From: Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.news-media,alt.desert-storm
Subject: Pundit Watch #2
Date: 14 Aug 1992 16:26:29 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: jym@remarque.berkeley.edu

=o= The attached is a Pundit Watch, an examination of the news
media's coverage of the Gulf War, assembled by Peter Dykstra of
Greenpeace.  I distributed these during the war and am reposting
them now so that alt.news-media readers can have them.

=o= One of the last Pundit Watches was published in _The_
_Progressive_, after which Dykstra wrote it as a column in
that magazine.  Back issues of _The_Progressive_ (from last
year) can be found at your local library, one hopes.
    <_Jym_>

Via Environet:
=================================================================
February 4, 1991


                   GREENPEACE PUNDIT WATCH #2

Second in a Series of Reports on News Coverage of the Persian 
Gulf War.  Contact:  Greenpeace Media, 202-462-1177.
 
Outrage was appropriately quick when Iraq dumped a huge amount of
crude oil into the Persian Gulf.  Had reaction been similar to 
the kinder, gentler waste of oil that's occurred in the West for 
decades, we might not now be at war with an oil power.  
   
In Pundit Watch 2, we'll examine the dynamics of oil -- both oil
in the Gulf, and oil in our lives.  Also, we'll explore the 
cliches and pejoratives used to describe war opponents.  
     
                           ***********  
 
THEY GET SMARTER EVERY WEEK:  The McLaughlin Group episode taped
2/1 offered these revised predictions:  Fred Barnes, "Five weeks
from now" (holding steady from last week's "six weeks");  Morton
Kondracke, "the end of February" (up from a "three weeks" 
prediction on Jan. 25); Jack Germond, "A couple of months" (last
week's wisdom was "six weeks and maybe longer"); Father 
McLaughlin weighed in with "March 1." (Last week's guess was for
April Fool's Day or later); Arnaud DeBorchgrave, editor of Rev. 
Moon's Washington Times, was Pinch Pundit for Pat Buchanan this 
}iweek, and offered "six weeks from now."  By Wednesday 2/6, the 
longest of the group's original January 17 war-length predictions
will have elapsed.   McLaughlin's "One on One" show also added to
the list of Felon/Pundits this week with an interview of former 
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane.  McFarlane has also 
shown up on CNN, giving the cable network the lead in total 
Felon/Pundits with two.  (Richard Secord, whom CNN identified 
only as an air war expert, turned up last weekend.) 

##################################### 
 
"I'm not very tolerant of any dissent to what we stand for:   
freedom," Everett McConnell, a 60 year-old retired Air Force   
sergeant told the Philadelphia Inquirer (1/18)   
   
