Censorship? But yes!
It is worth noting that journalists' demands for completely unbiased war reporting are not only naive but also illegitimate. Besides, what is the "pure truth" anyway?
Column Journalistic demands for completely free war reporting are not only naive, but also illegitimate. Besides, what is the pure truth? there is no war without journalists who are outraged by attempts to impose limits on their reporting or even to exercise censorship. The US offer to allow more than 500 press and television correspondents to travel to the front with the soldiers as "embedded journalists" is seen by critics as a particularly perfidious strategy of information control: it is suspected, they say, that this proximity of warriors and war correspondents leads to the latter identifying with the former. Moreover, the Pentagon had formulated rules for the behavior of "information combatants" (ZDF editor Ulrich Kienzle) that made free reporting impossible. At the same time, hundreds of journalists at the "Central Command" in Doha are complaining about routinely presented empty formulas, and a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor has already been expelled from southern Iraq by the allied forces. According to the military, he had given too precise information about the positions and operations of their units. NBC dismissed its reporter Peter Arnett, a journalistic veteran of the first Gulf War, because he had allowed himself to be turned into a key witness against the coalition on Iraqi propaganda television. German media critics see this as further proof of the boundless patriotism of the US networks, which had already criticized the non-broadcasting of TV images of fallen GIs as self-censorship.
What comes along in the pose of the defenders of a free press against the silence cartel of the (of course Anglo-American) military-political complex is
in reality a mixture of stupidity and brazen business acumen. (The small remnant of serious concern can be safely neglected in this place, which is designed to be exaggerated). Shamefully stupid
is when journalists fail to understand that different laws apply on a battlefield than in the hothouse of political intrigue or in the jungle of balance sheet manipulation by large corporations.
War is the ultimate emergency in which people fight and die. Information is an important weapon - always for the opponent too. That is why the whole truth, whatever that may be, is only available after the end of hostilities. How naive or narrow-minded must anyone be who does not understand that information about a unit's armament and position can contain intelligence that endangers the life and limb of soldiers? And should the "Central Command" seriously grant the bunch of journalistic highwaymen access to its war plans so that Saddam can then view them on CNN? Anyone who demands such a thing is asking for self-sacrifice through media publicity.
Peter Arnett, on the other hand, is certainly not that stupid. The ex-CNN man, who has been somewhat sidelined in this war, simply wanted to draw attention to himself again, which is why he sounded so full-bodied on Saddam Hussein's TV channel. If you have a booth on the market, you have to make noise: This motto is the only motive for an interview for which he was fired with good reason. Wartime is a reminder that there are limits, even for journalists. We should not be dissuaded from this insight by the loud accusations of censorship.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and lives as a freelance journalist in northern Germany.
What comes along in the pose of the defenders of a free press against the silence cartel of the (of course Anglo-American) military-political complex is
in reality a mixture of stupidity and brazen business acumen. (The small remnant of serious concern can be safely neglected in this place, which is designed to be exaggerated). Shamefully stupid
is when journalists fail to understand that different laws apply on a battlefield than in the hothouse of political intrigue or in the jungle of balance sheet manipulation by large corporations.
War is the ultimate emergency in which people fight and die. Information is an important weapon - always for the opponent too. That is why the whole truth, whatever that may be, is only available after the end of hostilities. How naive or narrow-minded must anyone be who does not understand that information about a unit's armament and position can contain intelligence that endangers the life and limb of soldiers? And should the "Central Command" seriously grant the bunch of journalistic highwaymen access to its war plans so that Saddam can then view them on CNN? Anyone who demands such a thing is asking for self-sacrifice through media publicity.
Peter Arnett, on the other hand, is certainly not that stupid. The ex-CNN man, who has been somewhat sidelined in this war, simply wanted to draw attention to himself again, which is why he sounded so full-bodied on Saddam Hussein's TV channel. If you have a booth on the market, you have to make noise: This motto is the only motive for an interview for which he was fired with good reason. Wartime is a reminder that there are limits, even for journalists. We should not be dissuaded from this insight by the loud accusations of censorship.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and lives as a freelance journalist in northern Germany.
