Tuesday, March 13, 2007

THE MEDIA WEAPON

I commend this excellent piece of research from Marvin Kalb of Harvard University on The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict.

"If we are to collect lessons from this war, one of them would have to be that a closed society can control the image and the message that it wishes to convey to the rest of the world far more effectively than can an open society, especially one engaged in an existential struggle for survival. An open society becomes the victim of its own openness. During the war, no Hezbollah secrets were disclosed, but in Israel secrets were leaked, rumors spread like wildfire, leaders felt obliged to issue hortatory appeals often based on incomplete knowledge, and journalists were driven by the fire of competition to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated information. A closed society conveys the impression of order and discipline; an open society, buffeted by the crosswinds of reality and rumor, criticism and revelation, conveys the impression of disorder, chaos and uncertainty, but this impression can be misleading."

On a similar subject, Honest Reporting has called on Robert Fisk to retract his blood libel that Israel used uranium-based weapons in southern Lebanon during last summer's war now that even the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission can't find any evidence to support his outrageous allegation.

It takes an honest man to admit a mistake so should I be holding my breath waiting for Fisk's retraction?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hold your breath waiting for Fisk to admit he made a mistake?

That's a rhetorical question, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Hold your breath waiting for Fisk to admit he made a mistake?

That's a rhetorical question, isn't it?