Another Credibility Gap in Iraq?

By Peter Johnson

The White House says President Bush is “very concerned” about reports that the U.S. military is paying Iraqi news outlets to paint rosy pictures of the war and reconstruction. And he should be worried, experts say, drawing comparisons with the misinformation campaigns during Vietnam, which undermined government and military credibility and made it more difficult to gain support for war.

“All wars are fought in part for hearts and minds, but the question governments face is how to do it,” says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “In Vietnam, the Johnson administration misled journalists and the public, and both stopped believing what they said. Bribing and misleading the fledgling Iraqi press will undermine trust in that press.”

In Baghdad last week, when asked whether the reports undercut American credibility, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch quoted a senior al-Qaeda leader as having said, “Half the battle is the battlefield of the media.”

But the only way to change people’s minds, “especially when their beliefs are strongly rooted in culture and strongly reinforced by peers, is by changing the reality, not the rhetoric,” says Harvard media analyst Alex Jones. “The idea that some phony stories are going to change public opinion in Iraq is a demonstration of horrible naivete. It not only is not effective, but it has now blown up in their faces and created a huge additional credibility gap for the military here.”

But Jim Murphy, executive producer of The CBS Evening News, says he doesn’t believe that the reports will affect media relations in the USA. “We all work with people we trust in the military and in the administration and vet our information as well as we can. What they do with foreign news organizations is not part of our work.”

Still, says Paul Levinson, a Fordham University communications professor: “When people back home are questioning the journalism that led up to the war effort, at precisely the time when we want (accurate) information about the road ahead in Iraq, these stories call into question the legitimacy of the military news and journalism.”

E-mail pjohnson@usatoday.com

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