Saddam Hussein's Real Ministers of Disinformation Come Out of the Closet

Much ridicule is aimed at the "Iraqi's Minister of Information," Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (also known as "Baghdad Bob") who reported imaginary victories for Saddam's troops while American troops were moving into Baghdad:

"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."

And while Statues of Saddam were toppling:

"The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad"

And after the Americans had secured the airport and were long moving past it:

"No! We have retaken the airport. There are no Americans there. I will take you there and show you. In one hour!"

Presently, we are told that Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is on "administrative leave" from his duties. It appears, unfortunately for the late night talk show comedians of the world that his "administration" no longer exists.

These quotes are hilarious in one respect because they indicate the sheer gall of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who was clearly wagging the dog. Most people living in the U.S. dismissed such lies as a sham, realizing that they were manufactured to maintain the existence of Saddam's Regime, if only for a few more days.

But in a more serious respect, al-Sahhaf's "reporting" was propaganda with a deadly purpose: those "extra few days" for Saddam's regime meant a greater chance of Saddam's forces inflicting further damage on innocents--American and British soldiers in particular. That propaganda had the effect of keeping the morale of Iraqis, whose only source of information was Iraqi TV, low enough to discourage them from joining in with coalition soldiers against Saddam. Westerners expected this. After all, "Baghdad Bob" is Saddam's Minister. He is the enemy. However, few people realized that one of the "world's leaders in online news and information delivery" was guilty of a similar deception--and even fewer realized the extent, depravity, and "reasons" for that deception.

It was a deception, carried on for years, that lent far more support and credibility to the Saddam Hussein regime than ten-thousand Iraqi Ministers of Disinformation could ever hope to achieve. The agent of that deception was the news network founded by self-reported "socialist at heart" Ted Turner, which advertises itself as "The Most Trusted Name in News." That network is CNN, the Cable News Network.

Writes Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, in the April 11th edition of the New York Times in an article titled, "The News We Kept to Ourselves":

"Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. "

"For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief... The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers."

Jordan goes on to recount some of the other horrid stories that "could not be reported," such as when Saddam Hussein's son Uday told Jordan in 1995 that he intended "assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan." The chief news executive at CNN ends his preemptive mea culpa at damage control by concluding:

"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely."

"Told freely"? No thanks to CNN, or for that matter many of the other major news agencies--BBC, Associated Press, Reuters--with offices in Iraq. The truth is these stories could have been reported, and they morally should have been reported, but CNN freely chose to suppress them.

Jordan attempts to justify CNN's dishonesty behind the lame "I couldn't help it!" excuse that CNN hid the facts to "protect innocent Iraqis." Observe that one of their cameraman was abducted and tortured, simply because he worked for CNN. CNN could have chosen to close down their Iraqi office (housed in the "Iraqi Ministry of Information"), but they refused to do so. If CNN were truly concerned with the fate of Iraqis, why didn't they simply close down their Baghdad office as Franklin Foer suggests?

"Instead of desperately trying to keep their Baghdad offices open, the networks could scour Kurdistan and Jordan, where there are many recently arrived Iraqis who can talk freely...Or they could use their access to depict the harsh realities of life under Saddam--even if it means never returning to Iraq. It's a method used by Soler in his documentary Uncle Saddam...His film shows Saddam to be a lunatic, devoid of morality or humanity...'I don't need a relationship with Iraq," he explains of his decision to bare all. "It was my one shot. Every day it was how can I push the limits.' " ("Air War", New Republic, October 2002)

Was leaving Iraq "not an option" because CNN was more concerned with a long-term "media access" relationship than with the truth? Foer quotes Peter Arnett, who worked the Iraq beat for CNN for a decade, says, "there's a quid pro quo for being there. You go in and they control what you do. ...So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq."

Comments Foer, "nobody has schmoozed the [information] ministry harder than the head of CNN's News Group, Eason Jordan, who has traveled to Baghdad twelve times since the Gulf war. In part these trips…consist of network execs promising they will cover its propaganda."

Observe the utter moral corruption of these practitioners of modern journalism: in Jordan's mind any suggestion that the he was "the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief" are "ludicrous," because it would be unacceptable for CNN to support the actions of a free-country (the United States) in undermining a murderous dictator. [1] But Jordan finds lying to the citizens of a free-country in order to curry favor with a murderous thug somehow justifiable because it might "save lives." Baghdad Bob would be proud.

