Typical Methods Used in the Media - Article Example

Media Spins 2008 Media spin is usually used in a derogatory sense, meaning providing through the media a biased portrayal of an organization or an event in one’s favor. The spin is used as a public relations exercise most typically by governments, more often during times of war. The administration then attempts to focus on certain issues and highlight achievements in order to develop public opinion in its favor. The typical techniques that are used as media spin are deliberately choosing certain facts and quotes and denying others, often resorting to providing false statements or phrasing statements in euphemisms in order to hide statements or to propagate own agenda (wikipedia). Media spin is most often used as a propaganda tool, as it was blatantly done during the World Wars, through censorship of news. Since the advent of television and the internet, media spin has become more difficult to engage in but at the same time, more sophisticated methods of spinning the media has also been used. In this paper, I will present two examples of media spin: one, that indulged in by the Nixon Administration during the Vietnam War, which failed as the media refused to toe the government line and the adverse public opinion forced the United States to withdraw its forces from the country, and two, by the Bush Administration that succeeded in mobilizing public opinion in its favor by justifying the attack on Iraq by the latter’s country’s supposed possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The Vietnam War remains a critical juncture in the military and media history of the United States when the relations between the two got strained and the media became so powerful that it could bend public opinion to the extent of resulting in military withdrawal from Vietnam. Till then, the public relations exercise of the Administration was strong enough to guide the media in its favor. During the World War I, for example, the Creele Committee churned out propaganda on German barbarity on a regular basis while also severely censoring the media. During the World War II, although the electronic media had come into the picture, the Administration continued to keep a hold on the media. It was during the Vietnam War that this hold broke (Fehlman, 1992). Nixon, in his memoirs, described how important the media had become during the Vietnam War. He said, “American news media had come to dominate domestic opinion about its purpose and conduct…. In each night’s TV news and each morning’s paper the war was reported battle by battle, but little or no sense of the underlying purpose of the fighting was conveyed. Eventually this contributed to the impression that we were fighting in military and moral quicksand, rather than towards an important and worthwhile objective” (quoted in Fehlman, 1992). Young (1991) argues that the war in Indochina disproved the naïve idea propagated by the administration’s spin doctors that US foreign policies always "meant well" and that Marxism was always "bad". Before the war, the Americans portrayed the Vietnamese as deceitful hordes, cruel, apathetic and unconcerned lots. Young thinks that the war proved it otherwise and shows that the turn of events that led to the war were actually America’s doings. After the signing of the Geneva treaty in 1954, Ho Chi Minh and his group had to move to North Vietnam while the French pawn government ruled that south. The country was supposed to be reunified after the elections to be held in 1956. In the meantime, however, the American continued to provide arms to the French government in south Vietnam in order to resist any possible attack from the North. The U.S., Young points out, realized that the Viet Minh would succeed in any free and just election and that Ho Chi Minh was more of an autonomist than a communist. Hence, it was needed to set up a stable separate nation in South Vietnam, under the absolute rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, who, on the other hand, unleashed a reign of terror against his rivals, leftist or else. Despite being regularly dribbled over as a great compassionate statesman in the U.S. media and among American moderates, conservatives in South Vietnam were starting to resist his rule, agonizing to U.S. officials about his government 's strength. Gradually, south Vietnamese rebels began to protest and finally, in 1963, Diem was killed. Young (1991) cite documents from the Rand Corporation that describe the notorious "strategic hamlet" plan in the village of Duc Lap. The US backing of the huge “defoliation” agenda purportedly to refute food sources to the NLF and the significantly ravaged peasants added to the notion that the U.S were "at best minimally concerned with the peasant's welfare" (Young, 1991). Through the war, the Vietnamese rebels put up a strong resistance to the US bombing and military might. According to the New York Times columnist, James Reston, it was the media reports on American casualties in Vietnam that was decisive and actually ended the war (cited in Fehlman, 1992). The administration’s media spin during the Vietnam War came a cropper primarily because it was as yet inexperienced with the new medium of television. While print journalists had already developed the art of covering human interest stories during wars, the administration had learnt through its experiences during the world wars how to go about either censoring print media news or include embedded journalists to provide the official version of war reports. However, television news became of crucial importance during the Vietnam War and it has developed into a major art since then. As Braastrup notes, “No print journalist on a major newspaper or wire service would be permitted the latitude allowed television reporters as they interpret on-camera the carefully edited film snippets that appear on the network every news shows…. Indeed, the vignette, often presented by the correspondent as a microcosm of the larger event, is the goal of television news… and what the home office wants him to do, essentially, is direct the making of a vivid little action film, and supply theme and coherence to the pictures with the script” (quoted in Fehlman, 1992). Media spin by the U.S government has been improved over the years and by the time that it waged war on Iraq in 2003, it was perfected to the extent of being successful in shaping public opinion, which was in any case sympathetic to the cause of War on Terror after the September 11 terrorist attack on the twin towers of New York. The Bush administration successfully used the televised images of the attack on WTO to garner support on the war on Afghanistan as well as on Iraq through misrepresentation of facts that claimed that Iraq was also involved in the spread of global terror, that it possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that the US had support to wage war against Iraq in the rest of the world. Pakman (n.d.) shows that a far higher proportion of people who were exposed heavily to Fox News, CBS and CNN believed in these misperceptions, thus proving that the media spin by the government through these television channels was a success. In an interview in 2005, Larry Bienhart, author of the book “Wag the Fog”, describes fog facts as the news that are trivia and should be highlighted actually disappear in the fog while the more important news get hidden. This is not any accident, according to Bienhart, but deliberately done as an exercise in media spin. Most news, with exceptions like natural disasters and so on, are made big through deliberate manipulations like press releases and conferences, which are actually spin instruments and spinrooms. Bienhart points out that public relations in the United States have matured over the twenty years since the Vietnam War. While most administrations need to justify some dishonest actions, media spin has become more sophisticated now than it had been during the times of Kennedy or Clinton, who had also spun the media but less successfully. On the other hand, Bush had the not only the support of an extremely competent set of spin doctors but also the environment of war hysteria that had already shaped public opinion on his side. Through the US presence in Iraq since its attack on the country, there have been repeated spins on the media that the US marines and the administration have devised. Once such example follows a query from a Times journalist on the 2005 killing of 24 Iraqis, including women and children, in Haditha, after insurgents detonated a bomb that killed one infantryman and injured two. In the military hearing on the event, of course, the four officers who had ordered the killing justified themselves. Even as the hearing continued, the marine put together answers to the journalist’s query that is a perfect example of a spin. Without answering any of the questions, including whether any officer was killed in the event, the replies provide a searing indictment on the media’s intent and its values in patriotism (New York Times, 2007). The Pentagon has also gone on record, acclaiming American casualties as war heroes when the marine involved was actually killed by a friendly firing or when injured by a grenade crash rather than a shoot-out. In 2007, Cpt Pat Tillman, who died in a case of friendly firing in Iraq, was made a national hero as was Jessica Lynch. While Tillman’s brother testified later that eyewitnesses had confirmed that Tillman was killed by an accidental friendly fighting, Lynch testified that she was injured in a grenade crash and did not deserve to become a legend for having survived an attack (Spillius, 2007). As the WMD theory was not substantiated and the coalition of Al Qaeda with Iraq began to be doubted, demands began to be raised for American withdrawal from Iraq. The administration spin doctors then began to float stories of impending withdrawal of the US from Iraq, through television programs like “what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves” on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS (Solomon, 2007). Times, too, ran a cover story, “Iraq: What will happen when we leave” although the scheduled American withdrawal in mid-2008 looks all the more unlikely. The news reports, while detailing the withdrawal of most of the American forces, hint at retaining some forces on vital American interests. This last bit of news is important since this gives the real clue that the US is in fact not withdrawing. Even though there is the impending election in the future, no presidential candidate is talking about complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, given its vital geopolitical location and the criticality of controlling it for American interests. Although there is some shift in public opinion against American presence in Iraq, the elite opinion in the country remains in its continuation. Even as the Air Force has been increasing its hardware in Iraq, there are unauthorized leaks from the administration that US is withdrawing from the country, whether or not democracy is in place there. For three years since the end of the war, when the falsity of the claims of WMD presence in Iraq came to the fore, there have been media reports that claim, though quoting unofficial sources, that US is withdrawing from the country (Solomon, 2007). Such media spins have been made necessary to squash public opinion against the war and the US presence in Iraq, which has claimed many marine lives and has had some adverse effects on domestic public opinion. According to a New York Times report in 2007, the House voted unanimously for US’ immediate withdrawal from Iraq. However, on close analysis, it was found that the bill actually voted against any permanent erection of US bases in Iraq and did not say anything on temporary military bases or the withdrawal of existing forces (Solomon, 2007). Thus, the government’s media spin industry has come a long way from the Vietnam days, when television reports were largely the cause of American withdrawal from Indochina. Spin doctors, that is the public relations mechanism within the administration, has, on the other hand, been proactive in garnering support for US’ attack on Iraq even though the grounds were flimsy. Taking advantage of the war frenzy mood that the public was already in, the attack on Iraq was portrayed as part of the war on terror. Even after the capture and assassination of Saddam Hussein, the continuation of US presence in Iraq has been enabled through media spins that occasionally talk about withdrawal. Works Cited Young Marilyn, Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 1991 Fehlman, Lt. Col Marc D., The Military/ Media Clash and the Principles of War: The Media Spin, Thesis presented to the Faculty of The School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell Airforce Base, Alabama, May 1992, http://aupress.au.af.mil/saas_Theses/SAASS_Out/Felman/felman.pdf Pakman, David, Media Spin and Misperception, http://www.heartheissues.com/mediaspin.html Spillus, Alex, Pentagon spin on Iraq 'heroes' exposed, April 27, 2007, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/25/whero25.xml New York Times, A Marine Tutorial on Media ‘Spin’, June 24, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/weekinreview/24word.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Solomon, Norman, Media Spin on Iraq: We’re Leaving (Sort of), Common Dreams, July 26, 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/26/2779/ Holland, Joshua, Reality and Spin in the Media, Alter Net, December, 13, 2005, http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/29278/ Read More