Abstract
‘Wag the Dog’ is a film about media manipulation. Though the movie was quiteprescient in its central scandal( a president charged with sexual misconduct),
the movie effectively chronicles the many ways in which the News media ismanipulated. In the first section of the paper, some relatively unknown‘Wagthe Dog’ cases are explored.. In the second section, the complicity and lackof vigilance of the Media in regards to manipulation is discussed. In the
final section, the paper assesses the impact of both the manipulation of themedia by government and the media’s own complicity in such manipulation.
Far from Fiction: ‘Wag the Dog’ and the News Media in Wartime
‘Wag the Dog’ is a film about media manipulation. Though the
movie was quite prescient in its central scandal( a president
charged with sexual misconduct), the movie effectively chronicles
the many ways in which the News media is manipulated. Two weeks
before election, the president in Wag the Dog has allegedly had
sex with a minor. In order to divert attention from this scandal,
and increase support for the president, Conrad Bream, a sort of
Public relations professional, (played brilliantly by Robert
Deniro) invents a war with the country of Albania. Bream hires
the services of a Hollywood producer and the movie is a sustained
focus on their sustained manipulation of the media. Among the
many manipulations the two devise are the in studio creation of a
war–digitally creating a ‘poor village’ of Albania ransacked by
the war; staged ceremonial events congratulating the president on
his efforts in Albania; anonymous leaks to the press;, and
finally a public relations campaign used to engender sympathy for
a ‘lost soldier’ when the fictionalized war is abruptly put to an
end by the CIA. Initially, many of ‘Wag the Dog’s” scenarios seem
to be ludicrous but in closer reflection many of the tactics used
in the film are quite real.
In the first section of the paper, some relatively
unknown‘Wag the Dog’ cases are explored.. In the second section,
the complicity and lack of vigilance of the Media in regards to
manipulation is discussed. In the final section, the paper
assesses the impact of both the manipulation of the media by
government and the media’s own complicity in such manipulation.
‘Wag the Dog’ Cases
While the relationship between media and military have never
been amiable, after Vietnam a new adversarial relationship was
developed. Convinced that the media portrayal of the Vietnam War
significantly contributed to its negative perception by the
public, military officials sought new ways to suppress negative
press coverage. The new set of rules were first implemented in
the U.S. invasion of Grenada, 1983. The Grenada invasion is the
first war cited by Conrad Bream, as an example of media
distraction. When asked, how the appearance of a war will distract
attention Bream says:
“During Reagan’s administration, 240 Marines killed in
Beirut.24 hours later we invade Grenada. That was
their M.O. Change the story, change the lead. Its not a
new concept.”
Bream, of course, maybe taken to imply that the Grenada invasion
was specifically intended to distract media attention by
“changing the story, changing the lead.” While it is doubtful
that the Grenada invasion was undertaken specifically to distract
attention from the Beirut killings( the decision to invade was
made three days before the bombing), it is hard to imagine that
the its political benefits did not play a part in its role. The
Grenada invasion took place (as Bream says) just 24 hours after
more than 200 marines were killed by a suicide bombing in Beirut.
In his Book, On Bended Knee, Mark Hertsgaard, states that the
marines death had the potential to be a political disaster for
President Reagan because of widespread fear in the public that
Reagan could take the country to war. In fact, the war became a
political triumphant. Public opinions polls rose sharply after
the war, spurred on by Reagan’s own explanation of the war as an
example of American power(Hertsgaard,1988).
It is here that we see many parallels with ‘Wag the Dog.’ In
the days leading up to the invasion, information was leaked to
the press about the invasion. When asked about the possibility of
invasion, officials declared that the idea was “preposterous.”
The decision to lie was not an isolated incident by war planners
but a directive from the highest offices to mislead the press.
The invasion was not known to the White House press offices or
the pentagon until one hour after the attack had already begun.
Further plans were made to organized that day–such as a speech on
the Today show. One reporter managed to make it to the island but
was detained on a U.S. navy vessel.
