Interview with Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org, News Dissector

July 1st, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Mary Joyce

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Why don't you go on ahead and introduce yourself.
DANNY SCHECHTER: And then?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And also what you're doing here at Media Channel and your blog.
SCHECHTER: I'm Danny Schechter known as "The News Dissector." I edit MediaChannel.org, the world's largest online media issues network. I write a blog every morning. I write books about media issues, and I'm making a film about the media coverage of the war in Iraq. So I'm a busy guy and I'm making some time out to talk to you about this because it's so important.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, great. And can you talk a little bit about also your history of working as a producer?
SCHECHTER: Yeah, I mean I come to this work -- I come to criticizing media having worked in major media. I was part of the startup team at CNN. I worked for ABC news for eight years. And so I have more than a passing acquaintance with how networks operate. And we ourselves as producers at Global Vision have produced programming to public television stations and cable channels for many, many years. So we've worked in the industry. We're not outsiders in that sense -- Although in terms of our perspective, we're far more critical probably than many people working in the business.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you give your evaluation of both the print and television news media leading up to the war in Iraq?
SCHECHTER: Well, you know -- The problem is when you have what's called a "buy in" -- when the media institutions in our country basically have a consensus with the government, and have been persuaded that there's a threat to the United States that Saddam Hussein is this menace to the world -- when we're told that there are these weapons that could be turned over to terrorists. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center, there's a lot of belief that suspended. People are saying, "My God! We've got to do something. We can't let this happen again." And that environment -- kind of patriotic correctness -- a lot of the media organizations basically became a transmission belt for government claims and did not challenge them. Now, a couple of -- a year later, we begin to have some media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post carrying articles saying, "Oh my God. We didn't do a very good job." But back then, they were basically "enlisted" in this great crusade -- this war against terror -- this battle against the evil-doers. And you had an administration that's saying, "Hey! It's either us or them. Who do you side with?" And many media companies said, "Well, we side with you, of course." -- You know, "We're scared too." And in that environment we saw uncritical, patriotically-correct coverage that was jingoism posing as journalism.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, great. And there's -- It seems to me that the -- Iraq certainly was covered. And there's the sins of omission and the sins of commission. So could you first describe the nature of the coverage that was happening?
SCHECHTER: Well first of all, most coverage is not about Iraq. Most coverage of the world is not about the world. It's about Americans in the world and American policy about the world. So when Iraq was a friend of the United States when it was fighting against Iran and being subsidized by the United States -- Guess what? -- Iraq was treated in a very friendly way by our media. [Interruption] ...

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: ...the nature of that coverage -- What types of the things were they covering?
SCHECHTER: Well, you know -- In the history of Iraq, Iraq was an important country to the United States, particularly after the Mossadeq government was elected in Iran. There was this wave of nationalism throughout the Middle East. The United States wanted to put a break on that to some degree, and Saddam Hussein was this sort of -- you know, a thug -- this Baathist party, which was very convenient for American policy makers at that time to support. When he gets the power, his first really task is to kill all the communists. He was seen as in the cold war as being a great friend of the United States until certain differences began to emerge, both in terms of American policy in the region and American policy towards Iraq. And the Reagan administration -- you know, Saddam Hussein was a friend of the United States basically. You know, he gassed the Kurds, but probably with gas sold to him by the United States. So there were a lot of stories that weren't being told -- About who Saddam was -- about human rights in Iraq -- about American strategy in the Middle East, and the relationship with dictatorships and royal families, and all kinds of people who were mostly interested in pumping oil out of the region. And the American oil companies were mostly interested in getting that oil pumped to us when it was in our interest to do so. So yeah, Iraq as a country and as a history is unknown to most Americans. Therefore it's easy when you simplify it. You simplify it into being like -- there's this one guy who's a horrible dictator. -- One man, he's like Hitler -- And the rest of Iraq kind of fades from view. All you're looking at is this one guy -- it's him -- and Iraq becomes Saddam in an age of images and impressions. So, the United States waged a very effective propaganda campaign in the world media to demonize Iraq and demonize Saddam Hussein. The war took place in Kuwait -- was a dispute between Kuwait and Iraq. Iraq invaded Kuwait with the essential agreement of the United States. They said, "Look, That's your -- We don't get involved in inter-Arab disputes." And yet, he goes in there, and the U.S. changes its mind. Decides to make an example of him. We have Gulf War I -- Followed by 10 or 12 years of sanctions, which were crushing to the people of Iraq that were never really covered. Okay? And as a consequence of all this, when the 2003 invasion -- the run-up to the war -- most people didn't have much background or context for understanding what was happening.