Letters to the Editor
L.W.M.
Published Letters: 5810 Editor's Choice: 5
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In addition to GUT checks... there is Yogi Berra
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This really is like deja vu all over again.
A 1994 FAIR article on the 30 year anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident observed:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261
On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf — a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.
But Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate" for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never happened.
Prior to the U.S. air strikes, top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any Aug. 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to "freak weather effects," "almost total darkness" and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat."
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."
In 1965, Lyndon Johnson commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."
But Johnson's deceitful speech of Aug. 4, 1964, won accolades from editorial writers. The president, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities."
An exhaustive new book, The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, begins with a dramatic account of the Tonkin Gulf incidents. In an interview, author Tom Wells told us that American media "described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely `tit for tat' — when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North."
Why such inaccurate news coverage? Wells points to the media's "almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information" — as well as "reluctance to question official pronouncements on 'national security issues.'"
Daniel Hallin's classic book The "Uncensored War" observes that journalists had "a great deal of information available which contradicted the official account [of Tonkin Gulf events]; it simply wasn't used. The day before the first incident, Hanoi had protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats."
What's more, "It was generally known...that `covert' operations against North Vietnam, carried out by South Vietnamese forces with U.S. support and direction, had been going on for some time."
In the absence of independent journalism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam — sailed through Congress on Aug. 7. (Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, provided the only "no" votes.) The resolution authorized the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
The rest is tragic history.
Nearly three decades later, during the Gulf War, columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident."
Schanberg blamed not only the press but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public."
And he added: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."
National Security Archives, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 years later:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/
Google Yellow Journalism and The Spanish American War (they used to call it Yellow Journalism). From a PBS program:
http://www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_journalism.html
Crucible of Empire - The Spanish-American War
The Spanish-American War is often referred to as the first "media war." During the 1890s, journalism that sensationalized—and sometimes even manufactured—dramatic events was a powerful force that helped propel the United States into war with Spain. Led by newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers--a style that became known as yellow journalism.
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Ahh...
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wait a second...
There was Jack Reed, George Seldes, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken... dozens of others from other times, like Tom Paine and the pamphleteers of the revolution. The aberration is not the rule.
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And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Biercian cynicism of Pluege
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did I spell that right?
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And it's still a story...
[Read the article: Response from ABC News re: the Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a mystery. Everyone loves a mystery. Just like, "Who is the real father of Anna Nicole's baby?" But no one is covering it, except a few dogged researchers and reporters like Glenn Greenwald and Ed Lake. Odd, isn't it? It makes you wonder because it does involve Democratic politicians, Leahy, Daschle, etc. (just not Gary Condit). But they were victims, not alleged perpetrators. Perhaps it just lacks a missing white woman (Chandra Levy).
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It happens...
[Read the article: Response from ABC News re: the Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But usually to smaller sites like Sadly, No!
I think Salon is just having technical difficulties today with the ad, formatting stuff, just some bugs due to the recent format change.
But... the fellow who posted the link to Counter Information Team has a point. It's a small point in the larger picture. We are consumers of information. The media produces and disseminates, broadcasts, sells that information. Information warfare is real. It's sophisticated. They ain't kidding. It's the big picture. They know they have to aim that information weapon at "the enemy du jour". They also have to aim it at the American publiic. Chomsky called it "manufacturing consent" years ago. Google information warfare.
http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html