A Marine Tutorial on Media ‘Spin’
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  1. #1

    Exclamation A Marine Tutorial on Media ‘Spin’

    June 24, 2007
    Word For Word | 'If It Bleeds, It Leads'
    A Marine Tutorial on Media ‘Spin’
    By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

    IN November 2005, a group of marines killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children after Sunni Arab insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in Haditha that killed one infantryman and wounded two others. Marine officers assumed the Iraqi deaths occurred during combat and were justified, if regrettable.

    More than a year later, in December 2006, the Marine Corps charged three enlisted men with murder in those deaths, as well as four officers with dereliction of duty in failing to determine exactly how and why the Iraqis were killed. All have said they did nothing wrong.

    Military hearings began last month. But the episode might have gone unexamined if not for Tim McGirk, a reporter for Time magazine. In January 2006, he sent an e-mail message to the Second Marine Division in Haditha, asking questions that clearly conveyed his suspicion that an atrocity had been committed.

    The Second Division wanted a response to each question from its Third Battalion, which was responsible for fighting insurgents in Haditha. So on Jan. 29, 2006, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, gathered his executive officer, Maj. Kevin M. Gonzalez, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, the commander of the company involved in the shootings, and First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, to hash out answers.

    The four officers produced a five-page memo of “talking points” and answers that displayed a searing view of American journalists conspiring to undermine the war effort.

    The memo, excerpted below with a few typos, came to light in a military hearing earlier this month for one of the accused officers.

    PAUL von ZIELBAUER

    McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?

    Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.



    McGirk: Were there any officers?

    Memo: By asking if there was an officer on scene the reporter may be trying to identify a point of blame for lack of judgment. If there was an officer involved, then he may be able to have his My Lai massacre pinned on that officer’s shoulders. ...

    In the reporter’s eyes, military officers may represent the U.S. government and enlisted marines may represent the American People. Given the current political climate in the U.S. at this time concerning the Iraq war and the current administration’s conduct of the war, the reporter would most likely seek to discredit the U.S. government (one of our officers) and expose victimization of the American people by the hand of the government (the enlisted marines under the haphazard command of our “rogue officer.”) Unfortunately for McGirk, this is not the case.

    One common tactic used by reporters is to spin a story in such a way that it is easily recognized and remembered by the general population through its association with an event that the general population is familiar with or can relate to. For example, McGirk’s story will sell if it can be spun as “Iraq’s My Lai massacre.” Since there was not an officer involved, this attempt will not go very far.

    We must be on guard, though, of the reporter’s attempt to spin the story to sound like incidents from well-known war movies, like “Platoon.”

    In “Platoon,” Sergeant Barnes, the movie’s antihero, is depicted as a no-nonsense, war-haggard platoon sergeant who knows how to get things done in the bloody jungles of Vietnam — and it ain’t always pretty. During one scene, Sergeant Barnes is shown on the verge of committing war crimes in front of his platoon by threatening to kill women and children as a means of interrogation. This is a classic “runaway sergeant” storyline wherein the audience is supposed to be sickened by the sergeant’s brutality and equally sickened by the traumatic effects war has on soldiers. This schema is especially fruitful for Mr. McGirk because if he tries to adapt our situation to this model it simultaneously exposes a “war crime cover-up” and shows the deteriorative (albeit exaggerated) effects of war on U.S. marines (the best of the best), which could be expanded by the general press as a testament for why the U.S. should pull out of Iraq.

    [Colonel Chessani later shortened this answer to “No.”]



    McGirk: How many marines were involved in the killings?

    Memo: First off, we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “killings.” One of our squads reinforced by a squad of Iraqi Army soldiers were engaged by an enemy initiated ambush on the 19th that killed one American marine and seriously injured two others. We will not justify that question with a response. Theme: Legitimate engagement: we will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer “killings.”



    McGirk: Were there any weapons found during these house raids — or terrorists — where the killings occurred?

    Memo: Again, you are showing yourself to be uneducated in the world of contemporary insurgent combat. The subject about which we are speaking was a legitimate engagement initiated by the enemy. ...



