Media Under Public Barrage Over Content of War Coverage

Seven weeks into the war in Afghanistan, many Americans say the nation’s news media are behaving irresponsibly--some even say “treasonously”--by providing coverage that helps the enemy and unnecessarily alarms people here.

There is no evidence that any stories have jeopardized U.S. missions or troops, and there have been no new terrorist attacks here, despite widespread coverage of vulnerable targets.

News executives attribute the criticism in part to patriotic fervor and anxiety over a war in which the country--already staggered by a massive loss of life--has been told several times that more attacks could soon follow.

Editors say many Americans also fail to understand that the media’s duty is to keep the public informed about the war effort and about possible terrorist targets, even when that coverage may include unpleasant or unsettling news.

Many readers and viewers just don’t accept that, and news executives across the country are hearing what Douglas Clifton, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, calls a “steady drumbeat of criticism.”

Neither the volume nor the virulence of these charges yet approaches the level of the anti-media sentiment often expressed during the Vietnam War. But “treasonous” and “traitor” are words aimed at the news media with increasing frequency these days.

“Any time we run a story that has any level of specificity [about troop movements], we get complaints,” Clifton says. “And when we ran a photo of a gaggle of Afghan . . . refugee kids--it touched off an avalanche of phone calls saying we were supportive of the enemy cause.

“One reader said using that photo was ‘treasonous,’ ” Clifton says, “even though President Bush himself has asked the children of America to give $1 each to these needy Afghan children.”

Newspaper editors and ombudsmen from Honolulu to Hartford, Conn., are hearing from readers unhappy with stories and photos showing civilian casualties from U.S. bombing raids. The Hartford Courant received complaints from more than 550 angry readers after publishing a Page 1 photo of what appeared to be a baby killed in U.S. bombing.

Taliban Not Dependent on U.S. News Reports

Although many readers are upset by stories about U.S. military tactics, “the Taliban certainly don’t need our newspapers and magazines to know what our troops are doing,” says James Kelly, managing editor of Time magazine.

Moreover, says Jeffrey Dvorkin, National Public Radio ombudsman, “virtually everything we report about military action comes directly from the Pentagon--in briefings, in interviews or from the Defense Department’s own Web site.”

NPR was sharply criticized in many quarters last month, though, when Loren Jenkins, its senior foreign editor, was quoted as saying, in effect, that if he knew the secret whereabouts of U.S. covert forces in Afghanistan, he would report it.

That comment played directly into the hands of critics who maintain that ego-driven journalists are so determined to break stories that they’ll do so even at the risk of jeopardizing the safety of U.S. troops and the security of their missions.

Journalists say they don’t want to do that, and in an effort to quell the controversy triggered by Jenkins’ remark, Bruce Drake, vice president of NPR news and information, released a statement saying that Jenkins “neither believes nor intended to suggest that NPR would engage in reporting that would put in peril the lives of U.S. military personnel.”

But many Americans remain skeptical--and critical.

Complaints About ‘Specific Information’

More than 75 readers complained to The Times after publication of a Nov. 5 story that began: “Four Western men in wraparound sunglasses and U.S. sportswear were on the sidelines watching and videotaping as anti-Taliban troops practiced for battle on a barren hillside Sunday.” The story went on to suggest that the men were U.S. military advisors and described in detail their appearance and vehicle.

Readers said enemy forces with access to The Times’ Web site could use this “specific information” to put “these brave Americans’ lives in danger,” in the words of Jeanie Thiessen of Hacienda Heights.

In an e-mail response to readers, Foreign Editor Simon Li wrote that the presence of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan “is no secret to the enemy.”

But couldn’t the story’s specific descriptions of these men render them vulnerable to enemy attack?

No, Li said. Because the men were with “friendly troops”--the Northern Alliance--in an area where “there has been no trace of enemy aggressive activity. . . . I do not see how [the] . . . report put them in any extra jeopardy.”

Much of the criticism of media war coverage, as has often been the case, comes from conservatives.

One conservative media watchdog group, the Virginia-based Media Research Center, has criticized ABC News, in particular for spending “far more time than its competitors showcasing the grisly pictures that the Taliban purport are civilians killed by U.S. bombs.”

ABC News executives insist their coverage has been evenhanded. “We very clearly label it when we get pictures only by virtue of an escorted Taliban tour, and we think our viewers are smart enough to evaluate them accordingly,” says Paul Friedman, executive vice president of ABC News.

