It’s Bagh-SPAN: Bremer Bunch Will
Broadcast
by Joe Hagan
Live
from Baghdad, fair, balanced and direct, it’s Bush TV.
The
Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq, created by the Bush
administration, dissatisfied with the American television news
decisions on covering the conflict, is about to create its own
broadcast operation, with the capacity to bypass the networks, live
from Iraq, 24 hours a day.
"We’ve
had
to rely on events covered by the networks and their interpretation, and
their feed back to the United States," said Dorrance Smith, the former
ABC News producer and an advisor to President Bush and his father, now
senior media adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"That’s
about to change," said Mr. Smith, "because we’re about to have total
24-hour connectivity."
Asked
if
he would call the new operation an American Al-Jazeera, a broadcast
operation institution untethered by commercial considerations, Mr.
Smith said it was more like a "C-SPAN Baghdad."
When
the
Bush White House bypassed the television networks in September 2003 by
taking the President’s story on Iraq directly to local news affiliates,
it sent a blunt message to the television networks: they didn’t want
the New York anchors—Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather—determining
their headlines.
That
plan
seemed to work. But in the past few weeks, particularly with the
significant growth in casualties in Iraq and the decrease of public
support for Bush administration’s war policy, the White House, aware
that the fate of the Bush administration is tied to the progress of the
war, took charge of molding public perception. The White House
understood the story belonged to whoever owned the cameras, microphones
and satellite. So it has made the decision to create its own de facto
news operation, without the middlemen of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and even
Fox.
Mr.
Smith was straightforward about the issue of control being important to
the C.P.A.
"It’s
real
time to the United States," he said, referring to the capacity to
broadcast immediately, at will, "as opposed to being covered by a
network and having them decide whether they want to carry it live. And
that’s a critical distinction in a wartime situation. And it’s not just
external in terms of a mass audience."
He
compared it to the Centcom broadcasts during the military operations
last spring. "They were watched in every government agency as they were
happening, and that’s because they have the connectivity. That will
soon be true in Baghdad, but it hasn’t been true until this point.
"It’s
C-Span Baghdad. The satellite coordinates will be for one and all and
won’t be dependent on somebody deciding whether they’re going to put it
on live."
Mr.
Smith
said the C.P.A. would create a broadcast link from Baghdad, giving it
the ability to broadcast news conferences out of the Republican Palace
in Baghdad without the need for network intermediaries, so it could be
transmitted without getting "chopped up in New York."
That
way,
said Mr. Smith, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the C.P.A.
administrator, and his press officers can take their stories directly
to local television affiliates and news operations and the Washington
press corps or directly to a private conference transmission of their
choosing, control the story themselves and "get our message out without
having to create an event and have it be covered by somebody and be
seen through their filter."
The
new
project, which Mr. Smith said would roll out in "the next couple of
weeks," has no official name, but it will precede the next C.P.A. media
project in December, a press filing center similar to those in the
White House or the Pentagon, complete with a credential system that
would dole out access.
"It’s
not
different from the capacity that exists in the Pentagon or the White
House or the State Department or anyplace," said Mr. Smith. "It’s just
the technology didn’t exist for the civilian side in Baghdad. It’s
really not that radical, but it’s just a capability that’s now built
into the civilian authority."
And
with
that, the Baghdad enclave will become a mini–White House in terms of
capacities and facilities. "We live in an interconnected world," said
Mr. Smith, "and when you watch the evening news, people aren’t looking
at the source, they’re looking at the information, and we have to be
capable of broadcasting from Baghdad as you would from any other
origination point.
"It’s
a
capacity that has not existed in Baghdad," Mr. Smith said. "Basically
it’s taking the capacity that existed at CentCom, that for whatever
reason, did not translate to the civilian authority in Baghdad."
Mr.
Smith, onetime producer of ABC News’ This Week with David Brinkley
and Nightline,
is a childhood friend of the Bush family, who left ABC in 1989 to
become media advisor to President George H. W. Bush, then returned for
a second stint with ABC News from 1995 to 1999. He said he sympathized
with the press’ wartime reporting mission, but thought the C.P.A. TV
operation could do it better.
"I
recognize what their obligations and responsibilities are, and they’re
going to cover the military side and the war side," he said, "but as it
recedes, do they focus on the peace side or do they not focus on
anything at all? We’ll be in a better situation to do it ourselves and
help paint a different picture than the one being portrayed."
The
toughest chess game on earth—between the beleaguered, bullet-riddled
press offices of the C.P.A., and the frustrated, battle-weary media
corps who drill the administrator’s office for details of the
conflict—just got tougher. After the administration’s complaints in
September that the press was painting a disastrous picture of Iraq
during the nation-building efforts, reporters came under increasing
pressure from the White House to find the so-called "good news" in
Iraq, or lose access.
The
pressure came not only from the White House and the C.P.A., but also,
according to some TV executives, from network executives, who were
beginning to feel the pressure to themselves—or at least trying to
anticipate the administration.
If
anyone
could be given credit for seeing the writing on the wall—that the
C.P.A. would soon subvert the networks by setting up their own
operation, protecting its cameras and broadcasts with tightly
controlled access—it would be Dorrance Smith’s former employer, ABC
News.
Last
October, ABC News president David Westin announced an ambitious,
expensive project called "Iraq: Where Things Stand," a joint effort
with Time magazine to get outside of Baghdad and survey the
country’s progress since the invasion. In a memo to ABC News
executives, leaked to USA Today on Oct. 15, Mr. Westin appeared
to agree with the administration on at least one count. He was unhappy
with the media’s coverage of Iraq. "We often seem to be captive to the
individual dramatic incident," he wrote, just one week before the Bush
administration made its own criticisms known.
