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Volume 9 Issue 10…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…March
10, 2006
Venue
for an Artist
The Ministry of Propaganda
By David Ray
Retired
generals in various cities
are interviewed
nightly about the war.
The maps are
shown and strategies
discussed with
great enthusiasm.
Our troops are
grabbing the bulls by their horns.
Resistance is
soon to be overcome.
But resistance
to what is never quite defined.
The news
anchors gaze upon these guests
with the
admiration until now
shown only to
movie stars.
There are no
views represented
other than
this gung-ho enthusiasm for war.
From every
military base
intelligence
and publicity personnel
fan out to
offer their services to media
as part-time
advisers and experts.
They explain
and make palatable
all the
President's policies, e.g.,
allowing no
photos of flag-draped coffins
bound for
Arlington or hometown cemeteries,
though it
would be hard to find
one that has
not added
a few from overseas
to its holdings.
Every
technique described by Orwell
or practiced
by Goebbels is in place,
but so far few
have dared say so.
About Me: David Ray’s "The Ministry of
Propaganda" comes from The Death of Sardanapalus and Other Poems of the
Iraq Wars. © Howling Dog Press. For more about this writer and his work,
visit www.writersalmanac.publicradio.org.
News You Use
Civil
Rights Era Censored
In
November 2004, Alexander Cohn, a photography intern with The Birmingham News,
discovered a cardboard box marked “Keep.
Do Not Sell,” while looking for a camera lens in an equipment
closet. Filled with thousands of
negatives from the civil rights era, the box’s contents and interviews with
people in the pictures and the photographers that took them led to the
eight-page feature "Unseen. Unforgotten," which ran in the newspaper
in February 2006.
The Sunday
special recounted the paper’s struggle to cover the civil rights movement. In a city and state dominated by Jim
Crow segregation politics, the paper chose to censor itself rather than draw
attention to the civil rights demonstrations and the racist responses. As the recently developed images show,
the photographs often reflected quite negatively on the majority white
community.
According to
Horace Huntley, director of oral history at the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute and professor of history at the University of Alabama, “It was
difficult for people to see.
People were embarrassed by it.
The city fathers were embarrassed by it.” “It” being the ugly way whites treated blacks that publicly
demanded equal rights.
Some
images from demonstrations featured in the previously unpublished photographs
made their way into national newspapers as a result of the Associated Press
(AP). Because The Birmingham News
was so slow to respond to requests for pictures, the AP sent its own
photographers to cover the civil rights protests and demonstrations.
The
previously unpublished images represent the work of Birmingham News photographers
Robert Adams, Don Brown, Norman Dean, Anthony Falletta, Ernest Hardin, Lou
Isaacson, Ed Jones, Tom Lankford, Vernon Merritt, William Pike and Tom Self.
In
addition to the more than thirty images that appeared in the February special,
dozens more are available on the newspaper's web site at www.al.com/unseen.
Bit of
History
Byron
Price (1891-1981)
Born in
Topeka, Indiana on March 25, 1891, Byron Price graduated from Topeka High
School (1908). While his father,
John Price, was a farmer, Bryon Price chose to be a reporter. As a student at Wabash College,
Price worked as cub reporter for the Crawfordsville Journal and Review and
Indianapolis Star and News. After
earning his B.A. degree, he joined the United Press staff and worked as a reporter
and editor for the Chicago and Omaha bureaus before joining the Associated
Press (AP) staff in 1912.
With the AP,
Price served as a day editor for the Atlanta Bureau, acting correspondent and
bureau chief in New Orleans, before being transferred to Washington, D.C. During WWI, Price took a leave of
absence from the AP and enlisted in the Army (1917). At the end of his service (1919), Price returned to AP’s Washington
Bureau; the following year, he married Priscilla Alden.
In 1922,
Price was promoted to news editor of the Washington Bureau and bureau chief in
1927. Ten years later, he became
executive news editor, a position he held until December 16, 1941, when
President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped him to head the newly created Office of
Censorship.
On January
15, 1942, Price's office issued the Code of Wartime Practices for the American
Press. While the code had no
built-in legal penalties, the media were urged to avoid printing information
deemed national security interests or demoralizing, such as troop and ship
movements and photographs of dead American soldiers.
Reporters
continued to seek out their usual sources, and government departments and
agencies still issued press releases, but each department had a list of things
that could not be published.
Price’s voluntary self-censorship program worked well. With the single exception of a Chicago
Tribune 1942 report of the battle of Midway, no code violation was
considered severe enough to warrant prosecution under the Espionage Act. Thus,
wartime reporting tended to run heavily toward human-interest stories.
