September 28, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Hunting Hizbollah
Over at Volokh, David Bernstein reacts to the news that the New York Times covered Lebanese and Israeli deaths in rough proportion to their frequency:
[From the New York Times Ombudsman] . . . This focus on the death toll led me to review the number of Times pictures depicting corpses and coffins. There were about eight times as many photographs of Lebanese as of Israelis, a ratio roughly comparable to the overall one for deaths during the conflict. "We try to reflect what happens on the ground," said Susan Chira, the foreign editor. "We are extremely conscious of the death tolls. It would be unfair to truth to do otherwise."Estimates of the relative physical damage weren't so readily available to Times editors as the conflict unfolded. But I'm comfortable with the editors' estimates that the relative physical destruction was even more disproportionate than the death tolls. The pictures in the paper reflected that. Eight times as many pictures of physical damage in Lebanon, compared with those of destruction in Israel, appeared on Page 1. The ratio for all such photographs used in the coverage shrank to three to one, but the pictures from Lebanon that ran inside the paper tended to be larger.
What an odd way to justify the "fairness" of media coverage! For one thing, it suggests that the Times' coverage of the Iraq war has been grossly unfair to the Iraqis, or, if you prefer, the Iraqi "resistance."For that matter, consider the "unfairness" of the Times' coverage of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. We certainly got more pictures of "American suffering" because of 9/11 than of suffering in Afghanistan because of NATO military action.
Sure, the Times is an American paper, and thus gives the U.S. a "home field advantage," but that just raises the question of why Israel, a close American ally, fighting Hizbollah, a sworn American enemy, doesn't get at least a less extreme version of the same sort of advantage.
This strikes me as a pretty weak argument. The United States is not at war with Hizbollah. We run lots of pictures of American soldiers because they are American . . . of us, and acting in our name. Israeli soldiers are not, and posts like these just generate unwelcome fodder for the conspiracy theorists claiming that the neocons, and American supporters of Israel more generally, have confused Israel's interests with America's.
I am of two minds as to how much media outlets should try to support morale at home during a difficult war . . . (and I am interested in the broader theory, like "should we have done so in WWII, at least?", not a referendum on the current conflict). But it is simply not reasonable to say that the New York Times should hew its editorial policy to Israel's favoured storyline because they are allied with us. Britian is allied with us in a war we are actually fighting . . . i.e. one that our Congress voted to authorise on behalf of America's taxpayers . . . and I doubt our papers run nearly as many pictures of British soldiers fighting valiantly as they do of dead Iraqi civilians.
There is a broader question of "does this sort of coverage skew perceptions of the war incorrectly?", which is fair--indeed, necessary--to ask. But I think the answer, ultimately, is no. The fact is that most of the Lebanese who died were civilians, and most of the Israelis who died were not, and that a whole lot more Lebanese died at Israeli hands than vice versa. The proclamation that "we have no idea how many of those 'civilians' were Hezbollah" sounds ominous, but no reputable source that I am aware of avers that anything other than the vast majority of Lebanese killed were the civilian kind of civilians. Lowering the ratio of dead Lebanese civilians to dead Israeli soldiers from 7:1 to 6:1 would not be much of a propaganda victory for Israel. You may believe that this ratio was a tragic necessity borne of Hezbollah's infamous tactics . . . but the place to make that argument is in the editorial pages, not at the photo desk. The solution to difficult facts is to explain them, not surpress them.
Mr Bernstein is on firmer ground when he points out that the Times ran almost no pictures of Hizbollah, because Hizbollah tends to shoot people who take pictures of them. The IDF are effectively penalised for not shooting reporters, which is ludicrous. But while this is a big problem, I don't think it's reasonable to say that because they can't run photos of Hizbollah, the New York Times should therefore also forego printing photographs of dead Lebanese civilians. It should be (and for all I know, was) printed in the news pages, which ought to remind readers quite neatly that Hizbollah aren't exactly the good guys here.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 28, 2006 1:28 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksJane,
I agree with most of what you said and the point of this comment is not to point out any areas of disagreement. Rather, I'd like your thoughts on how the media should respond to the fact terrorist's major goal is to use the media to influence public opinion. The point of blowing up a pizza parlor is to gain media coverage in the hope the public will make its government change a policy or accept a terrorist demand.