The press was further subverted by the government by barring
reporters from going to Grenada to report on the invasion. As a
result, most of the pictures and video of the war came from the
government. The shot footage was carefully selected: the
government videos consisted of paratroopers dropping on the
island and shots of students kissing the ground as they returned
to America. When reporters finally allowed access to the island,
the claim, (having been tenaciously repeated by the all major
news outlets) that Grenadian warehouses were full of Soviet
missiles and old weapons were refuted. One rational for the war
was, thus defeated. A second rational for the war was to “rescue
American students” but Hertsgaard asks the interesting question
“were the American students in need of rescue before or after
because of U.S. started combat.” Substantial evidence was there
that the Americans could have safely returned without military
rescue(Hertsgaard, 1988). Thus, another war rational was refuted.
Nevertheless, the Grenada invasion was a political victory
because the administration lied to the press, barred reporters
from entering Grenada, and provided news outlets with their
decidedly ‘sanitized’ and favorable images of the war.
In the book, Toxic Sludge is Good For You, authors John Stauber and
Sheldon Rampton, state that after being shut-out of the Grenada
War, journalists raised enough controversy which led to the
creation of bi-partisan committee that tried to best balance the
media and press in wartime. The idea of a media pool was
developed. The idea of a media pool faced its first real
challenge, in 1989 invasion of Panama to oust General Manuel
Noriega. Ostensibly, the pool was to provide journalists with
quick and easy access to the military and war but quickly turned
out to be yet another way to subvert the role of reporters. Media
Pool members arrived on the island late, after being delayed tow
hours by the Pentagon. When the reporters got to the island, they
were detained on a U.S. military base another five hours, and
therefore, missed all the major combat actions which took place
during this time. Moreover, the Media Pool was fed outdated
information by the U.S. embassy instead of being taken into
combat–military personnel refused to take journalists into the
combat zone. Overcoming technical difficulties( with a fax
machine in the Pentagon), the first pictures of the war surfaced
four days later— most of which were taken by the government. The
pictures and videos were of parachuting U.S. troops and the
reports mostly consisted of U.S. casualties, reporting nothing on
the battlefield.
However, media manipulation was not regulated to these
“lighting wars.” In the 1980's, The Reagan administration
secretly tried to overthrow the Sandinista government of
Nicaragua, which in 1979 had ousted the American-friendly
dictatorship of Anatasia Somoza. In order to win public support
for U.S. actions against Nicaragua( trade and economic actions)
the Reagan administration, in January 1983, directed CIA director
William Casey to set up a office of “Public diplomacy” described
as “a set of domestic political operations comparable to what the
CIA conducts against hostile forces abroad. Only this time, they
were turned against the three key institutions of American
democracy: Congress, the press and an informed electorate....the
administration built an unprecedented bureaucracy in the
[National Security Council] and the State department designed to
keep the news media in line and to restrict conflicting
information from reaching the American public.”( Stauber &
Rampton, 1995).
Following the advice, of the then leading Public Relations
professionals, the White House created a “communications
function,” of which the the Office of Public Diplomacy(OPD) was
primary to discredit the Sandinistas government in the eyes of
the American people. Bream, after find out that the president as
been charged with sexual misconduct with a minor hatches his
first plan to subvert the story: he tells his aides to leak a
story about a B-3 bomber so his press office can deny press that
there is B-3 bomber. Such denial means he’s not lying.
Bream: Why is the president in China?
Aide: Trade Relations
Bream: You goddamn right and Its got nothing to do
with the B-3 bomber.
Aide: There is no B-3 bomber
Bream: I just said that. There is no B-3 bomber
and I don’t know why these rumors get started.
