Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991 TAG: 9102140339
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS B. ROSENSTIEL LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The pictures - men weeping, women stricken with grief, bodies mangled after an American bombing attack - led news broadcasts from Moscow to Tel Aviv to Paris to Amman, Jordan.
American officials could counter with only oral explanations in English, and some diagrams of the facility they said was really a military command center. In propaganda terms, such a response pales before the vivid telecasts from Baghdad.
The video images also landed in a context of believability, propaganda experts said, coming as several world leaders already were expressing worries about civilian casualties. In the Soviet Union, for instance, where President Mikhail Gorbachev spoke out earlier this week about civilian casualties, state-run television noted women and children are increasingly the victims of the American bombs.
"The worst fear of the gulf war appears to have occurred in Baghdad," French anchorman Patrick Poivre d'Avor somberly announced to open the evening newscast on the leading French network.
German television noted the bombing came on the 46th anniversary of the allied blitz on Dresden, Germany.
In the Middle East, it likely does not matter if the bomb shelter where hundreds may have been killed was also a military command and control center, experts said.
"Internationally, this is a disaster for the United States," said Garth Jowett, a professor at the University of Houston specializing in propaganda. "It confirms what has come out of Baghdad for the last 10 days - that this is a war against Arabs, against civilians, and not to a war to free Kuwait."
The pictures especially were effective compared to previous footage from Iraq, say those reviewing Iraqi propaganda. Earlier images of bomb damage did not actually show civilian bodies being removed from the carnage, thus leaving some doubt whether allied bombing caused the deaths.
The Iraqis appeared to know instantly they had a powerful propaganda weapon. Ministry of information officials brought the roughly 20 Western journalists in Baghdad to the scene in time to make morning news programs.
Perhaps more significantly, the Iraqis for the first time let Western journalists send their reports without demanding to review the copy or video in advance. Some reporters remarked on the air that their stories had not undergone the usual explicit censorship.
Allied officials were put clearly on the defensive.
At first American authorities said they had no information about the bombing.
Three hours later, U.S. military briefers in Saudi Arabia had put together a detailed explanation that the target was a command center. An hour later, the White House issued another defensive statement. Still later Defense Secretary Dick Cheney defended the bombing, and more context was added in an afternoon Pentagon briefing.
But U.S. officials' contention they did not know civilians were in the building led reporters to ask if they had failed to try to find out beforehand.
And the story dominated the press worldwide.
In France, all four of the main news shows, including the two state-owned channels, devoted about 15 minutes of their half-hour newscast to the bombing.
Israeli television, controlled by the government, showed much of the edited CNN footage and a full American explanation for the bombing.
In Mexico City, an anchorman for Televisa's news program dismissed U.S. claims that the shelter was a military control center. "Be that as it may, the concrete fact is that more than 700 women and children are dead, among them babies, practically newborn who have been incinerated, suffocated and crushed," Abraham Zabludovski said.
With all the reports taken together, analysts said, the bombing amounted to the most powerful signal yet of how effectively Saddam Hussein is starting to wage the battle for the mind.
by CNB