Focus 580; War Rhetorics Toll on Democracy

Good morning this is Focus 5 video morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack bright and sitting in for David and glad you could listen. Our producers are Harriet Williamson and Martha Diehl and Jason Croft is at the controls. Very glad you are listening. It said that the first casualty of war is truth. Throw in an election year and you've got some really interesting dilemmas for rhetoric and democracy. That is the topic for this hour of focus 580 will talk about war rhetorics toll on democracy. The title of a talk to be given by our guest at the university YMCA at noon part of the Friday forum lecture series. Bruce Williams is our guest. He is the director of the Institute of communications research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he has taught for 10 years. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and has taught at the Pennsylvania State University the University of Michigan and the London School of Economics. He's published four books in more than 50 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. Bruce's most recent book Democracy dialogue and environmental disputes the contested languages of social regulation co-author with Albert Feeney. It was published by Yale

University Press and it won the Caldwell prize as the best book for 1996 from the science technology environmental politics section of the American Political Science Association. He's also the editor with a press of the communication review Bruce's current research interest focuses on the role of mass media in shaping citizenship and he is currently completing a book with Michael X. Tilly Carr peny tentatively entitled and the walls came tumbling down the eroding boundaries between news and entertainment and what they mean for mediated politics in the 21st century. We'll talk with Bruce Williams about a variety of issues looking at the history of war rhetoric and what that means for the democratic process and I'm sure we'll talk about the current rhetoric and current events in American culture and politics during this hour as we talk with Bruce Williams We invite you into the conversation. All you have to do is pick up the telephone and call us the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. Anywhere you hear us around the Midwest on air and on the Internet

anywhere in the continental U.S. toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Also at the outset before I forget I want to mention that Bruce Williams will also be a guest on vomit Chesney's show Media Matters this Sunday at 1:00 o'clock so you'll have a chance to hear him there as well. Professor Williams good morning. Good morning. Thanks for being with us. My pleasure. Now you have written an article I think for the Journal of higher education the Chronicle of Higher Education. You write yes. All right well I'm forgive me but I've read the article. But I but we talked briefly before the show and you looked at some of the history of rhetoric especially during World War One as it relates to the war. And to me we could start there. Yeah I was in London on sabbatical in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. And in talking to a colleague there I was reminded of the

work of Harold Laswell who went on to become one of the most influential political scientists of the 20th century. But it turns out that Laswell had written his Ph.D. dissertation on look at analyzing the propaganda campaigns that were used during World War One by both the Allied and the Central Powers and he published his book in 1907 and I actually went and. Read that book again and it was and it got me very interested in the history of propaganda because one last well described the techniques that were used during World War One they sounded eerily similar to the techniques that were used by both the Bush and Blair administrations to mobilize public opinion for war. One of the techniques for example that's familiar familiar to us all right now is is as well argued that that if you wanted to

mobilize popular support for a war you knew you had to make your message very very simple. And he believed that a successful propaganda needed to be based on these kind of simple ideas. And so one of the things he said is the idea of presenting the war as a conflict between two nations or two peoples was way too complicated because the idea of a nation is complicated. The idea of the divisions within a nation becomes complicated. And so what he believed is what you needed is what governments needed to do is have the enemy leader stand for the nation and then demonize that leader. And he meant demonisation very very literally he believed that the enemy leader had to be portrayed as the devil himself. And and stand in for the nation. And so if you think that's quite familiar to anyone who has lived through the rhetoric about

Saddam Hussein but if you look at what was said about Kaiser Vilhelm in the Allied Press it is very similar to what's said about Saddam Hussein. Another technique that last well identified is that you always needed to portray a war as defensive even if you were planning a complete sneak attack on an enemy. You had to sell that to your population as necessitated by the plans for the enemy to strike your country. And so it seems to me that if you think about it that way that claims about weapons of mass destruction and the connection between Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and the connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Both of which are claims which have been disproven by almost all dispassionate analyses and even the government's own analysis.

