The Press, Propaganda, And Censorship

THE OPEN MIND
Host: Richard D. Heffner
Guest: John R. MacArthur
Title: “The Press, Propaganda and Censorship”
VTR: 7/15/92

I’m Richard Heffner, your host on THE OPEN MIND. And over the years on this program I’ve conducted so many interviews and discussions that have been seen as rather critical toward the role of the press, both print and electronic, in molding or even manipulating American thought that I have no qualms at all about pressing my guest today to defend some of his more pointed criticism of contemporary media, particularly relating to the ultimate issue of war and peace.

Formerly a reporter and an Assistant Foreign News Editor at United Press, John R. MacArthur is the publisher of “Harper’s” magazine. And Hill and Wang has now published his “Second Front”, emphatically subtitled “Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.”

Mr. MacArthur believes Americans were victims of them both: censorship and propaganda…that in the Gulf War our government indeed opened a second front—against the American press—and that the press surrendered, rather supinely accepting our government’s censorship…and its propaganda.

Critical of the news person who argued: “It’s true reporters will do almost anything for a story…but it’s also true that in war-time, most are patriots”…Mr. MacArthur counters: “Would that they were reporters as well as patriots.”

Which leads me to ask my guest right off precisely what vision of press responsibility he embraces that turns him off so much from the role the American press actually did play in the Gulf War? What’s your sense of what the press should have done instead of surrendering?

MacArthur: Well, I think the press, particularly the owners of the media should have fought the censorship from the beginning. They knew it was coming, and in many ways the colluded in their own defeat. But as individual journalists, I would like to see reporters and editors pursue the truth, regardless of popular opinions at a given moment. The excuse that a lot of people use now in defending their lack of opposition to censorship before the War, or the censorship plan that was concocted before the War, is “Well, after all, the people supported censorship. They took polls and they showed that 70% or 60% of the American people supported the Pentagon censorship.” How can Americans know whether the information that’s being censored is worth knowing if it’s been censored? They need to know. These are things that you…Vietnam could have continued five years longer had to bee a censored War, because no one would have known the true horror of that War. The point is that the American people have a right to be informed of the conduct of their War by their leaders, during the War as well as after the War.

Heffner: Yeah, but now let me ask you, Me. MacArthur…you say that the American people didn’t know what they didn’t know.

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: Therefore, how could they…

MacArthur: Yeah, how can they judge…

Heffner: …respond.

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: But, isn’t there on your part also something of an attitude that the people simply don’t know and we in the press should ignore the polls that have been taken, or the many, many manifestations of American attitudes toward “the military did it, it’s okay.”

MacArthur: Yeah, the, the press should ignore popular pressure. The publishers and the media executives should ignore popular pressure. The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press in part to defend the rights of the minority of Americans who, in war-time, may want to be informed. It’s not just he majority…we don’t have First Amendment guarantees by majority rule, we have it by Constitutional guarantee in this country. So even if 10% of the American People wanted to know what’s going on, that’s their right. In fact I think a lot more than that wanted to know the truth about how the War was being conducted. And we can go into the specifics about how to was, in fact, conducted.

Heffner: Alright, but I want to know why did the press surrender, if that’s the word, as you in, in “Second Front” indicate it did.

MacArthur: Well, I, I merely have to quote Dan Rather who says that “suck up journalism is in today,” and by that he means that the reporter, the editor, the producer, the media executive who goes along with power, goes along with government, has a better chance of getting ahead in the business than the obstreperous independent, trouble-making reporter. Rather is himself viewing his career and remembering that when he came into the business reporters were “rewarded” he says for asking the tough question, for making trouble and so on and so forth. And that nowadays a trouble making reporter is more likely to be told to “shut up” or to “calm down”, and to act more like, as he says, “that anchor man in California on whatever local affiliate, who makes people feel good.” And he’s very upset about it. Other reporters I talked to are also cognizant of this trend in journalism.

Heffner: Yes, but it’s also true that you begin “Second Front” by talking about an early meeting….

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: …request for credentials to go to Saudi Arabia, if I remember correctly, in which higher up, we’re not talking about “suck up news-men,” we’re not talking about the guy in the front, you’re talking about executives, you’re talking about people coming closer and closer to ownership and indeed, “Second Front” seems to indicate that ownership of the press in America didn’t seem to be terribly exercised about the degree to which there was censorship and propaganda.