    McGirk: Is there any investigation ongoing into these civilian deaths, and if so have any marines been formally charged?

    Memo: No, the engagement was bona fide combat action. ... By asking this question, McGirk is assuming the engagement was a LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict] violation and that by asking about investigations, he may spurn a reaction from the command that will initiate an investigation.



    McGirk: Are the marines in this unit still serving in Haditha?

    Memo: Yes, we are still fighting terrorists of Al Qaida in Iraq in Haditha. (“Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida” is stronger language than “serving.” The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly “serving,” like in a way one “serves” a casserole. It’s semantics, but in reporting and journalism, words spin the story.)

    Ellie


  2. #2
    TIME and Haditha Lies

    Author: Michael Kraft
    Published: June 23, 2007
    Stickers, shirts, hats and buttons here.
    Related: International News Middle East US Enemies


    The Time Magazine Debacle

    It is interesting to note just how erroneous the media’s reporting on that incident was as exemplified by Washington Post reporter Ellen Knickmeyer who six months later took the word of a so-called “Iraqi witness” from Haditha and reported that the men in the cab “happened upon the scene inadvertently” while riding in the cab.

    Nat Helms is author of a new book, “My Men Are My Heroes” which provides an account of the incredible bravery of Sgt. Brad Kasal in the second battle of Fallujah.

    He stated that Knickmeyer wrote about a witness who said that the taxi driver turned onto the street and saw the wrecked Humvee and the Marines, and then the cab driver tried to back away at full speed. The Marines opened fire from about 30 yards away, killing all the men inside the taxi. Dela Cruz reportedly pumped his 30-round M-16 magazine into the car when they tried to run.

    Even worse, later media reports said the cab carrying four known insurgents was occupied by four “college students,” along with the cab driver, who were on their way to school.

    These false reports however, pale in the face of the role played by Time magazine Tim McGirk and Time itself. According to McGirk’s first story, a “budding journalism student” had given him a video he had taken after the killing of the civilians in the houses near the site of the IED explosion.

    Almost immediately, Time had to correct the story, revealing that the “budding journalism student” was actually 43-year-old Taher Thabet al-Hadithi who just happened to be on hand to videotape the aftermath of the killing in the houses.

    Time also identified al-Hadithi as head of something called the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring. Time reported that the Hammurabi Human Rights group was affiliated with Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch vehemently denied they had any connection or any ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, and Time wrote a retraction.

    It was then revealed that the Hammurabi Human Rights group was a group of two: Hadithi and Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, a Reuters News Service reporter who was previously arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi and underwent weeks of interrogation at the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison.

    His American warders told Reuters that he was released in a general amnesty in late 2005 along with about 500 other Iraqi prisoners. Reuters also reported that he spent five months in U.S. custody before being released without charges.

    Three months later al-Mashhadani was the darling of Time magazine, Nat Helms wrote sarcastically.

    NewsMax can now reveal that the battalion S2 knew that the insurgents were following their usual practice of videotaping an ambush. And it was a series of cell phone communications between Hadithi and Mashhadani, both known insurgents, that alerted the Marines to the impending ambush.

    False Charges Under False Pretenses

    The Marine Corps, however, had discovered al-Hadithi more than a year before Nov. 19, among other anti-government, anti-American Sunni insurgent sympathizers inhabiting Haditha. He was still under their microscope in late February when he gave his video to McGirk after shopping it around for weeks. Helms described it as “ugly and inflammatory, full of dead children and women and blood-covered walls.”

    Al-Hadithi claimed the deaths were the handiwork of out-of-control Marines who wantonly charged through the innocent victims’ homes slaughtering women and children in revenge for Terrazas’ gruesome death.

    In late March, McGirk released al-Hadithi’s “evidence” to the world. Marines who specialized in signal interception told Helms they were shocked when they heard al-Hadithi and Mashhadani were mixed up in it.

    In his testimony Capt. Dinsmore revealed that both men were operating freely throughout the province before purportedly announcing the creation of their human rights organization in early 2006. Marine intelligence officers were aware of their intelligence activities because their frequent cellular telephone conversations were monitored, they said.

