* Traduttori con l'elmetto ("Liberazione")
* Come vendere un conflitto (G. Poole)
* Militari esperti in guerra psicologica lavorano alla CNN (varie fonti)
---
TRADUTTORI CON L'ELMETTO
La seguente lettera e' stata pubblicata su "Liberazione"
del 31/3/2000:
<< Sono una albanese residente in Italia pienamente d'accordo con gli
articoli pubblicati su "Liberazione" di domenica 19 (marzo n.d.r) sulla
cattiva informazione della stampa e della televisione nel corso della
guerra in Jugoslavia.
Come rappresentante albanese ho partecipato a numerosi convegni contro
la guerra organizzati a Napoli da Rifondazione e svariate associazioni
culturali.
Ho denunciato la manipolazione dell'informazione e, in particolare, il
fatto che le traduzioni delle interviste erano spesso travisate.
Conoscendo la lingua, comprendevo che cosa veniva domandato e risposto e
come poi veniva tradotto in italiano.
Molto spesso i numeri venivano gonfiati: per esempio, su una rete Rai,
un albanese kosovaro intervistato parlava di 4 morti che il traduttore
faceva diventare 40!
Nel corso di una trasmissione, ripresa anche da Rai3, una troupe
televisiva si recava a intervistare gli albanesi kosovari scortata da
militari dell'Uck. Uno di questi, prima che iniziasse l'intervista,
avviso' gli altri di di "non parlare troppo", questa frase non fu
tradotta.
In un'altra intevista, fu posta a una kosovara la domanda : "Sei
d'accordo con i bombardamenti Nato?".
Subito dopo aver tradotto in albanese la domanda, l'interprete suggeri'
a bassa voce: "Di' di si', di' di si'". >>
Ardiana Shlaku, Napoli
---
COME VENDERE UN CONFLITTO -
L'INGANNO DELLE "RELAZIONI PUBBLICHE"
di Gordon Poole
(distribuito a cura della sezione italiana del Tribunale "Clark")
Tutti i teorici della guerra di bassa intensità, a partire dai
futurologi
Alvin e Heidi Toffler - il primo è consulente del Pentagono da molti
anni
- teorizzano la necessità di dominare, durante la fase calda del
conflitto, i mezzi di comunicazione di mas sa del proprio paese.[1] La
militarizzazione di questi ultimi dev'essere completa e capillare, sì da
evitare non solo quella "invadenza" dei giornalisti che"guastò" la
Guerra
del Vietnam, contribuendo a suscitare una rivolta in patria e sullo
stesso
campo di battaglia, ma anche "scomode" presenze nei posti sbagliati,
come
fu quella di Peter Arnett a Baghdad che si permise di intervistare
Saddam
Hussein, dando la parola a colui che veniva presentato al pubblico
ufficialmente, quanto inverosimilmente, come un "Hitler".
Gli stessi teorici, e anche qui i Toffler sono espliciti, limitano
questa
militarizzazione dei mezzi di comunicazione di massa al periodo di
conflitto intenso, durante il quale si può, anzi si deve, raccontare al
pubblico qualsiasi fandonia per giustifica re la guerra, purché si sia
in
gradodi renderla credibile, di farla passare. Le notizie, quindi, in
barba
alla deontologia tradizionale del giornalismo, in cui qualche raro
giornalista mostra ancora di credere (sino a rimetterci il posto), non
si
misurano con il metro della realtà, della verità - un'obiettività in cui
i
teorici del pensiero debole non credono - ma con quella della
credibilità
e della funzionalità agli intenti politici del governo e alla conduzione
della guerra. Dopo, cessato il periodo di militarizzazione, ai media
può
venire restituita la funzione ormai abituale di imbonitori di
sciocchezze
e volgarità "di bassa intensità". E' sorprendente poi come vengono
fuori,
soprattutto sui giornali o attraverso Internet, delle verità che durante
il conflitto non potevano emergere. In particolare, una serie di
menzogne
che i media stessi si erano ingegnati di trasmettere ad un pubblico
credulone vengono via via smascherate dagli stessi giornalisti che le
avevano comunicate al momento opportuno, o anche dalle stesse agenzie di
relazionipubbliche che le avevano inventate. Anche questa fase è
prevista
dai teorici dell'uso dei media: Toffler, in particolare, è esplicito nel
distinguere tra notizie calde e fredde. Lo smascheramento di un'utile
bugia in un secondo momento è sempre una notizia fredda. Serve, semmai,
paradossalm ente a dare l'impressione di una certa obiettività
giornalistica, come se i mezzi di comunicazione di massa fossero più
porosi, meno murati di quanto non siano. Ormai, cessati i bombardamenti
in Jugoslavia, piano piano sono emerse una serie di verità - notizie
fredde - che smantellano tutte le principali accuse mosse a suo tempo
contro il governo jugoslavo di Milosevic. Non ci fu la pulizia etnica
contro gli alba nesi nel Kosovo (è di questi giorni la smentita
autorevole
del generale di brigata tedesco a riposo, Heinz Loquai, della cosiddetta
"Operazione ferro da cavallo"), né gli stupri etnici, né i massacri di
civili, né le fosse comuni. L'operazione "Arcobaleno " era
ideologicamente
e legalmente corrotta, un atto di belligeranza, un attentato alla buona
fede e alla generosità del popolo italiano. Tutte notizie fredde. Ora
Jamie Shea, il portavoce NATO durante la Guerra di Kosovo, con una
franchezza che può sorprendere, ha fatto delle rivelazioni sui 78 giorni
del suo successo mediatico. In un discorso tenuto recentemente a Berna,
Svizzera, davanti ad un gruppo di impor tanti uomini d'affari dal titolo
"Vendere un conflitto - la massima sfida delle 'relazioni pubbliche'",
Shea ha detto tra l'altro: "Bisogna conquistare l'opinione pubblica, e
non
è una cosa semplice quando stai violando la sovranità di uno stato". I
"dann i collaterali" - l'eufemismo propagandistico per indicare le
sofferenze inflitte ai civili, oggetto di leggi e convenzioni nazionali
ed
internazionali - rischiavano di far perdere alla NATO il favore del
pubblico. A questo pericolo Shea riuscì abilmente a fare fronte con le
immagini dei profughi trasmessi da tutti i canali TV.
Con l'inveterato disprezzo per il pubblico "fesso" tipico di tutti gli
imbroglioni, Shea ha detto che la gente adora le telenovela quotidiane
con
buoni protagonisti, ed è quello che lui le ha fornito. La sua bravura
nel
farlo sarebbe comprovato, secondo l ui, dal fatto che la gente ancora lo
riconosce ovunque va. Shea, la star dei media, si è anche vantato di
essere stato incluso da una rivista popolare in un elenco dei "dieci
uomini più sexy del mondo". Se di tanto in tanto appariva l'immagine di
Milosevi c, filtrata e abilmente contestualizzata, essa risultava
cattiva,
decisamente non sexy. L'ex-portavoce della NATO ha raccontato anche che
le sue quotidiane conferenze stampa TV costituivano una grossa sfida. Il
suo compito era di passare la massima quantità di dettagli possibile -
dal
video della cabina di pilotaggio di un aereo da bombardam ento
all'angolo
di impatto di un missile - senza commettere errori, per non perdere di
"credibilità" - termine al quale egli conferisce chiaramente un
significato peculiare. Quello che rendeva il suo compito ancora più una
sfida era il fatto che le conferenze stampa teletrasmesse dovevano
tenersi
anche quando c'era una pausa nei bombardamenti a causa del cattivo
tempo.
