[iwar] [fc:U.S..Appears.To.Be.Losing.Public.Relations.War.So.Far]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-29 07:21:03


Return-Path: <sentto-279987-3585-1004368842-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com>
Delivered-To: fc@all.net
Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:22:08 -0800 (PST)
Received: (qmail 4536 invoked by uid 510); 29 Oct 2001 15:20:00 -0000
Received: from n31.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.81) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 29 Oct 2001 15:20:00 -0000
X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-3585-1004368842-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com
Received: from [10.1.1.224] by n31.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 29 Oct 2001 15:20:42 -0000
X-Sender: fc@red.all.net
X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com
Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 29 Oct 2001 15:20:42 -0000
Received: (qmail 48072 invoked from network); 29 Oct 2001 15:20:42 -0000
Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by 10.1.1.224 with QMQP; 29 Oct 2001 15:20:42 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta2 with SMTP; 29 Oct 2001 15:20:42 -0000
Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f9TFL3c14460 for iwar@onelist.com; Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:21:03 -0800
Message-Id: <200110291521.f9TFL3c14460@red.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
X-Mailer: don't even ask
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3]
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:21:03 -0800 (PST)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Appears.To.Be.Losing.Public.Relations.War.So.Far]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

New York Times
October 28, 2001
U.S. Appears To Be Losing Public Relations War So Far
By Susan Sachs
CAIRO, Oct. 27 - The Bush administration has belatedly deployed its forces
for a propaganda war to win over the Arab public. But the campaign, intended
to convince doubters that the American attacks on Afghanistan are justified
and its Middle East policy is evenhanded, has so far proved ineffectual.
Thousands of words from American officials, it appears, have proved no match
for the last week's news, which produced a barrage of pictures of wounded
Afghan children and of Israeli tanks rolling into Palestinian villages. 
"Talking heads just can't compete with powerful images," a Western diplomat
here said. "The images touch emotions, and people in this part of the world
react according to their emotions."
Since the bombs started falling nearly three weeks ago, it has become
obvious to people in Washington, as well as to many friendly Arab leaders,
that President Bush's "war on terror" has an image problem outside the
United States. 
The reasons for Arab skepticism may not be immediately apparent to many
Americans who feel personally threatened by terror and are inundated with
daily news about anthrax and young soldiers being sent to faraway places to
fight terrorists.
But that sense of immediacy - that terrorists threatening America are hiding
out in Afghanistan - is absent in the Middle East. While the anthrax story
is widely reported in the Arab media and stories about Osama bin Laden's
terror network appear frequently in newspapers here, news organizations in
the Middle East have shifted much of their attention in the last two weeks
to events in their own backyard. 
The front pages of newspapers in the region have been filled with reports on
Israel's latest attacks on Palestinian towns. Funerals of Palestinians
killed in clashes with Israel are the first item on television news
programs. The images are taken directly from Western news agency reports. 
For the Bush administration's new public relations campaign to win over
people in Arab nations, the renewed cycle of killing in Israel and the
Palestinian territories came at an especially inauspicious time. 
Beginning 10 days ago, a parade of administration officials started
appearing on Arabic television stations to explain the goals of American
policy in the Middle East and the attacks on Afghanistan. 
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have all been interviewed
on Al Jazeera, the widely watched Arabic television station based in Qatar.
State Department officials have appeared on state television in several
countries, and interviews with other American diplomats have run in
newspapers in the region.
The American views - always avowing that the United States has nothing
against Muslims or Islam - have received prominent play. 
But in terms of content and impact, the interviews have often fallen flat.
Ms. Rice, for instance, said several times in her interview that Palestinian
violence had to end before Israel would consider reopening peace talks. Not
long after the interview was aired, Al Jazeera viewers saw news reports of
Israeli tanks rumbling into Palestinian towns.
"America has failed miserably in marketing their war to the Arabs," said
Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University.
"How can they convince the Arabs of anything while Israel's American-made
tanks are occupying the Palestinian territories?" 
American newspapers and magazines available in the Middle East do no better
than the administration in explaining the war on terror to foreigners, he
added. "They write about how right America is," he said. "They do not try at
all to articulate the fundamental American thinking. All are writing the
same thing: terrorists are Arab and Muslim, and the Arab regimes produce
them."
The United States, of course, started off at a disadvantage in the
propaganda war because its Middle East policy was seen as blindly
pro-Israel, and Mr. Bush was seen as being uninterested in the plight of
Palestinians under Israeli rule.
Battlefield information is also scarce. Al Jazeera is the only foreign
television network with a bureau operating in Kabul. 
After nearly three weeks of watching television footage of American missiles
streaking across the skies of Afghanistan and seeing newspaper photographs
of Afghan civilians in bloody bandages, many Arabs remain skeptical about
the war's aim.
The suspicion can be seen in the way news from the front has begun to be
treated. 
Akhbar el Yom, one of Egypt's biggest newspapers, ran a wire service picture
on the front page on Friday showing an Afghan child with wounds said to have
been caused by the American bombing.
Inside the paper was another picture of an Afghan child whose family was
reported to have been killed in by American bombing. The caption read, "Is
this baby a Taliban fighter?" 

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Pinpoint the right security solution for your company- Learn how to add 128- bit encryption and to authenticate your web site with VeriSign's FREE guide!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/yQix2C/33_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-12-31 20:59:58 PST