Sauron

http://www.msnbc.com/news/892808.asp?0cv=BA01

The Other Air Battle
Al-Jazeera rules the waves�whether the Pentagon likes it or not

By Jonathan Alter
NEWSWEEK

April 7 issue � �A lie,� according to a 19th-century epigram, �will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots.� This assumes, of course, that the boots can give chase eventually. But what happens when the lies and truths (and half-lies and half-truths) are bouncing off satellites at warp speed?

FOR MONTHS THE U.S. government has girded for a huge propaganda war. That�s why the Pentagon allowed reporters�including Arab correspondents�to �embed� with troops, and why top officials like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wined and dined Al-Jazeera. But so far, it�s losing that war badly. Saddam Hussein is turning out to be a Madison Avenue Machiavelli, the Pentagon�s ingenious embed system is fraying and Washington�s �message discipline� is breaking down. Even as the U.S. military strives to avoid Iraqi civilian casualties, it finds itself depicted as a bunch of baby killers in the only air war most of the world sees�the one that appears on television.

Al-Jazeera is to the Iraq war what CNN was to the 1991 gulf war�the primary source for news worldwide. From the Middle East to Asia to South America, its video feeds are used by scores of networks that need raw, often graphic footage and don�t much care what Donald Rumsfeld has to say about it. This renders many of the decisions made on what to air in the United States less relevant. At least two of the families of American POWs learned of their loved ones� fate from satellite dishes that picked up foreign-language broadcasts using Al-Jazeera or one of the four other Arab satellite channels.

paul30

Unfortunately, I have been unable to get Al Jazeera on the internet.

However, it is my impression that they are reporting the gruesome truths of war--dead and injured children, blown-up apartments, weeping and mourning civilians.

Just yesterday, some reader wrote into the Atlanta Journal Constitution and condemned them for printing such pictures, saying it "hurt the war effort."

I say, "Print them!"

If it hurts the war effort, excellent!

This is what war is: mainly killing civilians and destroying people's lives.

Anything else is lies.

Wittekind

www.aljazeerah.info works fine for me - I only don't know if that is the real Al-Jazeera. Does anyone know?

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

It's true. A significant amount of footage I've seen on Australian television comes complete with titling in Arabic. Because the US keeps tight control over the media attached to coalition troops, the most sensational images of the war all have that funky Al Jazeera watermark in the corner.