Shea, che è britannico, ha paragonato questo problema ad una partita di
cricket quando piove - il cronista sportivo deve continuare a commentare
la partita sebbene sul campo di gioco non stia succedendo niente. Egli
usava queste "interruzioni" per spiegare ancora una volta chi erano i
buoni e chi erano i cattivi.
Secondo Shea, un principio importante è: "Se non hai una storia,
fabbrichi una storia". Per esempio, in una giornata lenta, Shea ha
organizzato la visita delle mogli di Clinton e Blair in un campo
profughi,
ricavando immaginiutilizzate con piacere dalla CNN. Inoltre Shea ha
evitato che un incontro dei ministri avesse luogo in contemporanea ad
una
conferenza stampa della NATO, per non distrarre l'attenzione dei media e
massimizzare l'effetto sul pubblico. Al 78° giorno, quando sono cessati
i
bombardamenti, la NATO ha vinto la guerra, non 5 a 0, secondo Shea, ma 4
a
2. "E come Rocky II: conta soltanto il risultato. Dopo gli errori sono
senza importanza." Nel suo discorso - come hanno notato i giornalisti
del
"Neue Zürcher Zeitung" - Shea non ha parlato delle vittime della guerra
né
dei problemi attuali nel Kosovo.
fonte: "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (Svizzera), 30/3/2000
[1] Il libro Guerra e anti-guerra dei Toffler è stato discusso su "G&P",
n. 24 (novembre 1995).
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
WASHINGTON, US, April 12, 2000 (Guardian)
Two leading US news channels have admitted that they allowed
psychological operations officers from the military to work as
placement interns at their headquarters during the Kosovo war. Cable
Network News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied that the
"psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage and said the internships
had been stopped as soon as senior managers found out.
CNN hosted five psy-ops officers as temporary, unpaid workers
last year, while NPR took three, all from the army's 4th
Psychological Operations Group, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The army's psychological operations are prohibited by law from
manipulating the US media.
After the existence of the CNN internship programme was
published in the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, the network immediately
cancelled it.
For its part, the army said the programme was only intended to
give young army media specialists some experience of how the news
industry functioned. The interns were restricted to mainly menial
tasks such as answering phones, but the fact that military propaganda
experts were even present in newsrooms as reports from the Kosovo
conflict were being broadcast has triggered a storm of criticism and
raised questions about the independence of these networks.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
[Note the reference to Emperor's New Clothes - RR]
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
US psychological warfare experts worked at CNN and NPR
during Kosovo War
By Tom Bishop
18 April 2000
Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio
(NPR) have acknowledged that eight members of the US
Army 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group
served as interns in their news divisions and other
areas during the Kosovo war. PSYOPS is a highly
specialized unit of the military whose personnel are
trained in the production and dissemination of US
government propaganda, including on television and
radio programs.
According to CNN executives and military officials,
the intern program began last June and ended in March.
A total of five PSYOPS sergeants were assigned to the
network's Atlanta headquarters. These included two at
the Southeast bureau, two at CNN Radio and one at the
satellite department.
Three PSYOPS personnel also worked at the Washington
DC headquarters of NPR, a publicly-funded radio
network. They worked for periods ranging from six
weeks to four months from September 1998 through May
1999 on such programs as All Things Considered and
Morning Edition.
On March 29 top CNN officials acknowledged the
presence of the military personnel in a written reply
to the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In
Reporting (FAIR), which had issued a media alert two
days before, entitled “Why were government propaganda
experts working on news at CNN?”
In her response to FAIR, Sue Binford, CNN executive
vice president for public relations, claimed that
while the interns were present “no government or
military expert has ever worked on news at CNN.” She
said that the five interns were among hundreds who
spend a few weeks at CNN and like all interns “observe
under the supervision of CNN staff and have no
influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports
it.”
An NPR spokesperson said the interns performed minor
tasks and “had no influence on our news coverage.”
The issue was first raised in the media February 17
when the French publication Intelligence Newsletter
published a report of a military symposium held in
Arlington, Virginia early in February. At the
symposium, Colonel Christopher St. John, Commander of
PSYOPS whose 1,200 soldiers and officers are stationed
at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, said the cooperation
between the army and CNN was a textbook example of the
kind of ties the US Army wants with the American
media.
According to the article, St. John said rather than
use outright military censorship as was done in the
Gulf War, NATO tried to use more subtle means to
regulate the flow of information where they could
spread selected information while suppressing
unfavorable information. Rear Admiral Thomas Steffens
of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) said at
the symposium that the military should have the
capacity to gain control over commercial news
satellites to bring an “informational cone of silence”
over areas where special operations are taking place.
(Indeed, one of the PSYOPS officers worked in CNN's
satellite division.)
Colonel Romeo Morrissey, also of SOCOM, said in his
report that NATO should have taken out the Serbian
radio station B-92. The Internet web site of B-92
became an independent source of coverage of the
bombing in Serbia for journalists looking for
information other than that presented at press
conferences held by NATO in Brussels.
The information in Intelligence Newsletter was brought
to a wider audience when it was published by the
Netherlands daily newspaper Trouw on February 21. The
magazine interviewed Major Thomas Collins of the US
Army Information Service, who acknowledged the interns
worked at CNN as part of the army's “Training With
Industry” program. Collins stated, “They worked as
regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have
worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped
in the production of news.”
The story was first reported in the US by such web
sites as emperors-clothes.com and on CounterPunch by
its coeditor Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for The
Nation. In its response to CNN's denial that military
personnel ever “worked on the news,” FAIR said this
was “essentially a semantic quibble” and pointed to
the comments of Major Collins. It also pointed out
that CNN only acknowledged that the presence of PSYOPS
personnel in the newsroom was “inappropriate” after
this was revealed in Trouw. NPR officials also waited
until the exposure of the intern program to remove
them.
Top CNN officials have also claimed that they were
unaware of the PSYOPS intern program, and would never
have approved of it. Instead, they say, such decisions
must have been made by lower-level human resource
managers. But according to an article in TV Guide,
several unnamed sources at CNN told the magazine that
a network programming executive who left the network
months before the intern program became public signed
off on the internships. Moreover, CNN and military
sources acknowledged that the interns never concealed
their identity at work.
In its original action alert FAIR stated: “What makes
the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that
the network allowed the Army's covert propagandists to
work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins
and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS
officers working in the newsroom did not influence
news reporting, did the network allow the military to
conduct an intelligence mission against CNN itself?”
These revelations are only the latest concerning CNN's
relations with the US military, particularly during
the Kosovo war. On July 2, 1999 the Independent
newspaper in Britain published an article entitled
“Taken in by the NATO Line.” The article suggested
that major media outlets went beyond the usual
unethical and dishonest news practices to outright
collusion with NATO.
Belgrade war correspondent Robert Fisk wrote: “Two
days before NATO bombed the Serb Television
headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its
Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be
destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities
from the premises at once, which they did.
“A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander
Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King
Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him
on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked
him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early
for make-up.
“Vucic was late—which was just as well for him since
NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes
to two. The first one exploded in the make-up room
where the young Serb assistant was burned to death.
CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the
Larry King show, put out by the entertainment
division, did not know of the news department's
instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade
building.”
Also during this period, CNN fired its Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist Peter Arnett from his 18-year
career as an international journalist for CNN. He was
fired April 20, 1999 after calling a press conference
to protest CNN's refusal to assign him to cover the
war from Belgrade. Arnett had been sidelined since
June 7, 1998 when CNN aired his investigative report
“Valley of Death”. In the joint production by CNN and
Time magazine Arnett gave compelling evidence that US
commandos had used deadly sarin gas to kill American
soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam.
After intense pressure from the military, the
co-producers of the production, April Oliver and Jack
Smith, were fired when they refused to disavow the
report.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTIVISM UPDATE:
CNN Responds to FAIR on PSYOPS in the Newsroom
April 5, 2000
On March 27, FAIR released an action alert urging readers to contact CNN
and
ask why the network allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army
Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) unit to work in the news division of
its
Atlanta headquarters. That action alert can be found on FAIR's website:
( http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html ).
Since then, FAIR has been contacted by Eason Jordan, CNN's president for
international networks and newsgathering, as well as executive vice
president for public relations Sue Binford. On March 29, FAIR received
CNN's
official response, written by Binford:
*****
As executive vice president of CNN Public Relations, I am responding
officially on behalf of CNN to FAIR's action alert headlined "Why were
Government Propaganda Experts Working on News at CNN?":
1. No government or military propaganda expert has ever worked on
news
at CNN.
2. Amongst the hundreds of interns from around the world who spent
a
few weeks at a time at CNN in the past year, were five personnel from a
U.S.
Army PSYOPS group.
3. Interns at CNN observe under the supervision of CNN staff and
have
no influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports it.
4. CNN's intern program is administered by the Company's Human
Resources Department, which is made up of hard-working, well-intentioned
people who are not journalists and who thought they were doing the right
thing when they agreed to a U.S. Army request to allow the military
personnel to intern at CNN.
5. The intern program was terminated as soon as the leadership of
CNN
learned of it. CNN's position: it was inappropriate for PSYOPS personnel
to
be at CNN, they are not here now, and they never again will be at CNN.
6. CNN prides itself on its journalistic independence and
impartiality
and is committed to accurate, fair, responsible reporting.
*****
FAIR's Analysis:
FAIR commends CNN for acknowledging that the presence of PSYOPS
personnel in
the newsroom was, in its words, "inappropriate." It is unfortunate that
the
network came to that conclusion only after the program's existence was
revealed in February by the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00).
The only points in CNN's statement that are in factual conflict with
FAIR's
action alert are points 1 and 3. CNN denies that any military
propaganda
expert "ever worked on news" at CNN-- seeming to contradict FAIR's
assertion, made in the headline of our action alert, that PSYOPS
personnel
were "working on news" at CNN. While PSYOPS personnel did intern at
CNN,
the statement says, "interns at CNN observe under the supervision of CNN
staff and have no influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports
it."
This seems to be essentially a semantic quibble. As interns, some of the
PSYOPS officers clearly answered to the news division and assisted CNN
news
staffers as they produced stories. According to Major Thomas Collins of
the
U.S. Army Information Service, the PSYOPS interns "worked as regular
employees of CNN" and "helped in the production of news." (Trouw, 2/21)
But as we said in our original action alert:
"What makes the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that the
network
allowed the Army's covert propagandists to work in its headquarters,
where
they learned the ins and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS
officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did
the
network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission
against CNN itself?"
FAIR then offered specific evidence that military PSYOPS specialists
have
recently been trying to increase their knowledge of and cooperation with
the
news media in order to influence coverage.
Indeed, the presence of psychological operations personnel at CNN was
first
revealed at a PSYOPS conference in Arlington, Virginia by Col.
Christopher
St. John, commander of the Army's 4th PSYOPS Group (the unit to which
the
CNN interns belonged), who offered the internship program as an example
of
the type of "greater cooperation between the armed forces and media
giants"
which he hoped to see more of (Intelligence Newsletter, 2/17/00).
That is presumably why CNN has admitted that, even as observers, PSYOPS
officers should not have worked-- or "observed"-- in CNN's offices.
ACTION: If you feel this matter is serious enough that CNN should issue
a
more in-depth explanation of how military personnel came to intern at
the
network, and precisely what kind of work they did there, you can write
to
CNN's President of International Networks and Newsgathering, Eason
Jordan,
at:
mailto:eason.jordan@...
Fax: 404-827-3134
As always, please remember that letters are taken more seriously if they
maintain a professional tone. Please cc-copies of your correspondence to
fair@....
NOTE: In pointing out the lack of mainstream media coverage of the
CNN-PSYOPS story, our original action alert stated that "in the U.S.
media,
so far only Alexander Cockburn" had picked up on the story. We should
have
noted that it was online media that initially picked up on the Trouw and
Intelligence Newsletter reports. The website Emperor's Clothes
(www.emperors-clothes.com) appears to have been the first to translate
the
Trouw report and put it on the Web. Several other political sites also
picked up the story. Cockburn was the first journalist in the U.S. to
discuss the story in print, and the first to get it into a mainstream
U.S.
outlet.
----------
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---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
COUNTERPUNCH
March 26, 2000
CNN AND PSYOPS
By Alexander Cockburn
Military personnel from the Fourth
Psychological Operations Group based at Fort
Bragg, in North Carolina, have until recently
been working in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
CNN is up in arms about our report in the last issue of
CounterPunch concerning the findings of the Dutch journalist,
Abe de Vries about the presence of US Army personnel at
CNN, owned by Time-Warner. We cited an article by de Vries
which appeared on February 21 in the reputable Dutch daily
newspaper Trouw, originally translated into English and placed
on the web by Emperor's Clothes. De Vries reported that a
handful of military personnel from the Third Psychological
Operations Battalion, part of the airmobile Fourth Psychological
Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, had
worked in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the US Army
Information Service as having confirmed the presence of these
Army psy-ops experts at CNN, saying, "Psy-ops personnel,
soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters
in Atlanta through our program, 'Training with Industry'. They
worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would
have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in
the production of news."
This particular CounterPunch story was the topic of my regular
weekly broadcast to AM Live, a program of the South Africa
Broadcasting Company in Johannesburg. Among the audience of
this broadcast was CNN's bureau in South Africa which lost no
time in relaying news of it to CNN hq in Atlanta, and I duly
received an angry phone call from Eason Jordan who identified
himself as CNN's president of newsgathering and international
networks.
Jordan was full of indignation that I had somehow compromised
the reputation of CNN. But in the course of our conversation it
turned out that yes, CNN had hosted a total of five interns from
US army psy-ops, two in television, two in radio and one in
satellite operations. Jordan said the program had only recently
terminated, I would guess at about the time CNN's higher
management read Abe de Vries's stories.
When I reached De Vries in Belgrade, where's he is Trouw's
correspondent, and told him about CNN's furious reaction, he
stood by his stories and by the quotations given him by Major
Collins.For some days CNN wouldn't get back to him with a
specific reaction to Collins's confirmation, and when it did, he
filed a later story for Trouw, printed on February 25 noting that
the military worked at CNN in the period from June 7, (a date
confirmed by Eason to me) meaning that during the war a
psy-ops person would have been at CNN during the last week.
