alternate war coverage
Well, even though reporter insertion inside Iraq is a million times better than it was during the Gulf War in 1991, the press coverage here in the United States is predictably abysmal.
I would say it’s an improvement over the television coverage during the Gulf War, in that at least we are able to see images from inside Iraq, but CNN, Fox and MSNBC are clearly being heavily censored in terms of what they can film, and, without getting into a huge philosophical rant right now, are arguably acting as part of the U.S. government propaganda machine.
Actually, my biggest criticism of the American networks right now has to do with the fact that they aren’t reporting anything besides the war. The Bush administration is also active at the moment on domestic fronts, and the networks are playing into the hands of the administration by not even reporting what they’re up to (budget votes, etc.).
Luckily, at least here in New York, we don’t have to watch CNN anymore unless we’re feeling masochistic. I have been watching the coverage mainly on TV5, which comes from France. They have alternated between their own news program, Le Journal, as well as broadcasts from TV2 (also French), as well as Swiss and Québecois news.
This strategy provides a decent blend of EuroAmerican bias, but the French sources seem to lack information from the fronts, which surprises me, since you’d expect them to try to get that information, given that the country is so anti-war. From this I deduce that they just don’t have particularly good sources, because I’m sure they’d use them if they did. Still, they do actually report on casualties at Iraqi hospitals (like, with video footage), which the American networks ignore.
My favorite English-language news source has been Newsworld International, which is an interesting network run by the CBC (in Canada). They broadcast CBC-run world news shows, as well as half-hour broadcasts from Deutsche Welle’s Eneglish language service, based in Brussels, and NHK, the Japanese network, also in English. Canadian news is notoriously good, I think, in terms of staying away from bias and considering issues from multiple angles. Their main failing is that they tend to exaggerate Canadian importance in the world sometimes, but I suppose that’s to be expected.
In this case, what they lack in raw facts they seem to make up for in balanced reporting; theirs is my favorite television “wrap-up” of the war right now. The German and Japanese news are pretty far down on the totem pole — maybe even lower than the Americans — in terms of usability, but it is interesting to see alternate viewpoints, as well as keep tabs on what’s going on in Europe and Japan generally.
We also get BBC coverage, and I will say that it is predictably far superior to American coverage. However, a sense of bias infests their reporting as well, I would guess since they’re involved directly, so I stick to limited doses.
Finally, we also get English-language Chinese news via CCTV, as well, and we have access to Al-Jazeera feeds on the Arabic Channel, which is useful even if you don’t understand what’s being said.
I guess I relay all this information to say that, yes, the American coverage is awful. But, if you’re a digital cable subscriber in New York, you really have no excuse to be bitching about it. Turn off CNN and watch something else…you might be pleased.
Of course, television is a shitty place to go for any real information anyway, and I’ve stumbled on a really fucking interesting war report.
The report claims to be English translations of Russian-language GRU reports. The GRU is, as I have just learned, the intelligence arm of the Russian military. Now, you can doubt the accuracy of the reporting, but I’m convinced enough that it’s the real deal, and if it is, the information provided totally trumps anything I’ve seen — anywhere, whether online or on TV.
Anyway, I’ve read that the GRU, during the Cold War, had six times the number of spies as the KGB. (Whether that is true or not, I can’t verify.) Also, I have read that the GRU did not scale back spy operations worldwide like the Americans did, and that because of their economic dealings with Iraq, Russia has a number of well-placed spies, and that’s where these reports are coming from.
If you read along, you will notice that these reports, which are far more detailed than the news stories you get in the mainstream media, do in fact generally follow the patterns of what was reported elsewhere, except with “real” information about troop casualties and movements.
Furthermore, as this post illustrates, they delve into military strategy, which is interesting to say the least, since it’s from the Russian perspective. In the linked report, they speculate on strategies to counter American technical superiority, as the Iraqis have clearly done successfully in some areas, in case there was a war between the United States and Russia.
Interesting stuff, indeed. I say, take it with a grain of salt, but with information propagating as quickly as it is nowadays, we all need to learn how to be choosier consumers, anyway…so don’t take it with any more salt grains than you do CNN.
And switch those assholes off. They don’t deserve the ratings anyway.