The media takes great pains to avoid being "used" by the US government. Every point raised by a anyone associated with the government, from the President to lowest press officer, is examined to insure any government friendly spin is removed (or countered by the opposition's spin). All of this is as it should be.
At the same time, by simply covering a terrorist act, the media is helping terrorists achieve their aims. In the case of Hizbollah, they put their rocket launchers in civilian areas and then prevented civilians from leaving those areas. For them it was a win/win. First came the images of destruction in Israel from their rockets. Then came the images of innocent lives taken by the Israelis. Just what steps should the media take to prevent being used in this way?
David,
You could just as well ask that of government. Every time they talk of the terrorist threat they are also helping terrorists acheive their aims.
The answer is simple. We are an open society and will not change that to fight terrorists. Part of that means that terrorists will use that to their advantage. So be it. We have plenty of resources at our disposal.
I think Jane is correct when she says that "The solution to difficult facts is to explain them, not supress them."
I agree with both Jane and David, above. David Bernstein often presents interesting and valuable ideas, but his monomania re Israel-Hezbollah has made me very skeptical of his opinions on that topic.
Would that the US media were more consistent in de-spinning government statements, and that they routinely noted the terrorists' goal of obtaining medi coverage via atrocity.
GT, don't you see a difference between murdering children for press coverage, and condemning that for press coverage? I'd like to know that my government is at least aware of the terrorism and trying to do something about it. While I think specific acts of terrorism should ideally get less coverage, to avoid rewarding the acts, that doesn't mean we can safely pretend they don't happen. Government statements are a reasonable response, tend to serve a positive purpose, and invite criticism in response if they amount to mere fear-mongering.
There are two moral imperatives in conflict here. On one hand a democracy thrives on information, and the press is duty-bound to provide the best information that they can--as spin-free as they can manage. On the other hand, we are at war and our enemies can use that information against us.
There is no way to unspin the Hizbollah human shields that David described above. To a large degree, Hizbollah wins this battle (propaganda battle) because they are willing to cause innocent civilians to die. It is a minor variation on the terrorist tactics. But in Sun Tzu terms, they win because they chose the battlefield. And they chose a battlefield where our freedom of the press is actually a liability in warfare.
This is simply a weakness of democracy. If we were a theocracy, monocracy, or any other -ocracy then the press would not be duty-bound to un-spin. You don't think that the press in Iran is trying to be fair to both sides of the Israel-Hizbollah war, do you? We have to decide what we are willing to accept in order to neutralize this weakness.
Maybe we need to develop a language to describe terrorists using civilians (as shields and/or targets) to upset democratic sensibilities. I'm not comfortable with giving up our freedom to know. Maybe just having a national discussion about this weakness will help lessen its impact.
Let's try again.
By doing its job the government will many times, like the media, act in ways that further the terrorist's objectives. Another way of looking at it is that terrorists will seek to exploit what they can in an open society.
A totalitarian regime has it much easier. They can control the media and impede the terrorists to gain publicity. But that's not a solution for us.
Every time they talk of the terrorist threat they are also helping terrorists acheive their aims.
Oh, please. That's like saying that since rapists like to make women afraid of them, warning a woman that a rapist is stalking her helps the rapist achieve his goal.
Jane, I'd be interested in knowing where you get reputable (= reliable?) information about the percentage of civilians among the Lebanese/Hezbollah casualties. I don't mean to disagree with your numbers, and of course I'm not looking for precision; I just don't feel at all as though I have sufficient reliable information to form an opinion on the point.
"I am of two minds as to how much media outlets should try to support morale at home during a difficult war "
Yeah, me too. I am not an expert on military equipment but I think the following is approximately true. In WWII, we found out early in North Africa that our Shermans were no match for the German Panzers (and later, Tigers). Our soldiers hated the Shermans and our reporters knew all about it, but in the interest of morale and military secrecy, that message never got back to the US. In the US, we had built a myth of incredible American industry, so the consensus that would have been needed to force radical changes to the Sherman never had a chance to form. (Some smaller improvements were made.) To the end of the war we fought with a tank that was strikingly inferior to our enemy's. It seems certain that fewer Americans would have died, and the war ended sooner, had we simply allowed reporters to do their jobs.