    McGirk’s sources were known insurgent propagandists and it was McGirk’s Time reports that created the Haditha massacre hoax.

    Marine sources told NewsMax that when McGirk first contacted the 3rd Battalion and asked to interview the men of Kilo Company, he was invited to come to Haditha and the men were told by Chessani to answer all his questions fully and truthfully.

    On the day before he was due to arrive in Haditha from the safety of Baghdad’s Green Zone, NBC reporter Bob Woodward and his cameramen were badly wounded. McGirk promptly canceled his trip, saying it was too dangerous.

    This, incidentally is the same McGirk who partied with the murderous Taliban after 9/11 and proclaimed them to be a fine upstanding bunch of just plain folks.

    The courageous McGirk has now refused to testify at Chessani’s Article 32 hearing where defense attorneys insist he would have been torn to pieces in cross examination.

    Ellie


  3. #3
    Daily Column
    US Papers Sunday: Keeping Cool in Baghdad
    Eight troops killed; Marines' spin revealed; Progress reports
    By CHRIS ALLBRITTON Posted 8 hr. 49 min. ago

    The Washington Post goes with a feature and roundup of the news in Iraq today, with no one story dominating. The New York Times rounds out a fuller selection, but like the Post, no major scoops. It does have an eye-opening Week in Review piece on the spin initially offered by the Marines in the case of Haditha, which is currently under investigation.

    From the perspective of a journalist in Iraq, today's piece by Paul von Zielbauer will give a sense of vindication. In November 2005, a group of Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha after an IED killed one Marine and wounded two others. TIME Magazine's Tim McGirk started investigating and through his reporting got an investigation going. As part of his reporting, he emailed questions to the Second Marine Division in Iraq. Last month, during hearings into the incident, an internal memo hashing out McGirk's questions came to light, revealing a contempt for the press and general defensiveness on the part of the four commanding officers from the Second Marine Division. (Full disclosure: I worked for TIME and with McGirk during his initial investigation in Baghdad, although I didn't work on the Haditha story.) The four officers' responses are exercises in cynicism, including this gem:

    McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?

    Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge (sic) on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.

    Another question from McGirk, ("Were there any officers?") was initially given a long, five paragraph thrashing out, but ultimately shortened to "No." Questions about how many Marines were involved "in the killings," as McGirk phrased it, are met with scorn and spin: "We will not justify that question with a response. Theme: Legitimate engagement: we will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer 'killings.'"

    PAPER CHASE
    David Sanger and Thom Shanker report for the Times that while Congress has mandated Sept. 15 as the day Gen. David Petraeus' term paper on Iraq is due, there will be other reports landing on Congress' -- and President Bush's -- desks as well. The goal, Sanger and Shanker say, is to "dilute" the expected downbeat tone of Petraeus' report and give Bush "a wide range of options." Pertraeus is expected to ask for more time, despite the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war in Congress and among the American people. Reports from intelligence agencies and an independent commission on Iraqi security forces are expected to give gloomy forecasts, strengthening the factions favoring troop drawdowns. The key point, however, is this: "But with the proliferation of assessments, there may also be a proliferation of contradictory views," the duo write. "That is exactly what the White House sought to create last December, when it ordered other studies to offset the findings of the Iraq Study Group." In other words, with so many reports to choose from, Bush may again defy expectations and do what he wants, forcing Congress to choose whether to cut off funding to troops -- which would be deeply unpopular -- or go along with yet another "Hail Mary" strategy. But even Bush's tactics of stubbornness and water-muddying might have reached the limits of their effectiveness, as IraqSlogger has mentioned. Should Bush ignore calls to draw down troops, the U.S. military will run out of troops to maintain current operations by about April 2008, forcing the U.S. to either withdraw "roughly one brigade a month, or extend the tours of troops now in Iraq and shorten their time back home before redeployment." The latter would be a political time bomb in an election year.