Those become linchpins of a propaganda campaign because they are central to the ability to portray what was an invasion of a sovereign country without UN backing as basically a defensive attack. We had to do it because they were getting ready to attack us. Indeed they already had attacked us on 9/11 and I think that what this suggested to me is that while we think of ourselves today as relatively sophisticated media consumers people who are you know able to resist the manipulations of government to to to support to mobilize public opinion that in fact the techniques that are used by government today at the dawn of the 21st century are almost exactly the same as the techniques that were used by governments in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. And I think one of the things that's important is to

revive this term propaganda. I think that we soften and divert attention to precisely what's going on when we use terms like spin or persuasion or public relations. I think we are getting a better handle on what it means to mobilize public opinion if we think in terms of propaganda. That's an interesting point because you know we use the word spin as you say and we you know we know that we're being spun when someone a pundit gets on. You know MSNBC or Fox News or at a press conference there is a particular spin on you know events that are going on and we call it spin. But when the minute minute somebody says that's propaganda people go Oh Oh whoa whoa you know no need to get nasty. Well I think that that and that is something that diverts attention from precisely what's going on now. I think it's important to understand that that there are reasons that governments use fairly

sophisticated propaganda techniques and again last well was someone who identified those terms one of the things he said was that he argued was that. War in the 20th century became total war and what that meant was it was no longer something that was going to be fought by a volunteer army. It required the mobilization of a society's entire resources and economy. So you had to get all of the population behind the conflict and that is quite difficult because what we know from now decades of social science research is that most people most of the time don't care very much about politics. They're not very interested in it and that's certainly the case when it comes to international affairs. So if you are going to fight a war part of the prerequisites for being able to do that in a time of total war is to mobilize the entire resources of the population. And I think that the question that then

haunted intellectuals during the interwar period between World War 1 and World War 2 was what this meant for democracy which I think is the question that confronts us now as we are in an election that and one of the things that worries me about all of this is that I think we're in an election where because of war time propaganda campaigns that still have a have an impact on public opinion it becomes very difficult even in an election campaign to talk about some of the very central issues that confront us as a democratic society and that clearly involves our the war on terrorism and its connection or lack thereof to our occupation of Iraq. We have a call to talk with. Let's include them in our conversation and let me just read. These are Guess we're talking with Bruce Williams He's director of the Institute of communications research at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign He'll be speaking at noon at the university YMCA Friday forum on this topic war rhetoric on democracy. And we're having a conversation along those lines this morning if you'd like to join us. The number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 1 7 Champaign is first on line number 1. Good morning. Good morning. I'd like to see whether you could expand last 12 categories and maybe some of these other categories regarding politics and who gets what where when and how it's said. And maybe talk about one of the propaganda not only from the American government or the right wing if we want to say that way but also talk about use that analysis to look at the propaganda by the so-called Islamic terrorists if we want to call them that Osama bin Laden and cetera whether we could use it to help us understand

both Inter in American politics internally between the left and the right. Both sides whether we call it the demonization of George Bush which is certainly goes on or the demonization of others. Even John Kerry's treatment by the Bush media and this morning by Bush's campaign spokesman on NPR and then maybe we could also shifted back to to to the Middle East and talk about the demonization of Israel by those on the left and the attitude. Still it's a Palestinian and so I would like you to you know use this paradigm or perspective and see if you could use it in a in a number of different areas and I'll just hang up and listen to you.

Oh I don't know it's not clear what I mean. Yes I think I know a little small question there. Go ahead. Just to touch on a few of the points you made first of all I think one of the things that is absolutely spot on in what I think you're trying to get at is that Laswell believed that the only solution to propaganda in support of one set of policies was a propaganda campaign and insert in support of another set of policies. He was fairly cynical about the abilities of ordinary citizens to understand as was most of the mid century social empirical social science for them to understand anything that's at all sophisticated about world politics. I think you're absolutely right that that these techniques are used. The reason they're used by both sides the reason and it's not just demonization it is the idea both if we think

about the arguments that come out of Islamic extremists there they are couched in exactly the same kind of techniques that last well identified. It's not just demonization it is things like this being a very clear crystal clear moral struggle between good and evil our president's rhetoric that either you are with us or you're with the terrorists become is mirrored by the rhetoric of Islamic extremists who say that either you are with us or you are with the infidels who are against God. And that is connected to this idea of demonization because as I said before Laswell took this very seriously. Demonization is a call to see a conflict in crystal clear moral terms. I think that the issue that's that's troubling for me and I and I think the