                            ***********   
     "Give peace a chance." This "reminiscent-of-the-Vietnam-era" 
refrain could be directed as aptly toward the media coverage of
the opposition movement to the Gulf war as it does to the
policymakers staging the war.    
     In assessing the new peace movement, the press often seems 
to go out of its way to marginalize war opposition.  Evocations 
of the 1960's are used to disparage opponents of the war,
branding them as irrelevant and out of touch with the 80 percent
of "real" Americans who support the war in the 1990's. On
television, isolated incidents of flag burning are portrayed as 
if it were endemic of the movement.  Divisions within the ranks 
are used to indicate weakness and pre-write the epitaphs of 90's
peace activists.   
     The subhead of the Miami Herald article story on the Jan. 19
rally in D.C. read "75,000 jam D.C. in 60's Like Scene" The 
Herald described the American anti-war movement as "a collection
of minorities and military mothers, aging '60s veterans and  
fresh-faced protesters."  The Baltimore Sun's Washington Bureau 
Chief Ernest B. Furgurson trotted out his best Love-it-or-Leave-
it rhetoric for a syndicated column: "The protesters run true to
type, some looking as if they just emerged after 20 years in a  
time capsule, or under a rock.  Rummage-sale sartorial fashions 
and pothead hair styles remind of the days when the chant was  
"Hey, hey LBJ! How many kids have you killed today."     
     Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post's Style section (1/17)
conceded that in fact the new movement represented a broader 
coalition: "What has been most distinctive has been the presence
of so many people lacking distinction at all, what you might 
perilously call regular folks.  Men in suits and ties have 
chanted 'no blood for oil' in unison with angry members of the 
America-is-always-wrong brigade."  Were the well-groomed 
"regular" folks really just the usual suspects disguised in 
suits?   
     But while Achenbach was as scornful of the movement's
diversity as he is of its message, Newsweek's Vern E. Smith and 
Annetta Miller did one of the most thorough profiles of the new
voices of opposition. "Though the antiwar activists defied 
popular sentiment, they were not just rebellious kids," they 
wrote.  "Compared with the Vietnam protests, which at the outset
were overwhelmingly the work of students, opposition to the gulf
war enlists a much broader constituency.  Its leaders are 
veterans of the various peace movements--Vietnam, Central 
America, nuclear disarmament --many of them now middle-aged and 
middle class.  The heads of unions, including the United Auto 
Workers and the Communications Workers of America signed an 
anti-war advertisement in the week before hostilities began.  
Families of servicemen and women play a bigger role now than they
did in the '60s.  So do churches.  And so do minority 
members...Even mainstream Republican figures like John Connally 
and H. Ross Perot have expressed opposition a Gulf War in recent
weeks.  The protesters are people who don't have a reason to be 
radicalized or estranged from their society."   
     US News Columnist John Leo (Feb 4) tarred war opponents with
many different brushes.  "The anti-war movement is ... home to an
alliance of mostly far-right anti-Semitic groups (including) the
Liberty Lobby, the Lyndon LaRouche organization, and Louis  
Farrakhan's Nation of Islam."  
     Already, this peace movement has gained momentum and turned
out more people in the first two weeks of Desert Storm than in  
the first several years of Vietnam.  But many news accounts have
suggested that the 1990's peace movement will have the staying  
power of the Nehru Jacket.  Just days before more than 100,000  
demonstrated against the war, The New York Times treated us to  
"Protesters Face Conflict in Their Ranks as They Try to Gain  
Momentum" (1/21).  The Miami Herald ran the same piece under the
headline "Anti-War Drive Hits Resistance."  The Washington Post 
in an article the day before the rally said "The Anti-War 
Movement Facing Test, D.C. Protest Saturday May Indicate Whether
Sentiment is Growing."    
     The movement passed the "test" with turnout exceeding Park 
Service expectations.  That success was unseen in USA Today
(1/29). In "Peace Marchers Fight Disenchantment", Elizabeth 
Snead describes the hundreds of thousands that have taken to the
streets in "scenes reminiscent of the 60s" and tells us that 
"some are already disillusioned."  The Post (1/29) followed up 
with a piece about how disappointed some demonstrators were 
because the police refused to arrest them for civil disobedience. 
 
        For his part, President Bush alluded to Christian tolerance
of pro-peace demonstrators during a 1/28 speech at (where else?)
a religious broadcasters' convention.  Chief of Staff John Sununu
was positively docile in his remarks on protests on the 1/27 ABC
"This Week with David Brinkley."  
 
     On the whole, newspapers did a far better job than TV in
attempting to give protesters a fair shake.  Mary McGrory 
reported in her 1/29 syndicated column that "CBS gave equal time 
to the 300, at most, pro-war demonstrators and the 75,000 at 
least, peace demonstrators.   NBC limited its coverage to 
remarking that the turnout of 75,000 had been accurately 
predicted by the police department."  CNN ran a relatively 
thoughtful pre-rally profile of war opponents, but TV was largely
a victim of its own self-imposed stereotypes of the marchers.   
 
