The Press: Just Whose Side Are They On?

By Richard Zoglin

The colonel running the military briefing cautioned at the outset that he would not be able to answer questions involving sensitive information. But the first questioner paid little heed: "What date are we going to start the ground attack?" Sorry, the officer replied, can't comment. "Where would you say our forces are most vulnerable to attack, and how could the Iraqis best exploit those weaknesses?" was the next query. Another no-no. Still the reporters kept blundering on. "Are we planning an amphibious invasion of Kuwait," asked one, "and if so, where exactly would that be?"

No, the American press corps is not really that dumb. But the sketch on NBC's Saturday Night Live struck a responsive chord. In the realm of ridicule, it was a telling symbol: TV's hip, anti-Establishment comedy series chose for its satirical target, instead of a stiff-backed military leader or a bumbling president, the not-so-gentle men and women of the press.

Seldom have the press and public been so starkly at odds about journalism's role. While reporters and editors gripe about press restrictions, pool coverage and a lack of information about the war, many Americans have just the opposite complaint. Far from giving us too little information, they are saying, the press is trying to give us too much. Reporters seem too pushy in press briefings, too insensitive to the need for secrecy, too intent on looking for bad news. Why, goes the common cry, is the press trying to undermine the war effort? What are they first -- journalists or Americans?

The lightning rod for most of these complaints has been CNN's Peter Arnett. Since the all-news network was allowed to remain in Baghdad after most journalists were evicted, Arnett has been broadcasting a stream of reports under Iraqi supervision, mostly showing damage caused by allied bombing. Though CNN carefully labels these reports Iraqi-cleared, they have drawn fire for giving Saddam a conduit for his portrayal of the war. Senator Alan Simpson has impugned Arnett's patriotism; talk-show callers have heaped invective on the reporter. If Arnett were awarded "the Iraq Medal of Honor by Saddam Hussein," suggested one letter writer in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, "I for one feel he would deserve it."

A fresh outcry rose up last week after the allied bombing of a Baghdad building in which several hundred Iraqis died. The outrage was not, for the most part, against the allied bombing strategy but against TV networks for showing the grisly footage uncritically and thus once again serving Saddam's propaganda needs. "Ninety percent of the people calling my show were saying, 'Hey, this was a military target,' " says Jerry Williams, a talk host for Boston's WRKO radio. "We had four full hours of negative reaction to the press."

Media bashing has been on the upsurge since the start of the war. Don Wade, who hosts a talk show on Chicago's WLS radio, notes that journalists went from heroes to villains in a matter of days. "Here they were, crouching under the table during the first air raid," he says. "But after a few days people started to ask, 'Why are they being so antagonistic to our guys? Why are they so suspicious?' " CNN, whose special privileges in Baghdad have inspired charges that the all-news network is getting too cozy with the enemy, is suffering a mighty backlash. More than 55,000 letters, phone calls and faxes have poured into CNN's Atlanta headquarters since the start of the war, about 60% of them negative. Letters to the Los Angeles Times have been overwhelmingly critical of the press. "They hate us," says Thomas Plate, who runs the Times' editorial pages. "They wish we would go away."

The press is catching flak from all sides. While many Americans charge that the media coverage has been too critical, a small but vocal minority argue that the press has passively accepted the Pentagon line and has given short shrift to views opposing the war. A caller on CBS's America Tonight contended that antiwar views are being censored by the media. "If you listen to the radio shows, you'll find people being cut off on a regular basis," he said.

Is this anything more than the usual partisan carping at the press? The attacks from both sides probably mean that the press is situated just about where it usually is: in the evenhanded middle ground. In a Times Mirror survey conducted at the end of January, nearly 80% of the adults in the poll rated press coverage of the war as good or excellent. But the survey also found little support for the media's aggressive tactics. Fully 78% said they were satisfied that the military is not hiding bad news, and 57% said the Pentagon should exert more control over reporting of the war. In a TIME/CNN poll conducted last month, 79% of the adults surveyed said they were getting enough information about the war, and 88% supported some censorship of the press under the circumstances.

Some media observers see the current press bashing as the culmination of long-simmering public discontent. "In Vietnam, people were ready to take the truth -- that the war effort was failing -- but they didn't take it happily," says Michael Janeway, dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. "The press lived through a kind of subterranean punishment for bringing that news. Now the tension is reasserting itself." Argued conservative critic Dorothy Rabinowitz last week in a Wall Street Journal article: "The bill, it seems, has come in for the past 20 years," during which time, she claims, the press has gone overboard in post-Watergate prosecutorial zeal.

It is not surprising that resentment toward the press has surfaced during a war that enjoys widespread popular support. The public wants to believe things are going well. Any report that tends to contradict optimistic U.S. pronouncements, or support Iraqi claims, casts the press in the role of unwanted messenger. The public is well aware, moreover, of the crucial role that favorable or unfavorable press coverage can have in the propaganda battle that is shaping the course of the war.

During wartime, some people seem to think reporters should put their journalistic duties behind an obligation to support their country, to get "on the team." That is a dubious suggestion at best. No responsible journalist would quarrel with the proposition that certain information -- sensitive intelligence data, secret battle plans -- cannot be published or broadcast without posing a grave risk to American troops. Yet within those security limitations, the press's job is to find out what is actually going on (not just what officials say is going on), no matter whose cause it might or might not advance. "There's an irreconcilable conflict," says Marvin Kalb, director of Harvard's Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. "The press has not only a right but a responsibility to press for as much information as possible. And it is the government's responsibility to give only that information it feels will not be injurious to American troops on the line."

What is unique about the gulf war is that this conflict is being played out in live press briefings airing daily on CNN and C-SPAN and occasionally on the broadcast networks. Usually, the public gets only the end result of this process: digested reports on the evening news or in the morning newspaper. Now they are watching reporters in the messy business of doing their job: asking difficult, often contentious, sometimes impolite questions. "We look like bullies," acknowledges Richard Salant, former president of CBS News. Notes Stephen Hess, who studies the media for the Brookings Institution: "It's like showing just the raw data in an experiment, or one's notes. People don't understand that briefings are a negotiation process. Sometimes reporters play devil's advocate to try to get as much information as possible."

The backlash against the press can also be traced to the sheer volume of media coverage. With hundreds of reporters on the story and hours of air time to fill, much of the press's attention has been focused on its own problems in getting the story. Complaints about the military's press restrictions and other roadblocks have been fodder for countless articles and TV discussions. Whatever the validity of those complaints, the arguments over the rules of coverage may portray the press as a band of arrogant, self-involved whiners.

Yet a bit of righteousness comes with the territory. Journalists are not duty bound to coddle people with the information they want to hear, but to provide them with the information they should hear. "If people don't like it, I'm sorry," snapped Sam Donaldson on ABC's PrimeTime Live, "but they really need to know what's happening." Comments David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam: "It isn't a popularity contest for us, and we shouldn't seek it to be one. The people of this country wouldn't like it very much afterwards if it turns out that ((the war)) doesn't go well. Then they'll say, 'Well, where was the press?' " For now, however, journalists must face the fact that a lot of people are more concerned with telling the press where to go.

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta, Gavin Scott/Chicago and William Tynan/New York