caller is correct in identifying the different places in the world where these techniques are used. The question that preoccupies me right now is the same question that preoccupied mid 20th century intellectuals like Harold Laswell like Walter Lippmann like John Dewey and that is what is the connection between these very effective and widely used propaganda techniques and democracy. And I think that as we move into an election campaign and we see as the caller pointed out the very same kind of brute blunt propaganda techniques used by both sides. I think that it it it makes it very difficult even in an election campaign to have anything like a serious public debate about the important issues that confront us. There's something in you in what you said that I wanted to follow up and then we'll get on to some of the callers

because they were have several waiting. Further the demonization of the opposition whether it's a political candidate or you know Osama bin Laden or George Bush as other people have remarked in fact we had a conversation with it last week Friday for a speaker on this issue. It makes negotiation impossible because what you essentially say is is this the other side is evil and there is there is no compromise with evil you can't do that because you know the only way to win is complete annihilation of evil. Well I think that that part of what troubles me about the use of these campaigns now is and I want to go back to something I said about. Laswell and his justification for propaganda remember he believe that the reason that these campaigns were needed is because we were talking about total war. The only way you could fight World War 1 or World War 2 was through total mobilization. And it seems to me that fighting a

you know a nazi germany a straw by Western Europe with designs to conquer the entire world is a very different proposition than invading Iraq and that that does not call for I mean you know even as the president has tried to emphasize this is not a conflict that is going to require total mobilization it's being fought again by a volunteer army. It scarcely ripples through our every day lives. It is it is a much more limited conflict and I think the problem with using these blunt propaganda techniques is that strategically they are counterproductive because if as you say the conflict is between good and evil there is no compromise. You have to wipe out evil and that makes it very difficult to contemplate the kind of proportional responses proportional military

responses or even nonmilitary responses that might be most appropriate in what in the lingo now are called asymmetric conflicts. We are not fighting the War to End All Wars. We are not fighting fascism. We have a couple calls to talk with let's go next to a listener in Kentucky on the number four. Good morning. Yes. What scares me is Mr. Allawi yesterday everything all of his problem saying to be the media and he can't lying the media for every time and all of his problems were because of the maid you know wasn't reporting him and this and that and I say that as a playa. And to try to suppress anything by it in other words. So we're going to have to go to BBC or somewhere to get the true facts if he could have his way. What do you think. I think that the role of the media is especially important when we think about how propaganda campaigns work today as opposed to the way they worked in the early part of the 20th

century. One of the things that is clearly different between now and World War 1 and even World War 2 is that we have experienced over the last let's say 20 years communication revolution it is almost impossible to keep your population insulated from information in the rest of the world. That contradicts argues with refutes the kind of information that's coming from your own government so you can click on the Internet and search on a term like Iraq and get. Links to articles in the BBC to Al-Jazeera to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the United Nations. It is very easy to find information that contradicts the. The arguments that are being made by the government and what. What I think happens then is that the propaganda campaigns rather

than really uniting the population in support of the policies that are adopted by the government winds up increasingly polarizing the population that you get people who either believe the government or don't believe the government. And I think that that blaming the media in kind of the blunt way that both allow we and our own president blames the media really obscures the the complicated media environment in which we now live and I think that that requires us to rethink the mobilization of public opinion for conflict. Is the caller still there. I think they hung up so I hope that that gets at their question. Very good we have a couple callers left and we're almost in our midpoint our guest this morning is Bruce Williams He's director of the Institute of communications research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

And we're talking about war rhetoric and its toll on democracy the subject of his speech at the university YMCA Friday form at noon today. The university why is it one thousand and one south right street in Champaign just on the champagne side of Wright Street. And that's for you know open to the public if you like to attend. Meanwhile we have a couple callers in time for others if you'd like to join us the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 will next to us or a normal online number 1. Good morning. As our caller there you know I'm on the line. OK good. OK I didn't know you were talking to me. OK OK good. This may have been partially an over lecture with the lead question but I'm curious about the media and what the propaganda needs media to carry out its message. I'm wondering about what the role is what the role can be should be of media and also historically. I'm wondering if you know we tend actually to be minimize our media if you want to talk