"The facts are", De Vries told me, " that the US Army, US
Special Operations Command and CNN personnel confirmed to
me that military personnel have been involved in news
production at CNN's newsdesks. I found it simply astonishing.
Of course CNN says these psyops personnel didn't decide
anything, write news reports, etcetera. What else can they say.
Maybe it's true, maybe not. The point is that these kind of close
ties with the army are, in my view, completely unacceptable for
any serious news organization. Maybe even more astonishing is
the complete silence about the story from the big media. To my
knowledge, my story was not mentioned by leading American or
British newspapers, nor by Reuters or AP."
Here at CounterPunch we agree with Abe de Vries, who told
me he'd originally come upon the story through an article in the
French newsletter, Intelligence On-line, February 17, which
described a military symposium in Arlington, Virginia, held at the
beginning of February of this year, discussing use of the press in
military operations. Colonel Christopher St John, commander of
the US Army's 4th Psyops Group, was quoted by Intelligence
On-Line's correspondent, present at the symposium, as having,
in the correspondent's words, "called for greater cooperation
between the armed forces and media giants. He pointed out that
some army PSYOPS personnel had worked for CNN for
several weeks and helped in the production of some news
stories for the network."
So, however insignificant Eason Jordan and other executives at
CNN may now describe the Army psyops tours at CNN as
having been, the commanding officer of the Psy-ops group
thought them as sufficient significance to mention at a high level
Pentagon seminar about propaganda and psychological warfare.
It could be that CNN was the target of a psyops penetration and
is still too naïve to figure out what was going on.
It's hard not to laugh when CNN execs like Eason Jordan start
spouting high-toned stuff about CNN's principles of objectivity
and refusal to spout government or Pentagon propaganda. The
relationship is most vividly summed up by the fact that Christiane
Amanpour, CNN's leading foreign correspondent, and a woman
whose reports about the fate of Kosovan refugees did much to
fan public appetite for NATO's war, is literally and figuratively in
bed with spokesman for the US State Department, and a leading
propagandist for NATO during that war, her husband James
Rubin.If CNN truly wanted to maintain the appearance of
objectivity, it would have taken Amanpour off the story.
Amanpour, by the way, is still a passionate advocate for
NATO's crusade, most recently on the Charlie Rose show.
In the first two weeks of the war in Kosovo CNN produced
thirty articles for the Internet, according to de Vries, who looked
them up for his first story. An average CNN article had seven
mentions of Tony Blair, NATO spokesmen like Jamie Shea and
David Wilby or other NATO officials. Words like refugees,
ethnic cleansing, mass killings and expulsions were used nine
times on the average. But the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Armmy (0.2 mentions) and the Yugoslav civilian victims (0.3
mentions) barely existed for CNN.
During the war on Serbia, as with other recent conflicts
involving the US, wars, CNN's screen was filled with an
interminable procession of US military officers. On April 27 of
last year, Amy Goodman of the Pacifica radio network, put a
good question to Frank Sesno, who is CNN's senior vice
president for political coverage.
GOODMAN:"If you support the practice of putting ex-military
men -generals - on the payroll to share their opinion during a
time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on
the payroll to give a different opinion during a time of war? To
be sitting there with the military generals talking about why they
feel that war is not appropriate?"
FRANK SESNO: "We bring the generals in because of their
expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don't
bring them in as advocates. In fact, we actually talk to them
about that - they're not there as advocates."
Exactly a week before Sesno said this, CNN had featured as
one of its military analysts, Lt Gen Dan Benton, US Army
Retired.
BENTON: "I don't know what our countrymen that are
questioning why we're involved in this conflict are thinking about.
As I listened to this press conference this morning with reports of
rapes burning, villages being burned and this particularly
incredible report of blood banks, of blood being harvested from
young boys for the use of Yugoslav forces, I just got madder
and madder. The United States has a responsibility as the only
superpower in the world, and when we learn about these things,
somebody has got to stand up and say, that's enough, stop it, we
aren't going to put up with this. And so the United States is
fulfilling its leadership responsibility with our NATO allies and
are trying to stop these incredible atrocities."
Please note what CNN's supposedly non-advocatory analyst
Benton was ranting about: a particularly bizarre and
preposterous NATO propaganda item about 700 Albanian boys
being used as human blood banks for Serb fighters.
So much for the "non-advocate" CNN. CP
CounterPunch
3220 N Street, NW, PMB 346
Washington, DC 20007
1-800-840-3683
http://www.counterpunch.org/
email: counterpunch@...
---
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Dear people,
Check out emperors clothes at tenc.net. Here are descriptions of the
two
latest articles:
U.S. ARMY 'PSYOPS' SPECIALISTS WORKED FOR CNN
Trouw, 21 February, 2000
By Abe de Vries
Many of the articles on Emperors-clothes.com are devoted to analyzing
the
techniques by which the media distorts the news. But how does it happen?
Is
it just some general fault of 'the system?' Does it happen by osmosis.
Or is
it planned and organized by real (if covert) people?
Now Trouw, an establishment Amsterdam daily, has gone public with
intriguing
information. It seems the US Army has admitted to Trouw that its
Psychological Warfare experts worked for CNN to produce the "news" and
that
this "possibly" occurred during the bombing of Serbia.
***
THE AMERICQAN ARMY LOVES CNN
Trouw, 21 February, 2000
By Abe de Vries
During a closed-door session in February, an Army Psychological
Operations
Colonel posed:
"cooperation with CNN [as]... a textbook example of the kind of ties the
American Army wants to have with the media."
Mr. de Vries, who broke the CNN psyops story, looks at some of the
implications. One question he leavs unasked: could this be just the tip
of
the iceberg? Are the CIA, NSA, and other covert agencies also involved
in
"helping produce the news"?
Best regards,
Jared Israel
FIRST STORY - POSTED AT:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm
U.S. ARMY 'PSY-OPS' SPECIALISTS WORKED FOR CNN
SECOND STORY - POSTED AT:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/love.htm
THE AMERICAN ARMY LOVES CNN
***
For more on the CNN-PsyOps connection see "U.S. Army 'Psyops'
Specialists
worked for CNN" by Abe de Vries, at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm
Here are some articles that examine techniques by which news is
distorted:
"Misleading from the Start" by Jared Israel. Looks at how the Associated
Press distorted news about the response of local residents to police
attacks
on the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/misleadi.htm
"Credible Deception" by Jared Israel. Examines NY Times coverage of the
U.S.
missile attack on a pill factory in Sudan in 1998. Uncovers specific
techniques which one is hard-pressed to ascribe to coincidence.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/sudan.html
"Reporting Kosovo: Journalism vs. Propaganda" by Phil Hammond. In which
the
author discovers an amazing continuity of pro-NATO coverage including
the use
of identical language in stories by several journalists.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/hammond/propagan.html
"Collateral Damage in Seattle, by Jim Desyllus"
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/collater.htm
"Lies, Damn Lies and Maps," by Jared Israel. A tragedy of errors as the
media, NATO & US spokesmen try to come up with an acceptable cover story
after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/Lies.html
Emperors-clothes relies on contributions. If you'd like to help with a
credit
card donation please go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html
. Or
you can mail a check to Emperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA
02461-0321. Thanks for helping make our work possible.
