Information warfare

In my first column of the semester, I criticized the American media for not questioning Bush's foreign policy and for collaborating with the US government by agreeing to censor material that "could aid terrorists." I wrote, "practices such as 'self-censorship' and skewed reporting create a misperception of global politics among the American public... we're not getting the whole story" ("Yellow Journalism," 9/24).

But over our Thanksgiving break, I discovered that the problem is much more serious than I originally thought it was. Not only is the government manipulating domestic media organizations in order to bend and censor news stories in the US, but the Pentagon is providing foreign news agencies with news reports of its own _ and possibly phony ones.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, the Pentagon created the, now closed, Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). Their mandate was to spread US government propaganda and disinformation throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Western Europe. Three months after the office began operation, The New York Times reported that the new office was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations"(Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad, 2/19/02).

The next day, one of the officials responsible for oversight of the OSI, undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith, was asked if the office would recruit an outside organization to "spread false or misleading information to the news media." Feith reportedly answered, "We are going to preserve our ability to undertake operations that may, for tactical purposes, mislead an enemy" (Agence France Presse, Pentagon will not lie to the public, but may act to mislead enemy: official 2/20/02).

Many were critical of the OSI, saying that any false news items sent to foreign media organizations would almost certainly be picked up by media organizations in the US. In fact, there is no way that an interesting story in a major news organization abroad would not be seen by US media groups. The impact of such misinformation could destroy the credibility of media. This in fact would be lying to the US public _ not just misleading, as my previous column suggests.

The Pentagon closed the OSI within one week of the Times report, stating that the increase in negative media attention kept the office from operating effectively. We were led to believe that with the office, so would the disinformation campaign go out the window. We were wrong.

Apparently, ditching the name was nothing but a public relations trick. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield has suggested that although the OSI does not exist, the programs remain intact. According to a Department of Defense news transcript dated 11/18/02, Rumsfield told reporters, "If you want to savage this thing [Office of Strategic Influence] fine. I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have."

That the federal government is manufacturing false news reports and providing them to foreign news agencies in the hopes of misinforming enemies abroad brings up a whole host of ethical issues. We are at risk of being fed bogus information from media organizations that we have always trusted (most of us anyway). This would fundamentally change the world of media.

What's worse is that the American public has been mislead about the existence of these activities and according to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (a media watchdog organization), "no major US media outlets _ no national broadcast television news shows, no major US newspapers, no wire services or major magazines _ have reported Rumsfield's remarks." Why is that?

Geo-political wars, which used to be fought between soldiers on a battlefield and were relatively self-contained, have turned into something nearly indistinguishable from its original: a sort of information warfare. This sort of thing has been a common practice to a lesser degree against enemy nations, but it has now grown to target allies and major foreign media organizations.

The Pentagon's foreign disinformation campaign could be detrimental to democracy. While it is true that the intended targets of these disinformation campaigns are abroad, the American media landscape will most certainly be adversely affected. People need accurate information in order to make intelligent decisions about important foreign policy decisions that the country is debating.

The information from which we base our opinions on must be accurate. Otherwise, we will not know what is true and what has been fabricated. We would be devoid of any objective information and our agency would be politically meaningless. Truth certainly is the first casualty of war. But this time, the phrase takes on a whole different meaning.