http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/3/10/2361/49952
Murdoch helps the US information war (Media) By QuantumG Wed Mar 12th, 2003 at 01:21:24 PM EST Many people, both in America and around the world, have forgotten about a war the US fought in Africa in the early 1990s. Blood spilled in the streets as 331 died and 925 were wounded. Somalia soon became to be seen as what can happen when a weak political homeland delays the deployment of troops abroad. The media told America and the world how badly the NATO forces had lost in Somalia. But had they lost? Judging from normal military standards it was a short and bloody conflict that America had won convincingly. Only a handful of NATO troops had died, giving a kill ratio of around 75:1 -- that's a massacre in anyone's language -- so how is it that the media could so easily mold public perception in such a negative way? Information Warfare (IW) is the ancient art of manipulating any and all information sources in a war to one's advantage. Traditionally IW has consisted of Command and Control Warfare (C2W) of at least: o operations security o psychological operations o military deception o electronic warfare o destruction In Somalia another branch of IW emerged in the form of media manipulation, and would play a crucial role. Through the international media Somalian warlords were able to expose the US covert operations aimed at kidnapping their leaders and, as a result, adversely affect the deployment of troops. The White House attempted to fight back with leaks to the media about secret operations that would portray the US in a positive light but it backfired, resulting in the strange happenings of reporters lighting up a beach landing site with cameras and photographers during a clandestine operation. In the end Mohammed Aidid was better able to control the IW asset of international opinion than the Clinton administration. Today we face a new war, this time with Iraq. This site has presented stories of media control by the Bush administration and, as we have seen, this is nothing new. In the Gulf War of 1991, before Somalia, Saddam Hussien was known to get a lot of his intelligence from US media coverage, and so media control was considered a legitimate target for IW. This resulted in the most televised war ever, with a large number of people seeing a laser guided bomb delivered to its target for the very first time. Swaying the public opinion to be favourable to a war before embarking upon it is so fundamental to US politics that it actually has a name, the Powell Doctrine. The fundamental element of media control is biased reporting. A media that reports both pro-war and anti-war sentiment is no good to any one side's IW efforts. The Bush administration now has the formidable task of swaying media to report pro-war sentiment only, and as much of it as possible. To date, the media has been prominently unbiased, if not somewhat anti-war. The exception is the newspapers, television and radio stations, and web sites owned by the Rupert Murdoch group. Murdoch has been quoted in Salon magazine challenging anyone to show an example of bias on his Fox News Channel. The challenge has been meet dozens [*] of times, this article is just another. Newspapers across the world today carried a headline US finds smoking gun or variations of the same. I should say Rubert Murdoch's newspapers across the world carried such headlines as no other newspapers saw it that way. The story presented in these newspapers is that an unmanned or "drone" aircraft that could be used to spray chemical or biological weapons was found by weapons inspectors and that the aircraft had not been declared by Iraq. Depending on the climate of the country in which the story is being printed, it also claims that Hans Blix deliberately hid this information from the UN security council. The ability of one man to control the destiny of troops going to war is a serious one. The process of democracy holds it in such serious regard that many countries devote much ceremony and law to preventing such an ability. A responsible democratic nation considers all the available facts and does not make such decisions lightly. But governments do not live in a vacuum separate from their society. There is no jury selection for cabinet meetings or war councils. As was seen in Somalia, the media has an enormous influence in the democratic process, even when related to such serious discussions as going to war. Rupert Murdoch's news cartel is paying a service to US IW interests. In doing so he threatens the democratic process through which many nations decide their involvement in this war. -- * http://www.fair.org/extra/0108/fox-main.html A Special FAIR Report The Most Biased Name in News _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