about humanizing. And I'm wondering you know historically have things always been the same as they are now or have there been some differences. And I'll hang up. OK thanks for the call. I think that's a great question and not sure I can fully answer it it's what I spend a lot of my time thinking about and and trying to understand. I think that one of the things that I'd like to see that it's important to make a distinction about is is the media versus the press or journalism. And one of the the problems of journalism I believe in this is something that is fairly constant that goes back certainly to last calculations about propaganda before World War One is that. In the run up to war in the most in propaganda campaigns that are designed to mobilize public opinion journalists the press newspapers in last well it's time now television

journalism print journalism they play a critical role because most analyses of press coverage of even the most recent run up to war paints a picture of journalists that really don't behave in the run up to war the way they do when in when they cover other issues. They basically pass on with very little criticism. The claims of their own government without the kind of two sides to every story. The idea that they're supposed to be disinterested in the passing on of information and so the very same people that we rely on in ordinary times if I can call them ordinary times to provide us with a kind of digested an analog view of what the government is saying. They play a very different role they become mouthpieces for the state. And I think that

that is something that is very that is that still goes on today. And I'm not just kind of making wild accusations. The Program for International. Political attitudes at the University of Maryland has done a lot of polling on just this topic. Where people get information about the conflict in Iraq what they believe about it and they they did about a year ago a poll where they looked at three misconceptions about the war. The first was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that they were found. The second is that that there was a clear connection between Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida on the one hand and Saddam Hussein in Iraq on the other. And third that most in most other countries in the world either the population supported the

invasion of Iraq or they were evenly divided now those are three misperceptions those are not true. But it turns out that they found that for example they looked at where people got their information from and they found it's probably no surprise to anyone here that 80 percent of the people who relied primarily on Fox News for their information believed at least one of these misperceptions. What's a little more surprising given the flap over CBS News the last few days is that over 70 percent of the people who relied on CBS News believed one of these misperceptions and not to pat Jack and his colleagues too much on the back but it turns out that people who relied on NPR PBS for their news were only about a quarter of them about 23 percent believe one of these misperceptions which is still scary. It's it is still scary because. The belief in these misperceptions is an important part of

support for the war it turns out that if you believe all three of these misperceptions people who have all three of those misperceptions 86 percent of them supported the war you know and I think that so that. So on the one hand I think that last well last framework gives us a good handle on how to think about the press and journalism in the mobilization for war in propaganda campaigns what has changed is that there is a whole lot of media that allows us to get a different perspective and it's not just the internet it's things like The Daily Show. I was just going to say The Daily Show Yes it is things like the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 or even farther afield The Manchurian Candidate. So I think that the the way political information comes at us is so much more diverse that we need to think seriously about the difference between the media really large and the press or journalism.

Yeah. Well just speaking about The Daily Show which is one of my favorite TV show it's actually. I mean they could. You know Jon Stewart is a gifted man but he makes the claim and I think you know it's correct. It's a fake news show. I mean it's not the real thing folks you know he says don't take it so seriously on the other hand he does things on that show. Speaking of this issue of confusion of these myths that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that there was a direct connect between some Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that so many Americans. I mean some still hold those myths and maybe there's a diminishing number one hopes because of all the coverage of the. The fact that they were myths. But nonetheless it seems that the many of the statements by the administration have I'm not sure intentionally I don't want to make that claim but clouded those particular issues and the media has failed largely to demonstrate that it's it's that those issues have been clouded in example on The Daily Show Jon Stewart showed a clip

of Dick Cheney being interviewed by one of the major television news programs in you know in which he said this was a recent interview. I don't understand how people could have got confused that there was a direct working relationship directly that there was direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And the interviewer said but you said a few months ago that we had clear evidence of a working relationship and Dick Cheney said no I never said that I never said that. And then Jon Stewart said Oh really. And then he played a clip on this from the same interview program Dick Cheney with the same interviewer and wish Cheney said we have clear evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. No one else is revealing that. And just showing that the statements that we now well know we never said that are just false. Well I think that's a great point. Indeed the book that I'm working on with my colleague Michael Della core peny really tries to come to

grips with. The the what we would argue is the collapse of any distinction between news and entertainment or other kinds of media. I think that we live as I've been saying in a very different media environment which makes the role which changes the role of journalism. I am not one of those people that castigate young people for relying on The Daily Show. I think I watch The Daily Show all the time and I could not agree with you more that that I think that Jon Stewart is being coy. I think that he's being he's playing his cards very close to the vest because he has to when he when he talks about his role in public debate on the other hand he is incredibly critical of journalism for just the reasons you are pointing to is that the role you know in journalism being object where as Fox would say being fair and balanced does not mean that you simply let someone from one position

