TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf/TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf.iso/time2_04/cf040097.t11

Text File | 1991-06-27 | 7.7 KB | 173 lines

DATE: JAN. 24, 1991      13:03               REPORT: 1
TO: INTERNATIONAL DESK
FOR:
CC:
BUREAU: NEW YORK
BY: WILLIAM TYNAN
IN:
SLUG: PRESS CREDIBILITY

News desk: Please drop copy to Intl story slugged ``Press
Credibility''

Take one

Michael Gartner, President of NBC News, is unequivocally
opposed to the restrictions that the Pentagon has imposed
on war reporting and says that they have undeniably
diminished the value of the information that the public
is getting. Says he: ``It's very, very difficult to
present an undiluted picture--in fact, so much so that
now, in all of our newscasts, we have our anchors read a
statement that says, `I want to remind you again that all
the war news that comes out of Saudi Arabia is subject to
censorship by our (stress) Government and the news from
Israel is subject to Israeli censorship.' And of
course,'' Gartner continues, ``if we had anything from
Iraq, which we don't, we would say that that's censored
as well.''

 Gartner cites what happened to NBC correspondent Martin
Fletcher in Tel Aviv Tuesday as an example of the
difficulties the networks face. ``Israel got irritated
and pulled the plug on our satellite, because they didn't
like something that Martin Fletcher said. The only way we
could get it back up was to apologize on the air. So we
apologized on the air. In other words, we apologized for
telling the truth. And I've gotta tell you, that really
grates on you.''

 Gartner resists the notion that any of the restrictions
are needed. ``No reporter,'' says he, ``is over there
trying to give away military secrets. The reporters
around are sensitive enough and smart enough to know
what's what. They're not going to imperil the lives of
400,000 American men and women with what they report.
Editorial judgments should be made in news rooms, not in
briefing rooms.''

 As a result of the reporting restrictions, Gartner says
that he thinks the public is inadequately informed about
some crucial aspects of the war. ``I think the public
understands that there's an enormous war going on, that
it's a difficult war, that it's a war that is already
causing casualties, but I don't think the public yet has
a very good grasp of the complexities, the possible
length, the potential horror, because it's still in the
early stages.'' Well, then, isn't it the job of the press
to make them aware of these things? Says Gartner: ``You
have to have facts in order to report well, and there's a
restriction on the facts that are available or that can
be reported.''

 It's true that some information is being leaked, as
always. ``But,'' says Gartner, ``even when there's
leaking going on, if you try to report it out of Saudi
Arabia or out of Israel, there's a censor right at your
elbow. They can literally pull the plug.''

 If the reporting restrictions have engendered any
special friction between the Pentagon and the press,
Gartner is unaware of them, he says. That's an issue to
be addressed by the reporters on the beat. However, says
he, ``They (the Pentagon and the press) don't exactly
have a commonality of interest in their jobs.''

 Gartner says that NBC's continuing policy on the airing
of POW tapes will be on a ``case-by-case basis.'' The
criteria that the network will use in deciding whether or
not to broadcast tapes are pretty simple: ``First of all
determine whether what you have is news, and if it is
news, then to put it in context. Never run it raw,
unedited, without viewing it. Never run it live.''
Gartner says that NBC will use the same policy when the
time comes to possibly air footage of dead soldiers:
decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis. However,
it's possible to speculate that the networks won't even
have that option, since the military has closed Dover
Base, where the bodies will be sent, a fact that Gartner
wryly notes is ``kind of interesting.''

 Gartner is a big advocate of pool coverage, so it's kind
of strange to hear him say that he doesn't really know
how pooling is working out yet. The footage seems to be
okay, he says, but he claims that he hasn't really had
the time to get into the issue yet. (However ABC's
Richard Kaplan, in Dhahran, says pooling isn't working at
all, as we'll get to in Take Two.)

 Jeff Greenfield, the political and media analyst for
ABC, has been working on a piece similar to ours, which
he delivered on last night's (Wednesday's) edition of
World News Tonight. He claims to have no special
knowledge or observations at this point. Still, he
amiably shares his thoughts.

 Trying to gauge the meaning of the press restrictions
and the effect they're having on the quality of the
information we're getting, says Greenfield, is a peculiar
and difficult problem, because we can't know how much
we're missing until we find out just what it is that
we've missed. ``What the restrictive coverage will mean
in the long run can't be judged unless you know what it
is we aren't learning now that in time we will learn,''
says he. Putting it another way, he says: ``I don't think
anybody knows how these restrictions are affecting
coverage, because I don't know what we'd find out without
them.''

 Greenfield acknowledges that ``these are extraordinarily
restrictive conditions. They are more restrictive than in
World War II, because there you had censorship but people
did go out on their own a lot. They could gather various
material.''

 Still, television technology has improved so much that
it is perhaps unrealistic to compare the current press
conditions to World War II conditions, or even to
conditions during the Vietnam War. One retired military
advisor that Greenfield recently talked to pointed out
that it was true that there was no censorship in Vietnam,
but that on the other hand nothing could get on the air
instantly. It took hours for reports to get to even the
nearest satellite hookup, in Hong Kong. So the security
problem was pretty much taken care of by logistics.

 Greenfield speculates that even if there were no press
restrictions, the public still might not be able to get a
clear picture of what's happening in the Gulf. ``It's not
that there's nothing real going on. It's that what's
going on would, at the least, be very difficult to cover
if you had complete access and no censorship. There are
questions people want to ask now: Is the Iraqi air force
decimated? Does Saddam still have a chemical capability?
What's the morale and the strength of the ground troops
that have been subject to bombardment for the last week
in Iraq and Kuwait? But the question is, To what extent
would freewheeling press ability let us know? Even if you
believe that we should know. There's a real question as
to whether or not some of this is stuff that the public
shouldn't know. Maybe Saddam shouldn't know what we
know.''

 The latter is an issue that particularly interests
Greenfield. Says he: ``Journalists always like to say
that we're the eyes and ears of the public. We're
standing in for the public, and we're as pushy as we are
because we think the public wants to know. But I think,
frankly, it's an open question as to whether the public
is perfectly content to let the Pentagon run the war.
That may be a terrible thing, but it may be true. It may
be that the public no longer regards us as their
tribunes.''

 To illustrate, Greenfield points out that on Wednesday's
``Donahue'' show, when Donahue made the point that Marlin
Fitzwater recently said that phone calls to the White
House on this subject were running one hundred to one
against the media, the audience applauded. ``It's a fair
point,'' says Greenfield. ``It may be that a lot of
people see this not as the press fighting for the public
but the press fighting for its own special privileges.''