When Foer asked CNN's Jordan to "explain why his network is so devoted to maintaining a perpetual Baghdad presence, [Mr. Jordan] listed two reasons: 'First, because it's newsworthy; second, because there's an expectation that if anybody is in Iraq, it will be CNN.' "

No Mr. Jordan, Michael Moore's bile broadcasted at the Oscars is "newsworthy"; Saddam's tyrannical oppression and draconian control of the media is actual news--it is of a profound life and death importance to the rational individual.

Truthful reporting serves a valid philosophical purpose. In our capitalist, division of labor society, news reporters expend the effort to logically collect, organize, and disseminate information to trade with others as an objective value. Such news is of vital importance to man's life as it provides facts to individuals so they can logically make life sustaining decisions in adherence to reality. To the extent that those reported "facts" are falsehoods they serve as the destroyers of man's life. They are cognitive poison. They are poison because to the extent that man attempts to act on falsehoods as if they were facts, he acts in contradiction to reality, and ends up destroying himself, i.e., when an individual acts on the falsehood that poison is food the individual dies; i.e., when a society acts on the falsehood that there is no difference between the principles and practices of a free-country and a dictatorship, the free-country becomes a dictatorship.

If CNN could not report honestly on Iraq, why spend all the time, money, and effort to support the pretense that it was doing so? Such actions merely lent CNN's moral sanction to the Hussein Regime in Iraq, misleading millions of people into believing they were receiving the facts. It is not too hard to project how many individual decisions against the war, might have been different if CNN had been honest. By CNN's near decade dishonesty, it morally propped-up the Saddam regime, thus allowing that regime to enslave, torture, and kill even more people then if CNN had simply told the truth. (One has to wonder about the validity of the reporting we are receiving from China, Cuba, the West Bank ("Palestine"), and Zimbabwe, and other regimes ruled by tyrants).

For the record, it appears that many other news agencies were also engaged in similar deceptions, including (but not limited to) those organizations that had permanent offices in Iraq: the BBC, the Associated Press, and Reuters. Writes Denis Boyles on the BBC World Service:

"It was [BBC's controller of editorial policy, Stephen] Whittle's wish that corporation broadcasts specifically reflect anti-war opinion....When the World Service anchor asked him for his analysis, [Alan George] promptly pronounced the bombardment "an example of pure American imperialism". Nobody challenged this assertion, nor has he been challenged since on any of his volatile comments during his regular World Service appearances...When the Iraqi leadership calls on suicide bombers to attack British and American soldiers, the call goes out over the BBC, without any attempt to deflate the accompanying rhetoric. If a child is hurt anywhere in Iraq as a result of Coalition activity, the World Service is there, broadcasting from bedside and full of sanctimonious fury. You might read about cheering Iraqis greeting troops as they advance through the country, but you will never hear about such a thing on the World Service." [Denis Boyles, "Bizarro Broadcasting Company", Duck Season, 4/7/2003]

Bolyes also quotes BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan who told BBC World Service listeners that he was at the airport allegedly taken over by the American, but the Americans were not there, therefore implicating that the Americans were being untruthful:

" 'I'm in the center of Baghdad...and I don't see anything…But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements.' Gilligan was referring to a military communiqué from Qatar the day before saying the Americans had taken control of most of Baghdad's airport...An hour or two later, a different BBC correspondent pointed out that Gilligan wasn't at the airport, actually. He was nearby - but apparently far enough away that the other correspondent felt it necessary to mention that he didn't really know if Gilligan was around, but that no matter what Gilligan had seen or not seen, the airport was firmly and obviously in American hands."

Disgusting. (Observe if you will the irony of a government that funds the activities of a news organization dedicated to undermining its own troops in combat--the BBC World Service is paid for by the British Government. Time to privatize the BBC?)

Boyle also quotes, Jonathan Marcus, a BBC correspondent in Qatar, who was asked by a BBC World Service anchor, "Jonathan, who should we believe? The Americans? Or Saddam?" Quoting Boyle:

"It's obvious the Iraqis are lying, Marcus shot back, adding that the American incursion was not only real, it was significant and had gone deep into the capital. 'Anybody who questions that can't see the forest for the trees,' he said...That was the last I heard of Marcus that day. The anchor instantly went to another, more trustworthy correspondent."