To browse articles from Emperors-Clothes.com, go to:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* Come vendere un conflitto (G. Poole)
* Militari esperti in guerra psicologica lavorano alla CNN (varie fonti)
---
TRADUTTORI CON L'ELMETTO
La seguente lettera e' stata pubblicata su "Liberazione"
del 31/3/2000:
<< Sono una albanese residente in Italia pienamente d'accordo con gli
articoli pubblicati su "Liberazione" di domenica 19 (marzo n.d.r) sulla
cattiva informazione della stampa e della televisione nel corso della
guerra in Jugoslavia.
Come rappresentante albanese ho partecipato a numerosi convegni contro
la guerra organizzati a Napoli da Rifondazione e svariate associazioni
culturali.
Ho denunciato la manipolazione dell'informazione e, in particolare, il
fatto che le traduzioni delle interviste erano spesso travisate.
Conoscendo la lingua, comprendevo che cosa veniva domandato e risposto e
come poi veniva tradotto in italiano.
Molto spesso i numeri venivano gonfiati: per esempio, su una rete Rai,
un albanese kosovaro intervistato parlava di 4 morti che il traduttore
faceva diventare 40!
Nel corso di una trasmissione, ripresa anche da Rai3, una troupe
televisiva si recava a intervistare gli albanesi kosovari scortata da
militari dell'Uck. Uno di questi, prima che iniziasse l'intervista,
avviso' gli altri di di "non parlare troppo", questa frase non fu
tradotta.
In un'altra intevista, fu posta a una kosovara la domanda : "Sei
d'accordo con i bombardamenti Nato?".
Subito dopo aver tradotto in albanese la domanda, l'interprete suggeri'
a bassa voce: "Di' di si', di' di si'". >>
Ardiana Shlaku, Napoli
---
COME VENDERE UN CONFLITTO -
L'INGANNO DELLE "RELAZIONI PUBBLICHE"
di Gordon Poole
(distribuito a cura della sezione italiana del Tribunale "Clark")
Tutti i teorici della guerra di bassa intensità, a partire dai
futurologi
Alvin e Heidi Toffler - il primo è consulente del Pentagono da molti
anni
- teorizzano la necessità di dominare, durante la fase calda del
conflitto, i mezzi di comunicazione di mas sa del proprio paese.[1] La
militarizzazione di questi ultimi dev'essere completa e capillare, sì da
evitare non solo quella "invadenza" dei giornalisti che"guastò" la
Guerra
del Vietnam, contribuendo a suscitare una rivolta in patria e sullo
stesso
campo di battaglia, ma anche "scomode" presenze nei posti sbagliati,
come
fu quella di Peter Arnett a Baghdad che si permise di intervistare
Saddam
Hussein, dando la parola a colui che veniva presentato al pubblico
ufficialmente, quanto inverosimilmente, come un "Hitler".
Gli stessi teorici, e anche qui i Toffler sono espliciti, limitano
questa
militarizzazione dei mezzi di comunicazione di massa al periodo di
conflitto intenso, durante il quale si può, anzi si deve, raccontare al
pubblico qualsiasi fandonia per giustifica re la guerra, purché si sia
in
gradodi renderla credibile, di farla passare. Le notizie, quindi, in
barba
alla deontologia tradizionale del giornalismo, in cui qualche raro
giornalista mostra ancora di credere (sino a rimetterci il posto), non
si
misurano con il metro della realtà, della verità - un'obiettività in cui
i
teorici del pensiero debole non credono - ma con quella della
credibilità
e della funzionalità agli intenti politici del governo e alla conduzione
della guerra. Dopo, cessato il periodo di militarizzazione, ai media
può
venire restituita la funzione ormai abituale di imbonitori di
sciocchezze
e volgarità "di bassa intensità". E' sorprendente poi come vengono
fuori,
soprattutto sui giornali o attraverso Internet, delle verità che durante
il conflitto non potevano emergere. In particolare, una serie di
menzogne
che i media stessi si erano ingegnati di trasmettere ad un pubblico
credulone vengono via via smascherate dagli stessi giornalisti che le
avevano comunicate al momento opportuno, o anche dalle stesse agenzie di
relazionipubbliche che le avevano inventate. Anche questa fase è
prevista
dai teorici dell'uso dei media: Toffler, in particolare, è esplicito nel
distinguere tra notizie calde e fredde. Lo smascheramento di un'utile
bugia in un secondo momento è sempre una notizia fredda. Serve, semmai,
paradossalm ente a dare l'impressione di una certa obiettività
giornalistica, come se i mezzi di comunicazione di massa fossero più
porosi, meno murati di quanto non siano. Ormai, cessati i bombardamenti
in Jugoslavia, piano piano sono emerse una serie di verità - notizie
fredde - che smantellano tutte le principali accuse mosse a suo tempo
contro il governo jugoslavo di Milosevic. Non ci fu la pulizia etnica
contro gli alba nesi nel Kosovo (è di questi giorni la smentita
autorevole
del generale di brigata tedesco a riposo, Heinz Loquai, della cosiddetta
"Operazione ferro da cavallo"), né gli stupri etnici, né i massacri di
civili, né le fosse comuni. L'operazione "Arcobaleno " era
ideologicamente
e legalmente corrotta, un atto di belligeranza, un attentato alla buona
fede e alla generosità del popolo italiano. Tutte notizie fredde. Ora
Jamie Shea, il portavoce NATO durante la Guerra di Kosovo, con una
franchezza che può sorprendere, ha fatto delle rivelazioni sui 78 giorni
del suo successo mediatico. In un discorso tenuto recentemente a Berna,
Svizzera, davanti ad un gruppo di impor tanti uomini d'affari dal titolo
"Vendere un conflitto - la massima sfida delle 'relazioni pubbliche'",
Shea ha detto tra l'altro: "Bisogna conquistare l'opinione pubblica, e
non
è una cosa semplice quando stai violando la sovranità di uno stato". I
"dann i collaterali" - l'eufemismo propagandistico per indicare le
sofferenze inflitte ai civili, oggetto di leggi e convenzioni nazionali
ed
internazionali - rischiavano di far perdere alla NATO il favore del
pubblico. A questo pericolo Shea riuscì abilmente a fare fronte con le
immagini dei profughi trasmessi da tutti i canali TV.
Con l'inveterato disprezzo per il pubblico "fesso" tipico di tutti gli
imbroglioni, Shea ha detto che la gente adora le telenovela quotidiane
con
buoni protagonisti, ed è quello che lui le ha fornito. La sua bravura
nel
farlo sarebbe comprovato, secondo l ui, dal fatto che la gente ancora lo
riconosce ovunque va. Shea, la star dei media, si è anche vantato di
essere stato incluso da una rivista popolare in un elenco dei "dieci
uomini più sexy del mondo". Se di tanto in tanto appariva l'immagine di
Milosevi c, filtrata e abilmente contestualizzata, essa risultava
cattiva,
decisamente non sexy. L'ex-portavoce della NATO ha raccontato anche che
le sue quotidiane conferenze stampa TV costituivano una grossa sfida. Il
suo compito era di passare la massima quantità di dettagli possibile -
dal
video della cabina di pilotaggio di un aereo da bombardam ento
all'angolo
di impatto di un missile - senza commettere errori, per non perdere di
"credibilità" - termine al quale egli conferisce chiaramente un
significato peculiare. Quello che rendeva il suo compito ancora più una
sfida era il fatto che le conferenze stampa teletrasmesse dovevano
tenersi
anche quando c'era una pausa nei bombardamenti a causa del cattivo
tempo.