One longtime media critic, the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, brushes aside any suggestion of media bias in coverage of the war. “The media have really flown the flag, acted as patriots, been front and center in presenting themselves as behind the war effort,” says Robert Lichter, co-director of the center.

Media See Problems of Different Sort

Many journalists think the media have been too deferential to the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the war effort.

“It’s not our job to be cheerleaders,” says Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Portland Oregonian. “Information about this war is so filtered that I’m less concerned with our giving away military secrets than I am with whether we’re asking tough enough questions, examining inconsistencies, being suspicious of pat answers and evasions . . . and pressing hard enough to make sure we have accurate information.”

Many news organizations are taking special care to avoid appearing sympathetic to--or easily manipulated by--the Taliban and their supporters and propagandists.

Walter Isaacson, chairman of CNN, told his staff late last month to balance coverage of civilian casualties with mentions of the deaths caused Sept. 11 by terrorists the Taliban are harboring.

Isaacson said CNN should not forget that Afghanistan’s leaders “are responsible for the situation Afghanistan is now in.” It seems “perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.”

Many Americans clearly feel the same way--as Isaacson implicitly acknowledged recently when he said, “If you get on the wrong side of public opinion, you are going to get into trouble.”

But journalists see an unsettling trend in public opinion.

“Some Americans are so fearful now that when they read information they don’t like, they question the newspaper’s patriotism,” says Gina Lubrano, reader representative at the San Diego Union Tribune. “People are actually complaining about . . . too much information.”

Lubrano is clearly echoing sentiments felt strongly by many non-journalists.

Leonard McGee, 48, of Salt Lake City put it this way in a letter to the Salt Lake Tribune:

“The media justify their irresponsible reporting . . . by saying that the people have a ‘right to know’ or a ‘need to know’ what their government is doing. Wrong. As a private citizen, I have neither the ‘right’ nor the ‘need’ to know how my military is getting the bad guys. Frankly, I don’t want to know right now.

“If a member of the news media wants to become famous by reporting about what the U.S. military has done in this war, then write a book when it’s over. Until then, just shut up.”

But journalists live for--and on--information. To them, the very concept of “too much information” is inconceivable. Journalists believe that information is essential to decision-making in a democracy. How can they evaluate the judgment and policies of the president and his top advisors? How can they know--and lobby for--the safety of airplanes, bridges and other possible terrorist targets?

“One of our most cherished values as a free society is that a fully informed citizenry will make wise choices, including about how to meet the new challenge of terrorism,” says Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder.

In some cases, it’s not so much that Americans don’t want to know as it is that they don’t want our enemies to know.

Several print and broadcast news organizations have received angry calls, e-mails and letters, for example, about stories saying that in an attempt to help the Pentagon determine the whereabouts of Bin Laden, geologists are examining rocks visible in videotapes made by him and broadcast on U.S. television.

“Do you have no interest in seeing the man captured?” one reader asked the San Francisco Chronicle. “Are you trying to help him escape?”

Some See News Stories as Terror Blueprints

Not surprisingly, many in the U.S. are more upset by stories about our vulnerability to terrorist attacks than they are by stories about military activity in Afghanistan.

When the Oregonian published a story about security at a chemical depot, a reader e-mailed, “Are you out of your mind?”

When the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a story and map Nov. 4 on “the potential calamity of a terrorist attack” against the 150 chemical plants, storage facilities and oil refineries along the Houston Ship Channel, readers were furious. One threatened to report the paper to the FBI. Another said he was mailing the story to the Homeland Security Office “to see if you have violated a law.” A third reader accused the paper of doing “leg work” for terrorists.

Early this month, The Times published an opinion page column by Brian Halweil that said meat processing plants have “virtually no security” and that turnover is so great and background checks so lacking that “no one really knows who is working there.” Anyone working in a plant “could easily obtain a sample of salmonella or E. coli or other life-threatening agent from a plant’s meat inspection lab and use this for large-scale contamination,” the column said.

One caller accused The Times of “publishing a blueprint and an invitation” for terrorists.

News executives insist they are performing a public service, not providing a terrorist guidebook, when they publish such stories.

“When the media put these things in the open,” ABC’s Friedman says, “that puts pressure on the government to do something about them.”