Under Siege

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 13, 2006 10:52 AM

An information war is breaking out on multiple fronts, with journalists caught in the crossfire.

Federal investigators are looking into several national security leaks to the press. Government agencies are trying to muzzle staffers who don't toe the official line. Cartoonists are the latest to find their work denounced, with violent results in the Middle East.

And it doesn't stop there. Politicians are even trying to creatively edit what's said about them online.

All these pressure tactics are being employed in the name of influencing public opinion, which increasingly means manipulating information and controlling how -- and whether -- it is made public. Journalists, who are genetically disposed toward greater openness, are having a harder time fighting these battles because of declining public faith in their profession.

A small example: The Pentagon, which had been providing its annual budget two or three days in advance with an embargo on the news, refused to release the documents last Monday until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's 2 p.m. news briefing, making it impossible for reporters to ask him detailed questions.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says the practice was changed because of past violations of embargoes, and he defended the withholding of the budget (except for a news release) until Rumsfeld spoke. Otherwise, he says, "someone hits the 'send' key at the commencement of the briefing without any opportunity for the secretary to be able to talk about the budget and the bigger picture."

A larger example: James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist, told the New York Times last month that agency officials tried to "censor" him by insisting on reviewing his lectures, papers and interviews, after he called for a reduction in greenhouse gases tied to global warming.

The most controversial area by far involves national security. To journalists, the Times story disclosing the domestic surveillance program and The Washington Post report revealing the secret CIA prisons in Europe, are matters of both civil liberties and how taxpayers' dollars are being spent. To detractors, the newspapers are indifferent to whether their scoops undermine the war on terror. (The situation was reversed in the Valerie Plame leak, where some government officials wanted to out a CIA operative and many journalists believe Robert Novak should not have acted as a conduit for their effort.)

The most extreme forms of media orchestration involve cold cash: The Pentagon paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-U.S. stories. The Education Department paying commentator Armstrong Williams, who backed the president's program. Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy paying a freelancer to submit articles to a Birmingham newspaper that defended him during his fraud trial.

But there are many areas drenched in gray: Should a dissident bureaucrat or independent-minded scientist be able to speak freely to reporters, or should political appointees be able to choke off such communication in the name of message discipline? Rank-and-file journalists strongly favor the former, but guess what: Some news organizations don't allow their reporters to give interviews without permission, if at all.

Political cartoonists seem to be the new whipping boys, but The Post's Tom Toles is relatively lucky: When the Joint Chiefs of Staff objected to his cartoon depicting a quadruple-amputee soldier as a symbol of a war gone awry, all they did was send a letter denouncing it as tasteless. (No such letter went to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who pictured a camera crew ignoring a group of wounded soldiers, including an amputee, in search of ABC's Bob Woodruff. Perhaps that message was deemed acceptable.)

But the riots that greeted the publication of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad -- first by a Danish newspaper, then in solidarity by numerous European ones -- have prompted some soul-searching. Since the whole thing was devised as a free-speech exercise, the question is whether it was worth it to gratuitously offend followers of one religion. The fact that you can publish something doesn't mean it's necessarily a wise idea. At the same time, the violent protesters -- who attacked the embassies of governments that have no control over newspapers -- don't have the slightest interest in freedom of speech.

Perhaps the most surreal practitioners of information control are politicians channeling phony memoirist James Frey. The campaign of New York gubernatorial candidate William Weld altered two newspaper articles posted on its Web site to remove all negative references, the Times reported. And on the Wikipedia Web site -- a database maintained by volunteers -- an aide to Rep. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) removed an old promise that he would serve no more than four terms, while some Republicans deleted references to indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

With everyone scrambling for every conceivable advantage, it's important that journalists remain honest brokers of information. But in a world where they are being shot at, prosecuted, sued and stonewalled, that's increasingly hard to do.

Broadening the Spotlight

ABC's "World News Tonight" launched a series last week on the wounded of the Iraq war -- a subject close to anchor Elizabeth Vargas's heart.

Not only were her colleagues Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt seriously injured by a roadside bomb on Jan. 29, but "I am an Army brat," she says. "I grew up around bases with a dad who fought in a war. I know what it's like to cope with that."

Vargas says ABC has extensively covered the problems of veterans, but that "we were also reminded with what happened to Bob and Doug" that there is a growing group of people at home bearing the physical scars of the Iraq conflict, which has left 17,000 Americans wounded. "These are men who women who dedicate their lives to defending this country. They often have a difficult time emotionally, psychologically, physically and financially."