Shea, che è britannico, ha paragonato questo problema ad una partita di
cricket quando piove - il cronista sportivo deve continuare a commentare
la partita sebbene sul campo di gioco non stia succedendo niente. Egli
usava queste "interruzioni" per spiegare ancora una volta chi erano i
buoni e chi erano i cattivi.
Secondo Shea, un principio importante è: "Se non hai una storia,
fabbrichi una storia". Per esempio, in una giornata lenta, Shea ha
organizzato la visita delle mogli di Clinton e Blair in un campo
profughi,
ricavando immaginiutilizzate con piacere dalla CNN. Inoltre Shea ha
evitato che un incontro dei ministri avesse luogo in contemporanea ad
una
conferenza stampa della NATO, per non distrarre l'attenzione dei media e
massimizzare l'effetto sul pubblico. Al 78° giorno, quando sono cessati
i
bombardamenti, la NATO ha vinto la guerra, non 5 a 0, secondo Shea, ma 4
a
2. "E come Rocky II: conta soltanto il risultato. Dopo gli errori sono
senza importanza." Nel suo discorso - come hanno notato i giornalisti
del
"Neue Zürcher Zeitung" - Shea non ha parlato delle vittime della guerra
né
dei problemi attuali nel Kosovo.
fonte: "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (Svizzera), 30/3/2000
[1] Il libro Guerra e anti-guerra dei Toffler è stato discusso su "G&P",
n. 24 (novembre 1995).
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
WASHINGTON, US, April 12, 2000 (Guardian)
Two leading US news channels have admitted that they allowed
psychological operations officers from the military to work as
placement interns at their headquarters during the Kosovo war. Cable
Network News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied that the
"psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage and said the internships
had been stopped as soon as senior managers found out.
CNN hosted five psy-ops officers as temporary, unpaid workers
last year, while NPR took three, all from the army's 4th
Psychological Operations Group, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The army's psychological operations are prohibited by law from
manipulating the US media.
After the existence of the CNN internship programme was
published in the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, the network immediately
cancelled it.
For its part, the army said the programme was only intended to
give young army media specialists some experience of how the news
industry functioned. The interns were restricted to mainly menial
tasks such as answering phones, but the fact that military propaganda
experts were even present in newsrooms as reports from the Kosovo
conflict were being broadcast has triggered a storm of criticism and
raised questions about the independence of these networks.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
[Note the reference to Emperor's New Clothes - RR]
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
US psychological warfare experts worked at CNN and NPR
during Kosovo War
By Tom Bishop
18 April 2000
Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio
(NPR) have acknowledged that eight members of the US
Army 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group
served as interns in their news divisions and other
areas during the Kosovo war. PSYOPS is a highly
specialized unit of the military whose personnel are
trained in the production and dissemination of US
government propaganda, including on television and
radio programs.
According to CNN executives and military officials,
the intern program began last June and ended in March.
A total of five PSYOPS sergeants were assigned to the
network's Atlanta headquarters. These included two at
the Southeast bureau, two at CNN Radio and one at the
satellite department.
Three PSYOPS personnel also worked at the Washington
DC headquarters of NPR, a publicly-funded radio
network. They worked for periods ranging from six
weeks to four months from September 1998 through May
1999 on such programs as All Things Considered and
Morning Edition.
On March 29 top CNN officials acknowledged the
presence of the military personnel in a written reply
to the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In
Reporting (FAIR), which had issued a media alert two
days before, entitled “Why were government propaganda
experts working on news at CNN?”
In her response to FAIR, Sue Binford, CNN executive
vice president for public relations, claimed that
while the interns were present “no government or
military expert has ever worked on news at CNN.” She
said that the five interns were among hundreds who
spend a few weeks at CNN and like all interns “observe
under the supervision of CNN staff and have no
influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports
it.”
An NPR spokesperson said the interns performed minor
tasks and “had no influence on our news coverage.”
The issue was first raised in the media February 17
when the French publication Intelligence Newsletter
published a report of a military symposium held in
Arlington, Virginia early in February. At the
symposium, Colonel Christopher St. John, Commander of
PSYOPS whose 1,200 soldiers and officers are stationed
at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, said the cooperation
between the army and CNN was a textbook example of the
kind of ties the US Army wants with the American
media.
According to the article, St. John said rather than
use outright military censorship as was done in the
Gulf War, NATO tried to use more subtle means to
regulate the flow of information where they could
spread selected information while suppressing
unfavorable information. Rear Admiral Thomas Steffens
of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) said at
the symposium that the military should have the
capacity to gain control over commercial news
satellites to bring an “informational cone of silence”
over areas where special operations are taking place.
(Indeed, one of the PSYOPS officers worked in CNN's
satellite division.)
Colonel Romeo Morrissey, also of SOCOM, said in his
report that NATO should have taken out the Serbian
radio station B-92. The Internet web site of B-92
became an independent source of coverage of the
bombing in Serbia for journalists looking for
information other than that presented at press
conferences held by NATO in Brussels.
The information in Intelligence Newsletter was brought
to a wider audience when it was published by the
Netherlands daily newspaper Trouw on February 21. The
magazine interviewed Major Thomas Collins of the US
Army Information Service, who acknowledged the interns
worked at CNN as part of the army's “Training With
Industry” program. Collins stated, “They worked as
regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have
worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped
in the production of news.”
The story was first reported in the US by such web
sites as emperors-clothes.com and on CounterPunch by
its coeditor Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for The
Nation. In its response to CNN's denial that military
personnel ever “worked on the news,” FAIR said this
was “essentially a semantic quibble” and pointed to
the comments of Major Collins. It also pointed out
that CNN only acknowledged that the presence of PSYOPS
personnel in the newsroom was “inappropriate” after
this was revealed in Trouw. NPR officials also waited
until the exposure of the intern program to remove
them.
Top CNN officials have also claimed that they were
unaware of the PSYOPS intern program, and would never
have approved of it. Instead, they say, such decisions
must have been made by lower-level human resource
managers. But according to an article in TV Guide,
several unnamed sources at CNN told the magazine that
a network programming executive who left the network
months before the intern program became public signed
off on the internships. Moreover, CNN and military
sources acknowledged that the interns never concealed
their identity at work.
In its original action alert FAIR stated: “What makes
the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that
the network allowed the Army's covert propagandists to
work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins
and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS
officers working in the newsroom did not influence
news reporting, did the network allow the military to
conduct an intelligence mission against CNN itself?”
These revelations are only the latest concerning CNN's
relations with the US military, particularly during
the Kosovo war. On July 2, 1999 the Independent
newspaper in Britain published an article entitled
“Taken in by the NATO Line.” The article suggested
that major media outlets went beyond the usual
unethical and dishonest news practices to outright
collusion with NATO.
Belgrade war correspondent Robert Fisk wrote: “Two
days before NATO bombed the Serb Television
headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its
Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be
destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities
from the premises at once, which they did.
“A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander
Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King
Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him
on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked
him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early
for make-up.
“Vucic was late—which was just as well for him since
NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes
to two. The first one exploded in the make-up room
where the young Serb assistant was burned to death.
CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the
Larry King show, put out by the entertainment
division, did not know of the news department's
instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade
building.”
Also during this period, CNN fired its Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist Peter Arnett from his 18-year
career as an international journalist for CNN. He was
fired April 20, 1999 after calling a press conference
to protest CNN's refusal to assign him to cover the
war from Belgrade. Arnett had been sidelined since
June 7, 1998 when CNN aired his investigative report
“Valley of Death”. In the joint production by CNN and
Time magazine Arnett gave compelling evidence that US
commandos had used deadly sarin gas to kill American
soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam.
After intense pressure from the military, the
co-producers of the production, April Oliver and Jack
Smith, were fired when they refused to disavow the
report.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTIVISM UPDATE:
CNN Responds to FAIR on PSYOPS in the Newsroom
April 5, 2000
On March 27, FAIR released an action alert urging readers to contact CNN
and
ask why the network allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army
Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) unit to work in the news division of
its
Atlanta headquarters. That action alert can be found on FAIR's website:
( http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html ).
Since then, FAIR has been contacted by Eason Jordan, CNN's president for
international networks and newsgathering, as well as executive vice
president for public relations Sue Binford. On March 29, FAIR received
CNN's
official response, written by Binford:
*****
As executive vice president of CNN Public Relations, I am responding
officially on behalf of CNN to FAIR's action alert headlined "Why were
Government Propaganda Experts Working on News at CNN?":
1. No government or military propaganda expert has ever worked on
news
at CNN.
2. Amongst the hundreds of interns from around the world who spent
a
few weeks at a time at CNN in the past year, were five personnel from a
U.S.
Army PSYOPS group.
3. Interns at CNN observe under the supervision of CNN staff and
have
no influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports it.
4. CNN's intern program is administered by the Company's Human
Resources Department, which is made up of hard-working, well-intentioned
people who are not journalists and who thought they were doing the right
thing when they agreed to a U.S. Army request to allow the military
personnel to intern at CNN.
5. The intern program was terminated as soon as the leadership of
CNN
learned of it. CNN's position: it was inappropriate for PSYOPS personnel
to
be at CNN, they are not here now, and they never again will be at CNN.
6. CNN prides itself on its journalistic independence and
impartiality
and is committed to accurate, fair, responsible reporting.
*****
FAIR's Analysis:
FAIR commends CNN for acknowledging that the presence of PSYOPS
personnel in
the newsroom was, in its words, "inappropriate." It is unfortunate that
the
network came to that conclusion only after the program's existence was
revealed in February by the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00).
The only points in CNN's statement that are in factual conflict with
FAIR's
action alert are points 1 and 3. CNN denies that any military
propaganda
expert "ever worked on news" at CNN-- seeming to contradict FAIR's
assertion, made in the headline of our action alert, that PSYOPS
personnel
were "working on news" at CNN. While PSYOPS personnel did intern at
CNN,
the statement says, "interns at CNN observe under the supervision of CNN
staff and have no influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports
it."
This seems to be essentially a semantic quibble. As interns, some of the
PSYOPS officers clearly answered to the news division and assisted CNN
news
staffers as they produced stories. According to Major Thomas Collins of
the
U.S. Army Information Service, the PSYOPS interns "worked as regular
employees of CNN" and "helped in the production of news." (Trouw, 2/21)
But as we said in our original action alert:
"What makes the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that the
network
allowed the Army's covert propagandists to work in its headquarters,
where
they learned the ins and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS
officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did
the
network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission
against CNN itself?"
FAIR then offered specific evidence that military PSYOPS specialists
have
recently been trying to increase their knowledge of and cooperation with
the
news media in order to influence coverage.
Indeed, the presence of psychological operations personnel at CNN was
first
revealed at a PSYOPS conference in Arlington, Virginia by Col.
Christopher
St. John, commander of the Army's 4th PSYOPS Group (the unit to which
the
CNN interns belonged), who offered the internship program as an example
of
the type of "greater cooperation between the armed forces and media
giants"
which he hoped to see more of (Intelligence Newsletter, 2/17/00).
That is presumably why CNN has admitted that, even as observers, PSYOPS
officers should not have worked-- or "observed"-- in CNN's offices.
ACTION: If you feel this matter is serious enough that CNN should issue
a
more in-depth explanation of how military personnel came to intern at
the
network, and precisely what kind of work they did there, you can write
to
CNN's President of International Networks and Newsgathering, Eason
Jordan,
at:
mailto:eason.jordan@...
Fax: 404-827-3134
As always, please remember that letters are taken more seriously if they
maintain a professional tone. Please cc-copies of your correspondence to
fair@....
NOTE: In pointing out the lack of mainstream media coverage of the
CNN-PSYOPS story, our original action alert stated that "in the U.S.
media,
so far only Alexander Cockburn" had picked up on the story. We should
have
noted that it was online media that initially picked up on the Trouw and
Intelligence Newsletter reports. The website Emperor's Clothes
(www.emperors-clothes.com) appears to have been the first to translate
the
Trouw report and put it on the Web. Several other political sites also
picked up the story. Cockburn was the first journalist in the U.S. to
discuss the story in print, and the first to get it into a mainstream
U.S.
outlet.
----------
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COUNTERPUNCH
March 26, 2000
CNN AND PSYOPS
By Alexander Cockburn
Military personnel from the Fourth
Psychological Operations Group based at Fort
Bragg, in North Carolina, have until recently
been working in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
CNN is up in arms about our report in the last issue of
CounterPunch concerning the findings of the Dutch journalist,
Abe de Vries about the presence of US Army personnel at
CNN, owned by Time-Warner. We cited an article by de Vries
which appeared on February 21 in the reputable Dutch daily
newspaper Trouw, originally translated into English and placed
on the web by Emperor's Clothes. De Vries reported that a
handful of military personnel from the Third Psychological
Operations Battalion, part of the airmobile Fourth Psychological
Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, had
worked in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the US Army
Information Service as having confirmed the presence of these
Army psy-ops experts at CNN, saying, "Psy-ops personnel,
soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters
in Atlanta through our program, 'Training with Industry'. They
worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would
have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in
the production of news."
This particular CounterPunch story was the topic of my regular
weekly broadcast to AM Live, a program of the South Africa
Broadcasting Company in Johannesburg. Among the audience of
this broadcast was CNN's bureau in South Africa which lost no
time in relaying news of it to CNN hq in Atlanta, and I duly
received an angry phone call from Eason Jordan who identified
himself as CNN's president of newsgathering and international
networks.
Jordan was full of indignation that I had somehow compromised
the reputation of CNN. But in the course of our conversation it
turned out that yes, CNN had hosted a total of five interns from
US army psy-ops, two in television, two in radio and one in
satellite operations. Jordan said the program had only recently
terminated, I would guess at about the time CNN's higher
management read Abe de Vries's stories.
When I reached De Vries in Belgrade, where's he is Trouw's
correspondent, and told him about CNN's furious reaction, he
stood by his stories and by the quotations given him by Major
Collins.For some days CNN wouldn't get back to him with a
specific reaction to Collins's confirmation, and when it did, he
filed a later story for Trouw, printed on February 25 noting that
the military worked at CNN in the period from June 7, (a date
confirmed by Eason to me) meaning that during the war a
psy-ops person would have been at CNN during the last week.