MacArthur: Quite right that ownership was not exercised, including Katherine Graham who I interviewed at length about this…but the point of the opening scene is to show middle management, because those were middle managers going…

Heffner: Right.

MacArthur: …into negotiate with Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, pleading as ABC’s George Watson put it, for visas to the, to the theater, to the theater of war. The fact that management, ownership, sent middle management to negotiate was a signal to Saudi Arabia, and to the United States government from the very beginning that ownership was not going to protest. Now, the fact that the middle managers did a lousy job of negotiating their deal with the Pentagon and ended up tying their own hands is, is too bad, but they are just middle managers, the Washington Bureau chiefs who go and make this deal.

Heffner: So I come back to the question…why was ownership not that concerned?

MacArthur: Well, that’s a complex question…it’s a historical question. I harken back to the…what I think of as the good old-fashioned Right Wing publishers like McCormick and Hearst, and in some cases Liberal publishers like John Knight and Joseph Pulitzer, who had the courage of their convictions…their convictions may have been wrong-headed, or they may been even out…downright crazy, but they said to themselves, and to their organizations, “I own this newspaper, I am protected by the First Amendment, that’s the most important thing we have to defend, and we go get the news regardless of what the government says…we’re not going to let some cheap politician tell us what to do.” It’s not to say that McCormick and Hearst did not make deals with politicians….

Heffner: Indeed.

MacArthur: Indeed. But, it is a fact that Colonel McCormick litigated the most…on his own, litigated the most important First Amendment case in the history of this country, I believe, Near versus Minnesota, which outlawed prior restraint. I ask in speeches now that I’m giving since the publication of my book, “Where are the Colonel McCormick’s of today?” I organized…I helped organize a lawsuit against the Pentagon as published of “Harper’s” magazine which none of the major media owners were willing to join. And this was a straight-forward First Amendment lawsuit objecting to the censorship arrangement in the, in the Gulf War. So I’m, I’m very unhappy…now you’re asking me why has it changed?

Heffner: I’m asking you why?

MacArthur: And the reason I think it’s changed is partly because of the…there is now more diffuse ownership. Katherine Graham no longer owns The Washington Post lock, stock, and barrel. She is a…the majority…the most important…the principal shareholder, but it’s now a public company. However, that doesn’t explain the behavior of say The New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or any number of other newspapers that are still privately owned. And there again I go to history. In 1972, 1973, the press was at the height of its popularity because of Watergate even though the responsibility for Watergate was just two reporters, really, and one newspaper. The rest of the press ignored the Watergate story for the most part until it became so big that they couldn’t ignore it anymore. For years after Watergate, you saw major newspaper executives and publishers and television executives apologizing for having brought down the President, as if they’d had anything to do with it in the first place. There is an inherent fear among big-time news executives and media executives of getting on the wrong side of power. They’re afraid that their reporters will be cut off in Washington if Punch Sulzberger starts making trouble at a higher level with the Pentagon or with the White House, Thomas Freedman, the State Department reporter might get cut off…James Baker might stop leaking to him. And in Washington leaks and access to power are everything in the way journalism works these days. So they, they fear reprisals. In the case of network executives, television executives there are issues before Congress which…and before, in effect, before the FCC, which affect their livelihood and they fear sometimes getting on the wrong side of the President on those things. We, we see how Nixon used his power to intimidate William Paley during Watergate, he was able to get Paley to cut Walter Cronkite’s Watergate special down by half because Paley was afraid of Nixon getting made at him.

Heffner: Do you really…

MacArthur: I mean there’s a, there’s a real, there’s a real cowardice at work here.

Heffner: Do you really feel that on that level it was “go along to get along”?

MacArthur: Absolutely. I think that’s the…right now, the prevailing mood, but it’s probably…oh, it’s been that way for quite a while. I don’t think it was that way during the Roosevelt Administration. During the Roosevelt Administration you had a very popular President opposed by three-quarters of the newspapers in the country…vociferously.

Heffner: The publishers…the owners…

MacArthur: the publishers, the owners…they said…

Heffner: The reporters liked him.

MacArthur: The reporters liked him, but the publishers didn’t and editorialized it against him, and in a sense were playing their proper role as a check on the executive branch. That’s what I want to see the Fourth Estate do.