Hizbollah operated from civilian neighborhoods and kept the civilians from leaving. Israel did not operate from Israeli neighborhoods and forced citizens into bomb shelters. Israel had lower casualties. Duh!
Hizbollah began a war with crude weapons fired by crude operators. They missed often, but would have been extremely deadly if they had not missed, or the Israelis had not been in shelters, since they were anti-personnel weapons. Israel responded with far superior weapons and well trained troops. They achieved far greater destruction than did Hizbollah, with far lower casualties. Duh.
History teaches us that there is no pre-emptive cure for stupidity. Lebanon allowed a group of fanatics to control the southern portion of the country. Lebanon allowed their supplies of rockets to be delivered from Iran through Syria and Lebanon. Responsibility for the security and safety of the Lebanese population belongs to the government of Lebanon. It failed spectacularly. Hizbollah is responsible for the actions of its goons. If it thought it could win, it was obviously sorely mistaken. If the government of Lebanon thought Hizbollah could engage Israel in a war from southern Lebanon without significant Lebanese casualties and significant property damage, they too were sorely mistaken.
While Israel "pulled its punches" to a significant extent this time, expecting that to happen again would also be an extremely dangerous error. Israeli President Ohlmert will probably lose his position for his performance. His successor will not make the same mistake.
I lean towards the idea that if it requires much effort to sell the public on the value of a war, we probably shouldn't be fighting it. And if the public clearly understands the mission, it won't much matter what the media does or doesn't publish.
GT,
I understand that the government sometimes "assists" the terrorists by commenting on their attacks. I also agree that the media needs to report terrorist activity. However, I think the media seems too willing to carry the terrorists' water. I think the media could do two things that would greatly serve the public interest while fulfilling the obligation to report the news:
First, the media can be at least as skeptical of the terrorists' claims as the media is of our government's. During the recent Hizbollah conflict, the media accepted and published photos that had been enhanced, staged, or otherwise faked. The media routinely reported as factual Hizbollah's claims as to the numbers of civilians killed or injured. Those claims, just as routinely, turned out to be exaggerated. A little more skepticism was obviously in order. (This is particularly true given the history of the actors in that part of the world. Remember the Jadin (sp?) massacre that turned out to be no massacre?)
Second, the media could use a less sensational tone when reporting terrorist activity. Domestically, the press is often careful with its tone when reporting on sensitive subjects such as teen-suicides -- for fear the coverage might incite copycats. Indeed, sometimes the media refuse to cover some activities because covering them would reward anti-social behavior. With regard to terrorism, the media could fulfill its obligation to report the news without being nearly as graphic in its coverage.
The media reported the totals provided by the government of Lenanon as factual. In individual cases they reported what witnesses told them. We know these were sometimes in error, because they reported that too. As far as I know, Hezbollah only made statements about their own losses. which are generally assumed to be too low. The reporting on the war in Lebanon showed the public that war kills civilians, even careful high tech war.
"The reporting on the war in Lebanon showed the public that war kills civilians, even careful high tech war."
I certainly agree that that is what the reporting showed. My question is, to what extent was the reporting based on (a) first-hand observation or (b) demonstrably reliable sources (with a not necessarily a subset of b in the age of photoshop)? If we can't tell Hezbollah fighters, non-fighting sympathizers, and non-sympathizing intimidatees from the rest of the population, how do we know what sources of information to trust?
I don't doubt that significant numbers of civilians perished, but I have no idea whether conclusions about the relative benefit (or lack thereof) to civilians of high-tech warfare can be drawn with any confidence.
While Hezbollah is not technically an enemy of the United States, it IS the enemy of an ally, as well as being on our list of terrorist organizations. So there's not much of a case for treating Israel and Hezbollah equally.
David Bernstein may or may not over-react to Israeli-related news coverage; I don't know since I only read Volokh.com ocassionally.
I am fairly certain, however, that if a large al Quaeda cell was hiding en masse among civilians in an urban setting, and anyone but Israel was involved in a multi-day skirmish that left hundreds dead after the al Quaeda leaders tried to initiate something, the tragically perished civilians would receive their due respects...BUT the reporting would have a tone that, at the very worst, was reasonably even.
