Posted on 08/05/2003 6:35:19 PM PDT by blam
Voice of free Iraq walks out on US
Brian Whitaker
Wednesday August 6, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
A broadcaster who became known as "the voice of free Iraq" after the fall of Saddam Hussein has walked out of his job, saying the United States is losing the propaganda war. Failure to invest in the new Iraqi broadcasting service means foreign channels are gaining popularity at the expense of the US, Ahmed al-Rikabi, the American-appointed director of TV and radio said yesterday.
"The people of Iraq, including the Sunni Muslims, are not about to turn against their liberators, but they are being incited to do so. These [foreign] channels contribute to tension within Iraq," he said.
Saddam is scoring propaganda successes over the Americans by sending audio tapes to Arab satellite channels, Mr Rikabi continued.
"Saddam is doing better at marketing himself, through al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyya channels," he said, referring to the deposed Iraqi leader's recent messages which have been broadcast throughout the Middle East.
Last April Mr Rikabi, who had been head-hunted by the Americans, announced the overthrow of the Iraqi regime from a tent near Baghdad airport. Many Iraqis still recall his exact words: "Welcome to the new Iraq. Welcome to an Iraq without Saddam, Uday or Qusay."
He then helped to recruit a team of journalists that started TV transmissions lasting up to 16 hours a day. But the channel was dogged by a lack of money and resources.
The station was provided with only three studio cameras and five portable cameras, Mr Rikabi said. For the five portable cameras, they were allowed only 10 rechargeable batteries lasting 15 minutes each.
The best-paid journalist got a salary of $120 a month, compared with the minimum of $500 a month paid by other Arab networks, he added.
There was also a clothing allowance for newsreaders, but only to clothe the visible top half of their bodies.
Stephen Claypole, who was a public affairs adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, said: "It's very typical of everything the Americans get involved in. They announce large budgets and the money is never released."
Yeah, Americans are lousy at everything. That is why our country is so screwed up and nobody wants to come here.
And that's all they care about, getting that "free" American money.
Lets change this statement to a more truthful statement.
The us Failure to bomb the old Iraq propaganda machines.
Now don't come back with how this would look to the rest of the world. I realise we believe in a free press BUT, lets add to that AN HONEST PRESS!
LETS BOMB ALL THE DISHONEST PRESS
Our local cable company provides 3 channels for local public school coverage and WE can't get the CENTCOM and DOD briefings - are forced to hear the war news through the wanker-filter...dishonest from day one.
We do have radio and press and TV in Iraq - but the world is big, with thousands of TV, radio and press outlets preaching anti-American pap - incited by a major US political party and our own former Presidents to act against us to weaken America on the world stage...all afraid of Big Good America.
Why are we not acting on this? As Roy Innis said, the first amendment was never supposed to be a suicide pact.
No, it's not, and I'm inclined to believe that it is true. This isn't the first I've heard of problems in the communicating-to-the-people-of-Iraq department. We've got to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, otherwise our job will be a thousand times more difficult. Money spent to get our message out to the Iraqis -- that we're working hard, that progress is being made, that we're on their side -- is money very well spent. If there is such a thing as a morally justified time for propaganda, this is one of them. We shouldn't be skimping on this.
It was worse during Vietnam. Cronkite's lies won the day, because we had few ways to check the facts - mail took weeks, internet non-existant.
Today, Americans are being conned daily - either don't care or don't know - wouldn't know unless they check CENTCOM, or have loved ones serving.
It's up to us to get the word out.
A member of Pres. GHW Bush's first admin. wrote a book about the media not allowing a President to fight a war. Solzhenitsyn was onto 'em long ago:
The (inter)national mainstream press IS the #1 answer to "why they hate us."
The only solution really is to take them less seriously...and get the facts out, as well as standing up to the liars.
As long as people believe the well-coiffed spinners and noisy activists, people like Hillary Clinton and Fidel Castro stay in power.
Where is the common sense here?
The Iraqi people survived over 24 years of brutality from the Hussein regime. They may have a more difficult time ignoring the hate speech surrounding them today.
When was the last time you heard a pro-American AMERICAN news outlet?
This is true.
But we could try harder to get our message across to the Iraqis.
How?
I know what this administration's been doing in Iraq. I doubt many here cared enough to look past the destructive partisan press for the truth. YES, the Iraqi people need to be strong and need to learn who to trust in the press.