A newsroom staffer at Washington's, WJLA-TV (ABC) explained the 
equal time given a few hundred pro-war demontrators with, "We 
give everyone equal coverage.  That's what we are supposed to 
do."  When asked if a pro-war demo with two people would merit 
coverage they responded, "sure."  WRC-TV (NBC) responded by 
saying "I'm being blasted for giving the anti-war any coverage at
all."  The best assessment of TV's inherently shallow approach  
came from an eminently qualified source.  Reagan imagemaker- 
turned-journalist David Gergen, who told a journalists' forum at
Columbia University, "TV is inherently a medium of simplicity."  

################ 
What's in a Poll  
################   

     Since the outset of the Persian Gulf crisis public opinion 
polls have been used by politicians to further US policy and by 
the media and war supporters to belittle and dismiss the 
opposition.   In building support for an attack on Baghdad, 
President Bush grossly exaggerated the Iraqi threat of nuclear 
weapons capability after polling showed it played well to the 
American public.  Since the beginning of the war, virtually every
reference to demonstrators is qualified with a flippant 80% 
percent support level for the war.   
     However, questions or polls that show that the 
"overwhelming" support is softer than it appears have been 
generally been underplayed.  A NPR-Harris Poll released Jan. 27 
showed that 59% of the public would be willing to accept only
"rather light" or no casualties, yet 76% of those surveyed said 
they expected "moderate" to "heavy" casualties.   In an ABC/
Washington Post Poll done just before the 16th, support for war
with Iraq plummeted to around 40% when 1,000 American casualties
were figured in.   
     Washington Post pollster Richard Morin did a revealing piece
in the Post (1/14) casting doubts on the accuracy of polls
gauging public opinion.  Morin showed that just prior to the
16th, support for a U.S. war with Iraq varied by nearly 15% 
depending on how leading the questions were.  At the Jan. 26 
rally, The Post made a first-ever attempt at polling members of a
demonstration in progress.  A sampling of the marchers showed 
that a vast majority of them were not first-timers and were
overwhelmingly "liberal" in their politics.  The revelation that
the 700 Club and the Republican National Committee were
underrepresented in the march may not have deserved a front page
story.  But the Post deserves credit for what Morin told PW was
its effort to  "go beyond traditional reporting."   Earlier, Post
polling had underscored the divergence from national opinion by
D.C. residents, who oppose the war by a roughly 60-40 split.  
   But an important argument against the value of daily polling 
comes from the pollsters themselves.  Every Gallup poll which has
appeared includes the statement "rally round the flag effect"," 
the often short-lived upsurge in popularity following the 
outbreak of crisis or war. This little 5 word-waiver was largely
ignored in news reports.    
   
Greenpeace's picks for best Anti-war placards  
1. If You Really Want to Destroy Iraq, Send Over a Team of Our  
Experts to Set Up an S&L for  them.  
2. George, We're sorry we called you a wimp.  We promise we won't
do it again.  
3. Kuwaitus Interruptus. George, Pull out Now  
                           ***********  
   
OIL ADDS TO TROUBLED WATERS  
   
While oil is flowing in untold quantities into the Persian Gulf,
stateside oil company profits for 1990's fourth quarter are
gushing.  The nine largest U.S. oil companies are expected to
total $7.2 billion in profits for the final quarter of 1990, up
69 percent from 1989.  
   
With gasoline prices finally returning to pre-war levels, the
price of crude oil dropped significantly after the start of the 
war and is now as low as 1989 figures of about 40 cents a gallon. 
At present rates, an oversupply would lower crude prices more as
the war continues.  
   
So as not to sound "unpatriotic" in this time of war, oil company
executives have taken great pains to play down huge profit  
increases and are rushing to speculate that the trend can't last.
On Jan 16, Mobil, which listed a 46 percent rise in fourth-
quarter earnings of $651 million, opted to freeze prices for U.S.
petroleum products in what Mobil CEO Allen E. Murray called "a
show of support for American policy and a demonstration of our
determination to do our part in the national effort during this
critical juncture in American history."  This price freeze held
gasoline prices at a relatively high level while the price of
crude continued to drop, allowing Mobil to profit.   
   