Vogt was transferred to an outpatient facility at Bethesda Naval Hospital last week, but Woodruff remains under medical sedation.

Asked about criticism that the injuries of two journalists are receiving far more media attention than those of so many soldiers, Vargas says she has tried to emphasize the others in the last two weeks. "Obviously Bob is well known," she says. "I think that's something you can turn to your advantage by re-shining the light on the people they were covering" in the military.

The first piece in the "Homefront" series, by Dean Reynolds, looked at two disabled veterans first interviewed by the network two years ago. An Iowa man who lost both legs has become a spokesman for veterans, while a Pennsylvania man who lost a leg and his eyesight was buoyed by a group called Homes for Our Troops, which is building him a house free of charge.

"It's about their triumphs, too," Vargas says. "This isn't just a downer."

Second-Hand Research

In a Washington Times profile of Sen. Barack Obama Friday, reporter Eric Pfeiffer described the portraits in the Illinois Democrat's personal office.

Pfeiffer also quoted Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott as saying Obama "needs to be a little more of a leader in the center if he really wants to have an impact," and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, as saying Obama "has not been the kind of strong leader people expected."

The problem is, Pfeiffer never interviewed Lott or Moulitsas -- who has accused him of "outright plagiarism" -- or visited Obama's office. The material was lifted from a Chicago Sun-Times piece last month.

"I definitely made a mistake in not including the attribution," says Pfeiffer, a former National Review Online writer who has been with the Times for just over a week. He says he believes he "intended" to credit the Sun-Times "and I didn't. I guess it's a fairly weak excuse, but it's an honest one."

Times Managing Editor Francis Coombs says Pfeiffer "acknowledged a stupid mistake. Needless to say, that's correct." The paper ran a correction Saturday, and Coombs said the editors will review Pfeiffer's other stories before deciding what action to take.

Furthermore . . .

Well, the first of the Abramoff photos has surfaced in Time , and while you need a really strong magnifying glass to spot Black Hat Jack in the background, this is not a grip-and-grin but a meeting between Bush and Indian tribal leaders:

"It shows a bearded Abramoff in the background as Bush greets an Abramoff client, Raul Garza, who was then the chairman of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas; Bush senior advisor Karl Rove looks on. The photograph was provided to TIME by Mr. Garza. The meeting took place in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House on May 9, 2001. Told about the photograph in January, the White House said it had no record that Abramoff was present at the meeting. Shown the photograph today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the White House had still found no record of Abramoff's presence but confirmed that it is Abramoff in the picture."

That would amount to a record, wouldn't it?

How long before this unfortunate incident becomes a metaphor for the war?

"Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a prominent Austin, Tex., lawyer on Saturday while the two men were quail hunting in South Texas, firing a shotgun at the man while trying to aim for a bird, a member of the hunting party said."

Lots of weekend pieces about a split on the right, such as this Philadelphia Inquirer story: "In their winter of discontent, many on the right are breaching Reagan's 11th commandment, which decrees that no Republican shall ever speak ill of another.

"And the target of their ire is President Bush.

"At the dawn of a crucial election year - and with all the polls indicating that the Democrats are poised to make gains in the House and Senate - the Bush White House is banking on a big, enthusiastic conservative turnout in November. But that will happen only if the Bush base calls a halt to its Bush-bashing.

"The bashing has been quite intense in recent days. Commentator Jonah Goldberg, miffed that Bush has piled up record deficits and boosted the size of government, writes that Bush 'is spending money like a pimp with a week to live.' Another, Fox News analyst Tony Snow, says that Bush's decision to shelve his Social Security privatization plan is 'an act of surrender.' Yet another, former Reagan domestic-policy adviser Bruce Bartlett, is releasing a book this month titled Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy ."

Like a pimp?

It must be a trend, there are two more in the Boston Globe. First, this one : "With crucial midterm elections less than nine months away, Republicans are expressing deep skepticism about President Bush's plans to cut social programs while promoting the extension of his tax cuts, saying the juxtaposition of the two GOP priorities could spur an election-year backlash."

And this one :

"The Republican family feud was laid bare in public last week at the Conservative Political Action Committee's annual confab. CPAC activists are a notoriously cranky bunch, quick to pounce on politician friends who stray toward the center. But this year the spears aimed at George W. Bush were especially sharp.

"It can't be a good sign for a White House hoping to maintain control of Congress next November when its one-time allies lump in the president with two of their perpetual bogeymen: John McCain and Ted Kennedy.

"Bush's budget-busting spending was a big reason for the foul mood. But two other issues captured the growing split between the president and a powerful conservative movement that twice helped him capture the Oval Office: immigration and the Medicare prescription drug plan."