    ROOFTOP POOL
    The Post's John Ward Anderson tells the story of Amir Rahim and his rooftop pool to report on Iraqis' suffering because of a lack of basic services. Four years after the invasion, it's a cliché to say that Baghdad sucks. But there is still very little electricity, water and other accouterments of modern life. Rahim's entire monthly salary goes to repairing and running generators for his home for 14 hours a day (not including air conditioners.) So Rahim installed a swimming pool on his roof so his family could cool off and get the war out of their minds for a little while, especially in the summer when Baghdad temperatures are kiln-like. Anderson notes that "lofty talk" of government and constitutional reform is meaningless to most people who just want to flick a switch and get some light.

    "You talk about sharing oil revenues and constitutional reforms -- why should we care if we don't benefit from it?" he quotes Zainab S. Shakir, an Iraqi official at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Baghdad. "If we want electricity, we need a generator, and we need fuel and we need money. And if you can't get a job, then the insurgents come and pay our kids to work for them."

    Anderson gets at the stats and numbers of the story. A U.S. embassy "fact sheet" from May 31 says Baghdad gets an average of eight hours of electricity a day, but Anderson counters with people from various neighborhoods saying they get about two hours. A June 12 study by the National Security Network found that electricity production was still 6 percent below pre-war levels.

    But the true gems of the story are the everyday scenes and the rapport between Amir and his wife. "Rahim and his wife sometimes sneak up at night for a private dip after the kids go to sleep," Anderson writes. It's a charming reminder that Iraqis want -- and sometimes get, in Amir's case -- a normal life. At least for a little while.

    ROUNDUPS
    Anderson and Richard Oppel handle the Post's and the Times' roundup stories, respectively. Saturday's news was grim: Eight U.S. troops were killed yesterday, seven of them in roadside bomb attacks. These massive explosions are causing the bulk of the mayhem, both papers note.

    The Post reports 30 U.S. servicemen killed in the past six days, bringing to 78 the number of troops killed in June, an average of 3.5 a day. On Saturday, four soldiers were killed in northwest Baghdad, two were killed in eastern Baghdad, an airman was killed in Tikrit -- all from roadside bombs. Another soldier died from non-combat causes, the military said. A British soldier died from wounds caused by a roadside bombing on Friday near Basra. In all, 153 British troops have been killed in Iraq. Anderson rounds out the day with the news that 12 people were killed and 14 wounded by a sniper attack, a roadside bomb "and other violence." Also, 12 bodies were found in Baghdad, all shot and bearing signs of torture.

    Oppel gives a similar rundown in the Times, reporting that 23 have been killed in the last four days. He adds that the planned two-month-long summer break for parliament has been put on hold while the speaker of Parliament Mahmoud Mashadani appears to have dug in his heels and won't leave, although no one really wants him around anymore. The Times has 13 bodies found in Baghdad, news from the increasingly volatile Babel Province, reports of attacks near Kirkuk and reports of three civilians killed in Khalis and three wounded in Abu Sayda, northeast of Baqoubah. Oppel also gives the news from Operation Arrowhead Ripper: 53 al Qaeda fighters had been killed and 60 arrested, according to an Iraqi commander.

    In other coverage

    NEW YORK TIMES
    Frank Rich picks up on Sanger and Shanker's piece and pens another link-filled take-down of Bush Administration spin on Iraq, picking up on the tossing aside of September as a real deadline for success of the surge. "For the Bush White House," Rich writes, "the real definition of victory has become 'anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat,' said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost."

    WASHINGTON POST
    Julia Taft, former director of the Interagency Task Force for Indochinese Refugee Resettlement in the Ford administration, writes an op-ed for today's Post that argues the U.S. needs to do more for the Iraqi refugees displaced by the war. In her former job helping resettle Vietnamese refugees, Taft witnessed the commitment of President Gerald Ford and State Department officials in getting people over bureaucratic barriers rather than blocking them. The she adds this zinger: "The United States has committed to reviewing 7,000 cases and admitting 3,000 refugees by the end of this fiscal year, in September. That is as many as our team processed in a single day back in 1975."

    USA TODAY
    No Sunday Edition

    WALL STREET JOURNAL
    No Sunday edition

    CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
    No Sunday edition

    Ellie


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