Patriotic Correctness

On our domestic shores, we have our own fog of war: call it "patriotic correctness." Peter Arnett's firing by NBC for the thoughtcrime of granting an interview to Iraqi TV is only the latest and most dramatic example of how patriotic correctness operates and how it limits journalism. A long list of journalists have been fired or denounced for expressing doubts about US leaders,

Pressures for patriotism have been felt by people such as 60-year-old Stephen Downs, who was ordered by security guards at the Crossgates Mall in Albany to remove the "Give Peace a Chance" T-shirt he had bought in the mall.

Patriotic correctness has also extended to colleges, where radical professors are accused of treason and warned to keep quiet. At Irvine Valley College in California, Vice President of Instruction Dennis White wrote a March 27 memo: "It has come to my attention that several faculty members have been discussing the current war within the context of their classrooms. We need to be sure that faculty do not explore this activity within the context of their classroom unless it can be demonstrated, to the satisfaction of this office, that such discussions are directly related to the approved instructional requirements and materials associated with those classes."

Actors and musicians have also felt the pressure of the flag-waving PC. The United Way of Tampa Bay cancelled an April 11 charity fundraising with actress Susan Sarandon because her anti-war views caused the event to become "divisive." Marty Petty, executive vice-president of Times Publishing Co. (where Sarandon's brother works), resigned as chair of the campaign in protest, arguing that "our civic life is made stronger by the expression of all views, including ones that are controversial."

Warner Bros. pulled posters and print ads for the new movie "What a Girl Wants" because the ad shows actress Amanda Bynes wearing an American flag shirt and giving the peace sign as she stands between two British royal guards. The studio claimed that the peace sign (but not the American flag) could be viewed as a political message, and replaced the ads with ones where there is no peace sign.

When Ani DiFranco played at ClearChannel's New Jersey Performing Arts Center on March 19, the manager of the arts center threatened to ban her if she allowed antiwar representatives to speak; despite this threat, DiFranco and the speakers were finally allowed their free speech.

One reason why Patriotic Correctness has gained so much power is the consolidation of media following the 1996 Telecommunications Act. After Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told fans during a London concert, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," Clear Channel stations boycotted their music. Cumulus Media, which owns 262 stations, ordered all 42 of its country stations to ban the Dixie Chicks. One station promoted a rally in Shreveport, Louisiana, where a bulldozer crushed Dixie Chicks CDs. Another station in Kansas City "chicken toss" party where the group's tapes, CDs and concert tickets were dumped in trash cans.

As Brent Staples observed in the Feb. 20 New York Times, while protest songs were common on the radio in the 1960s and 1970s, "A comparable song about George W. Bush's rush to war in Iraq would have no chance at all today." Until the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the top two owners had 115 stations between them. Now, ClearChannel has gone from 42 stations to 1200 stations in just a few years.

Clear Channel, which gave large sums of money to Republican candidates, also helped sponsor a series of pro-military rallies around the country-which may help convince the Bush Administration to ease regulations on media monopolies.

Quality journalism in America has suffered greatly from the wave of patriotic correctness. Suppression of dissenting views even preceded the war. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org) examined coverage of Iraq in the first two weeks of February during the nightly news on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS's NewsHour. They found that "76 percent of all of the sources on these four networks were current or former government officials," while only 6 percent of US sources on the nightly news were skeptics in any way about the war.

The Chicago Tribune censored a line from Salim Muwakkil's Feb. 10 column because it compared the Bush Administration policy of preemption to Hitler's justification for invading countries. Editorial-page editor Bruce Dold then decided to fire Muwakkil, although Dold claimed, "That column alone did not prompt my decision." Muwakkil, a senior editor at In These Times, had long been a target for criticism because of his opposition to Israel's occupation of Palestine, but it took the Patriotically Correct drive toward war for editors to decide that a sharp anti-war voice would not be welcome in the paper.

MSNBC fired its top-rated host, Phil Donahue. A secret NBC study declared that Donahue would a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war" and warned that the Donahue show could be "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." One NBC executive wrote in an email that MSNBC could take advantage of the "anticipated larger audience who will tune in during a time of war" to "reinvent itself": "It's unlikely that we can use Phil in this way, particularly given his public stance on the advisability of the war effort."

While firing Donahue, MSNBC was hiring far-right bigot Michael Savage to host a new show, even though Savage has called children killed by gunfire "ghetto slime," referred to non-white countries as "turd world nations," said homosexuality is "perversion" and claimed that Latinos "breed like rabbits." Savage has proposed reviving the Sedition Act of WWI and urged the government to "arrest the leaders of the antiwar movement."

When Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that Bush Administration advisor Richard Perle used his position to solicit investment for his firm, Perle threatened a libel suit. On March 9, Perle told CNN that Hersh "is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." By associating good journalism with suicide bombing, Perle wanted to silence the ongoing criticism of himself and Bush's policies. Perle is not only influential in the Bush Administration, but he also is involved in journalism. Perle sits on the board of directors of Hollinger International, which owns the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and other newspapers. Imagine a reporter or an editor who hears one of their directors calling one of the world's top investigative journalists a "terrorist"-how likely is it that any critical examination of Bush Administration policy will be permitted at that newspaper?

It turned out that Perle had been offered $725,000 by Global Crossing to get Defense Department approval for a financial deal. Perle then resigned as chair of the Defense Policy Board, although he remains a member. As for Hersh, he recently noted, "I have never seen my peers as frightened as they are now."

Some journalists have been fired for their unpatriotic views. San Francisco Chronicle technology columnist Henry Norr was suspended without pay after getting arrested in a protest against the war and taking a sick day when he was in jail.

The few liberal voices in the media either joined the war parade or found themselves left by the wayside. WLS (AM-890) in Chicago temporarily took Sunday afternoon hosts Nancy Skinner and Ski Anderson off the air, who are among the few liberal voices allowed on talk radio.

