In the wake of U.S. military strikes abroad, mainstream media coverage tends to follow a traditional script. International law, if mentioned at all, is treated as mere platitude, not as a specific body of precedent. After the recent cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and Afghan paramilitary camps, for example, few reporters inquired into what “self-defense” actually means in international law. (See “Inalienable Right,” below.)
Civilian casualties of U.S. attacks–if shown at all in the mainstream media–appear briefly and after warnings that the footage is likely part of a propaganda campaign. In contrast to U.S. victims of foreign terrorists, we rarely learn the names of civilian victims or hear their families’ reactions to the attack. True to script, Sudanese civilian victims made only cameo appearances in American media.
And only because of the media-hyped sex scandal raging around Bill Clinton did some mainstream reporters diverge from the traditional script to question the President’s political motives (a la Wag the Dog). It’s refreshing to see Washington reporters finally asking such questions–queries rarely raised when past presidents capitalized politically on military adventures.
Another departure from script, though slow in coming in U.S. media, was the questioning of the Clinton administration’s evidence for targeting the Sudan factory. Within two days of the attack, the European press was quoting factory managers, among others, to puncture the initial U.S. claim that the Sudan plant was a terrorist-funded nerve gas factory with no civilian purpose. In fact, terror suspect Osama bin Laden had no discernible link to the plant, which produced much of Sudan’s medicine. Perhaps slowed by the U.S. media mantra that Sudanese openness to plant inspection was a propaganda ploy, it took the New York Times more than a week to clearly report that U.S. justifications had been “inaccurate, misleading or open to question.”
More telling was the relative lack of emotion about White House deception. In the days prior to the missile attack, editorials and commentaries in top U.S. outlets marshaled unprecedented fury in castigating Clinton for not telling the whole truth about his sex life. There was almost no mainstream outrage at Clinton for not telling the whole truth about an illegal bombing that killed and wounded civilians.
Here’s a chronology of the first days of mainstream news coverage of the missile attacks.
August 20:
POSITIVELY REAGANESQUE
Bill Press, the “left” on CNN‘s Crossfire, seeks Pat Buchanan’s approval: “You know, Pat, I think this Wag the Dog talk is nonsense. I think the president did the right thing and I know you agree. I mean it was positively Reaganesque, what he did today. I just hope, since Osama bin Laden is still alive, that we have a few cruise missiles left and use them.”
PRIMETIME DIVERSITY
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) supports the cruise missile attacks on national TV five times in under three hours: CNBC‘s Hardball (8 p.m.), MSNBC‘s The Big Show (8 p.m.), CNN‘s Larry King Live (9 p.m.), CNBC‘s Rivera Live (9 p.m.) and Fox News Channel‘s Crier Report (10 p.m.). As an expert on integrity and truth-telling, Oliver North appears three times in less than two hours: Hardball, The Big Show and Rivera Live.
August 21:
QUIETING LIBYA
Experts repeatedly cite Reagan’s Libya bombing as evidence that air strikes reduce terrorism. On ABC‘s Good Morning America, ubiquitous TV guest Sen. John McCain remarks: “There are examples, such as our raid on Libya, where we bombed Tripoli back in 1986, which made Quadaffi rather quiet, and he’s remained so ever since.” (So quiet that two years later, according to U.S. intelligence claims, Libya had a hand in blowing up Pan Am 103 over Scotland.)
SORRY, WRONG COUNTRY
Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntrye on CNN: “The U.S. picked the highly accurate cruise missiles for the strikes against the Afghan camp because of their ability to fly with pinpoint accuracy.” Days later, asked about reports that a missile had cruised into Pakistan, hundreds of miles off course, McIntyre says, “It wouldn’t be unprecedented.”
INALIENABLE RIGHT
Lead sentence of the New York Times lead editorial: “The United States has every right to attack suspected terrorists if there is credible evidence showing that they were involved in attacks against American citizens or were planning such attacks.” (International law recognizes a country’s right to strike another only when defending itself against an attack that is “imminent and overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, no moment of deliberation.”)
EDITORIAL DIVERSITY
Washington Post editorial: “The United States was correct to send its military forces into action against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan yesterday.” Headline of Los Angeles Times editorial: “U.S. AIR RAIDS NECESSARY.” Headline of USA Today editorial: “U.S. STRIKES ON TERRORISTS A GOOD BEGINNING.”
CIVILIAN VICTIMS AS PROPAGANDA
New York Times correspondent Serge Schmemann writes: “Given the growing sophistication of militant groups in the use of media, it is likely that television cameras will be invited to record any civilian victims or wayward bombs, with the United States portrayed as a heartless bully.”
BUSH VS. BUSH
On Nightline, Ted Koppel asks his guests to discuss how “we” should conduct foreign policy vis-a-vis terrorism. The two-person panel is comprised of George Bush’s Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, and George Bush’s director of the National Security Council, Richard Haass.
August 23:
SHREWD MOVE
CNN correspondent Mike Hanna, one of the first journalists to see the destroyed plant in Khartoum, reports on the Sudanese government’s response: “To allow unfettered media access to a suspected chemical weapons plant is either an act of extreme irresponsibility or it is a shrewd move to cast the burden of proof on the U.S. administration that authorized the attack.”
August 24:
MORAL HIGH GROUND
Mike Hanna reports: “Through a series of orchestrated demonstrations and by giving unfettered access to the media, Sudan appears intent on gaining the moral high ground. … This is all part of the process, it appears, of the Sudanese government to gain the moral high ground, and certainly, they have been giving the media here every access to the site.”
August 25:
A GLEAMING OPPORTUNITY
In the Washington Post, Karl Vick reports: “In the smoldering wreckage of El Shifa, the rogue government of Sudan perceived a gleaming public relations opportunity.” The Los Angeles Times reports: “As part of the Sudanese government’s public relations effort, meanwhile, Western journalists were given access to the bombed-out factory and were shown prescription drugs described as having been manufactured there.”
August 26:
A EUROPEAN VIEW
A news article in the London-based Financial Times gauges the negative reaction of senior European diplomats in Khartoum, quoting one as saying, “On the basis of what we know of the factory and the evidence we have been given by the United States so far, there is no reason to believe that the United States knew what was going on inside that factory…. Nor is there any evidence that the factory had links with bin Laden. This robust support by other governments for the United States was frankly very stupid.”
A version of this appeared in In These Times (9/98).