How often does Israel ever get that benefit in its dealings?
Oh, come on. What, exactly, do you think the Times' purpose is? It is to make money, first, and, second, to help bring about a society/government to the liking of those who run it. Fairness? Absence of hypocricy? Please. Until such "defects" defeat either of the two principles they will be shunted aside without much concern. And they are.
The Times has no interest in "promoting" the efforts of any U.S. ally in the war on terror--just the reverse. That is what drives its coverage, not fairness. Sheesh.
Mr Bernstein is on firmer ground when he points out that the Times ran almost no pictures of Hizbollah...
Even that... It seems to me that the real media scandals in the war were the systematic use of staged, frequently fraudulent, photography and stories, and the outsourcing of reporting to stringers of questionable integrity and objectivity. (Both of which are absolutely routine in reporting from the PA.) Putting those aside in favor of badgering the NYT over subjective choices of photo selection seems counterproductive at best to me.
The problem with reporting is they try so hard pretending to be objective. There is no reason why our news sources should give the same weight to their statements and actions as ours. Media routinely report lies and deceptions. According to the terrorists and those who support them, we've never killed a "bad guy" but always killed civilians.
Lebanon is also our ally and its progress toward democracy was at risk because of the war. The media's additude toward civilian deaths cause by a skirmish with terrorist will be strongly effected by the location : London, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Beirut.
While you bring up interesting questions, there is no way that you can discuss these issues with the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict as your backdrop.
Doctored photos, staged photos, and wrongly labeled photos were the stock in trade of this war. While the video footage of the Green Helmet Guy actively directing photographers as to what they should film, while directing the rescue workers as to what they should be doing, does not meet the "extraordinary evidence" test of conspiracy, it should at least allow the fair minded viewer to be skeptical as to what he is looking at. Even the great neo-con Anderson Cooper noted that he saw ambulances racing around the block with lights and sirens blaring solely for the benefit of the western media.
The question this particular conflict should bring to mind is how did the editors of major world wide news organizations hire Arab photographers to cover an Israeli-Arab conflict without thinking that the photographers might, possibly, could be A LITTLE SLANTED towards one side?
Then you used the term,"Israel's favoured storyline". What storyline is that? Hezbollah fired missles into Israel targeting civilians for quite some time. Hezbollah deliberately set up in and around civilians (and UN observers!)to try to avoid Israeli counter-attacks. No one questions that. Not even the Lebanese.
I guess to answer your question about that then would be to ask you if the media of WW II should have painted the French, Poles, and Dutch, et al as equal aggressors against Germany?
It seems certain that fewer Americans would have died, and the war ended sooner, had we simply allowed reporters to do their jobs.
You assume that such "pressure" by reporters would have produced a tank the equal of the Tiger, and a decent amount of them shipped to the front.
(The real issue, in fact, appears to have been US doctrine regarding tanks, which suggested AT guns and Tank Killers, rather than medium tanks like the Sherman.
This was, shall we say, Awkward in the Normandy hedgerows. But of course by the time we were in Normandy, there was less than a year of the war left; nowhere near enough time to make a Tiger-killer medium tank.
And since the US troops met, as Wikipedia says, "few Tigers or Panthers before D-Day", and the lighter German tanks were quite killable by a Sherman, well... I don't think this example is a very good one for making your point.
The military itself is usually quite aware when its equipment is not up to snuff, and equally capable of putting in bids and pressure for new equipment.)
Hizbollah hid their troops and weapons behind Lebanese human shields, and then started a shooting war. Would it not be fair to say that Hizbollah knowingly and willingly caused those Lebanese civilians to die?
Would Israel have killed those civilians if they had not been acting as human shields? I don't think they would have. If we honestly believe that Israel would not have killed those civilians if they hadn't been human shields, then we have to place the blame for their deaths squarely at the feet of the people who placed them in the line of fire.
Perhaps Isreal's miscalculation in this was expecting the Lebanese human shields to either get out of the way or revolt against Hizbollah. Perhaps Israel's leaders don't have the stomach to keep on killing civilians, but thought that "if we kill a few, or a few hundred, they will get out of the way or overthrow Hizbollah themselves in order to get out of danger." But it seems that the Lebanese civilians couldn't differentiate between the people who were shooting them and the people who painted the targets on their chests.