Bream cleverly concocts a diversion. Since the president is in
China for trade relations, it is imperative that he stay there
for a few more days in order to avoid having to answer to the
allegations made against him. However, in order for it not to
seem like the president is extending his stay in China because he
does not want to face the allegations, he must give the press
something to think about–a crisis involving a B-3 bomber. Bream
instructs his aides to “let it slip” to a Washington reporter “I
hope this [the president being in China] won’t screw up the B-B-3
program.” Of course, the reporter will ask “What B-3 program and
why should it screw it up?” to which his aide will reply “to
avert the crisis.” At this point in the film, Bream does not know
what the ‘crisis’ is but leaking the story buys enough time to
allow him to create it.
When told by one of his aides that the “story won’t prove
out” Bream responds “ It doesnt have to prove out. We just have
to distract them.”
Predictably, the reporters in the film, instead of
skeptically addressing the bomber story, spend most of the time
asking if the president’s stay in China has anything to do with
the B-3 bomber and rumors of an “Albanian Ops center.” This
allows the press office to deny knowledge of any B-3 bomber which
only furthers speculation. One reporter asks:
“ Is the situation in Albania in anyway related to the
Muslim fundamentalist anti-American Uprising?”
To which Bream, watching the press conference on television,
happily responds:
“Now they get it. There you go. There’s a little help.”
In other words, all that needs to be done is leak a false story
and enable the curious journalists to expand on it, in the
process ignoring allegations against the president. After all,
“Muslim fundamentalists” and “anti-American Uprisings” present a
threat to national security and ‘The American Way of life” which
are much graver than the sexual misconduct of the president. The
attempt to divert attention, is thus complete.
While the obvious comparison is the President Clinton/Monica
Lewinsky scandal, the Nicaraguan example is more apt since no
actual action was taken as in the film. Following directives to
find “exploitable themes and trends”, the Office of Public
Diplomacy, in the Reagan administration leaked uncorroborated
stories purporting to show the military threat Nicaragua posed to
the U.S. One such story was the 1984 “MIGS crisis.” The White
House leaked information to the press that claimed Nicaragua was
on the verge of receiving Soviet Fighter planes. Later research
showed that the story did not “prove out” but the story served
its purpose. Television news frequently played the story of the
MIGS crisis, to the extent that regular news programs were
interrupted to give “special bulletins” about the crisis.
Moreover, the story diverted attention from the Nicaraguan
election, which was held that week, and in which the Sandinista
government—the one Reagan was trying to overthrow won by a large
margin. In fact, the election was the first “free” Nicaraguan
election though it was soon dismissed by Reagan as a “sham.”
Perhaps the most insidious form of media manipulation stems
from the use of Prepackaged news, or video news releases. In the
article, Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News, David Barstow
and Robin Stein detail the expansion of pre-packaged news in the
last decade. Pre-packaged news are news segments specifically
produced to be indistinguishable from regular Network TV news,
complete with scripts, interviews, and suggested lead ins. While
pre-packaged news existed in the time of the Grenada and Panama
wars, in the form of favorable or ‘sanitized’ video footage, the
use video news releases have grown exponentially since and have
become much more sophisticated. These videos feature “reporters”
who report on an issue, just have it were regular news. Public
relations professionals are careful to not overtly push a message
though the segments don’t ever feature criticisms of their
positions. The segments are distributed to various media outlets
and pl subsequently played to millions of viewers. Networks
regularly edit these video news releases, by for example, cutting
the paid government employee out, and using their own reporters
to read the Government written or Public relations written
script( Barstow &Stein, 2005).
Another carefully orchestrated plan of media manipulation in
the film ‘Wag the Dog’ remarkably resembles the use of Video News
releases to enjoin certain sentiments in the public. In light of
the president return from China, Bream stages a ceremonial event–
An Albanian young girl and her grandmother thank the president
for his help in the country of Albania. Thus, the segment
broadcasted live in the movie serves to rationalize the fictional
war to the American public by showing the good fortune its bring.
This deliberate act of manipulation is virtually identical in the
first case the New York Times article acites, in which a jubilant
Iraqi-American says “Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.” to a
camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the
fall of Baghdad. The segment was produced by the U.S. State
Department.