Clinton gave the UN and international socialist NGOS and think tanks unprecidented authority in US foreign policy matters. We have no Jesse Helms sitting on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee defending US from the pro-UN-crook globalists. What THIS administration has accomplished in Iraq even with the forces they're up against (#1 enemy = the VLWC) is nothing short of a miracle. Blaming this administration for the current efforts of the international press is rather like Clinton telling Juanita Broderick, "Put some ice on it."
Meanwhile, as the military continues to make great progress across Iraq - successfully completing major operations WITHOUT major casualties - and winning over the Iraqi people - the press hypes bad, ignores the good, and even those who should know better believe the lies.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
We NEED a better PR machine.
We are on the side of what is good, and just and beneficial for the Iraqi people.
We need to get that message out there and keep pounding it home.
We also need to counter the deceitful propaganda from the press where ever we encounter it, because we are right and they are wrong.
It's ridiculous that the only message so many people are hearing is leftist American hating crap from a bunch of losers. We have to provide the alternative.
Blaming this administration for the current efforts of the international press is rather like Clinton telling Juanita Broderick, "Put some ice on it."
You misunderstood me. I'm not "Blaming this administration for the current efforts of the international press" at all.
I am blaming them however for not doing enough to counter the barrage of misinformation.
They need to do more to get the truth out.
If anybody was to ask me on septemer 12th 2001 that in 22 months the Taliban would be gone and a provisional government up and running along with Osama Bin Laden MIA, move 300,000 troops into Kuwait, setup a Command center in Qatar, Successfully remove Saddam and already begun rebuilding Iraq, and in the 2nd quarter of 2003 the GDP is at a 2.4% rate of growth, I would laugh and say "YEA RIGHT!"
But this has all happened and still people read the doom and gloom published by these rags and actually believe it. Their agenda is so obvious it glows in the dark
Well, this is true, and I could imagine that TV might not be the most effective way of communicating over there. Radio and print may be the better way. On the other hand, if our efforts in these areas are as anemic as our effort in the TV department apparently are, then there is good reason for concern.
Surely the smart people we have in charge of things in Iraq have a handle on this. It would be monumentally stupid to overlook something important as being able to communicate, and to be persuasive, with the people you're trying to govern.
LOL. That's OK.
Are there any websites, addresses or whatever that can be contacted in Iraq? There has to be something that can be done.
This is a great idea. I heard that the Iraqis who've been isolated from the rest of the world for so long...are now starting to get online.
Let's face it...the internet has provided an excellent and popular alternative to the liberal media when it comes to news sources, right here in America.
Imagine what an Iraqi version of FreeRepublic or Townhall.com could do?
The "facts on the ground" clearly don't trump all propaganda. Just look at the success our own liberal media has in coloring people's perception of things here in the US. The media has an effect on people's thinking. There's just no way around it. That's why it's important that we use the media to our advantage in Iraq.
It's very frustrating to have the international press in enemy hands - but we do.
President Bush could try co-opting NPR. He asked the VOA team not to play pro-Taliban propaganda tapes from Osama Bin Laden in the early days of Afghan bombing and they stood up and walked out on our CIC in protest.
The ACLU, PFAW, Hollywood - THE activist press....are out of control. Not only in America, but around the world. They share talking points, learn from the instructors who share the same philosophy - run in the same circles.
Conservatives don't go into government work in large numbers - nor do many sit through liberal liberal arts schools to take on the Big Media.
We have more voices today, and the internet - but our enemies have 24/7 satellite and Madison Avenue-Hollywood creative talent - with no concern for the truth - or for lives destroyed on the path to power.
We bypassed the press in Florida to get the truth to the people. It can be done. Americans need to start paying attention.
Woman engineer vows to change face of impoverished Baghdad township
I'll settle for silence over that clap trap :-)
That wouldn't surprise me. Hopefully we're putting out some good newspapers over there.
Towards Freedom: weighted in favour of US
A former adviser to efforts by the US and Britain to set up a post-war media network in Iraq has lifted the lid on the high degree of political control exerted over broadcasts by coalition authorities.
Stephen Claypole revealed that the Iraqi Media Network was originally intended to be run by Bob Reilly, a former director of the Voice of America radio station, giving it what he describes as "a degree of independence".
Although the station is US government-owned, it was considered relatively impartial.
However, amid Washington concerns that Jay Garner, the director of the post-war reconstruction effort in Iraq known as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, was "not relating" to the Iraqi people, the Iraqi Media Network was kept firmly under US government control.
"It was the stuff of dreams for the White House and No 10 - direct control over the content of the evening news," Claypole wrote in the latest issue of Television, the journal of the Royal Television Society.