scream at someone from the other position and stay out of it. There are certain sort of. Dare we say facts or true does that journalists ought to bring to the fore. And I think that that to the extent they don't it is it is important that there are other sources of information that really do that with If a cause is going to talk with our next listener someone in Eureka online number two. Good morning. Welcome to liberal NPR thank you for your timely program this morning. What I would like to ask your comment on is some of the comments of the vice president have deeply deeply crumbled me. Which to me is propaganda when I think he says something to the effect that if Senator Kerry is elected the United States is really going to get hit by al Qaeda. Can you comment on this please. Yes I think that that is part of really what troubles me most about the the

the continuation of wartime rhetoric and wartime propaganda in basically an open ended fashion that moves over into the election campaign. I think that there is a reason that the Bush administration a makes these. Slaw I claims they make them and then they pull them back about what would happen if that connection between a Kerry victory and a terrorist attack. Because if you go back to this public perceptions of international politics mixing up the name but it's we all call it the pipa poll from the University of Maryland among those who perceived experts as saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Again that's not true but of those who believe that that was true 72 percent said they would vote for Bush and 23 percent said they would vote for

Kerry. Among those who perceived experts as concluding that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction which is what. Almost everyone concluded 23 percent said they'd vote for Bush and 74 percent for Kerry. And it's similar when you look at that connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The more you believe that the more likely you are to vote for Bush and the less likely you are to vote for Kerry. So I think that this is part of the election campaign it's the. And what troubles me is that when you have in an election campaign the patriotism of your opponent being called into question or the idea that we can't criticize the incumbent because this is war time that really makes me worried for the state of democracy. I like to throw in words of mass deception. Yeah that's exactly what I think we're getting from the current administration. Thank you very much.

Thank you Michael. So if a call is waiting we'll go next to a listener in math to an on line number four. Good morning. Hi. You're talking about three notes that have been propagated Apparently you don't classify the use of gas against the Kurds. The use of weapons of mass destruction are. I think that that is an interesting point and I think that it goes back to something that Laz well-observed about propaganda campaigns in World War 1. If you look at the atrocity stories that were leveled against the German army when they marched through Belgium even the very worst the most outrageous propaganda stories had a core of truth to them. If you look very deeply I think that that the question of the use of gas against the Kurds is I think strikes at what we mean by

weapons of mass destruction. The reason if you go back to the arguments that were made by the administration justifying the war. The invasion of Iraq. It's that weapons and weapons of mass destruction is a term of art it's a term of propaganda because if you look at where that term comes from and the images and emotions that it calls up the weapons of mass destruction that we worry about our nuclear weapons those are the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. I think the the and the reason we get we get so worried about those weapons is because they pose a threat to us. That is the lynchpin of mobilization for a war like this that that the that that that we are invading this country because if we don't do that they're going to invade us they are going to attack us. And that's why weapons of mass destruction are such an important part of the propaganda campaign. I think as horrible as the use of poison gas is in any context the question of whether

that poses a threat to the United States is a very very different question. So in fact I would I think the United Nations view the gas and the use of gas as weapons of mass destruction that in fact they have used them. So in fact it is true that they did have at least at some point weapons the fastest. That in fact is not a man. Well I think if Western troops the troops were Iraqi troops were carrying gas masks for say. Well I think first of all I think the key question there is at some point because the the the the the use of gas against the Kurds in the when would that have been Iran Iraq war nineteen eighty nine hundred ninety there. That the question of what the

Iraqis had when we invaded them and whether they were complying with the UN mandates to destroy their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction no one argues whether they you know they had them 10 or 15 years ago. That is not the question that's not the misperception and let me get the exact wording that the pipa poll used the misperception was and this is the quote. U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So the the claim and the misperception is not that they at some point in the past had them. The claim and the misperception is that they had them when we invaded them and theirs and I think the experts are pretty uniform that that was not the case. I hope it gets to the caller's question. We have several callers remaining and we'll go next to someone on. When someone in Belgium forgive me online number three go ahead and whine.