Price's
office employed 14,462 people between 1942 and 1945. Weekly, these civil servants read and censored a million
pieces of mail. US soldiers,
subject to censorship by officers, were prohibited from mentioning anything
about the surrounding military situation when writing home. US soldiers’ families were encouraged
to write light, happy, non-specific letters. The Office of Censorship kept
records of every telephone, mail and telegraph inquiry it received between
mid-January 1942 and August 1945.
The Office
of Censorship was closed down on August 14, 1945. Price received numerous awards for his work, including an
honorary LL.D. degree (1943) from Wabash College, a special Pulitzer citation
(1944) for the creation and administration of the newspaper and radio
censorship codes from Columbia University, an honorary M.A. from Harvard
University (1946) and the Medal for Merit (1946) presented by President Harry
Truman. The American Society of
Newspaper Editors and ten other associations of the press, radio and
photographers awarded Price
special commendatory citations in 1945 and 1946.
After
closing the Office of Censorship, Price served as President Truman's
representative to occupied Germany.
Appointed vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America
(1945), he became chairman of the board for the Association of Motion Picture
Productions, president of the Central Casting Corporation, first vice president
of the Educational Films Research Corporation, and director of the Hollywood
Coordinating Committee (1946).
In 1947, Price
became Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations for Administrative and
Financial Affairs. The only American among eight assistant secretary-generals,
he supervised arrangements for construction of the new UN building in New York
City. Price died August 6, 1981, at his Hendersonville, N.C. home; Price was
90. (Sources: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWpriceB.htm, www.depauw.edu/library/archives/ijhof/inductees/priceb.htm, http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/sweeney_secrets.html, and www.cameron.edu/~johnh/defpg2.html)
Comments from
the Bat Cave
In
a household with several generations, there are plenty disputes and
confrontations that must be resolved with gentle persuasion. The Dark Knight-Batman/White
Ninja/Zorro is frequently entangled with his erstwhile sidekick- Boy
Wonder. The tenuous relationship
suffered a recent setback when a dispute erupted over a missing action figure,
some Yu-Gi Uh cards and a loss of privacy. Heated words were exchanged. Reprimanded for calling his younger sibling a less than
complimentary name, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro wondered soto voce, “What’s the
point of free speech?”
Plumbers
Plugging Leaks
“There’s
a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before
grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that
reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors. I don’t know how far action will follow
rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at
home on the values its professes to be promoting abroad.” NY Times Executive
Editor Bill Keller
US
mainstream media were complicit in spreading the cherry-picked case for war
against Iraq. None so much
personified media complicity than former New York Times reporter dame
Judith Miller. Fed a steady diet
of lies by White House leakers that was regurgitated in the pages of the New
York Times and ingested by its readers, Miller was the perfect embedded
reporter, helping to build a consensus for war. After the fact, the newspaper had to retract much of what
she had written.
Ironically,
Miller served time in the slammer (jail) for refusing to reveal her source for
a story about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame that she never
wrote. When she finally came
clean, Miller named I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby as the leaker. Libby resigned as chief of staff to
Vice President Dick Cheney after being indicted for lying to the grand jury
looking into the Plame matter.
According to court documents, Libby claims his “superiors” okayed the
leak of classified information.
Libby had only two superiors in the White House, i.e., Cheney and George
W. Bush. Both have claimed to know
nothing about leaking Plame’s name
After
a year of self-censorship, the New York Times in December 2005 finally
revealed that the government was engaging in warrantless wiretaps. Bush admitted he ordered the domestic
spying to “prevent” terrorist attacks and called the leak “a shameful act” that
was “helping the enemy.” The New
York Times domestic spying revelation and the disclosure of secret CIA
prisons are indications that a Fourth Estate in the US may exist. If true, it lends hope to the notion of
US democracy. Without a free press, dedicated to keeping the public informed,
democracy cannot exist. Only an
informed public can act as a check against a corrupt government.
According to
press reports, the Bush administration is aggressively seeking to plug
“unauthorized” leaks. And
while Justice Department plumbers question government employees, administer lie
detection tests and threaten to prosecute journalists under the 1917 Espionage
Act, Congress sits on its thumb in regards to official corruption.
Politics
Y2K6
Information
Operations Roadmap
Under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the National Security Archive at George
Washington University obtained a declassified document called “Information
Operations Roadmap,” which was written by Pentagon officials in 2003 and signed
off by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to the document, information, whether for psychological
operations or attacks against hostile computer networks, is “critical to military
success.”
The roadmap
contains recommendations on various ways to upgrade the military’s ability to
conduct critical information operations and electronic warfare. It describes
various military activities slated for improvements. These range from public affairs briefing of journalists and
psychological operations to the training of computer specialists in the
destruction of enemy electronic systems.
