Good news from Iraq

Everyone is justifiably outraged at the revelations that the US has been planting pro-American stories in the Iraqi press (except for a few wingnuts who see it as good old fashioned info war rather than as a stunning corruption of the free press we're allegedly advocating).  I'm actually not the least bit surprised - this is one of those things which I assumed was common knowledge, but now that it's out I can see that it really wasn't.  Of course Ahmed Chalabi's al-Motamar would run that stuff, it's the reason the paper exists. It's part and parcel with the American approach to the Iraqi media, which has always been more about message control and spin than about creating the foundations for a free press and pluralist democracy. 

I wasn't even going to comment on the story, since I've been so busy that it's already well into the news cycle (in a day!).  But I was intrigued when Global Voices guru (and impossible-to-schedule-coffee-with) Ethan Zuckerman offers this observation:

A couple of years ago, I was taking a long ride in a taxi cab in Jordan and noticed the driver would switch stations on the radio once the announcer came on with a newscast. Precisely five minutes later, he’d switch back to the original station. I asked him what he was doing.

He explained that he was listening to Radio Sawa, the US sponsored radio station that broadcasts in several Middle Eastern nations, offering “accurate, timely and relevant news about the Middle East, the world and the United States.” (The quote is from Sawa’s English-language website.) He told me: “The music is really good, but the news is bullshit. So I switch it off when the news comes on, then switch back when the music returns.”
...

While there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a sleazy technique that will weaken Iraq’s already fragile press, I find myself wondering whether techniques like this can possibly be effective. Radio Sawa doesn’t clearly advertise itself as an American propoganda tool, but average folks on the street in Amman or Cairo know that the station’s reporting has a distinctive bias. When Iraqis encounter a blatantly pro-US story in a newspaper that’s otherwise critical of the occupation, are they likely to conclude that perhaps he was wrong and the Americans really are fighting the good fight? Or that the Americans have subverted his daily newspaper, leading him to look for news from other sources?

Perhaps the US has just granted a great favor to Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and other arabic media outlets in Iraq, helping convince Iraqis that to get news, not propaganda, they need to look beyond both the US media and nascent local media outlets.

I agree with Ethan about this (and have previously recounted my identical Radio Sawa story).  But I wonder whether the Iraqis were ever really the targets?   Publishing pro-American stories in the various Iraqi newspapers - many of which are cheaply made and poorly distributed - was unlikely to have much impact on Iraqis who, after all, could see first-hand what was happening in their country.   

Where was the market for these feel-good stories?   The United States, where the mainstream media allegedly refused to publicize the "good news". This is a classic, textbook case of "blowback", where propaganda for foreign audiences enters the domestic public debate  - thereby circumventing the laws against disseminating propaganda at home.   The only real question is whether this was intentional (which would be illegal) or incidental.  I'd lean towards the former, but I'll leave it to real reporters to pursue it. 

Meanwhile, perhaps we'd like to revisit some oldies but goodies, like the al-Mada list of Saddam's oil vouchers?   Where'd that story come from?   Oh, and those "Saddam's cash" stories, about how Arab  journalists were allegedly on the Iraqi payroll... don't those look quaint now?

UPDATE:  Ah, I see that Laura Rozen fixated on the "blowback" thing, too.  This really is the story here - along with the corrosive impact on Iraq's public sphere, the subversion of the laws against domestic propaganda should indeed be the headline.

Comments

[hummbumm]

I see your point, but the UN voucher lists were confirmed and documented in the UN investigation led by Volcker, and as you well know almost no Arab media, including Al Jazeera is stand alone profitable without subsidies and a degree of editorial control from govt or rich individuals. It is also common knowledge that Saddam paid off people. I am not for propaganda, but for you to dismiss Oil for food corruption is a stretch. After all where do most leaks and stories come from, from people who want the news out whether they pay for it or not. Heck Bin laden may well be paying Al Jazeera to broadcast his tapes

[the aardvark]

No, no that's not the point - I've never doubted that the OFF program was rife with corruption (and have written about it often). That's been common knowledge for years, long before hte Volcker report. And I've also never denied that there's huge amounts of money slushing through the ARab media - Saudi and Kuwaiti, Qatari and Iraqi... and American. My question was the source of information for al-Mada, where they got the document, not its validity or lack thereof.

[hummbumm]

Fine, but you tied into an article re. paid placement of "news" where immediately the reader will doubt its veracity, vs. a govt leak, which quite often is self serving but true and is newsworthy.

[EthanZ]

Not impossible, Marc. Just difficult to schedule coffee with. December 15th, 16th, 21st and 23rd are all open dates (the mornings, at least) on my calendar... :-)

Love the blowback theory. Very interested to see how the idea does both in the blogs and in MSM. Perhaps something to talk about over coffee...