Heffner: Why do you make a point in “Second Front” of saying that it was a myth that in Vietnam the press had contributed to our defeat…let’s call it that. Why do you spend so much time on that, because the question that comes up in my mind…wasn’t the perception been that in the…among the military people, too, at the time of the Sidle Commission, when General Sidle came and joined me here on THE OPEN MIND, he said, “I can vouch for the fact that an awful lot of folks from all of the services who were in Vietnam thought the media treatment was very bad and did blame a lot of the final results on the media’s treatment.” Now you, you, you take steps here to disprove this.

MacArthur: Right. I…in order to…

Heffner: Why, why, why get involved in that?

MacArthur: Well, I have…in order to, to debunk censorship, I’ve got to debunk the premise for censorship and whether it’s true or not, the premise for…the public premise for censoring the press in the Gulf War is that the press somehow actually lost the Vietnam War, which is preposterous.

Heffner: But Mr. MacArthur, a) the military thought that…

MacArthur: Yeah.

Heffner: …and b) let me ask you if your researches, or if the researches that you make reference to proved the other point, would you change your mind about attitudes toward the press, and coverage in war time?

MacArthur: You mean…you’re…

Heffner: If you were to find in your researches that the mythology were indeed true, and that indeed…

MacArthur: Yeah.

Heffner: …the free press had done in our capacity to wage war…

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: …as Lyndon Johnson had said…

MacArthur: Right, right…falsely…

Heffner: …at the Broadcaster’s speech…

MacArthur: …yeah…

Heffner: …would you change your mind?

MacArthur: Well, no, I mean I, I think that it’s a good thing. It would have been a good thing had the press been more opposed to Vietnam earlier. The press followed public opinion on Vietnam, when public opinion changed, the press began to change, somewhat. But I would certainly have supported a more aggressive, skeptical, independent press in 1963, ’64, ’65 because they could have kept us, or might have dome something to keep us out of the war. The point I make is that while David Halberstam, Peter Arnett and some other reporters were, in fact, reporting the truth about the failure of the military effort by the South Vietnamese Army against the Viet Cong, all the reporters were pro-war, and they were all being influenced by this Lieutenant Colonel Paul Van, who Neil Sheehan writes about brilliantly in his book, who was essentially saying, “We can win this war if we just fight it more intelligently, if we fight it the way the enemy fights it.” And I think that’s crazy, but that’s the view that Halberstam and his people were reflecting…it was an alternative strategy for wining the war, not opposition to the war.

Heffner: What…

MacArthur: And so that blows the premise of the Gulf War censors to pieces…

Heffner: But…

MacArthur: …because they’re saying, they’re implying that David Halberstam is out there in the jungle literally trying to subvert the war effort…that’s the implication.

Heffner: Well, you know the General when he was here went on to say about the military at the time of Grenada, he wasn’t…we weren’t as yet involved eight years later…or…

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: Seven years later…

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: …with, with the Gulf War, “Most of the people who were Majors and Lieutenant Colonels and General Officers and Flag Officers today. And my guess is that mood, the anti-media mood has continued and that it is possible that this has had an impact,” and I guess the question is…true or not true what they thought the press, the media did to our efforts to win in Vietnam. This is what they thought…

MacArthur: Yes.

Heffner: …they thought that the press did them in. Okay. What chance is there that there will be a different attitude reflected on the part of the military toward press involvement in a war…the purpose of war is to win a war, not presumably to provide for pools, or worse for your guys, you scribblers.

MacArthur: Well, actually I cite some, some scholarly work by a Navy public relations person who says, “The point is not to censor…simply to censor the press…the point is to use the press as a psychological weapon in war,” and the most sophisticated people in the defense establishment, in the Pentagon, understand that. The average line Public Relations officer or General, or Colonel, or Major, as he says, has a, has a, has a kind of visceral hostility to reporters because they’ve been convinced that the press is anti-military even though that’s not true. But what’s really disturbing is that the government is becoming, and the public relations specialists are becoming much more sophisticated about using the media to promote war-fever, to promote a sense of glorious victory as opposed to slaughter, which is the story I am telling a little bit about in the book…

