Uri Avnery, 12 April 2003, Gush Shalom
"This war was waged simultaneously in two arenas: in the field and on television. There was hardly any resemblance between the two.
Television was an accompaniment to previous wars. But in this war, television has become an integral part of the war itself, one of its major battlefields, if not the most important one. From now on, TV is a component of the armed forces, along with the army, the navy and the air force. Like them it is directed by the command structure.
The aim is to engender in the mind of the home audience, world public opinion and perhaps even in the mind of the enemy a picture of the war that has no connection with reality. That is easy, because there is no more mendacious instrument than television. He who controls it, controls the picture of reality, and thereby the mind of the viewer.
For example: in order to support the claim that the aim of the war was to 'liberate' the Iraqi people, it was essential to show the Iraqi population welcoming the liberators with joy. Television delivered the goods.
Nothing easier: simply fill the frame with a hundred jumping and shouting people, in order to create the impression the whole country is jumping and shouting. Nobody will ask: Who the hell are they? Where did they come from? Who called them together? Did they get anything in return? Aren't they, by chance, the same people who jumped and shouted a few days ago 'with our soul and blood we will redeem you, Saddam?' And where are the other 5 million inhabitants of Baghdad? What do they think and feel?
During five very long hours all Western TV stations (and Al Jazeera as well) concentrated on showing a crowd of Iraqis trying to bring down a giant statue of Saddam in the center of Baghdad. A discerning eye could notice that the crowd was no more than a hundred people, certainly half of them journalists. The statue-smashers acted manifestly for the camera. But television-wise, that was 'the Iraqi people'. This picture will remain fixed in the mind of the world as the defining image of the 'liberation.'
In the Iraqi campaign, every Western (and, of course, Israeli) journalist was a soldier with a job to do under the command structure. The point was reached that Donald Rumsfeld, in a Washington briefing, directly ordered the American journalists in Iraq to interview Iraqis and get stories from them about Saddam's atrocities. Sure enough, within hours such stories came pouring in.
Joseph Goebbels would be bursting with envy. George Orwell would not be surprised."
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