Moyers & Greg Mitchell on War Coverage

[Pete C]

Transcript form last night's NOW airing. Moyers' program is one of the few things in the "mainstream" media providing a counterbalance to the war mongering and jingoism of the press.

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/tr..._mitchell.html

[Ron Thorne]

Thank you for this link, Pete. I wish that I'd been able to see this program. I've always admired Bill Moyers, and considered his thoughtfulness, intelligence and approach a breath of fresh air.

Among the comments from the transcript which really stood out to my sensibilities were:

BILL MOYERS: Fox News has become the cheerleader for the government. What does it do to other news organizations when-- when Fox proves that jingoism is more popular than journalism?

GREG MITCHELL: I think the problem with that is that a lot of the other-- particularly the cable news networks have-- felt that they have to keep up with that. I think there's a certain competition to show that they're not soft on the war.

That-- they have-- any less patriotism than Fox. And we've seen it in-- just this morning. I saw an interview on CNN with the-- an Australian woman who had been in Baghdad and had just left. And the woman kept saying that, you know, she was amazed how much the Iraqi people, although they may not like Saddam Hussein-- were very angry about the bombings.

BILL MOYERS: What concerns you about what's not being covered?

GREG MITCHELL: My complaint is with the cable news networks that are on 24/7 and yet have found virtually no time to interview psychologists and theologians and other observers who could talk about what this is doing to us what this is doing to us as a country.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think is stake for democracy and how we journalists cover this war?

GREG MITCHELL: Obviously, there are great-- always be restrictions in war time. But-- you know-- Edward R. Murrow had a quote-- on his wall in his office from Thoreau in which he said, "Speak the truth. You need two people. One to speak it and one to hear it."

And-- I think that sums up the-- relationship not only between the military and the press but the press and the American people. You know, the press often is reporting factual matters. And the public sometimes turns away from it. We entered this war, with upwards of half the people in the country believing that-- Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack.

[willy]

Doom and gloom, baby. Hand wringing and fear. It's the liberal way of life.

[walto]

So sorry, Willy. I, for one, promise to try to enjoy this bombing stuff more from now on. After all, only a couple thousand innocents have probably lost their lives at this point, and I don't know a single one of them!

This whole thing ROCKS!

[willy]

I, for one, prefer to get my news from the press involved in the war who see first hand what's going on

[willy]

and not those who are not there and have no idea what's going on

[moneyp]

Willy, be honest. You'll get your news from whomever tells you what you want to hear. You've made that perfectly clear.

[willy]

Thanks for setting things straight, oh great one.

[moneyp]

Originally posted by willy
Thanks for setting things straight, oh great one.

What, no cute reductive cartoon accompaniment? The artist doesn't have anything counter the accusations of conservative sycophancy?

[Captain Hate]

BILL MOYERS: What concerns you about what's not being covered?

GREG MITCHELL: My complaint is with the cable news networks that are on 24/7 and yet have found virtually no time to interview psychologists and theologians and other observers who could talk about what this is doing to us what this is doing to us as a country.

Earth to Moyers & Mitchell: This is causing anxiety in our citizens. To which PBS station do I forward my invoice?

[Captain Hate]

Originally posted by Uli
It will hopefully change the hypocritical messages that we give our kids. Like no violance, not even in self defence. In the future we will teach them to kick mutherfuckers premptively, especially if they are weaker than you.

I never told my kids not to use violence in self defense.

[moneyp]

A story at odd with Willy's little cartoons:

A recent Washington Post article describing the killing of civilians by
U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that
"embedded" journalists do have the ability to report on war in all its
horror. But the rejection by some U.S. outlets of Post correspondent
William Branigin's eyewitness account in favor of the Pentagon's sanitized
version suggests that some journalists prefer not to report the harsh
reality of war.

The Pentagon version was the one first reported in U.S. media-- sometimes
in terms that assumed that the official account was factual. "What
happened there, the van with a number of individuals in it...approached
the checkpoint," reported MSNBC's Carl Rochelle (3/31/03). "They were
told to stop by the members of the 3rd Infantry Division. They did not
stop, warning shots were fired. Still they came on. They fired into the
engine of the van. Still it came on, so they began opening fire on the van
itself."

Fox's John Gibson (3/31/03) presented the story in similar terms: "We warn
these cars to stop. If they don't stop, fire warning shots. If they don't
stop then, fire into the engine. If they don't stop then, fire into the
cab. And today some guys killed some civilians after going through all
those steps."

But later on the night of March 31, the Post released its story on the
shooting that would appear in the April 1 edition of the paper.
Branigin's report described U.S. Army Capt. Ronny Johnson's attempts to
avoid the incident as he directed his troops via radio from the
checkpoint:

---
"'Fire a warning shot,' he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with
increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun
round into its radiator. 'Stop [messing] around!' Johnson yelled into
the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken.
Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, 'Stop him, Red 1, stop him!'

"That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon
fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots
were heard in all.

"'Cease fire!' Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his
binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon
leader, 'You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a
warning shot soon enough!'"
---

The Post's account is significant because it suggests that, in fact,
military procedures may not have been properly followed at the checkpoint.
Several U.S. papers, including the New York Daily News, Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle, managed to
include the discrepancy between the official Pentagon account and the
Post's eyewitness description in their reports on the Najaf killings in
their April 1 editions. The New York Times, however, did not, instead
running a story that only presented the official version, under a headline
that stated as a definite fact that adequate warning had been given before
soldiers opened fire: "Failing to Heed Warning, 7 Iraqi Women and Children
Die."

While it's possible that the New York Times, unlike other East Coast
papers like the Daily News and the Globe, had a deadline that did not
allow it to include information from the Branigin article, the Times ran a
follow-up article on April 2-- "U.S. Military Chiefs Express Regret Over
Civilian Deaths"-- that still omitted any mention of the description of
the incident in the Washington Post. The piece, by Christopher Marquis,
described the victims as being "killed when their van apparently failed to
stop after orders by American guards." It rehearsed the official version
of events ("that soldiers fired warning shots to stop the van, then fired
into the engine, but that the van continued forward, forcing troops to
fire into the passenger compartment") and quoted Gen. Richard Myers on
"our policy of doing all we can to spare civilian lives"-- all without
mentioning the contradictory firsthand account from the Post.

The Times was not the only outlet that either overlooked or chose to
ignore the reporting that undermined the official story on the killing.
NPR's Nick Spicer reported on the April 1 All Things Considered-- which
aired at least 18 hours after the Post story broke-- that "what we're
hearing here at CENTCOM is that troops fired a warning shot as a vehicle
approached a checkpoint. The vehicle did not stop. It then fired at the
engine block. The vehicle continued. And then they fired in the
passenger compartment and they killed seven women and children."
Branigin's account was not mentioned.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution summarized the story thus on April 2:
"Seven Iraqi women and children are killed at an Army checkpoint 20 miles
north of Najaf after they failed to heed warning shots." The Houston
Chronicle reported on April 1, without qualification, that "U.S.
troops...opened fire on a civilian vehicle that refused their order to
halt and ignored warning shots." Although the story cited the Washington
Post on the number of people killed in the incident, it ignored the parts
of the Post account that contradicted the official account that the
Chronicle treated as fact.

Even the Washington Post itself, in an April 2 story by a different
reporter, failed to mention Branigin's reporting when it reiterated the
official description of the incident: "At another checkpoint on Monday,
U.S. troops blasted an approaching vehicle carrying as many as 16 people,
most of them women and children, in the belief that an attack was
underway. Ten people in the vehicle died. Soldiers said later that they
fired warning shots that were ignored."