National Security And Government Manipulation

By Author: Jordon
Total Articles: 91
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Because information about foreign relations is more difficult to corroborate than information about domestic policy and because members of the press are citizens as well as reporters, reporters are susceptible to the administration's line on foreign policy. David Halberstam's book The Powers Omega Seamaster Replica That Be documents the way that the government sustained press support for Vietnam policy. Appeals to support presidential policies are made in the name of "national security" and "protection of vital interests." Such appeals usually prove irresistible.

Appeals to national security are complicated by competition among news outlets. In some cases, journalists keep a story off the air or out of the papers only to see it broken by someone else. For example, for nearly a year, the Carter and Reagan administrations tried to prevent publication of information about the existence of two secret listening posts operating in China with American equipment and Chinese personnel. The story was finally reported in June 1981 on NBC Nightly News. Earlier, ...
... when two New York Times reporters had learned of the posts' existence, they were talked out of publishing the story—first by Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and later by Reagan's CIA director, William Casey. NBC News, last in the ratings, had a strong incentive to break the story. However, the existence of the listening posts had been hinted at in the Washington Post several days earlier, and China's offer to replace posts lost in Iran after the revolution there had been reported as early as April 1979. What gave the story such impact was the recent Reagan administration decision to authorize the first sale of "lethal" U.S. military equipment to China.

Strategic leaks of classified material are also used to manipulate the press. Just how common this practice is became clear during lawsuits over publication of the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration. In answer to claims by the Nixon administration, the New York Times responded with 15 affidavits which laid out some of the ways in which government officials had selectively leaked classified material to the Times in the past to achieve their ends. . . . The Post also argued . . . that government officials had for years leaked classified material for their own purposes and introduced affidavits from staff members including Ben Bradlee, the newspaper's editor, and its foreign affairs specialist Chalmers Roberts.
Stephen Hess, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, has identified six types of leaks. Each is based on a different motive:
1. Policy leaks are "a straightforward pitch for or against a proposal using some document or insider's information."
2. Trial balloon leaks are an attempt to assess a proposal's strengths and weaknesses, assets and liabilities.
3. Ego leaks satisfy the source's sense of self-importance.
4. Goodwill leaks attempt to cultivate credit with a reporter.
5. Animus leaks are designed to embarrass someone else.
6. Whistle-blower leaks are the last resort of a frustrated civil servant who feels that he or she has exhausted remedies within the government.
The political use of strategic leaks illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the press and the government. The Omega Replica Watches government needs the press to distribute information and to support its policies. The press needs the government as a major source of information.

This close relationship was illustrated by the Reagan administration's use of the press during trade talks held to persuade the Japanese to limit voluntarily their automobile exports to the United States. The situation arose because the administration did not want to make any overt effort to restrict Japanese exports. However, the press was used to put pressure on the Japanese through a news release from "sources close to U.S. trade officials" indicating that talks were going badly and that it was hoped that other proposals would be forthcoming from the Japanese. Reporters who were induced to print that story "later concluded that they had been gulled in a U.S. scheme to put overnight pressure on the Japanese." In effect, the Reagan administration used the press as a conduit for its negotiations while maintaining the fiction that it was making no attempt to restrict Japanese exports.