Veteran news boss Claypole, who was the founder of the TV news agency APTN and chairman of broadcast advisory company DMA-Media said all attempts to be independent was lost.
While IMN attempted to give the impression that it was conveying the views of ordinary Iraqis, it was heavily weighted in favour of the official US line, Claypole claimed.
"'We have got to have vox pops,' became the mantra, so that the Iraqi people can see themselves talking in an atmosphere of liberty.
"When the vox pops came back to the temporary studios with anti-American opinions, they were shelved for a day or two to be intercut with official ORHA responses."
Into this "dodgy mix", wrote Claypole, came a woman called Hero Talabani, the "exotic and cosmopolitan wife of the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan".
Mrs Talabani, according to Claypole, managed to convince Margaret Tutwiler - the American ambassador to Morocco who had been drafted in to assist in the roll-out of the new civilian administration - "that she was the arbiter of public taste".
"After one morning meeting with the IMNtv team, it was decided to take a taped package to Mrs T's house for her to comment on the editorial content. The Iraqi exiles who formed the majority of IMNtv's staff threatened to strike," Claypole revealed.
As if tight government controls and the influence of exotic characters were not enough, IMN was also hampered by squalid surroundings and lack of communications equipment following attacks on Iraqi TV and radio stations during the war.
ORHA was located in a rambling palace, called the "Four Saddams", that had no running water or electricity, was covered in sand and infested by "mosquitoes, sand fleas and large black rats".
To make matters worse, those working for ORHA were not allowed to go anywhere unless accompanied by soldiers and special forces.
"No thought was given to why the military had precision bombed most of the TV and radio stations and transmission systems in Iraq," wrote Claypole.
"On the ground, the only means of communication was Thuraya satellite phones that worked so poorly they were known as 'Thuraya Heaps'."
In the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq, the Americans broadcast Towards Freedom Television from a Hercules transport plane flying above the country, showing Fox News, NBC, ABC and CBS dubbed into Arabic but otherwise unedited.
CNN declined to participate in the transmission because it did not feel it was appropriate for an "independent global news organisation" to participate in an American government transmission.
The inaugural broadcast on Towards Freedom TV featured Tony Blair and George Bush delivering messages in a bid to reassure the Iraqi people that the US and Britain wanted "the government of Iraq and the future of your country" to belong to Iraqis.
Britain also made its own hour-long contribution to the channel, produced by independent TV company World Television at a cost of £10,000 to the MoD.
As only around 10% of Iraqis have access to television, according to a US military spokesman, the American and British authorities have also set up radio stations and newspapers in the aftermath of the war.
· To give MediaGuardian a story email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857
Would you consider doing a separate thread on him? Propaganda war indeed. Stephen Claypole is no objective participant. FoxNews hasn't a clue.
I'm still wondering about the Clinton holdovers who quit because of the Museum looting. The press hasn't investigated that story. The press lied. They undermined our troops - turned many in the watching world against our troops just as our troops marched into Baghdad to cheering crowds and worked to assure the Iraqi people that we respected their culture and history.
The Museum workers who moved the antiquities to the bank vault knew that they weren't stolen from day one, and only came forward AFTER weeks of anti-American bashing from the press. No follow-up, no investigation, no apology, no accountability from the accusers.
Those on the left still pretend to care about the safety of our troops as they toss literal bombs in their path daily.
Still waiting, as well, for the big press investigation into the Al Jazeera and other reporters on Saddam's payroll who ignored Saddam's mass-murder, took Saddam's money and spread anti-American propaganda for years. They have a lot to lose if when the truth is exposed. Are they still on Saddam's payroll?
As only around 10% of Iraqis have access to television...
This would explain why we're apparantly not pouring the money into our TV efforts.
"...the only means of communication was Thuraya satellite phones that worked so poorly they were known as 'Thuraya Heaps'."
"Thuraya Heaps"!
Points for wit for whoever thought that up. If it was an Iraqi, then there is definite hope that we can make a civilization out that place. The Afghanis never would have thought of that.
Claypole, like many other liberals, they believe that it's their responsibility to make sure that those who are the most successful should provide for those who lack the skills to provide for themselves. Socialism is a failed concept because it doesn't reward excellence. If and when we neglect to reward excellence in this country, is the day we have lost everything this country was founded on.
A liberal believes in providing a months supply of Fish for anyone who feels they can't fend for themselves, along with the Time/Date and Place when the next delivery can be expected,
A Conservative believes in providing a fishing pole for those who want to work, along with directions to the nearest fishingh hole
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