Government plans that raise the possibility officials may, as a matter of policy, lie to foreign journalists, are fatally flawed. They represent a bad idea that could hurt the American people.
Even though a report about the plan was denied the day after it came to light, it’s not just journalists who should protest. It doesn’t matter whether targets are foreign or domestic. Such a policy would be counter to the interests of Americans who are asked to trust their government.
While it may not be a matter of policy, journalists already suspect they are sometimes lied to by people in power whether they represent governments or other entities. The public needs to share journalists’ skepticism, said John Sweeney, public editor for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.
The fuss over dealings with U.S. government sources was raised by a front-page story in The New York Times Tuesday that also appeared on Page A-7 of The San Diego Union-Tribune. It said: “The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence policy-makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.”
It was the phrase “possibly even false ones” that raised the eyebrows of journalists.
The proposal “may be a trial balloon,” said William Woo, former editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who now teaches at Stanford University. Even so, “the fact that it is even being considered feeds the cynicism.”
The initial story resulted in a front-page denial in the Union-Tribune Thursday by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others. “They tried to quell growing protests over the use of false information by a new office (the Office of Strategic Influence) created to help the United States win the battle on terrorism,” the story said. It added that Rumsfeld and others “defended the Pentagon’s need to conduct secret activities.”
Rumsfeld’s denial is of little comfort to Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation: “The seed of doubt has been planted, and it’s going to be awfully hard to unplant.”
The difference between a deliberate policy to lie and propaganda is that propaganda is not necessarily lies but can be truth without context, McMasters said.
He fears a policy that permits lying would result in “blowback. That is, the American media picking up stories that have been planted in the foreign press and delivering them to the living rooms of the American people.”
McMasters said Americans don’t like being lied to and are offended at the prospect of paying someone to lie for them. It makes them liars as well, he said.
McMasters fears such a policy would place American journalists in even more danger in countries where people already view reporters as instruments of their governments. He also said it would further corrode the American press’s credibility, “which is already in disrepair.”
Since inception of the war on terrorism, the government has acted in ways that have not been helpful to the American news media, McMasters said. He cited the administration’s admonishment to “watch what you say;” warnings by American officials to news agencies not to air full interviews with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden; pressure on the Voice of America not to air an interview with a Taliban leader, and Secretary of State Colin Powell’s request to Qatar to monitor the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera network.
Such tactics, he said, “serve notice to the American people and anybody else who’s watching carefully that the press in America is subject to some direction.”
The notion is untenable to American journalists who take pride and comfort in freedom of the press. It should be just as unpalatable to the American public.
Woo, the professor and former editor, called such a proposal “counterproductive. It will result in the pollution of almost any piece of information that comes out of the Defense Department in terms of a story,” he said.
“People need to have some faith in their government,” Woo said. “It’s just very shortsighted and misguided.”
On Friday, the American Society of Newspaper Editors asked Rumsfeld to reconsider the disinformation plan. “We believe such a plan, if instituted, would be a serious wrong turn for the United States,” Tim J. McGuire, society president, wrote Rumsfeld.
Ian Mayes, London Guardian ombudsman, cited one of the guiding principles of journalism: truth-telling.
“We know that propaganda has always been a tool working against this for partisan purposes in wartime but the press does not want to be knowingly or unknowingly a part of that. The discovery of this kind of thing discredits the agency issuing it . . . We should protest in the strongest terms.”
Don Wycliff, ombudsman at the Chicago Tribune, called the idea “absurd and destructive. “If the truth won’t win for us, why do they think falsehood will?”
Gina Lubrano’s column commenting on the media appears Mondays. It is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune to correct all errors. To discuss accuracy or fairness in the news, please write to Gina Lubrano, readers representative, Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191, or telephone (619) 293-1525. Send e-mail to:
readers.rep@uniontrib.com.
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
——————————————————————————–
