John Hughes, a former editor of The Christian Science Monitor who now teaches at Brigham Young University, writes and op-ed for that paper today. He describes how a compliant Western media is helping the West lose the information war in Iraq and the Middle East.
Provo, Utah – In 2005 Al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a letter to the then top insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "[M]ore than half of this battle," he wrote, "is taking place in the battlefield of the media…. [W]e are in a media battle, in a race for the hearts and minds of our umma [people]."
As the struggle in Iraq between the insurgents on the one hand and US military and Iraqi security forces on the other reaches a climactic phase, it is clear that the insurgents, far from being a band of crude guerilla fighters, have taken the Al Qaeda leader's injunction to heart and have coupled the tactics of terror with a sophisticated knowledge and use of modern media.
Their command of the Internet, their use of television, their release and timing of material calculated to be picked up and used by Arab and Western TV outlets and news agencies, indicates a high degree of planning and professionalism.
He goes on to describe how the media turned a significant victory on the ground in the Fallujah area into a defeat simply by reporting enemy propaganda as straight news. And it is not a slight distortion. Instead of the factual minor injury of one policeman and one civilian, the media reported 28 dead civilians and 50 wounded. A marine officer who was there says, "We are getting demolished by nefarious enemy media outlets … 'reporters' or 'sources' for Arab and other news agencies either on insurgent payrolls or who have known sympathies with insurgent operations, and by collective Western media that are often being manipulated by enemy elements."
I would charge that it is not just Iraq. All over the region, Western media is quick to report any unsubstantiated allegation that reflects badly on the West or America and Israel in particular. They don't even appear to bother with routine fact checking. They simply report whatever they are given. It is that uncritical Western media response that led to Reuters publishing blatantly falsified photographs. And the media refuses to challenge outrageous assaults of freedom of speech. They simply report, without challenge or comment, Muslim "rage" over whatever rage-de-jour item the information warriors of the jihadis have pumped up.
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The journalist may choose to represent journalists as innocent little victims of sophisticated techniques (timing, indeed!) but it looks more like newsies who are both cynical and complicit. When al-Qaeda announces that the world actually is a purple jellyfish, the NYT and Associated Press will crow about this great defeat for Bush, the Pentagon and the Christian Right.