- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A
new front is quickly emerging in the conflict between the West and Osama
bin Laden's al Qaeda network -- the battle to define information and
propaganda.
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- The United States, stung by widespread publicity given
to broadcasts of bin Laden and his spokesman following the launch on Sunday
of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, is fighting back with an information
assault of its own.
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- But some are concerned the West is behind in that battle.
"One thing becoming increasingly clear to me is the need to upgrade
our media and public opinion operations in the Arab and Muslim world,"
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters on Thursday while
traveling
in the Middle East.
-
- President George W. Bush was to take to the airwaves
Thursday night, with the first prime-time news conference of his
presidency.
It is also his first in the formal, attention-getting, setting of the White
House East room.
-
- Bush has unveiled posters calling bin Laden and 21 others
"most wanted terrorists," and the White House is working with
Fox television network on a special terrorism episode of of its
"America's
Most Wanted" television show.
-
- In the meantime, the White House has sought -- and won
-- cooperation from U.S. television networks in limiting broadcasts of
prerecorded statements by bin Laden, an Islamic militant who is based in
Afghanistan and accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the United
States.
-
- It is also asking newspapers to avoid printing full
transcripts
of bin Laden's statements, which White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
denounced
as "propaganda of a most insidious nature" with possible coded
incitements to violence.
-
- In a videotaped message shown on Sunday after the U.S.
military strikes began in Afghanistan, bin Laden said God had blessed a
group of vanguard Muslims to "destroy America."
-
- The White House is reviewing a request from the al
Jazeera
Arabic-language satellite television network to interview Bush. The
network,
which earlier interviewed Blair, is owned by the government of Qatar and
has come under U.S. criticism for its exclusive broadcasts of bin Laden
statements, which have been picked up by Western media.
-
- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has already
complained
to the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and was told that
the Qatari government wanted media freedom in preparation for parliamentary
life.
-
- Al Jazeera's Washington bureau chief, Hafiz al Mirazi,
said in an interview with Reuters television that the network was striving
for balance in its coverage and he accused the U.S. government of using
national security concerns as an excuse to stop broadcasts seen as
unfavorable.
-
- A "PROPAGANDA
WAR"
-
- Such incidents are probably only the opening skirmishes
in a long information battle, said propaganda expert Randall Bytwerk of
Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
-
- "We have no choice to wage a propaganda war as well
as the military war, and those who oppose us are going to be doing the
same," Bytwerk said.
-
- "It's proceeding with fits and starts ... but more
and more of it will happen, and ultimately I think the propaganda war may
be almost as important as military activity," he said.
-
- "In a cast of standard war you've got large armies
... in this case you've got a much more scattered enemy. The enemy can
be reached by different methods," he said.
-
- Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos of California, speaking at
a congressional hearing on Wednesday, called for expanding U.S. overseas
broadcasting such as Voice of America to Afghanistan and other Arab and
Muslim countries.
-
- "In many respects, the United States and our allies
are losing the battle of the airwaves. We are literally being out-gunned,
out-manned and out-maneuvered on the public information battlefield,"
he said.
-
- As it tries to get out its own message, the White House
has also clamped down on unauthorized releases of classified information
and kept evidence about bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks
close to its vest. Bush scolded Congress this week for leaking material
from classified briefings.
-
- Also, after complaints that the United States was
providing
insufficient evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks,
Washington left it to Blair to publish a document outlining the case
against
the Saudi-born militant.
-
- "The goal was always to get information out in a
way that was useful to the campaign," U.S. national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice said of Washington's view on the release.
-
- Charlotte Beers, who heads the State Department's
"public
diplomacy" efforts, told the congressional hearing on Wednesday the
United States was seeking to convey four main messages.
-
- They are: that the Sept. 11 attacks were an attack on
the whole world, that the battle against terrorism was not a war against
Islam, that America supports the Afghan people and that nations must
"band
together" against terrorism.
-
- Carrol Doherty, editor at the Pew Research Center for
the People and The Press, said the American public is likely to support
the government's interest in restraining press coverage of bin Laden.
"The
public is very willing to place restrictions on the press," he
said.
-
- But Bob Giles, head of Neiman Fellowship program at
Harvard
University, said the government should not seek self-censorship.
"Information,"
he said, "is what this country needs."
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