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, great. And could you talk about -- You made some analogies about sports, and there's no questioning of why. And can you describe how the coverage leading up to the war was like sports coverage, and --
SCHECHTER: Well, you know -- The coverage of the war was like a sporting event. You know, we went from here to there. We invaded Iraq. It was kind of a straight line of a series of maneuvers and plays -- We'll go into Nasseria. We'll go around the back. We'll head to -- through Fallujah, and come into Bagdad in the back door. It was like a sports commentary. But in the run-up to the war, in the -- There was a kind of different game being played. It was a game, but it was a different game. And it was a game of trying to build support for the notion of unilateral invasion -- pre-emptive invasion. And the Bush administration announced its policies. Then the Powell people and others said, "Look. You gotta go through the UN." They tried to get a second resolution, and they failed. And then they said, "Well, the hell with the UN. We're gonna go in to enforce UN resolutions," which of course the UN didn't ask them to do. And that led -- you know, kind of created a pretext for an invasion, which was supported by some countries -- a few. And was opposed by most people in the world. On February 15th 2003, you had two main forces in the world -- according to the New York Times -- The force of global public opinion against the war, and the power of the United States waging the war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you talk about the branding of the coverage -- "Road to War?" -- "Showdown With Saddam" -- "Countdown: Iraq"?
SCHECHTER: Well -- Packaging and branding is part of our television system. And we found in the networks that by creating special events, and giving those special events a signature -- there own music, there own graphics, there own sort of positioning -- we're able to promote and market them better. And so we've seen this: "Election 2000" -- "The O.J. Trial" -- "Clinton on Trial." These kinds of packaging approaches is part of the way modern television is packaged. So the war was packaged this way also. But so was Gulf War I. And so was a lot of other conflicts in the same way. Because if you create a sense of crisis around something, more viewers will be drawn to watch it. So by hyping it up with music, effects, what they call "video enhancement elements"-- graphics and the like -- you're trying to bring more people to the tube, which translates into higher ratings and higher revenues.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk about the balance between the bottom line and the integrity of the news that -- ?
SCHECHTER: Well you know -- Our media system is a commercial media system. It's increasingly run by fewer and fewer companies that have bottom line concerns that drive their strategies. If you spend 19 billion dollars as Disney did to buy ABC, you have to pay on that money. You're gonna have a big mortgage so to speak, as if it was a house. And where's it gonna come from? It's gonna come from sales. It's gonna come from cut backs and cutting your costs. It's gonna come from trying to be as popular as possible to attract audiences which will attract advertisers. So this is the kind of way the media functions. The television networks are there to sell eyeballs to advertisers. That's their real business. Okay? And when you're in that real business, you want to try to find a way to attract people to news. Now, what began to happen was that people stop -- fewer and fewer people were watching news. Or because of cable, the market was being segmented and divided. So you didn't have the same major audiences that network news once had. You had all these cable news networks. You had news all around the clock. As a result people weren't all gathering around their TV's at 6 o'clock for the network news. So the news business had changed. And as it became more hyper-competitive, it began to use entertainment techniques to sell itself. So you had a merger between news biz and show biz. And it's that merger in which the war became a subset. We had "mili-tainment." During elections, we have "electo-tainment." It's an entertainment-driven strategy, which is very successful in bringing audiences in. Most news doesn't build big audiences because -- Why? A) The way it's presented is often very boring. It's often very repetitive. It's often -- people don't learn anything new. As a result, there's been a tune out of a lot of news. And that's why networks have resorted to news magazines, and other formats to try to bring more viewers to the tube. -- I'm going on too long, aren't I?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No.