Heffner: Well, in, in…

MacArthur: One of…my favorite point about the military campaign itself is that the images we got were of a very clean war where smart bombs were hitting targets precisely, non-civilian targets, again and again and again, and we…and people really became convinced that that was the story of the war, plus the famous “left hook” or “Hail Mary” play by Schwarzkopf. The real story of the war, and the untold story of the war is carpet-bombing by B-52’s which constituted 93% of the tonnage dropped in the Gulf War, not precise, not clean, not sanitary, and we don’t’ know what that looked like, we don’t know even now what the casualties were. And we do know that what some of the effects on civilian…on the civilian population…but that is the side of the story that has not been told. We’re left with the impression of this brilliant maneuver by Schwarzkopf and a brilliant, precise bombing campaign which is a much smaller part of the war than anybody understands at this point.

Heffner: Of course what is so intriguing about “Second Front” is your rather grudging admiration for Pete Williams.

MacArthur: Yes.

Heffner: …you don’t like what he accomplished…

MacArthur: No.

Heffner: …but you have to admire his ability to brief the nation…

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: …in a way that created all of the attitudes that you’re referring to now.

MacArthur: Sure, he’s a brilliant public relations man, and he’s a wonderful…he’s wonderful at obfuscating…he’s very glib, he’s likable, he ran circles around the American media in the War and before the War. He conned them very, very badly. In fact they were conned so badly and so effectively, I don’t even think half of them understand what happened to them now. They still don’t want to admit that he actually was a player in conning them. Now, of course, I object to what his, his motives were, but I expect government public relations people to manipulate and to lie as Williams did to me. He lied directly to me in my interview with him…he said there was no “up close fighting” in the Gulf War…that’s a lie. We know that our, our earth moving equipment buried Iraqis alive…I consider that “up close fighting.” What I object to is the American media going along with this. I mean I quote Michael Garter, the head of NBC News shockingly as saying he would hire Pete Williams tomorrow if he were available, as a reporter. Showing a complete confusion between public relations and journalism in my opinion…

Heffner: Oh, come on, I think Mike Gartner was paying Pete Williams could do anything well, he could play the other role, too, he could play the other side as effectively.

MacArthur: Possibly, but I think it’s more sinister than that…I do think that at a certain point, the network executives see the coverage of the war as “entertainment”, not as journalism, and they see it as a “show,” not as an attempt to get the truth out. And in my book, the hero, the closes thing I’ve got to a hero in, among the network people, is Robert Wright, the bete noire of the Left, who think that he’s just a creature of General Electric. Robert Wright is the only person, the only network person besides Dan Rather, who I interviewed, who was genuinely upset about censorship, and he was upset because he realized that he had been “had” and that his network had lost $55 million as a result of this. His people, his middle managers, like Gartner, had assured him that the pool system would work, and he realized all too quickly when he turned on the television the morning that the ground war allegedly started, it actually started two days earlier, and saw just a picture of Forrest Sawyer standing in the desert near nothing, and he realized that he had been “had.”

Heffner: But no pool system, no system is going to work in modern war…wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you agree to that?

MacArthur: Well, a pool system…

Heffner: What are you going to say? You’re going to say, “let’s go back to Ernie Pyle and those middle management people should have insisted that here be Ernie Pyle’s,” but it wouldn’t have happened, would it?

MacArthur: Well, if the network executives and the major publishers and editors had made an issue of it before the war and said “the public has a right to know, we have a First Amendment right to report this war, respecting security, respecting obvious common sense ground rules,” I hope nobody thinks that I favor crazy reporters running around the battlefield leaking information about invasions or attacks before they happen. That’s not the issue. That’s what the military would like you to think is the issue, that…but proof is in Vietnam. There is not one example in Vietnam, one documented example of a reporter breaking security, violating security and leading to the death of an American soldier…it never happened.

Heffner: But Mr. MacArthur, certainly in the decade since Vietnam the point has been made that the sophistication of our modern means of communication, satellite communications and the rest, even if you’re broadcasting from the top of a hotel in Baghdad, that those things have security meanings and consequences. No?

