Ethics

From Muckrakers to Buckrakers

Three decades after their stories in the Washington Post led to President Nixon's resignation, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have sold their notebooks and other materials from the Watergate years to the University of Texas at Austin for $5 million. "Woodward and Bernstein have found a new way to buckrake," comments Richard Blow. "While that may make them richer, it doesn't enrich the profession, or the regard in which the public holds it."

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Saddam Did 9/11 -- The Big Lie Tactic Works Again

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels observed that "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." The Big Lie technique has worked well in Bush's war on Iraq. The New York Times reports that "organizers of the antiwar movement lament how well the administration argued that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, playing on Americans' residual anger and fear after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

No

Email Spoofing to Attack Activists

"Arab-American activist Nawar Shora checked his e-mail one day and found scores of angry messages asking why he hated Americans and Jews," writes Anick Jesdanun. "The messages were responding to e-mails marked as coming from him. Only one big problem: he never sent the hate mail." Shora was the victim of a new form of harassment in which fake e-mail is sent using real addresses. "The tactic, known as e-mail spoofing, requires little technical know-how and no illegal computer break-ins.

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Poster Boy for War

Just when you thought American TV couldn't stoop any lower, now we have the plight of Ali Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who lost both of his arms, along with his parents, three siblings and ten other relatives, in a missile strike on Baghdad. Now he has become "a redemption story, the kind we like," muses Joan Walsh. The U.S. military has flown him to Kuwait, where reporters are breathlessly following his medical treatment. "But some of the stories have tried to deal with an uncomfortable fact. Ali is, um, well, he's angry at the U.S. for killing his family," Walsh writes.

No

TV Wraps Itself in the Flag and Sells the War

Columnist Frank Rich writes, "There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. ... When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for 'decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before,' no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin.

No

Pentagon PR Star Torie Clarke Embeds the Press

Bill Berkowitz writes that "a relatively quick war against an overwhelmed and outmatched foe -- sanitized of civilian casualties -- has been a tonic for a Pentagon hungry for good publicity. ... Embedding reporters is the brainchild of Victoria 'Torie' Clarke, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Clarke brings considerable PR experience to the task of winning the spin war.

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Cameraman Killed In Northern Iraq Worked For Pentagon PR Firm

Australian cameraman Paul Moran, who was killed by a suicide bomber on March 20, had worked for the Rendon Group, a Washington-based PR firm currently being used by the Pentagon, the Adelaide Advertiser reports. At the time of his death, Moran was on an assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in northern Iraq.

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War Is a Rich Time for Students of Propaganda

PR Week commentator Paul Holmes writes that "the 'embedding' of reporters in military units is the most brilliant
strategic decision of this entire campaign, since its effect appears to
be the transformation of usually intelligent reporters into Pentagon
[Public Relations Officers]. As someone in the administration obviously realised, it's hard to
hold on to journalistic integrity when you're dependent for continued

No

Official Story Vs. Eyewitness Account

"A recent Washington Post article describing the killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that 'embedded' journalists do have the ability to report on war in all its horror. But the rejection by some U.S. outlets of Post correspondent

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