25 Years Since Pentagon Papers:
A Dismal Record

excerpted from the book

Wizards of Media OZ

by Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

June 5, 1996

A quarter of a century ago, the First Amendment took a deep breath. On June 13,1971, portions of secret documents appeared in the New York Times-and a federal court swiftly issued a restraining order. The Washington Post grabbed the baton of press freedom and ran with more excerpts. Weeks later, both newspapers-and the American people-won a momentous victory when the Supreme Court ruled ~ their favor.

Many were thrilled to see the Nixon administration lose its bid to suppress the Pentagon Papers, which illuminated the US. government's nonstop lies about the Vietnam War. For a decade, news media had done much to propagate those lies. But in 1971, with antiwar opinion widespread, newspaper editors moved to expose a history of falsehoods.

Today, it would be pleasant to look back on publication of the Pentagon Papers as a turning point for media coverage of the U.S. military. However, instead of carrying forward the honorable legacy of the Pentagon Papers battle, America's most powerful news outlets have waved the journalistic white flag.

When the US. government set out to invade Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, major media echoed the official themes. In autumn 1990, the deployment of U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf paralleled a pre-war media buildup. While the British press debunked White House claims that the purpose was to defend Saudi Arabia, the media spin was very different in the United States.

For the man who'd given the Pentagon Papers to the press, the fall of 1990 felt an awful lot like the fall of 1964. "I was just appalled," Daniel Ellsberg told us a few days ago. "The American newspapers seemed as willing to collaborate in this hoax-this approach to war being carried on covertly-as they had been 25 years earlier, when I was in the Pentagon making plans for the bombing of North Vietnam."

Ironically, Ellsberg singled out two of the worst 1990 offenders: the New York Times and the Washington Post.

As soon as the first American missiles hit Baghdad in early 1991, mass media leapt into a cheerleading frenzy. With Iraqis- many of them civilians-dying at a rate of thousands per day, news accounts were upbeat. Sanitized phrases like "collateral damage" referred to people perishing under American fire power.

"We lie by not telling you things," a Pentagon official commented to Newsday in a moment of candor. That's where journalism is supposed to come in-telling the public what the government wants to keep under wraps.

A few Sundays ago, the symbolism was acute when a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery unveiled a small memorial for 21 American soldiers who died in secret combat during the 1980s. Back then, the American public remained unaware that U.S. troops were fighting guerrillas in the countryside of E1 Salvador-where a total of several thousand American servicemen, 55 at a time, played key combat roles such as calling in deadly air strikes.

For most media, the ceremony at Arlington was a time-warp curiosity. Even the better coverage was severely flawed. On CBS, 60 Minutes aired a May 26 segment that lauded the honor of the U.S. soldiers who'd been deprived of combat ribbons-and ignored the Salvadoran people deprived of their lives.

One of the intrepid journalists who managed to uncover Central American realities, Robert Parry, worked for the Associated Press and Newsweek as the 1980s unfolded. He recalls that "editors and bureau chiefs in Washington were far too easily seduced by slick government propagandists, too willing to accept the smear campaigns directed against honest reporters."

Truth is the first casualty of war, but it need not be a fatality.

"If the American people knew that their tax dollars were being used to arm brutal armies which were butchering political dissidents, killing children and raping young girls, then support for the Reagan-Bush policies would have evaporated," Parry says. "With a few notable exceptions, the Washington news media went merrily along with the lies." Sadly, not much has changed.

Wizards of Media OZ