Unable to see the "forest for the trees" is an apt description for today's modern journalists who are willing to throw away journalistic objectivity and political freedom in the long run, for some anti-Western "media access" in hopes of achieving their "five minutes of fame."

By sacrificing the journalistic requirement of objectivity to make room for the public relations goal of "access," CNN and other news agencies have defrauded their customers and seriously ruined their reputation. As patients will flee a quack doctor who has poisoned their neighbor, so will CNN's best customers--those who are concerned with true and accurate information--flee CNN in favor of news organizations with more integrity.

How can the rational individual protect oneself against such "reporting"? Paul Blair, a contributing writer to Capitalism Magazine succinctly outlines the proper principle in judging news reported from within dictatorships:

"I've heard calls for a CNN boycott--but this is not a principled way to look at this issue. There may be many reasons to boycott CNN, but with regard to this issue any news organization that had people in Baghdad deserves the same, because there is no other way to operate in a totalitarian country. A truly principled news organization wouldn't have had any people inside such a regime at all, at least not officially. The principle is: any news that comes from inside a totalitarian country with the sanction of the regime is non-objective and must be treated as such. What we're seeing here is just another dead end of American pragmatism."

How did journalism become such a cesspool? What made such a state of affairs possible is the professed moral agnosticism of modern journalism, which allows it to report facts without apparently judging them. The underlying premise behind this non-judgmental attitude is that to "take sides" on an issue--in this case the side of the United States--would be to hold a "point of view" and be "non-objective." Combine this moral agnosticism in the intellectual realm of reporting with the pragmatic concern for media access to dictatorships, and you have a recipe for the cesspool that characterizes the state of journalism today.

Contrary to the dogma of modern journalism taught in Western universities, being "objective" does not mean that one disseminates facts that are not "tainted" by a point of view; rather being objective means that an abstract conclusion must be logically based on the facts. Without such processing, one is not delivering an organized presentation of facts, but disseminating a hash of data. In journalism, as in any field, one cannot be truly agnostic. One has to take a side, if only to judge what information is true and what is false and to select what information is newsworthy and what is not. Given the choice of sides, it is clear what standards the journalists have chosen.

Journalists are the information guardians of a free capitalist society. They are the eyes and ears of the men of the mind. CNN, and the other news agencies--the BBC, the Associated Press, and Reuters--that had permanent offices in Iraq while it was occupied by the Hussein Regime, have no moral right to call themselves news agencies. They are merely "useful idiots" running a PR agency for the thugs and savages of the world. It is time they cleaned up their act. A good book on philosophy that outlines the nature and practice of objectivity would be an excellent place to start.

Credit for the political cartoons in this article go to Cox and Forkum.


References and Updates:

[1] In the Washington Post, Peter Collins writes about his experiences working for CNN. The below comments indicate, in part, what CNN would do in order to get an exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein:

...In each of these meetings, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan made their pitch: Saddam Hussein would have an hour's time on CNN's worldwide network; there would be no interruptions, no commercials. I was astonished. From both the tone and the content of these conversations, it seemed to me that CNN was virtually groveling for the interview.

...I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first "live shot" on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. "Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera," he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan. The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. "You were a bit flat there, Peter," he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda. [Washington Post, 4/15/2003]

Now contrast this to CNN's enthusiasm for dealing with the U.S. government:

The Bush administration took over Iraqi state television yesterday...U.S. officials said that within days, they hope to open a second television channel in Iraq featuring subtitled versions of the three major networks' evening newscasts, as well as PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and Fox News Channel's hour-long politics show, "Special Report With Brit Hume."...Norman J. Pattiz, chairman of the Westwood One radio network and a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, said the new channel's mission will be to give Iraqis "an example of what a free press in the American tradition actually is."...CNN declined to have its newscasts included. "As an independent [!!!], global news organization, we did not think it was appropriate to participate in a U.S. government transmission," spokeswoman Christa Robinson said. [Washington Post, 4/11/2003]

"Independent"??? Bear in mind, the U.S. government was not asking CNN to read its' views; but, only to allow it to broadcast CNN's newscasts on Iraqi TV. "Global" must mean anti-American in CNN lingo. In another respect, perhaps it is a good thing that CNN refused. After all, the mission of the channel is to be an example of what a "free press in the American tradition actually is."

Mr. Da Cunha writes for Capitalism Magazine.