DR01@CARNEGIE.MAILNET (08/14/86)
A few months ago I sent the following messages off to a bunch of
friends. It occurred to me that people out there in net-land might be
interested in this stuff, so I'm sending it on. There will be a
second message like this immediately following, and future messages as
I get the stuff, unless people object. I'm cross-posting this to both
ARMS-D and POLI-SCI because I think it would be of interest to readers
of both lists (of course, the moderators may or may not choose to
include it in both), so if it is included in both digests and you read
both, forgive the duplication of a long message.
By the way, this material has a copyright ((C) 1986 New York
University) but the copyright notice says nothing about not
reproducing it, so I presume that (a) it's kosher for me to post this
here, and (b) if you in turn reproduce it you should probably include
the copyright information contained in this sentence.
======================================================================
Date: Tue 18 Mar 86 13:25:29-EST
From: D. M. Rosenblum <DR01@TE.CC.CMU.EDU>
Subject: The Press and The Arms Race
New York University has set up a Center for War, Peace, and the News
Media, which publishes a bi-monthly (every other month) journal called
Deadline. I just got the first issue of Deadline, dated March/April
1986.
The first issue of Deadline had the following lead article, that I
think may be of some interest to some of us who have been debating the
worthiness of the American news media. I have borrowed the Scribe
command for italics (@i{italicized text}) to indicate italics in the
original.
======================================================================
`A Range of Opinion As Narrow As Scarlett O'Hara's Waist'
Questions--dozens of them--were the logical response to Mikhail
Gorbachev's surprise offer last January to commence reducing by half
the number of nuclear weapons capable of reaching the other
superpower's territory; eliminate intermediate-range weapons in
Europe; extend the Soviet test ban; and eventually destroy all nuclear
weapons by the year 2000.
Might he be serious? Why would he make such an offer? What does
it tell us about the new Soviet leader and his arms control agenda?
Should both sides even risk the complete elimination of nuclear
weapons? Is there a way the U.S. might respond to test the Soviet
strategy? Is it worth negotiating S.D.I. to pursue the plan? Should
the U.S. join the Soviet moratorium on testing? What might be gained,
or lost? And why did the offer take the Reagan administration so much
by surprise?
Journalists might have chewed over these questions for weeks,
seeking out the views of the arms control community (both left and
right), the allies, the grass roots peace movement, scientists, and
Soviet scholars, as well as the administration. What we were fed,
however, was the administration's view. The range of opinion in the
press was as narrow as Scarlett O'Hara's waist. It started with the
president's "We're very grateful" for the offer, and moved to tougher
assessments that it was utopian, or cynical, or just more propaganda
to befuddle the West.
The plan was first reported by television on Wednesday, Jan. 15.
What analysis there was appeared on the 15th, 16th and 17th. The
Soviets stretched the story through another news cycle on the 18th
with a rare Saturday press conference in Moscow. And by the 19th it
was gone; the waters of the arms control debate barely rippled. The
collective response of the press, with a couple of notable exceptions,
was a yawn. The administration's view, including its continuing
refusal to join in the test ban, was accepted without debate, let
alone challenge. Most of the intriguing questions were never asked.
Below is a brief rundown of how some key newspapers, magazines, and
television programs reported the proposal between the 15th and the
19th of January:
CBS aired the views of Senator Richard Lugar and Soviet specialist
Dimitri Simes, both opponents of the offer. David Martin, the
network's highly-regarded Pentagon and arms control correspondent,
thought so little of the proposal that he continued to work on a
Weinberger profile rather than cover it the day it was announced.
ABC presented only Senator John Warner, who said it was really the
@i{president's} goal to eliminate nuclear weapons.
NBC restricted its coverage to the views of the Reagan inner
circle; other views were filtered through White House correspondent
Chris Wallace.
@i{The New York Times} relied on a battery of often unnamed sources
to present the administration view that the offer's only potential
value was in on-site verification procedures and reducing the numbers
of European-based missiles. In keeping with its editorial position,
the paper paid little attention to the test ban question. In the past
three years the @i{Times} has completely reversed itself on the value
of such a ban, now adopting the Reagan administration position that a
test ban treaty can only come in the context of a much broader arms
control agreement. The @i{Times} did contribute one noteworthy
addition to the debate in the last two paragraphs of a Jan. 17 article
by Leslie Gelb, headlined: "Weighing the Soviet Plan." Gelb pointed
out that the elimination of nuclear weapons would force American
strategic planners to determine how to protect Europe with
conventional forces, rather than with nuclear deterrence. Gelb quoted
an unnamed administration official as saying that this "forces us to
make hard choices that we haven't been willing to make so far."
@i{Washington Post} coverage was not much different from the
@i{Times}, the exception being a valuable piece by Walter Pincus on
the problems of reducing the long-range nuclear arsenals of the
superpowers so as not to leave one of them at a strategic
disadvantage. Pincus also gave voice to outsider William Colby, who
endorsed the Gorbachev proposal as a serious step. He was one of the
very few Americans outside the Reagan inner circle to be quoted with
anything good to say about the proposal.
@i{Newsweek} did not even lead its "International" section with the
offer, tilting instead to the Philippines.
@i{U.S. News & World Report} gave it only three columns. On the
administration's unwillingness to join the moratorium, the magazine
quoted Weinberger as saying that the U.S. will have to keep testing
"because unfortunately there are nuclear weapons in the world"; this
is a state of affairs that would seem to apply to the Soviets, too,
rendering the secretary's logic impenetrable, but @i{U.S. News}
editors let the remark stand unchallenged.