One pro-military Iraq blogger is getting plenty of attention, says the LAT :

"More than one U.S. senator endorsed him. So did retired Lt. Col. Oliver North and platoons of American fighting men and women. Actor Bruce Willis called him the only correspondent 'telling the truth about what's happening in the war in Iraq.'

" Michael Yon may not be a household name, but he emerged last year as the reporter of choice for many conservatives and supporters of the war. His blog inspired so much buzz that by last month only 83 other blogs, out of about 26 million on the Internet, received more links from other websites.

"Yon's emergence from obscurity is emblematic of Internet-age journalism, in which a lone writer with little experience can build a significant following by deeply mining a specialized niche. In the blogosphere, opinions fly with abandon. Unconventional characters thrive who would make the mainstream media blanch. What big newspaper or television network, after all, would have taken a chance on a self-taught war correspondent who once killed a man in a barroom fight, and whose last venture had him pursuing an American cannibal around the globe?"

Sounds like a natural for cable news.

Peggy Noonan wasn't offended by the political criticism at Coretta Scott King's funeral:

"There was nothing prissy, nothing sissy about it. A former president, a softly gray-haired and chronically dyspeptic gentleman who seems to have judged the world to be just barely deserving of his presence, pointedly insulted a sitting president who was, in fact, sitting right behind him. The Clintons unveiled their 2008 campaign. A rhyming preacher, one of the old lions, a man of warmth and stature, freely used the occasion to verbally bop the sitting president on the head.

"So what? This was the authentic sound of a vibrant democracy doing its thing. It was the exact opposite of the frightened and prissy attitude that if you draw a picture I don't like, I'll have to kill you.

"It was: We do free speech here ."

Red State revels in news that Harry Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to Abramoff's Indian-tribe clients:

"Is all of this the end of the world? No. But it certainly shows that Reid was every bit as much in bed with Abramoff, and maybe more so, than many of the Republicans he is criticizing, and as such his ties to Abramoff will become a major liability to the Democrats' need to make the Abramoff issue a campaign theme this fall (as Reid himself has signaled it will be their main theme, if not their only theme). If there's nothing wrong with what Harry Reid did - a position Democrats will need to take if they don't want to throw their own leader under the bus - then the bar for a Republican scandal over ties to Abramoff will have to be set pretty high."

But radio talker Taylor Marsh isn't buying:

"The swiftboating of Senator Reid has begun. Republicans are trying to tie him to Jack Abramoff. Good luck. . . .

"Harry Reid accepts lobbying money. It's legal. It's politics. It's life in Washington. What it isn't is a pay to play pay off scheme like Jack Abramoff had going with Republicans.

"Senator Harry Reid takes money from gaming and Indians tribes, both of which happen to be in his constituency. How do I know? I live in Las Vegas."

At the HuffPost, Mark Kleiman pounces on news that Scooter says he was only following orders:

"If revealing classified information is illegal, then it's a crime, right?

"And George W. Bush promised that 'If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration,' right?

"Now it comes out that 'Scooter' Libby has testified that his 'superiors' authorized him to reveal classified information in an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson's account of his trip to Africa and thus to defend the idea that the Administration had a basis for claiming that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium in Niger.

"Libby's boss was Dick Cheney; Libby was Cheney's chief of staff. His only other 'superior' would have been . . . George W. Bush.

"So either Cheney or Bush (or both) ordered the release of classified information, which according to Bush is a crime. And anyone who commits a crime has to leave the administration.

"So which is it? Is Bush going to ask for Cheney's resignation, or offer his own?"

Ann Althouse , the Wisconsin law professor and blogger, wonders whether there's a place online for someone not entrenched in either ideological camp:

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a political moderate. More than any ideology, I care about rational discourse. In the year that I've been blogging I've taken a lot of different positions, some left and some right. What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times you've written posts that take their side. Why is this happening? I find it terribly, terribly sad.

"UPDATE: My colleague Nina, a self-confessed 'lefty,' writes that she has been slammed from the right. And I'm reminded that I should say, I don't think all the irrational blogging is on the left. I'm just saying that I'm struck by the way the right perceives me as a potential ally and uses positive reinforcement and the left doesn't see me as anything but an opponent -- doesn't even try to engage me with reasoned argument. Maybe the left feels beleaguered these days, but how do they expect to make any progress if they don't see the ways they can include the people in the middle? If you look around and only see opponents and curl up with your little group of insiders, you are putting your efforts into insuring that you remain a political minority."