However, the biggest effect of war is not to amplify the voices of the loony right, but to ensure that dissent disappears. The overwhelming majority of news time is now occupied by US government and military statements, analysis by former US military officials who consult with the networks, and live-from-the-field reports by journalists embedded in military units. Top television news consultant Frank Magid is warning clients to be careful about covering anti-war protests too much.

While the US media regularly report dubious US denials, virtually none of the American media have noted how international press freedom groups have demanded an inquiry into the case of two Israeli and two Portuguese journalists who were detained by US soldiers in a jeep for 36 hours, accused of spying for Iraq, and abused; one journalist was reportedly beaten and suffered broken ribs.

Just as media coverage of political campaigns now follows the polls rather than the issues, the coverage of this war deals with the military tactics rather than the question of whether war is necessary. The sole debate and dissent allowed on American media since the war began was whether our overwhelming military force was sufficient, or if (as ex-generals such as Barry McCaffrey argued) the US needed even more soldiers in Iraq. A military capable of mass destruction, or a military of even greater destruction-that's the limit of debate in the mainstream media.

Dissenting voices, and even the right to dissent, were deemed too controversial for news networks fighting a ratings war over who will be the most patriotic supporter of the Bush Administration. Any moral arguments about whether we should be in a war, or about how this war should be fought, disappeared in the fog of war propaganda.

And government censorship in the wake of the Patriot Act and its sequel is on the rise. In March, US customs seized a copy of a 1995 unclassified FBI lab report that was sent via Federal Express by an Associated Press reporter in the Philippines to the Washington bureau; the package was turned over to the FBI because the government didn't want it to be seen, and there was no warrant or notification of the seizure.

Even pro-war media can find themselves censored. On March 21, Fox News cameraman Gregg Gursky was arrested and handcuffed, and had his camera and videotape taken. It didn't happen in Iraq, but in Washington, DC. Gursky's crime? He videotaped the Virginia State Police arresting a man, who was of Iranian descent, driving a vehicle on the highway. Gursky was arrested by Pentagon military police, who wanted to prevent the broadcast of the pictures, claiming that the US is in a state of emergency. A day later, after intense negotiations between the Pentagon and Fox News, the videotape was returned, but even conservative Fox journalist Brit Hume called it a "worrisome development."

The parade of Patriotic Correctness has been particularly strong in Congress. Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) ordered the word "French" removed from all cafeterias in the House, and the cafeterias even put red, white, and blue "Freedom" stickers to cover the name of French dressing packets. Rep. H. James Saxton (R-NJ), proposed banning the Pentagon from this year's Paris Air Show, and Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fl.) advocated allowing the remains of US veterans buried in France to be brought home.

When Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) said he was "saddened that the president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we are forced into war," House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) practically accused him of treason, declaring that his "comments may not undermine the president as he leads us into war, and they may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close."

The accusation of treason is now common for those who question the war. According to influential Republican David Horowitz, "there is a Fifth Column in America, an enemy within. It's the so-called 'peace movement.' Funded and fueled by foreign organizations that have long hated America, the current 'peace movement' is infecting the hearts and minds of millions of young Americans." Fox News' Bill O'Reilly declared on Feb. 26, "Americans and, indeed, our allies who actively work against our military once the war is under way will be considered enemies of the state by me." Ann Coulter's latest book, called Treason, will be published in June.

Peter Arnett is the poster child for patriotic correctness, being fired for the crime of giving an interview. NBC declared, "it was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV-especially at a time of war-and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions." Of course, journalists have been discussing personal observations and opinions throughout this war, including Arnett on NBC. Criticism of the US military tactics, and fact that Iraqi resistance sometimes surprised the Pentagon, has not been wholly absent, except perhaps on Fox News. As Arnett put it, "I said in that interview essentially what we all know about the war."

NBC, after initially supporting Arnett, turned on him after receiving 8,000 hostile emails and complaints from a furious White House that said Arnett spoke from "a point of complete ignorance." The day after his firing by NBC, Arnett wrote in his new home, The Daily Mirror, "There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad. They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems." According to Arnett, "I don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy - I just want to be able to tell the truth."

MSNBC President Erik Sorenson called Arnett's interview a "complete total outrageous mistake." According to Sorenson, Arnett's remarks "belie a bigger issue, which is that he has strong points of view about the war and its conduct. For him to be betraying these opinions of his, much less on Iraqi TV, is arguably aiding and abetting the enemy in Baghdad." It should be shocking that a "news" network president thinks that telling the truth and having opinions is "unpatriotic" and essentially treason.

"It's regrettable that a news organization feels compelled to fire a journalist for essentially doing journalism," noted Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, reported that "NBC is supersensitive right now to the winds of the Bush administration." NBC is also supersensitive to the winds of public opinion and the right-wing groups who help manipulate it.

Joseph Angotti, former vice president of news at NBC, declared that Arnett was fired because NBC is afraid of being seen as an unpatriotic network. And with good reason: despite Arnett's firing, Fox News Channel ran commercials showing Arnett's interview as an announcer declared, "He spoke out against America's armed forces; he said America's war against terrorism had failed; he even vilified America's leadership. And he worked for MSNBC."

Fox's Geraldo Rivera, who violated military rules by drawing a map in the sand showing where American troops were, and failed to obey orders to leave, still has a high-paying job and will be allowed to return to Iraq. Arnett, who violated no military or network rules by giving an interview, will almost certainly be permanently blacklisted from American television.

Today's wave of repression in the name of patriotic correctness has only begun. How many journalists, professors, and dissenters will be fired by the patriotism police? A war ostensibly fought for "freedom" must not be allowed to trigger a crusade of domestic repression.