@i{Time} at least took the proposal seriously. The editors
presented an excellent graphic that explained the offer and set forth
the problems it poses for the American side. @i{Time} also published
a useful box on previous diplomatic efforts to rid the world of
nuclear weapons. Like its brethren, however, the magazine did not
quote a single American who questioned the Reagan response.
"Nightline," which pounces on every major story as if it were a
hostage crisis, ignored this one entirely. Of greater urgency were
shows on premature infants and a boy and his gorilla. Similarly, all
three Sunday morning network news interview shows on the 19th found
other subjects more worthy.
"The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" provided somewhat more breadth in
presenting interviews with Soviet expert Marshall Shulman of the
Harriman Institute at Columbia University and David Aaron, former
deputy national security advisor.
@i{The Boston Globe} was the most open to debate. Reporter Richard
Higgins presented the views of Dr. Bernard Lown, a co-founder of
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, winner of
the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Lown urged that the proposal not be
written off as propaganda, particularly the test ban moratorium.
Reporter Fred Kaplan provided a blunt analysis of why the U.S. has
refused to join in the test ban moratorium. "[T]he Reagan
administration wants to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons,"
Kaplan wrote. He then attacked the administration's stated reasons
for rejecting the moratorium and described the specific weapons the
U.S. is testing.
The Gorbachev proposal is now, presumably, being discussed in
Geneva, beyond the reach of public debate. Doubtless the
administration will eventually call in the press to tell us what we
need to know when we need to know it.
--@i{David M. Rubin}
======================================================================
There were other articles that might also be of interest, but there's
only so much that I have time to type.
-- Dan Rosenblum
Date: Tue 18 Mar 86 17:03:02-EST
From: D. M. Rosenblum <DR01@TE.CC.CMU.EDU>
Subject: The Press and The Arms Race
PS: Message of Tue 18 Mar 86 13:25:29-EST
More from Deadline, the full name of which, as I forgot to mention in
my previous message, is Deadline: The Press and The Arms Race. At the
end of an article by Tony Kaye entitled "Playing Musical Chairs on the
Network News Interview Shows," about the lack of breadth in these
shows, appeared the following paragraph:
During the Carter era, when the administration was under attack
from both the left and right, a broad range of views--from
opponents of the MX to advocates of American nuclear superiority--
participated vocally in the nuclear debate. And they found a
place on the news interview shows. During the Reagan era,
however, the whole spectrum has moved so far to the right that
Robert McNamara now represents the left wing of the nuclear debate
in official circles and on the news talk shows. To be sure,
McNamara is extremely articulate and knowledgeable, but he's also
the man who brought flexible response to American nuclear policy.
======================================================================
I got Deadline, by the way, as an insert in the latest issue of
Nuclear Times, which was sent to me for free as a sample to encourage
me to subscribe. That issue of Nuclear Times included, in the "Early
Warnings" department, the following piece on ABC's Amerika program.
AN AMERIKAN TRAGEDY: Marc Cooper has seen the future, and it does not
work. Cooper, a writer and radio journalist in Los Angeles, recently
was given the entire script to the on-again ABC television miniseries
@i{Amerika}. His source, he says, was "a weak link in the production
chain." The 12-hour film, written and directed by Donald Wrye and
scheduled for airing in 1987, portrays a Soviet takeover of the United
States.
After digesting all 1200 pages of the script, Cooper told us: "I
wasn't prepared for this at all. The sensibility is conservative
fringe, and it's quite pernicious. The real enemies in the story are
not the Soviets, who are portrayed as rather skillful, attractive
individuals--sort of like the aliens in @i{V}--but liberals who give
the country away. People who favor such things as rent control,
abortion and other liberal causes form something called the New
American Progressive Party, which eagerly collaborates with the
Russians. In dramatic classroom scenes, teachers who have been
totally compromised by the Soviets denounce the nuclear arms race,
sweatshops and the military- industrial complex. This discredits
legitimate liberal sentiments by associating them with Soviet
propaganda.
"And when courageous American patriots rebel, guess who is called
on to crush them? Not the Red Army. @i{United Nations} troops. Old
Glory has been torn down and in its place stands--and I quote now from
page 16 of the script--`a new and strange flag, frightening because it
seems so benign. Against a blue background are crossed Soviet and
American flags. Suspended in the crux is the white globe and olive
branch, symbol of the United Nations.'
"I also found interesting that ABC has stated that the Soviet
takeover in @i{Amerika} does not involve nuclear war. Well, it's
true, there's no @i{war}. The Soviets simply explode four nuclear
bombs 250 miles above the U.S., throwing our communication systems out
of whack. But all in all, @i{Amerika} is pretty much of a soap opera.
It's set in the mid-1990s in Milford, Kansas, a fictional town.
Devlin Milford, scion of the original landowners of the town, is sent
to a re-education camp. When he gets out he joins the armed
resistance, and delivers several sermons extolling fundamentalist
Americanism. He's the hero, naturally. Then there's Marion, a
soulless bureaucrat who sleeps with Russian generals and sends her
teenage son to re-education camp; and Peter, a well-meaning liberal
who fruitlessly tries to reform the system from within. The show
closes with KGB troops machine-gunning the puppet U.S. Congress and
dynamiting the Capitol. But all is not lost. Devlin Milford's
underground militia swears vengeance--a spin-off series, perhaps.
"This all sounds pretty awful to me. But, you know, when word got
around that I had the script I got a call from one of the leading
agents in Hollywood. `You've @i{got} to let me see that script,' he
said, `All my clients are @i{dying} to be in it.'"
======================================================================
Daniel M. Rosenblum, Ph.D. candidate,
School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA), Carnegie-Mellon University
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[ Daniel asks that you cc him on any discussion of this, as he is not
on the poli-sci list. -CWM]
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