Murray asked customers to limit gasoline use and "join Mobil in
its pledge not to profit from the uncertainties that now exist in
the worldwide oil market.  We pledged to show restraint at the
time Iraq invaded Kuwait and we can do no less now," he said.   
   
By way of apology, Murray added that while price rises helped  
Mobil, the company reported "depressed profit margins in 
marketing and refining" and an outlay of $40 million to pay for 
future environmental cleanups at U.S. service stations.  
   
Mobil took its profits case to the public in its January 6 weekly
ad.  It featured excerpts from a letter responding to 
Congressional questions about Mobil's price system and profits. 
Why did consumers not feel the significant drop Mobil passed on 
to consumers?  The December 1 five-cent increase in the Federal 
gasoline tax for which Congress was responsible.  Mobil said that
a look at gasoline and crude oil price changes from July to 
December should "Refute the ill-conceived notion that there has
been any 'price gouging' on our part," except Mobil's 46 percent
increase in quarterly earnings.  
   
In another Mobil ad (NY Times, Jan 31) the company provided a  
detailed chart decrying federal, state and local taxes which
burden their customers. With the national average of these taxes
in mind, Mobil claims consumers are paying some "$35 billion a
year in direct taxes" for their gasoline.     
   
But in its January 24 ad the company pulled out all the stops
with an economics lesson on the difference between profits and  
profitability.  Lest we forget the difference, Mobil reminds us 
that "No matter how many pennies there are in our profit total--
and, because of our size and sales volumes, there are a lot of  
them--bare numbers never tell the whole story."  
  
Matt Wald's article in the 2/3 New York Times "Week in Review" 
challenged the oil industry's benign self-portrait.  Wald quoted
oil analysts at John S. Herold, Inc.:  "For shareholders in most
major oil companies, total returns -- capital gains plus 
dividends -- were higher than for the Dow Jones index as a whole
for the last five years." 

#####################  
SIDEBAR  
#####################  
   

PAYING THE PAPER  
Mobil's message is distributed weekly through opinion page ads in
most of America's largest newspapers and newsweeklies.  The  
company's message has not missed a Thursday on the New York Times
op-ed page in years.  While neither the Times nor Mobil would 
cite the cost of these ads, standard rates for similar weekly 
space in the Times costs $939,000 annually, according to numbers
provided by a Times salesperson.  (An account executive for a 
major Washington ad agency termed that figure "conservative.")  
Mobil's largesse is not limited to the ad coffers of major news 
organizations -- it's also second only to AT&T in Public 
Broadcasting Service program grants.  

######################  
   
Amoco, the nation's largest natural gas producer and the fifth 
largest refiner of gasoline, reported a 69 percent jump in their
fourth-quarter earnings of $538 million thanks to the crisis in 
the Middle East.  Company executives ducked criticism that those
earnings were made by high gas prices by stating that the boom 
would cease when the world returned to business as usual.    
   
Texaco, the nation's third largest oil company, showed a 35 
percent increase over last year's earnings with fourth-quarter  
profits of $388 million.  
   
Chevron:  Chevron USA Chair Kenneth Derr (USA TODAY, 1/15) said 
his firm's profits were "going to be high, and they're going to 
create a lot of flack.  When oil prices go up we make more 
money."  Chevron came in at $688 million for the fourth quarter,
over a reported quarterly loss of $883 million a year earlier.  
   
Exxon:  A 121 percent jump in quarterly earnings over the fourth
quarter of 1989, when a horde of 11,000 Alaskan rock-wipers  
assaulted the company's profit margins.  
   
Arco:  An increase of 40.4 percent in earnings to $566 million. 
 
Phillips:  46.5 percent rise in quarterly earnings over 1989.  
 
Shell: A 68.9 percent jump in quarterly earnings over 1989.  
 
