to war, we guaranteed a hundred thousand deaths, knowing it might be far worse, to say nothing of the people injured, cities ruined, and families broken on both sides. This is not a conclusive argument against the war, the same was true for WWII, which I think we were right to fight. However, any and all gains from fighting the war must be considered against this backdrop. If the war is worth fighting, it can only be
in spite of the casualties; they are not incidental, they are always the result. Speaking as a Jew (agnostic, yes, but raised Jewish), I firmly believe that the Axis and Allied military and civilian deaths can be justified by the fact that we prevented a worse mass genocide. It is the height of cravenness that the current administration has never been truly willing to ackowledge this war in those terms (casualties, not genocide, which doesn't really apply here). If the current American regime was truly concerned, they would have recognized that Iraqis possess human rights, and tried to
mitigate the freakin casualties! That they haven't, and that the media has abysmally failed to report from Fallujah, from Ramadi, from Baghdad outside the green zone, is a colossal failure of the values we so proudly proclaim over and over again. I know that the reporting is dangerous, and my hat is off to the brave ones who do, but the self-censorship shown by the media bosses reflects no such courage. That our country fought a war on false pretenses is awful enough, but the careless disregard we have shown for human life during and since is a legal crime, a moral crime, and a black mark on human history.