However, the war on terrorism began before the war in Iraq
in Afghanistan and the Administration used video news releases to
justify and support the war in Afghanistan. A total of 59
segments, according to the Times article, were produced,
‘reporting’ how successful the U.S. war on Afghanistan had been.
The video news releases explained that a result of U.S. action,
Afghan women were ‘liberated,’ now being free to go to school and
participate in their country’s politics. One such video, featured
reporter Tish Clark who later learned that the segment was
government produced. Clark, following standard industry practice,
had edited the tape and read the script giving the segment the
reality of ‘real news.’ The segment was broadcast to millions of
viewers who were not made aware that the segment was a product of
the government. The effective blurring of the lines between ‘real
news’ and government or PR produced news, through censorship and
media complicity has lead to marriage between the media and the
government, in which the government is the greater benefactor.
The Complicity of the Media
In any marriage, one expects to find some storming an
shouting. But how much storming and shouting did the press do?
While each of the wars from Grenada to the Gulf elicited enough
anger from various journalists that new committees were formed,
with the expressed purpose to better accommodate the demands of
journalists in Wartime, Journalists consistently complied with
prima facie cases of military censorship rather than vigorously
challenge them..
The Grenada Invasion is case in point. A day before the
Grenada invasion, two ABC reporters captured footage of U.S. navy
jets and Marine helicopters on the neighboring island of
Barbados. The airplanes landed, transferring soldiers and
equipment to helicopters, and men in business suits to the Jets.
Sharon Sacks, one of the reporter called the U.S Embassy wanting
to find ou if the event was signal of invasion but was told it
was an evacuation of students(later shown to be false). When
this story was filed to ABC News, editor Robert Fyre declined to
run the story citing Washington stories that the prospective
invasion of Grenada was “preposterous.” Further comments from
Washington suggested that a U.S. carrier in the region was there
to ferry stranded foreigners, not prepare for invasion. All of
these were lies. Yet, the press did not run, lead with. or
featured this curious case of Government censorship and
deliberate misinformation in its newscasts (Hertsgaard, 1988).
John MacArthur, in the book, Second Front details many of the
cases in which top newspapers and Tv editors simply conceded to
the military, showing a nascent lack of vigilance in pursuit of
news and complicity with government censorship. After the failure
in of the National Media Pool system in the Grenada and Panama
invasions, another committee was created to address the problems
of the press and military in wartime. The compromise was to be
tried in the Gulf war but failed miserably. Journalists were
confined to hotels and could not independently report, a military
escort was necessary on each report; journalists in pools could
not choose stories and were instead assigned “slots” by the
Pentagon; Journalists stories had to undergo a “security review”
before they could be filed which essentially censorship. As a
result of rules Journalists agreed to in going into th Gulf War,
they were effectively prevented from reporting any other news
other than what the Pentagon wanted. Popular stories of the war
praised th accuracy of U.S. bombs, and exaggerated the might and
quantity of the Iraqi army. However, just as pre-
packaged news represent the most insidious ways of media
manipulation so does the conventional acceptance and use of Video
News releases in the Journalism industry is its most unsettling.
In a country that receives over 80 percent of its news from
television, what is one to make of the fact that much of what
seems like ‘news’ produced by the stations are, in fact VNR’S
produced by the government PR professionals? Are we to naively
assume that the seamless blending of sponsored news and ‘real
news’ has negligible impact? The specific purpose of Vnr’s is the
promotion of a product or ideology. The news media’s ostensibly
purpose is to report on different products whether they be
products or ideologies. As such, a primary feature of actual
journalism is criticism. In order to fulfill its function as an
informer, the journalist must be wary of promoting different
ideologies, either by short shifting an idea or lacking
vigilance in their reporting. The producers of VNR’s have a
decidedly different objective: the promotion of a product which
precludes criticism. Thus, there exists an essential tension
between the VNR’S and the practice of journalism.