As part of
its ongoing psychological operations, the US government plants stories in the
press to help shape public opinion at home and abroad. On the domestic front, the government
has hired spokespersons and paid journalists in its efforts to advance
government policies from public education programs to warfare and defense
spending. One of the most
publicized paid spokesperson was Armstrong Williams, who was paid by the
Department of Education to speak in favor of and write positive articles about
the No Child Left Behind public education program. There were others, but Williams received the brunt of media
criticism.
Abroad,
hundreds of pro-US-coalition “news articles” published in Iraqi newspapers were
actually written by US military personnel. The Pentagon hired the Lincoln Group, a private company, to
plant the faux news stories. In
addition, the US government runs web sites and funds radio and television
programs aimed at influencing public opinion and garnering support for US
foreign policies and operations.
What it
cannot control or favorably influence, the US military appears willing to
destroy. Operation Information
Roadmap’s recommendations for fighting the Internet include developing the
ability to “disrupt or destroy” the flow of global electronic communications.
Disgruntled
feels: Terrified! Since 9-11, White House propaganda,
effectively disseminated by US mainstream media, has rendered every Arab,
bearded man, dark-skinned native or alien an Islamic extremist bent on death
and destruction in the US, because “they hate our freedom and way of life.” In every major speech given by George
W. Bush and members of his administration, there has been either a direct or
indirect 9-11 reference. The
terror drumbeat has made us xenophobic stockpilers of duck-tape. We have been programmed to believe only
Bush’s pre-emptive aggression abroad keeps us safe and the dogs of war away
from US shores. In this post-911
environment, reason is not the American way; we are too terrified to think.
Disgruntled wants to
know: Last week, cadaver
dogs were used to help locate bodies in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. After more than six months since
Hurricane Katrina and the breached levee system destroyed the area and after
party beads and floats of Mardi Gras were safely stowed away for next year, efforts
are finally underway to clean up the debris left in the wake of the
devastation. But first, the bodies
must be located and the dead properly buried. There is no official plan to rebuild this low-lying area
where mostly black Americans lived and died. On learning about the belated effort to find the hundreds of
missing and presumed dead, one might be tempted to ask, is this unusual delay
and lack of public outcry because the victims were black?
Disgruntled says:
The news that former California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who
pleaded guilty to accepting brides from defense contractors, received eight
years and four months in prison sent shock waves through Congress. Some rats scurried to hire high-powered
defense attorneys. Others
announced unexpected retirements, which came as good news for a public
increasingly fed up with a do-nothing Congress. One of the rats getting an attorney was Rep. Katherine
Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State made infamous for her role in the
2000 Bush/Gore debacle. Some
observers hope her association with Mitchell J. Wade, the defense contractor
that bribed Cunningham, will produce a similarly long jail term.
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
Canilor1@aol.com
Scott Ritter warns of US-Iran War...By Ted Kahl (West Hartford News)
Former UN weapons inspector and ex-marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter
told a crowd of about 500 gathered at the West Hartford Town Hall that,
"...the Bush administration is fixing intelligence around policy on
Iran," and that it could lead to a new US war in the Middle East. He noted
that the administration used a similar approach in its current war in Iraq.
"There is nothing to prevent the president from going to war in Iran. He
has no respect for checks and balances. We're heading toward Tehran unless we
get representatives in Congress who respect the Constitution of the United
States."
Email
paulandrewmitchell2004@yahoo.com "Lawyers close to the leak case
said Fitzgerald seems to be pursuing conspiracy charges against some of the
higher-profile suspects in the leak, such as Karl Rove. "The White House
Iraq Group (WHIG) was formed in August 2002 by Andrew Card, President Bush's
chief of staff, to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. WHIG operated
out of the Vice President's office. "The group's members included Rove,
Bush advisor Karen Hughes, Senior Advisor to the Vice President Mary Matalin,
Deputy Director of Communications James Wilkinson, Assistant to the President
and Legislative Liaison Nicholas Calio, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby."
Email
www.guardian.co.uk Nuclear Pact With India Seen as
Surrender...While US President George W. Bush hailed Thursday's nuclear accord
with India as a major breakthrough in forging a "strategic
partnership" with the South Asian giant, the pact has been broadly
denounced by non-proliferation experts here as a devil's bargain. The agreement
marks a significant blow to the prevailing international non-proliferation
regime, which has argued that it effectively rewards India for behavior that
differs little from what Iran is trying to do today.
Email
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com Two recent polls, a Los Angeles
Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is
getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable
of acquiring, processing and understanding information. Much of the problem is the media
itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush
administration. Fox
"News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with
propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all media
are affected to some degree.
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