SCHECHTER: I'm giving you a lot of history of analysis here.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No, a lot of that is good.--
SCHECHTER: You ask me to talk about something, and I just keep talking.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No, it's fine.
SCHECHTER: I'm like in a yak situation here. Go ahead.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Can you talk a little bit about how they covered the legality of the whole intervention.
SCHECHTER: Well you know, ordinarily if the United -- if a government -- Ordinarily if a government makes a claim, you then subject that claim to the test of truth. You go out and find experts to comment on it.-- "How reasonable an interpretation of the law is this?" If however, you sort of see the war as being in your interest too -- as a network as a way to build viewer-ship and build revenues -- then you don't want to create -- throw too many monkey wrenches into the whole mix here. And so, we've seen that.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And --
SCHECHTER: So, legality of the war? There were a lot of legal experts challenging it. Were they interviewed? Were they on the air very much? I didn't see them. Did you?

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No. Not at all. Now -- Do you feel the television news actually rewards the type of war correspondence -- pentagon correspondence with -- Is that what's valued within --
SCHECHTER: Well, we have a beat system. Okay? If you're covering sports, you go to sports division. If you're covering the military, you go to the military correspondence. You're covering the White House, you go to the White House correspondence. They have a beat system of how things get covered. Now the problem is -- People who are on a beat want access from that beat. They don't want to be cut out or frozen out. So they tend to get along by going along. They don't ask too many disturbing questions. They don't challenge too much because they don't want to be isolated. Let's say there's a breaking story and they go to your competitor instead of you. So this is a way of enforcing a kind of conformity of approach -- a deferential approach to coverage. That's why at the presidential press conferences you have all these people you are -- according to one author -- "on bended knee." They're treating the presidency and the president with incredible deference, and not challenging the coverage. In 2004, there was an Irish journalist who challenged President Bush. And he was in a state of shock that somebody would really come back at him and challenge him, because we don't see that kind of journalism in America. We do see it in other countries. And so -- You have a system here of almost a kind of collegial approach. It's not a confrontational approach. It's not a controversial approach. And the consequence of it is that people in authority are perceived as being authoritative. If the Secretary of Defense says something, "Well my God! He's the -- I mean, he should know..." In other words, you don't question his political agenda. What is the basis of his assertion? Could he have a reason for stating the information the way he has? In other words, there's a tendency to be more accepting -- of the media. And that's one of the big problems we have here. But what I'm talking about here are institutional problems. Most people who are anti-war people and activists -- they're like partisan -- "He's a liar!" -- "He's doing --" They don't look at the institutions -- The way institutions work and why they work the way they do, and how to try to challenge that. And that's the problem here. You look at the coverage and you say, "Oh my God! They lied." But this is their routine of coverage. This is how they cover everything. Okay? If it bleeds, it leads in Iraq. If it bleeds, it leads in Harlem. It's the same approach to journalism. It's top down. Okay? It's not bottom up. It's not outside in. It's inside -- It's an approach where the guy goes and stands in front of a building with a microphone and -- "Behind me is the -- such-and-such-a-thing happening." We don't see it. We don't really get access to it. So there's a whole way in which news and reality are often worlds apart. And we saw that during the Iraq war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: ... Let's see, talk a little bit about -- On the eve of war, you talk a little bit in your book about almost being on New Year's Eve --
SCHECHTER: ... Well you know, it was like the countdown. It was like the countdown to New Years Eve. The big clock was gonna come down -- "Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong" -- "24 Hours to War" -- "Showdown with Saddam." We saw this kind of hyping up the idea of confrontation and conflict. We didn't see -- "Let's find out how can we avoid this? What are conflict resolution experts --? What are things that could be done? Why is this inevitable? Why do we have to do this this way?" And that's the big problem, that this is not really questioned.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, and some isolated incidence of that happened during the build-up. Talk a little bit about Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein...
