Journalists accuse the White House of intolerance

 Linda Diebel

STAFF REPORTER 011004 WASHINGTON

 - Two small-town newspaper columnists have been fired for their views; late-night TV host Bill Maher has been publicly denounced by the White House and, across America, songs from "Walk Like an Egyptian" to "American Pie" have been removed from playlists.

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau pulled his "featherweight Bush" cartoons. And anti-capitalist hard-rockers Rage Against the Machine temporarily shut down their Web site after complaints last week from the U.S. Secret Service about "inflammatory material."

Three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there are increasing signs of censorship in the United States.

"Even as the White House preaches tolerance toward Muslims and Sikhs, it is practising intolerance, signalling that anyone who challenges the leaders of an embattled America is cynical, political and - isn't this the subtext? - unpatriotic," wrote Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

The pressure is coming from the White House, most often press secretary Ari Fleischer, as well as from media self-censorship and pressure from corporate owners and advertisers.

Since the 1960s, the media have walked a rocky road with the Pentagon. There's still a common view in the military that reporting "lost the war" in Vietnam, and the Pentagon quickly learned to clamp down.

"The media has already accepted censorship," says John MacArthur, editor of Harper's magazine, which joined other media in suing the U.S. government under free-speech laws after the Persian Gulf War.

"But this time, they've just rolled over and played dead... We're not even testing freedom of speech. There's nothing left of it," he says.

"The consequences are so much worse than Osama bin Laden could ever have imagined.... We are acting like children. It's the `infantilization' of the American media and public," as U.S. author/critic Susan Sontag pointed out.

Dan Guthrie, a columnist for Oregon's Daily Courier, was fired for writing that Bush "skedaddled" after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, flying to military bunkers instead of returning to the White House.

Columnist Tom Gutting of the Texas City Sun similarly lost his job for his opinion that Bush flew around the country "like a scared child."

In his front-page apology, Sun publisher Les Daughty Jr. said the opinion was "not appropriate to publish during this time ... our leaders find themselves in.''

These are just two examples. Others include university radio stations that have had their state funding threatened, professors threatened with disciplinary action, and a music program cancelled because of a composer's comments.

From the White House, Fleischer attacked Politically Incorrect host Maher for saying "cowardly" wasn't the right word to describe suicide terrorists, that it was cowardly for the U.S. to be "lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles."

Sears, Roebuck and Co. cancelled its advertising from the show. Washington's ABC affiliate, WJLA, yanked it.

"The reminder is to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and that this is not a time for remarks like that," said Fleischer.

Dowd, among other critics, reacted angrily, saying that with her family tradition of firefighters, police detectives and soldiers, she doesn't need instructions from Fleischer "on the conduct of a good American."

On television, there's a deference in reporting that, in one instance, saw CNN apologizing to Bush for having him "a little out of focus" during a report.

Karim H. Karim, from Carleton University's journalism school and author of Islamic Peril on the media and global violence, sees these events as a "threat to a democratic society that depends on information."

He asks: "Do we want to hit the pause button on our democratic exercises?"

Howard Rosenberg, media critic for the Los Angeles Times, praised Bush's heart, compassion and "depth of feeling" after the attack, but went on to say the president "lacked size in front of the camera when he should have been commanding and filling the screen with a formidable presence."

He received death threats. "Go live with the Arabs," said some e-mails. "Osama bin Rosenberg" he was called in messages with anti-Semitic slurs.

"U.S. journalists walk a tightrope," a shaken Rosenberg later wrote. "But `my country right or wrong?' If that myopic dictum is followed, the U.S. media might as well pack away their megaphones and allow their First Amendment liberties to atrophy.

"If it had been followed by journalists reporting about Vietnam, (the massacre by U.S. soldiers at) My Lai and other excesses from that debacle would still be interred along with the bones of the victims.''

In the Persian Gulf War, media organizations signed agreements with the Pentagon to "pool" reports. The limited access led to errors which emerged only after the war, including the exaggeration of the success of U.S. bombing - endlessly replayed video of smart bombs which turned out to be duds, for instance - and the playing down of civilian and enemy casualties.

This time, the Pentagon doesn't even want "pool" reporters, says the Village Voice.

"This is going to be an uncovered war," says retired U.S. Col. Laird Anderson, who teaches journalism. He calls it "ominous" that the public is going to be so in the dark.

Retired TV anchor Walter Cronkite has urged the public to wake up to the dangers.

"When (the Germans) yielded up their free speech so easily (to Hitler), they became responsible for what the government did in their name," he said. "We not only have a right to know what `our boys and girls' are doing in our name. We have a duty to know what the army is doing in our name."