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Underground > Switchboard >

propaganda vs. censorship

autopilot disengaged

16:36 / 12.10.01

quote:The five major television news organizations reached a joint agreement yesterday to follow the suggestion of the White House and abridge any future videotaped statements from Osama bin Laden or his followers to remove language the government considers inflammatory.

The decision, the first time in memory that the networks had agreed to a joint arrangement to limit their prospective news coverage, was described by one network executive as a "patriotic" decision that grew out of a conference call between the nation's top television news executives and the White House national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday morning.

The five news organizations, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, along with its subsidiary, MSNBC, the Cable News Network and the Fox News Channel all had broadcast, unedited, a taped message from Mr. bin Laden on Sunday. On Tuesday, the all-news cable channels, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, also carried the complete speech of a spokesmen for Al Qaeda.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, indicated in his news briefing yesterday that Ms. Rice was primarily concerned that terrorists could be using the broadcasts to send coded messages to other terrorists, but the network executives said in interviews that this was only a secondary consideration.

obviously, the 'inflammatory' argument is a discussion in itself, but does anyone actually buy this line about coded messages? is there any evidence or precedent for it? or are we seeing a pretty clever pretext to bring the mainstream media to heel?

The Knowledge +1

16:46 / 12.10.01

Fuck censorship. It's self-defeating.

17:06 / 12.10.01

quote: but does anyone actually buy this line about coded messages? is there any evidence or precedent for it? or are we seeing a pretty clever pretext to bring the mainstream media to heel?

probably a little of both. When captured American POW pilots in Vietnam were compelled to make filmed confessions & denounciations of the US, some of them blinked out counter-messages in morse code.

But I would imagine that if the 'bad guys' here have worked out a somewhat more reliable means of communication than what hoping the media run the proper 45 seconds of the 15 minute video on the news.

autopilot disengaged

17:33 / 12.10.01

blink code? oh man, that is incredible. imagine if one of the POWs got grit in his eye during a broadcast - he could push high command into world war III!

19:18 / 12.10.01

on a tangent regarding responsibility in media, anyone else read Cyril Kornbluth's The Silly Season? And i've always believed U.S. foreign policy/elected officials to be a far sight scarier than wealthy rabid camel humpers.

14:00 / 13.10.01

does anyone actually buy this line about coded messages? is there any evidence or precedent for it? or are we seeing a pretty clever pretext to bring the mainstream media to heel?

It's possible that al Qaeda would use those sorts of means to get a message across to their "sleeper" terrorists, although I doubt cells hiding away in other countries really need much motivation to begin a campaign of terror at this point.

Overall, it is a fairly clever pretext. I half believe that the Administration buys into it, being the paranoid lot that they most certainly are. In the end, it was the organizations you listed that made a choice to self-censor based on suggestions so we don't know if the government would've gone ahead and censored them directly.

But hey, it's war-time. They probably would censor everything if they could.

14:13 / 13.10.01

quote:Originally posted by autopilot disengaged:

...but does anyone actually buy this line about coded messages? is there any evidence or precedent for it? or are we seeing a pretty clever pretext to bring the mainstream media to heel?

The messages regarding flight number and so forth to attack the wtc were coded in images on the internet, so I could buy that (maybe). But I don't buy the inflammatory remarks bit. If we're censoring bin laden from the american people, we're censoring his humanity.

autopilot disengaged

14:54 / 13.10.01

(this post is classified)

16:13 / 13.10.01

...and I have the necessary security clearance, I can tell you that 'pilot was using that last post to call a nuclear strike on the Ben & Jerrys factory. You'll just have to take my word for it.

16:46 / 13.10.01

i heard an interview on NPR the other day with the man who is the head of the congressional task force of terrorism, and author of the book about bin Laden; he said he thought it was extremely unlikely that they would use encoded messages in the video taped speeches. they already obviously have other ways of communicating, by hand delivered messages, etc, and it would be silly of them to go for sometihng so unreliable.

but apparently that doesnt stop the government from seizing opportunity to control its own people.

Frances Farmer

18:57 / 13.10.01

Obviously, they don't want to see another Vietnam. No support at home makes things difficult abroad. If the administratio can maintain that 92% approval rating for what's being done in Afghanistan, they'll avoid many of the PR pitfalls of earlier administrations.

On a side note:

Sabawoon seems to be unreachable - the Afghani news source I posted a week or so ago.

Does anyone have links to alternate Afghani sources?

Frances Farmer

00:21 / 14.10.01

Nevermind the Sabawoon bit. Appears to have been a short-lived outage or maintenace thing.

00:21 / 14.10.01

some interesting nuggets of info on administrative (in)competence in dealing with the media to be found here.

I've always taken comfort in the fact that governments are rarely bright enough to conspire effectively against people. (I'm excluding those governments who simply exercise violent oppression. That doesn't take brains.) But right now I wish they were just a leeeetle smarter.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

10:13 / 14.10.01

I don't see why they have problems with censoring the images. The problems come when the strange, re-arranged illiterate excuses that pass for translations get qouted.
'I see no reason why we should be banned from having nuclear weapons, as the US and it's allies do' Became 'I'll nuke Britain' within minutes or breaking on the BBC.