Can we call it the "intransitive property of bullets"?
So how can we describe human shields and civilian targets in a way that correctly places blame on the guilty party?
Aristides,
I believe the Geneva Convention already took care of that. Military targets can still be attacked even when placed among civilians. The concern of the attacker is political, not legal.
Sigivald: "You assume that such "pressure" by reporters would have produced a tank the equal of the Tiger, and a decent amount of them shipped to the front."
Thanks for the response. Yeah, that's close to what I'm saying. It's a bit simplistic, but one of the problems is that our tank designers spent the war arguing that speed was more important than muzzle velocity and armor (that's what our "doctrine" had told them) and they were never forced to face evidence from the front that they were wrong. We faced heavy Panzers in the catastrophe of Kasserine Pass early in 1943; my parents, who read about that battle in the papers, didn't know it was a defeat until years after the war. More armor, longer barrel; getting those added by the invasion of Europe would not have been impossible. My conclusion might be simplistic, but what is the other side of the argument? Letting our journalists write about what our soldiers and our enemy already knew would be bad for the war effort?
Mike,
Is there some reason the War Department didn't know about the problems with the Sherman? If "Our soldiers hated the Shermans and our reporters knew all about it," what reason is there to think the chain of command didn't know all about it, too? Were the generals in Washington getting all their information from the papers?
Journalists nowadays know f&*%-all about military equipment, so if they start hyping something about how inadequate some weapon is, I'm just going to assume they're doing it because they hate Rumsfeld. (maybe it was better 65 years ago, I don't know). They might create public pressure, but there's no reason to think they'll create it in helpful ways.
I'd just like to add that it is seldom pressure from the media or the public that initiates changes in weapons or tactics. Usually its a case of the enemy finding a weakness (that's what enemies do), then the troops finding a counter, then the media asking "why didn't you do that before?", followed by politicians and assorted armchair experts chastizing those in power for their inability to see into the future, and/or not having mass produced the equipment in question within a "reasonable" amount of time.
David Walser, it's Jenin you're thinking of. You may have been unsure of the name, but the situation there was pretty much as you describe.
Patrick, what's with "non-sympathizing intimidatees"? I would have thought "hostages" would be a perfectly good word for people in their situation.
Rob, indeed today's reporters seem ill-informed about military issues, but in addition they are hopelessly naive about basic economics, too: vide all the silly whining and posturing about up-armored humvees.
Reporters today are quite broadly uninformed and ill-informed. However, when you read their material it is obvious that, while they are not always right, they are never in doubt.
Rob,
Our generals knew about the problems (see for example Atkinson "Army at Dawn" pp218-9, sentence begins "To Eisenhower's surprise, American tanks ... also seemed wanting..."). Generals in N. Africa, however, just didn't have that much control over munitions design in the US. Incredibly, munitiond designers in the US won arguments with line officers over what was needed in equipment. (The Shermans are only the most famous example; Hastings in his Overlord book does a pretty good job of showing how virtually every piece of Allied equipment was inferior to its German equivalent. In most cases Allied propaganda obscured that fact.) There is a famous story (I think also in Atkinson though I can't find it.) of the new, upgraded Sherman's being delivered to the US Army. Bradley was excited until he found out that the new 76mm gun had virtually no more stopping power than the old 75mm gun. The improvements the generals had asked for had been overuled in the US. If I were a General in that situation, I think my best friend would be an investigative reporter.
May I use this method to report a technical problem with your blog. When I log on to your site directly what I see is a long, long green rectangle on the left hand side obscuring the posts and making them unreadable. To read your posts I have to go to 'archives.' I use Netscape and it may arise from that.
Kirk,
By "non-sympathizing intimidatees," I intended to include potential sources of information who, although not sympathetic to Hebollah and not physically in Hezbollah's custody, would be reluctant to tell reporters the truth for fear of Hezbollah reprisal. If your point is that such people are in some sense "hostages," I suppose I agree, but my (admittedly awkward) phrase was intended to convey that one need not be either literally a prisoner of Hezbollah or a sympathizer in order to be an unreliable source of information about it. That makes it hard for a reporter to know whom to trust (as it is no doubt intended to do).