Unocal:  54.2 percent rise in profits for the full year.  
 
SOURCES:  NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Associated Press, Reuters.
 
##########################   
President Bush made a passing reference to conserving energy in 
his State of the Union speech.  But Energy Secretary James 
Watkins was more forthright about Administration plans, stating 
"If I thought that there was one element that was critical to the
nation('s energy strategy) it is the opening of the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge."  (Reuters, 1/23).  
##########################   
**************  
   
Greenpeace experienced a fleeting moment at the gates of Pundit 
Heaven for the worst of all reasons.  The paucity of information
on the war -- and the number of military pensioners willing to 
comment on it -- had an environmental parallel during the first 
days of the oil spill.  Environmentalists, including our own, 
were called on to float theories on the damage despite the lack 
of solid spill information.  While we tried our best to cite the
theoretical damage to the Gulf based on the effects of past 
spills, we also tried to stress the most relevant fact of the 
spill's potential:  We just don't know how bad it will be. No one
else does, either.  Retired Generals, please take note. 
<Greenpeace's Military Research Staff published a comprehensive 
listing of hard information, with admirably little punditry, on 
2/1.  "Situation Report 15," part of a series of daily reports on
the war, is available from Greenpeace in Washington.>   
 
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE FOR ALTERNATIVE VOICES?  
        Former Reagan Arms Control Chief Ken Adelman, Former NBC 
News reporter and State Department mouthpiece Bernard Kalb, and 
the Brookings Institute's William Kaufman:  Persian Gulf "expert"
guests on Firing Line?  No, just some of the predominantly white,
male, and conservative guests on the 1/27 Jesse Jackson Show.  
  Other panelists included conservative counterterrorism expert
Neil Livingstone, George Washington U. Economics Professor Robert
Dunn (who declared war "good for the economy"); and member to
George Bush's Middle East Task Force Joy Starr, who stated 
that war was needed to "stabilize" the Middle East Region.  
  
VIETNAM WINS AGAIN:  According to a Congressional Quarterly 
report cited on Fox TV's "Off the Record," (1/27) Vietnam was 
invoked in the pre-war congressional debate on Iraq 413 times.  
Adolf Hitler finished second with 198 mentions, while Winston 
Churchill was the show-horse with 46.  His predecessor and the 
right wing's favorite historical lesson for everything, Neville 
Chamberlain, finished out of the money with 45.  President Bush 
has also played the name-dropping game, prompting Christopher 
Hitchens to tell his "Off the Record" pals, "If George Bush 
quotes Churchill once more, we're going to throw up everything 
we've ever eaten."  
   
FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS:  London's Birkbeck College distributed
tips to American students with tips on how to avoid drawing
terrorist attack.  The pamphlet cautions against appearing overly
American.  Students should thus avoid McDonald's and the Hard 
Rock Cafe, and should not "conspicuously purchase or carry USA 
Today."  (Washington Times, 1/29).  
   
SADDAM PARTS THE PERSIAN GULF, Film at Eleven:  NBC Consultant  
Edward Peck explained on 1/16 that Americans had a New Testament
heritage of "turning the other cheek," while Iraqis were "an Old
Testament people."  
   
AN EXTRAORDINARILY LARGE POLLING SAMPLE:  The Washington Post  
reported (1/30) that "millions of Americans have told pollsters 
they support the US intervention."  
   
OBSERVATION OF THE WEEK:  "Q:  Suddenly, it seems we have more  
military analysts than Elvis impersonators.  Who are these so-  
called experts?  A:  Same people as the Elvis impersonators."  
J. Taylor Buckley, USA TODAY (2/1).

##################################
Next Week in Pundit Watch:  Has the dominance of TV news coverage
in the Gulf made newspapers irrelevant to public opinion?
##################################

Pundit Watch 2 was written by Peter Dykstra, Blair Palese, and
Andrew Davis.

                              ####
Newsgroups: alt.news-media