MacArthur: I don’t buy it. Edward R. Morrow was broadcasting live from a …from the roof of a building during the blitz of London and German agents could have been sitting in this country listening to his reports and figuring out which buildings were getting hit. I, you know, I just don’t…I…

Heffner: May I…

MacArthur: …I think the technological…

Heffner: …not to…

MacArthur: (Laughter)

Heffner: …coin a phrase…but they are not Edward R. Murrows, And you’re talking…and I mean that, you are talking about a different breed of cat, you’re talking about a different kind of war, you’re talking about a different kind of world, you’re talking about a different kind of reporter. Now…

MacArthur: Well…but the different kind of reporters…you’re saying he was a good journalist, and that journalists aren’t as good as Edward R. Murrow, or as brave as Edward R. Murrow was…

Heffner: Well, I’d certainly, I’d certainly…

MacArthur: Yeah.

Heffner: …be willing to say…

MacArthur: Yeah, and I think that’s another, that’s another topic…if you want to talk about the decline in quality…

Heffner: but, but…look, I’m talking about more than that, too. I’m talking about, and certainly you’ll make this concession, at least technically you make the concession, whether you concede that any change needs to be made…that we’re living in a very, very different world technologically, and that the likelihood is that whether middle management or top management, and ownership of the press goes to the Pentagon, goes to the President of the United States to try to set up the way things will be in the next incident…

MacArthur: Or sues.

Heffner: Or sues…

MacArthur: Right.

Heffner: ..and, well, that’s another time, we don’t have that many minutes left…

MacArthur: (Laughter)

Heffner: …what actually can be accomplished when you get right down to the nitty-gritty if you take Panama, Grenada, if you take the Gulf War…you’re talking about immediate strikes, you’re talking about not really bring able to mobilize within the context of modern war…

MacArthur: Well, it…

Heffner: …the kind of press you want there.

MacArthur: Well, my…certainly a reporter can accompany a first strike. I don’t see why reporters couldn’t have gone along to watch the assault of Panama City. The reason they weren’t allowed to watch it is because it was a very ugly business. We burned down a very poor neighborhood, and people were burning alive in their buildings, and I imagine that’s not something the Pentagon wanted the American people to see. Look we’ve gotten to the point where not only didn’t we see any corpses in the Gulf War, I mean we’re living in a fantasy world now where we think people don’t die in war…Americans don’t die, foreigners don’t die. But we’re not even allowed to see the coffins coming out of Dover Air Force Base because George Bush was upset that they did a split screen of him making a speech as the coffins were being brought out after Panama.

Heffner: Listen…

MacArthur: The American people are entitled to know that people die in a war and that we kill a lot of people in a war. How else are we supposed to make a judgment about the value of the operation, the conduct of the operation, the morality of the operation…during the war, or even after.

Heffner: that’s the trouble with living today rather than in World War II, and are you going to, are you going to say that Lyndon Johnson was totally wrong when he raised the question, as he left the White House…

MacArthur: It was an excuse…I mean he was looking for scapegoats, as were a lot of military people, as General Westmoreland…why did General Westmoreland sue CBS? He’s still, all of them are looking for scapegoats, they won’t admit to themselves, or to the people that Vietnam was a terrible, terrible mistake, and that they were accomplices in this terrible mistake…an immoral war, if you will. And I think that the technological argument that you’re bringing up…it’s interesting, but it’s value is exaggerated. People are talking…saying “we can’t have live coverage of war.” Well, under certain circumstances, I don’t see why you can’t have live coverage of war. We had live coverage of the LA Riots, we saw people torn out of…a guy pulled out of a truck and nearly killed. Why can we see that, and not see a SCUD hitting the barracks on Dhahran, and the result of that?

Heffner: It’s not just…

MacArthur: the corpses being pulled form the barracks.

Heffner: …it’s not just because you’re tearing apart what I said, it’s because I’ve gotten the signal…our time is up.

MacArthur: Okay. Thanks.

Heffner: Thanks very much for joining me today, Mr. MacArthur. And thanks, too, to you in the audience. I hope you’ll join us again next time. And if you’d like to share your thoughts about our program, our guess, please write THE OPEN MIND, P.O. Box 7977, FDR Station, New York, NY 10150. For transcripts, send $2.00 in check or money order. In the meantime, as an old friend used to say, that same old friend, “Good night, and good luck.”

Continuing production of this series has generously been made possible by grants from: The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation; The M. Weiner Foundation of New Jersey; The Thomas and Theresa Mullarkey Foundation; The New York Times Company Foundation; and, from the corporate community, Mutual of America.