MEDIA WATCH

Bush admin. routes TIPS calls to ‘America’s Most Wanted’

Washington, DC, Aug. 6— In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called “surreal,” the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned “America’s Most Wanted” television series.

“This is like retaining Arthur Andersen to do all of the SEC’s accounting,” said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “It’s a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector. What’s next — the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?”

“If it continues to cooperate with the government on Operation TIPS, America’s Most Wanted should move networks and rename itself ‘Big Brother,’” King said.

The author of the Salon article, David Lindorff, reportedly signed up for TIPS more than a month ago, heard nothing and followed up last week with a phone call to the Department of Justice, the agency responsible for overseeing the proposed program. The department gave Lindorff another phone number, which it said had been set up by the FBI. When he dialed that number, Lindorff was greeted by a receptionist for “America’s Most Wanted,” which features reenactments of unsolved crimes and then asks the public to phone in leads and tips.

Shocked that the number did not connect to the FBI, Lindorff was told, “We’ve been asked to take the FBI’s TIPS calls for them.” The ACLU today said that, not only does the Operation TIPS program on its own pose serious threats to the American ideal that neighbors not be expected to inform on neighbors, but the program, when coupled with the power and profit incentives of television, could enhance its resemblance to Big Brother through sensationalism and the thirst for advertising revenue.

Even before its partnering with Fox Television, the Operation TIPS program has come under a barrage of criticism from both the left and the right. House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-TX), one of the most powerful and conservative members of Congress, introduced a measure in his chamber’s version of the Homeland Security legislation that would prohibit the implementation of TIPS and other similar measures. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also opposed the proposal, saying “We could be vigilant, but we don’t want to be vigilantes.”

“Why stop with America’s Most Wanted?” King added. “If a sensational story is what it was looking for, the Department of Justice should have just hired Jerry Springer as its public information officer.”

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

War and forgetfulness — a bloody media game

By Norman Solomon

August 1— Three and a half years ago, some key information about UN weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages of American newspapers — and promptly vanished. Now, with righteous war drums beating loudly in Washington, let’s reach deep down into the news media’s Orwellian memory hole and retrieve the story.

“US Spied on Iraq Under UN Cover, Officials Now Say,” a front-page New York Times headline announced on Jan. 7, 1999. The article was unequivocal: “United States officials said today that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors ferreting out secret Iraqi weapons programs.... By being part of the team, the Americans gained a first-hand knowledge of the investigation and a protected presence inside Baghdad.”

A day later, a follow-up Times story pointed out: “Reports that the United States used the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq as cover for spying on Saddam Hussein are dimming any chances that the inspection system will survive.”

With its credibility badly damaged by the spying, the UN inspection system did not survive. Another factor in its demise was the US government’s declaration that sanctions against Iraq would remain in place whether or not Baghdad fully complied with the inspection regimen.

But such facts don’t assist the conditioned media reflex of blaming everything on Saddam Hussein. No matter how hard you search major American media databases of the last couple of years for mention of the spy caper, you’ll come up nearly empty. George Orwell would have understood.

Instead of presenting a complete, relevant summary of past events, mainstream US journalists and politicians are glad to focus on tactical pros and cons of various aggressive military scenarios. While a few pundits raise cautious warning flags, even the most absurd Swiss-cheese rationales for violently forcing a “regime change” in Baghdad routinely pass without challenge.

In late July, a Wall Street Journal essay by a pair of ex-Justice Department attorneys claimed that the US would be “fully within its rights” to attack Iraq and overthrow the regime — based on “the customary international law doctrine of anticipatory self-defense.” Of course, if we’re now supposed to claim that “anticipatory self-defense” is a valid reason for starting a war, then the same excuse could be used by the Iraqi government to justify an attack on the United States (even setting aside the reality that the US has been bombing “no fly zones” inside Iraq for years).

Among the first to testify at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s recent hearing on Iraq was “strategy scholar” Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon and State Department official. He participated in the tradition of touting another round of taxpayer-funded carnage as a laudable innovation — “our first preemptive war.”

Speaking alongside Cordesman was Richard Butler, the head of the UN weapons inspection program in Iraq at the time that it was spying for Washington. At the Senate hearing, Butler suggested that perhaps the Russian government could be induced to tell Baghdad: “You will do serious arms control or you’re toast.”

Like countless other officials treated with great deference by the national press corps, Butler strives to seem suave and clever as he talks up the wisdom of launching high-tech attacks certain to incinerate troops and civilians. As a matter of routine, US journalists are too discreet to bring up unpleasant pieces of history that don’t fit in with the slanted jigsaw picture of American virtue.

With many foreign-policy issues, major news outlets demonstrate a remarkable ability to downplay or totally jettison facts that Washington policymakers don’t want to talk about. The spy story that broke in early 1999 is a case in point. But the brief flurry of critical analysis that occurred at the time should now be revisited.

“That American spies have operations in Iraq should be no surprise,” a Hartford Courant editorial said on Jan. 10, 1999. “That the spies are using the United Nations as a cover is deplorable.”

While noting “Saddam Hussein’s numerous complaints that UN inspection teams included American spies were apparently not imaginary,” the newspaper mentioned that the espionage operatives “planted eavesdropping devices in hopes of monitoring forces that guarded Mr. Hussein as well as searching for hidden arms stockpiles.”

The US news media quickly lost interest in that story. We should ask why.

Source: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: (FAIR): www.fair.org