Issue date: 12/4/01 Section: Opinion

Twenty-two years after Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic "Apocalypse Now," America is fighting again. But this time it’s not the soldier who is confused and blinded by darkness. It is the public.

CNN and other networks are running saturation coverage of the war in Afghanistan. But the Pentagon briefings, the satellite link-ups and the grainy, green-tinted footage of U.S. Special Forces are all merging together to create utter confusion amongst the public. Who’s in charge here?

It is very simple. The media (and consequently the public) don’t know what’s going on. They can’t. When the Taliban claim the bombing has killed 1,500 civilians, America denies it. The media cannot check to see who is telling the truth. The Taliban won’t allow reporters into the parts of Afghanistan they control. The Pentagon is following the media control system that worked so well for it during the Gulf War. The information given out at briefings is minimal and any awkward questions receive the standard reply: "I can’t answer that."

Robert Fisk, a veteran British Middle East correspondent, says, "This is probably the most under covered war I’ve come across in my life." However, the news organizations can’t afford to admit how hamstrung they are by this. So CNN bombards its viewers with the slogan, "You can depend on CNN."

Since the disastrous Vietnam War, when the media was allowed almost unlimited access, restrictions on war reporting have become tighter. Senator Hiram Maxim said in 1917 that "The first casualty when war comes is truth." The events of every war that followed have proven him to be right.

The military briefings in Vietnam were so inaccurate that the journalists dismissed them as the "five o’clock follies." During the invasion of Panama in 1989, then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney praised the stealth bomber for its "pinpoint accuracy." In fact, the bomber missed both of its targets by about 100 yards during that conflict.

In the Gulf War, government spokesmen boasted about the accuracy of laser guided missiles and smart bombs. It emerged after the war that only 8.8 percent of the 84,200 bombs dropped by the United States were "smart" bombs. The rest were conventional, hit-anything, "dump" bombs.

In the war in Afghanistan, nothing has changed. There are few reporters on the ground to tell the public what’s going on: only the U.S. government spokesmen and the Taliban, each with their own agendas. Even reporters from the Stars and Stripes, the Army’s official newspaper, have been told that the Pentagon will not allow them to accompany any invading force.

But it is too easy to place all the blame on the government. The media’s 24-hour saturation coverage, full of endless opinions but no analysis, is doing a grave disservice to the public. It is distasteful to watch news networks putting together advertisements to promote themselves, complete with deep throated voice-overs, just like in a Hollywood trailer. It is upsetting to see Larry King, one of the most respected voices in American journalism, conduct a sycophantic "interview" with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Just to emphasize that this was a public relations exercise for Blair, and not an interview, Larry King finished by asking him about his one-year-old son, Leo.

Kosovo was called the first video game war, a conflict where nothing felt real, not even the news reports. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan. All of the modern conflicts are "sanitized wars." The public is spared the blood and guts, the civilian casualties and anything that depicts human suffering. Instead, we are fed a controlled diet of Pentagon briefings, grainy video footage and endless speculation. What both the U.S. and British governments dread are graphic images that might turn the public against the war: mothers with dead children and starving refugees. Some will dismiss this as scare mongering. But when American planes are dropping "daisycutters" (15,000 pound fuel air bombs) and cluster bombs, it is inevitable that innocent Afghans will be killed or wounded. There will be no one to report it.

Michael Brennan is an exchange student from Dublin City University in Ireland, where he studies journalism. Respond to this article at hornetopinion@excite.com.

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