But if VNR’S are common, then their must be reason for its
use. The primary argument for the use of VNR’S are its financial
benefits to stations: News Networks have radically downsized
while expanding coverage. The use of VNR’S is thus a cost-saving
measure that allows news organizations to gather footage that
would either be too expensive too be produced or what they cannot
afford at all. Unfortunately, while the argument explains the
widespread and conventional use, it says nothing about ethical
questions. There are in no Media Code of Ethics articulated any
standards for the use of VNR’S. While some codes state that, work
not produced by news organizations should be clearly labeled,
this can hardly be a sufficient. VNR’S still expound. not report
on or critique products or ideologies. As a result, the public is
still being fed a particular ideology by a news organization. Should
the government produced events of happy Afghan women be
accompanied by anything? Is merely noting that is a product of
the government sufficient curb the ideology produced( ‘the War is
good. Look at all the good’)? correcting falsities stated in
VNR’s sufficient? It is impossible to determine precisely how
images and videos affect audience perception but that they can
should give us caution in thinking that merely labeling
uncritical reporting is sufficient to prevent propagandizing.
The Impact of ‘Wag the Dog’ Cases
In ‘Wag the Dog,’ the result of media manipulation is
decidedly bleak: the Hollywood producer mysteriously ends up dead
and there remains public permanently deceived about non-existent
war. In real life, the consequences are not so different though
the casualty is the ability of the public to discern the truth.
In the film, some characters express worry that the public will
know or find out about the deception but Bream, who refuses to
assert the truth or falsity of any statement in the film gives a
devastating response to such naive sentiments:
“You watched The Gulf War. What do you see day after
day? The one smart bomb falling down a chimney. The
truth? I was in the building when we shot that shot. We
shot it in a studio in Falls Church, Virginia.1/10
scale model of a building.”
When asked sardonically asked if the above is true, Bream
responds:
“How the fuck do we know. You take my point?”
This is the crippling skepticism that results when the lines of
‘real news’ and government sponsored or public relations are
mixed. The ‘point’ is that the Gulf War images fed to journalists
could have been easily been faked by the government. Bream has
outlined a possible scenario in which the bombing could have been
fictionalize, asserts it as “truth” but resorts to agnosticism
when asked if what he asserts as true is indeed so. That is, how
can you tell the difference? We simply don’t know!
Moreover, Bream, argues in the film: it is the visceral
impact of the images that matter not there truth or falsity.
While the News media prides itself on its ability to issue public
statements correcting mistakes, by the time the media has
corrected misleading visual images, the point has already been
made. Says Bream:
“‘54, 40, or fight.’ What does that mean? ...’Remember
the Maine’ ‘Tippcecanoe and Tyler, too. They’re war
slogans. We remember the slogans but we can’t remember
the war...The Gulf War, smart bomb falling down a
chimney. 2,500 missions a day, 100 days. One video of
one bomb. The American People bought that War. War is
show business.”
And if there is no images? No memory such as the Grenadian
Invasion. How many people know of that War? Or remember it? The
point is that visual images, whether they communicate truth or
not have lasting impact. These facts were demonstrated in the
previous ‘Wag the Dog’ cases.
But of course this conclusion isn’t too distressing? After
all, the lesson, at least, for the public is to develop a
‘healthy skepticism” toward the Media itself. However, this
argument misses a crucial point: Journalists are supposed to be
the skeptics. Can the public be expected to have the same time to
do as much research as assumed of journalists? Can the public,
for instance, be expected to research reports from overseas? It
can easily be replied that a “healthy skepticism” simply entails
a suspension of judgment and compels the public to do no more
than acquiesce in the face of news. However, this is
insufficient. Journalists report information that is supposed to
inform the public: this information can then be used by the
public to act. Journalists do not present their work in a vacuum
of which there is no effect on public attention. Thus, the
concept of a “healthy skepticism,” while a valuable concept
ignores the demand this will put on a public now expected to
critically research the reports of those who are supposed to be
its critical researchers. Though it is unacceptable for the
public to take the media simply at face value, it is equally
unacceptable that Journalist could not be trusted enough to give
fair accounts in the absence of individual research.
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