"ABC
News
is now going to address this conspicuous lacking in the reporting to
date," Mr. Westin wrote. He then announced the network would roll out a
series of reports on the state of Iraq, an audit of the hearts, minds,
well-being of regular Iraqis.
The
propinquity of the Bush complaint and the ABC News response seemed
close to some observers. But Mr. Westin said he came up with the idea a
month before, in August, after the terrorist attack on the U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad. But ABC News—and its anchor, Mr. Jennings, in
particular—have been widely attacked by conservative media critics as a
bastion of anti-Bush bias. Was ABC News righting the ship, or just
finally getting the real picture? And how exactly was Mr. Westin’s
criticism of media coverage in Iraq different from the
administration’s?
"I
don’t see them as related at all," Mr. Westin told The Observer.
"My concern is not the validity or even the value of the reporting, but
that it didn’t go far enough. It was valid, but it was not complete.
There was another part of this story that also needed to be told."
In
order to balance the news, fairly?
"It’s
not
even balanced in the sense that one doesn’t know whether it’s good news
or bad news," he said. "It just needed to be complete. And it might
point in exactly the same direction as the bombs going off."
As
it happens, that’s exactly the direction it turned, by terrible
circumstance. When the ABC News–Time magazine series aired—on World
News Tonight, Nightline, Good Morning America and This
Week,
starting on Nov. 2 and ending on Nov. 7—it provided a perfect
illustration of the challenge that the government faces, and,
incidentally, that Mr. Westin faces, too. A number of "individual
dramatic" incidents—the downing of the Chinook helicopter on Nov. 2,
and the subsequent loss of another helicopter with six soldiers five
days later—managed to make irrelevant the story the Bush administration
wanted told, of progress in Iraq.
Mr.
Westin’s conclusion about the "Iraq: Where Things Stand" series was
that the Iraq story was "complicated." Did the ABC report corroborate
the White House’s view of Iraq’s improvement?
"They’ve
been right that the schools are better, absolutely," Mr. Westin said.
"And they’ve said that repeatedly. I think if you look back at their
statements, they have not been comprehensive at looking at all the
various elements that we’ve gone through."
Back
in
New York, where, as former ABC News producer Dorrance Smith said, the
news was "chopped up," ABC News editors engaged the complicated issues
of balance at close range:
David
Wright, an ABC News correspondent, contested the idea that he had been
seeking good news in Iraq, described turning in footage of an Iraqi he
called "the happiest man in Iraq." The Iraqi, he said, felt his life
had improved considerably since the U.S. invasion. "I had to fight to
get him in because they said he’s the exception," he recalled. "If
anything, it was, ‘Don’t spend so much time on this one guy because
life’s going so well for him.’"
Bob
Woodruff, another ABC News correspondent who worked on the project, was
also adamant that he was given no explicit instructions by Mr. Westin
to seek out positive stories. But he conceded that the initiative might
have a deflecting effect.
"The
White
House is not going to bitch about us not taking the initiative to do
the story anymore," he said, "but we’re still going to do it, which
tells you the motivation."
Mr.
Westin said that the series would continue in February and March.
"We
haven’t seen any of it," said one White House official. "That’s what
they should be doing. It’s tough to praise someone for what they’re supposed
to
be doing," the official said. "It’s just amusing that journalists have
to resort to making a commitment from the top of a news organization to
quote-unquote ‘tell the real story.’ It’s almost dripping with irony,
and so much so a lot of people wouldn’t even notice."
Responded
Mr. Westin: "I guess what I would say to you is, a: I’m not surprised,
and, b: Fortunately it’s not why we did it. I would be disappointed if
it was the reason we did it."
But
in the
days since, as reporters in Baghdad were implored by Mr. Bremer to
visit a new school or an upgraded fire house, a missile or grenade
assault would make a casualty of the field trip.
And
the
C.P.A. had—in what is called the Green Zone—created a replica of the
institution that had spawned it, the White House, with
institutionalized press antagonism. "They’re living in a Washington
bubble," said ABC News’ Mr. Wright of the C.P.A. Inside the high-walled
compound, Mr. Wright and others said, officials employ no Iraqi
food-service workers for fear of poisoning, buy their office supplies
and furniture from the United States and use a cell-phone system based
in Westchester County, N.Y.
"Inside
the green zone it’s a totally artificial world, sheltered from Iraq,"
said Mr. Wright. "So the fact that they spend so much of their time
there—and you hear stories that they send their laundry to Kuwait—it’s
like you’re in a different country.
One
producer described a C.P.A. press office as staffed by political true
believers, "neocons and evangelists," the military full of passionate
officials trying to achieve victory, "apoplectic" at the press for
under-reporting the "good news’ in Iraq.
"The
terrorists have a brilliant strategy by choosing novel media targets,"
said the producer, referring to the Red Cross and U.N. bombings last
summer. "They’re fighting the war using U.S. media. Is U.S. media being
unpatriotic and causing the U.S. to back off and withdraw? It’s complex
and extremely interesting."
"I
know
it’s a political situation, and I know there’s an election coming up,
but it’s not our job to do P.R. for them," said Mr. Wright.
As
for
Dorrance Smith, he said he had success with CNBC’s Chris Matthews and
CNN vice president and chief news executive Eason Jordan selling "the
real story of Iraq." Mr. Jordan "came over and met with Ambassador
Bremer and was going to take a second look at the way they’re doing the
story. It required a second look," he said. He also said that he had
spent most of his time in Baghdad so far trying to convince networks
and cable news outlets to change their approach toward the coverage.
"The
net
effect of this self-scrutiny," he said, "is they’ve changed their
approach to how they’re doing the story." Then he added, "I’d like to
see more."
This column was published on page 1 in The New York Observer dated 11/17/2003