SCHECHTER: ...Dan Rather interviews Saddam Hussein. He's got "the big get," as we call it in television. He's in his hotel room primping -- he reports on it -- He's looking at the mirror. He's asking his questions. What will Saddam say? He's organizing his interview for this. CBS meanwhile, not only has the Iraqi translator, but has a Hollywood actor with an Iraqi accent who's actually translating. So it's sort of a show business effort. They're upset because the Iraqis want to shoot it. CBS can't shoot it. So there's this concern about "Will they get the story?" and "Will they get it out?" In the end, Saddam Hussein says, "I would like to be in a TV debate with Bush." Of course, the White House dismisses it. Does CBS try to stage a debate? Do they try to call for a debate? No, of course not. They just go along with it. And the whole idea was "See the big bad wolf". And that was Saddam Hussein in this interview, who was actually pretty reasonable. Now of course, he's a deceptive person also. He's got his own agenda. You know he's propagandizing. He's coming from a different worldview -- clearly -- than from Bush. But for most Americans it was hard for them to understand, because he'll make a reference to something -- "On March 1st, 1991 -- such-and-such." Nobody remembers that. Nobody knows what he's talking about. And so -- We present information stripped of context and background. And the Dan Rather interview is really to put Dan Rather on the same level as Saddam Hussein. It was like the two power sources in the world -- Television and The Man who is the man that the United States loves to hate. It was like a championship wrestling match...

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: ... A hypothetical question -- If you were working at ABC -- What type of stories that you saw within the print media would you -- may have gone after?
SCHECHTER: Well first of all, I'm unusual because I'm exposed to coverage all around the world. I'm not just focused on American coverage. So I can see what's being reported in England. What's being reported by Al-Jazeera. What's being reported in the Middle East, and what-not. And often, it's very different types of information and the context are very different. So the problem is -- Once you get locked into a logic -- it's like certain TV logic -- once you frame the story -- say, "This is the story, and only this is the story" -- Then other information gets screened out immediately. And that's one of the problems -- that we're getting a kind of script, a kind of story line. And this is what the administration did very well in this war. They used storytelling techniques rather than political pronouncement techniques. Okay? They told a story because they knew Americans respond to that.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you give some examples of what kind of stories --
SCHECHTER: Well, Jessica Lynch would be a good example of one story later on in the war. But the whole thing about Iraq -- There was a propaganda war going on -- Information Warfare to discredit anything the Iraqis said -- not to give them a real opportunity to explain their case -- not to go to 3rd parties who might have other points of view that would be relevant to all of this. It was presented in a way as a kind of boxing event, "The World Championship of War." And we're gonna kick his but. And that was basically -- And Americans were saying, "Yeah! Let's go do it! After all, look what he did to the World Trade Center!" You know, 44% of the public thought that there were Iraqi's on the planes that hit the World Trade Center. Where did they find that out? It wasn't even reported. It was an inference. It was an impression. It was non-verbal communication. It was like an effort to demonize the other guy. And people believed it -- they connected dots that weren't there -- in their head.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you talk about the pattern of the Bush Administration to try to discredit the UN inspections process? And how the media in a way adopted that?
SCHECHTER: Well, you know -- The UN was essentially -- particularly by the conservative media...
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Hold. Go ahead...
SCHECHTER: The UN was treated as some sort of foreign organ on American soil. It was like the enemy. Murdock press attacked the UN as "cheese-eating, surrender monkeys." The United States media -- George Will and others -- said, 'The US should pull out of the UN. Because the UN is clearly hostile to our agenda -- Dominated by these small countries that are trying to control everything. They're kind of obstructing. They're full of contradictions. They're full of hypocrisy. We are pure. They are not.' And this was the line that we saw. Most people don't know much about the UN. Actually 62% of the American people support the UN. There's a high approval rating for the UN. But they don't really get much information about the UN. And in this particular case, when you start talking about UN resolutions -- "Security Council Resolution 12-12-4-3, and subsection II, and blah, blah" -- your mind glazes over. You can't pay attention -- "What is this about?" And people are speaking in foreign languages with translation. We never see that on American television -- So it was foreign. It was something that -- it was very easy to characterize. When Colin Powell went to the UN, he tried to use modern communication techniques. He went to a PowerPoint presentation. He went to pictures and audio to prove his case. And afterwards people say, "It was brilliant!" Now Powell is apologizing for it saying, 'Well, he was badly advised. He didn't have all the facts." You know, it was just not true. But it sounded good. It looked good. And on television, perception means more than reality.