Pentagon puts clamp on media

  The Associated Press International media crews cover the
news conference of Abdul Salam Zaeef, Taliban ambassador to
Pakistan, Oct. 31 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Zaeef told reporters U.S.
forces have killed 1,500 civilians.

By Leo Wallach
Daily Bruin Contributor

While American bombs were falling on Kabul and U.S. pilots and
special forces were risking their lives on raids into Taliban
territory, the American public was by and large left without
third-party evaluation of the war.

Pentagon and Taliban officials alike have denied the media
direct access to the conflict at an unprecedented level, according
to those covering the war.

“The Pentagon is providing much less information than in
the past,” Washington Post military correspondent Thomas
Ricks said in an e-mail. “In this war, unlike in others, the
Pentagon has become almost the sole source of
information.”

No reporters are with special forces in Afghanistan or with the
U.S. 10th Mountain Division stationed in Uzbekistan, Ricks
said.

The defense department has rebuffed the notion that they are
being restrictive, given the nature of the war.

“If a reporter wants to go to Afghanistan on their own,
they are welcome to do that,” said Capt. Tim Taylor, a
Department of Defense spokesman, adding that reporters have been on
aircraft carriers near the war zone and that the military has
“taken reporters on humanitarian flights.”

“There’s nothing else available that is safe,”
he said, explaining that journalists could not safely accompany
fast-moving special forces units into action.

  The Associated Press U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld in New Delhi, India. In
Washington, briefings have been less forthcoming with details than
during the Gulf War, Ricks said, adding that Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld is more closed-mouthed than his predecessors and
exerts more personal control over information released to the
media.

During the Gulf War, military commanders like General Norman
Schwarzkopf regularly briefed the press. Tommy Franks, commander of
U.S. forces in the current war, gave his first Pentagon briefing on
Nov. 8. ““ nearly a month after military action in Afghanistan
began. Rumsfeld and others have fielded the majority of questions
at the Pentagon.

“Tommy Franks is no Norman Schwarzkopf,” Franks said
at the Nov. 8 press conference, where he disclosed little concrete
information about the war effort.

Journalists have operated in and around Afghanistan independent
of the U.S. military but have done so with considerable
difficulty.

The Taliban expelled foreign journalists from their territory at
the outset of the war, with the lone exception of Katherine Gannon
of The Associated Press, who was the only Western reporter allowed
to stay in Kabul. Gannon was able to travel and report with
relative freedom from Kabul because, she said via e-mail, she has
longstanding ties in the area.

The AP had an office in Kabul before the Taliban came to power
and Gannon, now bureau chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been
reporting in the region for years. But the vantage point from Kabul
is a limited one, she said.

“The most difficult thing about covering this war is the
distance we are from the actual conflict,” Gannon told the
AP.

A contingent of journalists has been reporting from within
Northern Alliance-held territory. These reporters have direct
access to the conflict, but they also face the tough task of
covering a widespread conflict under difficult conditions, Gannon
said.

  The Associated Press Volker Handloik
(right) of German magazine "Stern" waits as a Taliban prisoner
captured the day before is taken for an interview on Oct. 19.

“Despite the numbers of journalists, most of them are in
one place trying to report many fronts,” she said.

During the first month and a half of the conflict, U.S.
officials admitted to having incomplete information about
developments with the Alliance.

“We get bits and pieces of information,” said
defense department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke in a press
conference Nov. 9.

To cover the Alliance, reporters have operated on rugged terrain
lacking in infrastructure, such as highways and modern
communication, making it difficult to get a full view of the
conflict. Journalists have been delayed at times when roads become
clogged with donkeys, according to one AP report.

Meanwhile, in nearby Pakistan, growing hoards of reporters
complain the Pakistani government is restricting their movements.
Reporters are regularly confined to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad
ostensively for their own safety from anti-Western demonstrators,
the AP reported.

Relations between the Pakistani government and the foreign press
took a turn Oct. 7 when reporters in Islamabad received permission
to travel to the border in an armed column. Twenty miles outside
the city, several hundred demonstrators ““ which an AP report
said was unexplainably well-prepared for the arrival of the column,
ran toward the motorcade of journalists.

The mob chanted anti-American slogans with smiles on their
faces, witnesses said. The journalists’ heavily-armed
Pakistani escorts decided to turn back when faced with the unarmed
mob of mostly old men and boys.

While most reporters on hand said the display of animosity was
probably staged, the danger to war correspondents is very real.

The first known deaths of journalists in the current war were
reported Nov. 12, when three European journalists were confirmed
killed while traveling with Northern Alliance forces. The
journalists were Volker Handloik, a free-lance reporter writing for
German magazine “Stern,” Johanne Sutton of Radio France
Internationale and Peirre Billaud of RTL Radio in France.

That same day in Kabul, AP and BBC offices suffered damages when
an explosion hit the residential neighborhood where the offices are
located. Staffers were present at both offices, including Gannon,
but none were reported injured.

The dangers and obstacles reporters in the region face make it
difficult to corroborate the multitude of claims made by officials
in Kabul, Northern Alliance territory and Pakistan.

There is a public relations war raging between the United
States, Taliban, Northern Alliance and Osama bin Laden’s
al-Qaeda organization, and journalists are helpless at times to
sort out propaganda from real news, reporters have said.

Through the first month of the military campaign, the Taliban
issued reports of civilian casualties which American officials
deny. The Islamist regime also made several claims of downed
helicopters and U.S. casualties that were never confirmed.

“The Taliban of course are not telling the truth. They
lie,” Rumsfeld said to Jim Lehrer of PBS on Nov. 8.
“And they’ve got a report this morning that was
amusing. So far, they had killed 95 Americans since this started.
They haven’t killed any.”

But according to a controversial Seymore Hersh article, which
appeared in the Nov. 12 issue of The New Yorker, the United States
has also given misinformation. According to the article, U.S.
officials lied about the outcome of a special forces raid on Oct.
20.

The article, which quotes anonymous Delta Force members, alleges
that U.S. special forces came under heavy fire during a pre-dawn
raid near Kandahar, sustained casualties and were forced to
withdraw.

General Richard P. Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
told reporters the that U.S. special forces “were able to
deploy, maneuver and operate inside Afghanistan without significant
interference from Taliban forces.”

Pentagon officials have denied that soldiers were injured during
a firefight, as was reported in the article.

“What was dramatically wrong with Sy Hersh’s article
is that he indicated that (the casualties were) as a result of
being fired upon, which was completely untrue,” Clarke said
at a Nov. 7 meeting with bureau chiefs.

All injuries from the attack were relatively minor, sustained
during parachute landings and other mishaps not inflicted by the
enemy, she said.

With the fall of Kabul last week and the media’s greater
access to a large portion of Afghan territory, reporters hope they
will be able to corroborate controversial reports like
Hersh’s. CNN, for example, has 40 people inside Afghanistan,
many of whom transferred from Pakistan after the fall of Kabul.

But critics worry that this will be too late and that questions
which should have been answered in the initial stage of the war are
still unanswered.

Ian Marquand of the Society of Professional Journalists said it
is essential that there be “independent assessment” in
wartime.

David Shaw, media critic for the Los Angeles Times, said in an
e-mail that “any time the press is shut out, it becomes
possible for our enemies to disseminate propaganda and for our own
government to overstate our success, mis-state our obstacles and
keep “˜bad news’ to a minimum.”

Critics worry that with each successive war since Vietnam, the
military has been more willing and able to restrict media access
““ a trend alarming to those who stress the need for civilian
press coverage of military action.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services. See
tomorrow’s paper for Media and the War: Part 2.