Hizbollah killed 244 Marines and sailors in Beirut in 1983.
That's "at war" enough for me, even if we haven't filled out the proper forms.
As for the Sherman -
Eisenhower, his staff, and most of the Army commanders scheduled to execute D-Day attended a demonstration of the M26 Pershing tank in England, in late 1943 or early 1944.
The Pershing went through trials head to head with a Sherman, including shooting at test armor targets at various ranges and various degrees of slope to the armor.
The Pershing's high velocity 76mm gun was superior to the peashooter LV 75 on the Sherman in every respect. It was faster, had better weight distribution, had sloped/thicker/curved armor where the Sherman was slabsided and thin just about everywhere but the glacis plate (which was still easily defeated by the lightest German tank main gun still in service). It also had larger self-sealing fuel tanks, a better powerplant and transmission, and better fire control.
There was an assembly line tooled up to build the Pershing, with contracts ready to be let to subcontractors for parts.
Eisenhower thought there might be a chance the Allies would invade as early as April or May 1944, weather permitting. He could not get assurances that sufficient numbers of M26's could be delivered, with spares and trained technicians, to wholly equip all the armored divisions tasked to D-Day through D+30. So he elected to stay with the Sherman based on the known ability of battalion and division shops to return battle damaged tanks to combat. He bet that mobility, airpower, and yes, antitank guns would minimize tank-on-tank encounters and that the battle environment would see tanks used to assault fortifications and create penetrations.
He was... incorrect on several points. But he still won the war.
BTW, the logic behind putting a LV gun on a Sherman was based on the fact that it could fire over a thousand rounds before needing to be rebarelled.
The combat lifespan of a Sherman in combat in Normandy was measured in hours; most tanks knocked out had fewer than a dozen warshots fired by whatever crew happened to be manning them at the time. Some hulls would return to combat (with new crews) five or a dozen times before being burned beyond repair, or taking a shot in the turret ring, which was also non-repairable. One of the most plentiful artifacts for surplus sale after the war were the spare barrels produced for Sherman main guns...
tmjutah,
Thanks, I didn't know that about the Pershing. Do you have a reference? (The Wikipedia article is consistent with what you say, but with fewer details.) Obviously, your story undercuts my argument that an uncensored press would have helped produce a better outcome, at least in this case. As I said earlier, the general argument is one I am ambivalent about, but WWII seems like a good test case. An open minded person with a more detailed understanding of the war than I have could put together a pretty interesting essay on the question.
The problem with reporting is they try so hard pretending to be objective.
Actually, I think a British-style newspaper system would be preferable. There are times I enjoy reading The Guardian, not for the opinion usually, but because I already know in advance which side they're gunning for -- and with that out of the way, the news coverage is often quite good. The fact that they then run ocassional op-eds from other viewpoints is a nice icing.
My source was a book by Belton Y. Cooper, an ordnance officer who fought across Europe with the 3rd Armored Division. He's mentioned at the bottom of this Wikipedia entry.
Am I the only non-public-spirited person among us who doesn't think it's a good thing for news sources to skew stories one way or another at all? I don't want my newspaper deciding whether to skew stories toward Israel because it's the ally or Hezbollah because it's the underdog. I'd like the best available picture of reality. That includes making it clear what constraints the reporting is done under--whether that's formal restrictions on what you're allowed to say, or informal threats to shoot you if you take the wrong pictures.
There are way too many places where major news sources feel the need to spin their stories to have some desired social effect. They're not smart or wise or pure enough to do this. Rather like scientists, the most beneficial thing for them to do is almost always to simply report what they know as honestly as possible, as well as the limits to their knowledge. Don't decide I need to see more bleeding Arab kids to know that being an Arab kid in Lebanon or Palestine sucks. Don't decide I need to see more burning buildings in Haifa to know that Israel is surrounded by people who want to kill them and periodically try. Just tell me what's happening.
Jane writes: "posts like these just generate unwelcome fodder for the conspiracy theorists claiming that the neocons, and American supporters of Israel more generally, have confused Israel's interests with America's."
Wouldn't a more parsimonious explanation be that many neocons _have_ confused Israel's interests with America's?
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