10:40 / 14.10.01

this is getting scarier and scarier
UK Media chiefs called to No. 10 to discuss broadcasting Bin Laden messages.

On the bright side the BBC sounded quite defiant about any political interference in their work but it must also be remember that during the 1980's the statements of sinn fein members such as Gerry Adams had to be redubbed with the voice of some out of work Irish actor in order to prevent him from delivering his insidious propaganda, a measure that was complied with by the BBC. It must also be remembered that the BBC's charter and revenue source via the licence fee could be revoked by any government that could not tolerate its broadcasting.

Alastair Campbell as the C21st Goebels?

11:32 / 14.10.01

This is a bollocks attempt at censorship. Get me a paper and a pad and give me ten seconds and I'll prove it.

1: The hidden messages, if in (say) Arabic, will be lost anyway - translation is not a fixed process, and different words could be used by each translator.
There are hundreds of words describing abstract concepts, feelings, etc which have no literal translation - and are widely open to interpretation.

2: If the message is not delivered verbally, but by blink codes or whatever, then maybe Osama could get messages out, right?

Well, perhaps - if the tapes were shown in their entirety and unedited.

Obviously, that would be the kind of thing every news network does - showing, say, 30 minutes of uniterrupted ranting from Osama. Or maybe they would use edited sections of the the tapes.

And the edits would fuck up the message, surely?

A message like: [You][must] [on][with] [infidel] [fly][do not] [Allah] would be pretty useless, I'd argue...

3: So let's assume that the BBC and ITV, plus all the major American news staions do decide to go along with this censorship.

Means nothing. Achieves nothing. Why?

Because Al Jazeera, the source for almost all the Afghan footage and the channel which the Osama tapes are delivered to first, is a satellite channel.

It will still be broadcasting the tapes, probably in their original language, and it can be picked up internationally. So what exactly does all this achieve?

[ 14-10-2001: Message edited by: Not Me Again ]

autopilot disengaged

09:04 / 15.10.01

quote:...this is a war without a frontline upon which to station reporters. Unlike the Gulf War, when Peter Arnett of CNN was stationed in Baghdad, and the Kosovo crisis, when Simpson was in Belgrade, the Western media have no independent sources inside the battle zone.

'This will be a particularly difficult war for us to cover,' says the BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan, now in Pakistan. 'Most of the action will be invisible and there are no independent reporters able to challenge the official version of events.'

As things stand, incidents such as the bombing of a refugee column during the Kosovo crisis - first denied by Nato, and only admitted to when journalists arrived at the scene - will this time round remain unchallenged.(TheObserver)

autopilot disengaged

09:08 / 15.10.01

quote:...the US media have already proved willing to comply with military orders when it matters. Seventeen news organisations knew three days before that the bombing of Afghanistan was to start on Sunday, and said nothing.

Frances Farmer

09:24 / 15.10.01

Ironically, many U.S. citizens are worked into such a dogmatic frenzy over this whole thing that trying to question whether or not censorship is appropriate will garner harsh rebuttals at best: "Are you fucking stupid?!", or the tag of "terrorist sympathizer", at worst.

Among other things, this means trying to rally popular support for protesting censorship - much less peace - seems damned near impossible in the U.S.

Not good at all.

13:00 / 15.10.01

Ironically, many U.S. citizens are worked into such a dogmatic frenzy over this whole thing that trying to question whether or not censorship is appropriate will garner harsh rebuttals at best: "Are you fucking stupid?!", or the tag of "terrorist sympathizer", at worst. – Frances

WILL? Already has, at least in my neighborhood.

Was at the laundromat yesterday, and John Ashcroft was on the telly making not-so-subtle commentary about how, now that we are a nation at

WAR

We cannot be expected to live our lives as freely as we are accustomed to. I raised my middle finger to the television screen and got blasted by my fellow launderers for being "unpatriotic". The general consensus was that a loss of civil liberties was only worrisome if one "had something to hide".

The Return Of Rothkoid

14:52 / 15.10.01

Originally posted by Ierne: quote:The general consensus was that a loss of civil liberties was only worrisome if one "had something to hide".That's something that's been doing the rounds at work here, when I bring up talk of encryption or whatever - people seem not to be too concerned about the government snooping around because "I've got nothing to hide".

This mortifies me.

17:23 / 18.10.01

US Buys Up All Satellite Footage of Afghanistan

from the story:

The images will be of little practical use to the military, which already has seven orbiting imaging satellites with a resolution down to 10 centimetres. However, the deal will stop images falling into the hands of the Taliban or the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, says a spokesman for the Pentagon.

If the images are in the public domain, "compromising operational security is a definite concern," he says. The images could reveal the deployment of US ground troops, for instance. "We want to have the photographs for our own use and not the enemy's," he adds.

However, some commentators believe the main motivation behind the buy-up is to prevent images of civilian targets hit during bombing raids reaching the media.

Don't you think *anyone* trying to buy satellite pictures of Afghanistan at the moment would be a little suspiscious? And the authorities might be alerted?

But I'll believe the US that Osama could get his hands on them.

I mean, it's just handy that it stops news agencies from getting images of civilian casualties, innit?