information war free-for-all

For the second time in a month, I am surprised by the official reaction of the United States to international incidents—I don’t know what else to call them—that it did not attempt to control.

On October 8, I wrote about the controversy that had erupted over  so-called “insurgent videos” from Iraq that were available on YouTube and Google Video, which were matched by videos posted from our side of the conflict. I noticed the military’s hands-off approach:

Presumably, the military hopes the videos from our guys will also act as “force multipliers” for our side. It’s part of the information war: we can’t afford for that to be asymmetrical. We need to answer fire with fire. And so the gruesome videos appear, until YouTube or Google deems them offensive.

Now comes the insurgent sniper video showing “insurgents” targeting and hitting U.S. troops that was obtained and aired—endlessly, it seems—by CNN. This second incident has caused a much bigger public controversy, with several outraged congressmen writing to Rumsfeld to demand that the videos be taken off YouTube and GoogleVideo.

No response from Rumsfeld yet, as far as I know. The president, however, is playing it cool:

[Rep. Duncan] Hunter said he suspected that CNN’s hunger for ratings might have factored into the decision to air the video.

In their letter to Rumsfeld, the congressmen recommended that “all CNN reporters presently embedded with U.S. soldiers be removed from their embedded positions immediately.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow declined yesterday to second-guess CNN’s decision.

“Those are editorial judgments, and I’m not going to tell you what you do and don’t run,” Snow said at a White House briefing. “This is a free country.”

He said, however, that the president worries that insurgents are providing such images in an effort to break the will of the American people.

“It’s not going to work,” Snow said.

Snow can afford to play it cool while the hotheads in Congress go way over the top and do Bush’s job for him by demanding that the government censor the Internet. Which of course is completely undemocratic and illiberal, not to mention idiotic. However, one idiocy from the shrill right wing doesn’t need to be matched by an idiocy from the shrill left wing. But guess what?

Jeffrey Dvorkin, formerly the ombudsman for NPR and now executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists in Washington, thinks that CNN “did an important journalistic job in reporting this.”  Then he generously

said Hunter and others were free to criticize CNN, a frequent target of conservative media critics. But he noted the timing of the complaints: a few weeks before the midterm elections.

The San Diego Union-Tribune helpfully goes on to explain the context:

In recent months, dozens of graphic, insurgent-made videos showing attacks on U.S. troops have been posted on YouTube and other Internet sites.

YouTube has removed many of the tapes due to complaints from users.

But Dvorkin is utterly misleading in his condemnation, because people are specifically condemning a cable news network—which is, presumably, seen by more viewers than are YouTube videos—for airing what they consider a snuff film. And the Union-Tribune is equally misleading in itsreporting, because it fails to draw the distinction between videos posted on YouTube and video aired in heavy rotation on CNN. Unless CNN now plays second fiddle to YouTube in influence. Which the paper ought to report if that’s what it’s suggesting, because it would be kind of mind-blowing.

The hands-off reaction of our government and military is what interests me most about these stories. I wonder if it’s because they know they can’t control the media war (they can only play it) or because they suspect that condemning CNN—or giving any kind of official reaction—would enhance the effectiveness of this kind of terrorist weapon.