The point that needs to be taken into account is that we've got to get out of the situation. Someplace along the line we've got to get out of it. Now there's various types of war the wars we've fought in the past some of been fought over women. The Trojan War. But the second world war was fought over a war of conquest where people went out and grabbed land. The Cold War was a war of ideology which Vietnam and Korea were just two hotspots about the way we weave. We defeated the German and Japanese armies to get them done by just taking back the ground. The Cold War we just essentially spent them in. The ground they couldn't keep up with is this what we're dealing with is a cultural war and that one's going to be very very difficult to deal with that problem. And in Israel and Palestine and Iraq the whole area there is a cultural war which is going to be very very very difficult for us to find a way to defeat it.

I think that's an important observation and if I can go back to some of the problems with using what are fairly blunt propaganda techniques. One of the problems with using this idea of demonization I think we see and we see it now is that if the conflict is between us and an evil leader the devil. When that leader is either killed or captured. That ought to end the problem. And it is extremely difficult when you've built a case for a war on this idea of these these very blunt black and white moral questions that we are. It's a battle of good against evil. It is very difficult when we capture Saddam Hussein and we get rid of the evil leader to then explain to the public wall the problems that we encounter when we try and reconstruct and democratize a shattered society. And it's

and the problems that we face here are exactly the same problems that Allied Powers had at the end of World War One when they had gotten rid they had gotten rid of the Kaiser Germany had been defeated. But then there were enormous problems in in how to reconstruct German society. And one of the real I think lessons if you come leery of lessons from history but I think one of the things we ought to pay attention to is that the the problems of constructing a just and lasting peace after World War One worse were not addressed and not solved. And the. One of the lasting impacts of the victory in World War One was the carnage of World War 2. And I think that if we are engaged in a cultural battle if the problems in the Middle East are very complicated because they do involve the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict they do involve questions of oil. They do involve questions of our allies being authoritarian regimes and what does that mean when we go to war to create a democracy in the Middle East or what is the real nature of the conflict between Shia and Sunni as in Iraq where do the Kurds figure in all of this. What what constitutes the nation of Iraq. All of those are important complex questions that we could be debating at some level. But when you portray the war the way that it gets portrayed in these propaganda campaigns it makes it very difficult if not impossible to have those kinds of debates. Thank you very much. You're welcome thanks for the call. Well you know it strikes me and we have another call get right too but just a quick follow up that we're still fighting the propaganda war over Vietnam.

I could not agree more and obviously because this is radio listeners can't see how old I am but I am 52 and I am of the Vietnam War generation and I believe that there are important parallels between US involvement in Vietnam and U.S. involvement in Iraq. I think that at the very least that is an important question. To the extent that the those issues get cast in the terms that they have been cast. And here I fault the Kerry campaign no less than the Bush campaign to the extent they get cast around questions of who is more macho who was brave or who was who really got wounded who really bled who ran away. That obscures the our ability to really talk about what I think was a profoundly brave action by John Kerry which is he

fought in the war he volunteered for the war he came back and he criticized the war he had seen it. And I think that a lot of the reasons that he criticized the war in Vietnam are it would be interesting to be able to talk about them today as as we get sucked further and further into a situation of chaos and violence in Iraq. We have just about 10 minutes left with our guest maybe a little bit less. Bruce Williams director of the Institute of communications research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign He'll be speaking at the university YMCA Friday form lecture at noon today if you'd like to attend that you're welcome to do so it's free and open to the public. And if you'd like to join us in the time remaining Our lines are open now. The local line 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I think one thing that you know the thing that struck me about the rhetoric surrounding the campaign and the role of the media in

this is there seems to be a sort of strange dysfunction going on in the media that the media is fully aware of but can't seem to do anything about. And a good example is the whole uproar over the document used by Dan Rather detailing Bush's service in the National Guard and the story then became the document in Dan Rather and CBS. And you know I'm watching all these news programs cover this over and over and over again. And part of the coverage of the story is how we're spending too much time covering the story. And we'll be back right after this message and we'll continue talking about this. I think that that gets to some of the changes that have occurred in the the nature of both the way journalism comes at us and the nature of the media environment. One of the things that I've been trying to argue is that for better or

worse when you had propaganda campaigns from the beginning to the. Really the last quarter of the 20th century they were in the context of a media system where political information was coming to us from a very limited number of sources. In the 1950s for example through the 19th the early 1980s there were three network news broadcasts that was all that was on basically. And you know fantastic percentages of everyone with a TV set were watching one of those three broadcasts and that was pretty much it for where most people maybe really motivated people would also read a newspaper. But almost all of the political information that was coming at us was from journalists and journalists have a particular way of covering those issues I mean that's why they are professional journalists and they get criticized a lot just criticize them for the way they behave in war. In the run up to war but they they behave in a certain way. Now we have a very different system.

