Page 29 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

18 Toby Miller
and domestic security failings – virtually nothing on US foreign policy, minerals
exploitation, and militarism. This was in keeping with the history of US news
coverage of terrorism – enough with the aetiology, let’s moralize (Traugott and
Brader 2003: 183–184, 186–187). Lead New York Times reporter Richard
Bernstein’s embarrassing volume on September 11 (2002) eschewed anything
even approximating a serious discussion of US foreign policy in its pious
romanticization, while his soon-to-be-disgraced Executive Editor Howell Raines
referred in the Preface to Hiroshima’s decimation by the US as having arisen
‘from dictatorial passions run amok’ in Japan (2002: xi). All historical perspec-
tive was lost. Terrorism is regarded either as a struggle over ideas or feelings –
never as an example of political violence against civilians that derives from
material causes (Schlesinger et al. 1983: 2, 5).
When a sense of history, geography, or language is needed, who receives the call?
The right-wing think tanks that dominate Washington policy on the Middle East have
sought to discredit area studies across US universities, especially Middle Eastern
programmes. The Washington Institute for Near East Studies is the key front organiza-
tion for the Republican Party, while institutions like the American Jewish Congress,
Campus Watch, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (run by the Vice-
President’s wife) warn against ‘Middle Eastern Arabs’ in universities, and place
conservatives in vital opinion-making fora that feed into TV current affairs, such as
the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, the Los Angeles
Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (Abrahamian 2003; Beinin
2003: 135; Brynen 2002; Davidson 2002; Merriman 2004; Whitaker 2002). There
are over 300 right-wing think tanks in Washington, dealing with topics from sexuality
to foreign policy. They hire ghost-writers to make their resident intellectuals’ prose
attractive, as part of a project that is concerned more with marketing opinion than
conducting research – for each ‘study’ they fund is essentially the alibi for an op-ed
piece. The government also establishes front organizations that select, train, and
promote apparently independent figures. The State Department financed the Iraq
Public Diplomacy Group, which coached Iraqis to appear on US television and speak
positions prepared for them, on the grounds that they would be more effective than
Yanquis. For instance, the Iraqi National Congress was the creation and creature of
the CIA, via the Agency’s public-relations consultant, the Rendon Group (Alterman
2003: 82–83; Rampton and Stauber 2003: 55, 43).
Progressive think tanks had a sixth share of media quotation compared to these
institutions during the 1990s (Alterman 2003: 85). In 2002, conservative groups
received 47 per cent of think-tank citations by the mainstream media, centrists
41 per cent, and leftists 12 per cent. The latter was the lowest proportion for
progressives since 1998 (Dolny 2003). Media attention does not correlate with
scholarly esteem or achievement, and the academics most likely to be interviewed
are those who have worked in government (Claussen 2004: 56). Ninety per cent of
news interviewees on the major networks are white men born between 1945 and
1960 (Love 2003: 246). That might expose us to the cohort that is responsible for
most of our troubles, but not to disinterested critiques – or critiques from interested
positions that are at variance with the tenor and word of the White House.