"The facts are", De Vries told me, " that the US Army, US
Special Operations Command and CNN personnel confirmed to
me that military personnel have been involved in news
production at CNN's newsdesks. I found it simply astonishing.
Of course CNN says these psyops personnel didn't decide
anything, write news reports, etcetera. What else can they say.
Maybe it's true, maybe not. The point is that these kind of close
ties with the army are, in my view, completely unacceptable for
any serious news organization. Maybe even more astonishing is
the complete silence about the story from the big media. To my
knowledge, my story was not mentioned by leading American or
British newspapers, nor by Reuters or AP."
Here at CounterPunch we agree with Abe de Vries, who told
me he'd originally come upon the story through an article in the
French newsletter, Intelligence On-line, February 17, which
described a military symposium in Arlington, Virginia, held at the
beginning of February of this year, discussing use of the press in
military operations. Colonel Christopher St John, commander of
the US Army's 4th Psyops Group, was quoted by Intelligence
On-Line's correspondent, present at the symposium, as having,
in the correspondent's words, "called for greater cooperation
between the armed forces and media giants. He pointed out that
some army PSYOPS personnel had worked for CNN for
several weeks and helped in the production of some news
stories for the network."
So, however insignificant Eason Jordan and other executives at
CNN may now describe the Army psyops tours at CNN as
having been, the commanding officer of the Psy-ops group
thought them as sufficient significance to mention at a high level
Pentagon seminar about propaganda and psychological warfare.
It could be that CNN was the target of a psyops penetration and
is still too naïve to figure out what was going on.
It's hard not to laugh when CNN execs like Eason Jordan start
spouting high-toned stuff about CNN's principles of objectivity
and refusal to spout government or Pentagon propaganda. The
relationship is most vividly summed up by the fact that Christiane
Amanpour, CNN's leading foreign correspondent, and a woman
whose reports about the fate of Kosovan refugees did much to
fan public appetite for NATO's war, is literally and figuratively in
bed with spokesman for the US State Department, and a leading
propagandist for NATO during that war, her husband James
Rubin.If CNN truly wanted to maintain the appearance of
objectivity, it would have taken Amanpour off the story.
Amanpour, by the way, is still a passionate advocate for
NATO's crusade, most recently on the Charlie Rose show.
In the first two weeks of the war in Kosovo CNN produced
thirty articles for the Internet, according to de Vries, who looked
them up for his first story. An average CNN article had seven
mentions of Tony Blair, NATO spokesmen like Jamie Shea and
David Wilby or other NATO officials. Words like refugees,
ethnic cleansing, mass killings and expulsions were used nine
times on the average. But the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Armmy (0.2 mentions) and the Yugoslav civilian victims (0.3
mentions) barely existed for CNN.
During the war on Serbia, as with other recent conflicts
involving the US, wars, CNN's screen was filled with an
interminable procession of US military officers. On April 27 of
last year, Amy Goodman of the Pacifica radio network, put a
good question to Frank Sesno, who is CNN's senior vice
president for political coverage.
GOODMAN:"If you support the practice of putting ex-military
men -generals - on the payroll to share their opinion during a
time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on
the payroll to give a different opinion during a time of war? To
be sitting there with the military generals talking about why they
feel that war is not appropriate?"
FRANK SESNO: "We bring the generals in because of their
expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don't
bring them in as advocates. In fact, we actually talk to them
about that - they're not there as advocates."
Exactly a week before Sesno said this, CNN had featured as
one of its military analysts, Lt Gen Dan Benton, US Army
Retired.
BENTON: "I don't know what our countrymen that are
questioning why we're involved in this conflict are thinking about.
As I listened to this press conference this morning with reports of
rapes burning, villages being burned and this particularly
incredible report of blood banks, of blood being harvested from
young boys for the use of Yugoslav forces, I just got madder
and madder. The United States has a responsibility as the only
superpower in the world, and when we learn about these things,
somebody has got to stand up and say, that's enough, stop it, we
aren't going to put up with this. And so the United States is
fulfilling its leadership responsibility with our NATO allies and
are trying to stop these incredible atrocities."
Please note what CNN's supposedly non-advocatory analyst
Benton was ranting about: a particularly bizarre and
preposterous NATO propaganda item about 700 Albanian boys
being used as human blood banks for Serb fighters.
So much for the "non-advocate" CNN. CP
CounterPunch
3220 N Street, NW, PMB 346
Washington, DC 20007
1-800-840-3683
http://www.counterpunch.org/
email: counterpunch@...
---
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Dear people,
Check out emperors clothes at tenc.net. Here are descriptions of the
two
latest articles:
U.S. ARMY 'PSYOPS' SPECIALISTS WORKED FOR CNN
Trouw, 21 February, 2000
By Abe de Vries
Many of the articles on Emperors-clothes.com are devoted to analyzing
the
techniques by which the media distorts the news. But how does it happen?
Is
it just some general fault of 'the system?' Does it happen by osmosis.
Or is
it planned and organized by real (if covert) people?
Now Trouw, an establishment Amsterdam daily, has gone public with
intriguing
information. It seems the US Army has admitted to Trouw that its
Psychological Warfare experts worked for CNN to produce the "news" and
that
this "possibly" occurred during the bombing of Serbia.
***
THE AMERICQAN ARMY LOVES CNN
Trouw, 21 February, 2000
By Abe de Vries
During a closed-door session in February, an Army Psychological
Operations
Colonel posed:
"cooperation with CNN [as]... a textbook example of the kind of ties the
American Army wants to have with the media."
Mr. de Vries, who broke the CNN psyops story, looks at some of the
implications. One question he leavs unasked: could this be just the tip
of
the iceberg? Are the CIA, NSA, and other covert agencies also involved
in
"helping produce the news"?
Best regards,
Jared Israel
FIRST STORY - POSTED AT:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm
U.S. ARMY 'PSY-OPS' SPECIALISTS WORKED FOR CNN
SECOND STORY - POSTED AT:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/love.htm
THE AMERICAN ARMY LOVES CNN
***
For more on the CNN-PsyOps connection see "U.S. Army 'Psyops'
Specialists
worked for CNN" by Abe de Vries, at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm
Here are some articles that examine techniques by which news is
distorted:
"Misleading from the Start" by Jared Israel. Looks at how the Associated
Press distorted news about the response of local residents to police
attacks
on the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/misleadi.htm
"Credible Deception" by Jared Israel. Examines NY Times coverage of the
U.S.
missile attack on a pill factory in Sudan in 1998. Uncovers specific
techniques which one is hard-pressed to ascribe to coincidence.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/sudan.html
"Reporting Kosovo: Journalism vs. Propaganda" by Phil Hammond. In which
the
author discovers an amazing continuity of pro-NATO coverage including
the use
of identical language in stories by several journalists.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/hammond/propagan.html
"Collateral Damage in Seattle, by Jim Desyllus"
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/collater.htm
"Lies, Damn Lies and Maps," by Jared Israel. A tragedy of errors as the
media, NATO & US spokesmen try to come up with an acceptable cover story
after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/Lies.html
Emperors-clothes relies on contributions. If you'd like to help with a
credit
card donation please go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html
. Or
you can mail a check to Emperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA
02461-0321. Thanks for helping make our work possible.
To browse articles from Emperors-Clothes.com, go to:
http://www.emperors-clothes.com
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
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