The the audience for the nightly news broadcasts is is way down and people are watching Fox CNN and small numbers but they're still over a million people watch FOX every day they're watching The Daily Show they're cruising the internet. They're getting information from a lot of different places and that makes that leads to a fragmented and polarized public. And when you wage these kind of propaganda campaigns it polarizes the public even more. And I you know I just I watch Fox News a lot and I think there was some that it was a thinly disguised glee that CBS News had been caught and this meant the end of you know the the the dominance of the network news. Well I think that that dominance is long over and Fox is one of the major beneficiaries of that. We had several callers will try to get as many as we can before in a time we go next to someone on a cell phone on line number

one. Good morning. I just want to get a reaction from you on what I thought I asked the Bush campaign and states that they need to be re-elected because we're in a war. They also indicate that this war is not a traditional war and make along for 10 20 years. So I want to have in a few years and I can be talking about getting rid of the two term limits on the presidency. That's why. If you could just talk. I think that given the nature of our political system that would be a pretty difficult thing to do. But and I'm not you know and maybe I should worry about it but I'm I have other bigger fish to fry right now I guess. But I think the initial point you made is is what to me is alarming. It is the this idea that we are fighting a war which basically has no end to it. There is it morphs very seamlessly from al Qaeda

to Iraq. It is. And when you have a war that really is is is ill defined in terms of what would be its end point. The thing that really frightens me is that then that gives warrant to elites to use the same you know the continuously this kind of war time propaganda techniques that are then taken up by segments of the press. And I think thats something worth worrying about. Well theyre also taken up by other governments for example Vladimir Putin in Russia. I mean you know there is that's a very complicated situation but. You know he is battling a war on terrorism as well and that kind of situation may justify taking certain actions which in recent days we've seen Putin say that he's going to now appoint leaders in the 18 on provinces in the Russian Federation and certainly

in in one view. You could say that's a rollback of democracy and certainly in other areas in Indonesia in Israel in so many other places the war on terror justify so many just can't justify so many of the things. Well I think that goes back to something we've heard several callers have brought up in that we've been talking about for a while and I don't know enough about the situation in Russia to comment intelligently about it but from the perspective of the United States I think again what is what is what is troubling is that to the extent that this. Propaganda rhetoric dominates our political discourse. Then it puts us in a very difficult position when it comes to dealing with some someone like Vladimir Putin how do you tell him not to crack down on what we you know to to centralize power when that is a large part of what we are to what the government is doing in the United States now I'm not I'm not saying that. That American

democracy is in any way parallel to the situation of the attempt to establish democracy in Russia. What I'm arguing is is that the the the rhetoric of war and the way it's been deployed makes it very difficult to address in anything like a subtle way our relationship to Russia or other. And the you know the obvious example is Pakistan. So I think that that is is is a problem that is inherent in the use of these propaganda campaigns. We're just about out of time and I'm sorry there's a couple callers we simply won't be able to take. There's much more we could talk about on this topic and I certainly hope we will continue the conversation in programs in the days ahead. But let me also mention again that our guest Bruce Williams will be speaking at the university YMCA in just about an hour at noon. The university why Friday forum series has a 1001 south right street that's free and open to the public. They have a great Thai restaurant there by the way. Yes I

know. And so he's speaking more on this topic there. Also he'll be a guest on Bob McChesney As Media Matters this Sunday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm here on oil AM 580 And I also wanted to mention which I did not before that. And he will also be speaking at the university YMCA next Tuesday in the no your university lecture series. He'll be speaking on his book The problem of the media and media politics in 2004 and beyond that's also at noon for an open to the public at the university why. And today Bruce Williams will speak there. Thank you so much for being here. You're very welcome.