Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War [Paperback]

John R. MacArthur (Author), Ben H. Bagdikian (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520083989 | ISBN-13: 978-0520083981 | Publication Date: November 29, 1993 | Edition: Rep

While the United States government made noisy preparations to go to war against Saddam Hussein, it was also purposefully planning another war. But this enemy, unlike Hussein, was strangely passive in the face of these threatening maneuvers. John R. MacArthur scrutinizes the government's unprecedented assault on the constitutional freedoms of the American media during Operation Desert Storm. With a reporter's critical eye and a historian's sensibility, he traces decades of press-government relations--during Vietnam, Grenada, and Panama--which helped set the stage for restrictions on Gulf War reporting and for a public-relations triumph by the government.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The publisher of Harper's magazine here decries what he sees as the Pentagon's efforts to sanitize the Gulf war. First he reviews the Defense Department's technique during Grenada of creating a media pool and ensuring that it arrived after the action, and in Panama of virtually imprisoning the pool on an army base. He then turns to "Operation Desert Muzzle," as he calls it, a "devastating and immoral victory" for military censorship and a "crushing defeat" for the press and the First Amendment. MacArthur expresses revulsion at the media's timid acquiescence to the Pentagon's tight control of news, combined with its "out-and-out boosterism and jingoism." He criticizes Dan Rather's casual but heartfelt "salute to our young men and women out there" as offensive. In a final scene, for which his puzzling metaphor is Nathanael West's Day of the Locust , MacArthur describes how reporters at a postwar Washington banquet fawned over Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf: " . . . the Fourth Estate bowing to a man who had treated them with contempt." The tendency in the media, the author warns in this somewhat shrill treatise, is toward more and more supine, "suck-up" coverage of military operations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The United States was partly pushed into the Persian Gulf war by a slick public relations campaign on behalf of Kuwait. Concurrently, the Pentagon coolly executed a censorship program accepted by a timid, divided American media. That is the thesis offered by MacArthur, publisher of Harper's magazine, in his solidly documented indictment of media performance during the war. He faults both print and broadcasting for ineffective or nonexistent protests against censorship and for poor war reporting. (On obstacles to strong reporting in recent years, see Peter Stoler's The War Against the Press , LJ 12/86.) MacArthur deserves credit for illuminating interviews with CBS anchor Dan Rather and others, though his sarcastic tone, particularly on the subject of Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams, somewhat detracts from his argument. Recommended for media collections.
- Bruce Rosenstein, "USA Today" Lib., Arlington, Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; Rep edition (November 29, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520083989
• ISBN-13: 978-0520083981
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,141,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JOHN R. MACARTHUR is the president and publisher of Harper's Magazine. An award-winning journalist, he has previously written for The New York Times, United Press International, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of the acclaimed books You Can't Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America, The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy, and Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I wish I had read this earlier, December 2, 2001

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Paperback)

During the Gulf War, I was an elementary schooler who eagerly bought the propaganda the government. my school district, and hometown were promoting in the name of patrotism.

I earnestly snapped up everything and anything having to do with the millitary, American Flags or Yellow Ribbons convinced that our side was the right side--and unlike the war in Vietnam, the reasoning for deployment was universally accepted by the American people. Although I now realize there were people voicing conciencious objection to war with Iraq (because among other reasons, we had once supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power including oulfiting his troops with weapons when it suited our international interests and did not seriously care what would happen to the people of Iraq afterwards), if given any coverage in the national news at all, they were riddiculouslsy marginalized as outcasts who were living in a gigantic timewarp and did not understand that this was the 1990's.

My parents, having lived through Vietnam, were more cynical about the millitary opperation--but did not challenge the advertising marketed towards their daughter for fear of being perceived as unsupportive of America's objectives. Because they realized that the Gulf War was fought partly over US Petroleum interests, support was actually a more complex issue than I was receiving from media, institutional, and peer socialization.

MacArthur and Bagdikian provide a wealth of information for anybody who wants to revisit this time in international/American history and uncover the truth that all too quickly disappeared and was ommitted in the name of national unity. The so-called "liberal-media" defered to government preferences and reporting angles in it's coverage of the Persian Gulf, reducing 20 years of profoundly complex relations in this region of the world to a binary presentation of "good guys v. bad guys". The ultimate loosers in this scenario of course are the American people who never get to see the full justifications of their leaders, policy makers and public officials.

Although we think of information suppression as something that was supposed to be eliminated with post-Vietnam millitary oversight procedures and policies, they continued during this event---in an albeit more subtle way. In the world of public policy, just because you cannot see something does not mean that it is non-existent.

Granted, looking at a gritter past may be hard, but this action is neccesary to fully understand how media and politics work together in times of war--and not necessarily for the benefit of the citizens at large. The timelieness of this scholarship is wholly appreciated and badly needed.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read before the start of the second Gulf war, February 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Paperback)

For anyone who still believes that we have a free, open, and unbiased press in this country, read this book. Before we go to war again against Iraq and start getting the government's highly censored version of events, it will be helpful to understand what we were told last time and why.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book!, May 4, 2004

By 

"mascaras23" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Paperback)

I wish the author of this book had gotten more media coverage prior to Gulf War Redux. It is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the so-called free press, and the difficult and dysfunctional relationship a journalist has with the DOD, Pentagon...all those governmental "powers that be"....Check it out. Definately.