Russian reports on the War, paint different picture

[DanS]

Triangulating between two lies doesn't shed light on the truth.

Re the Russian source, it's suspect to me, even though some things strike me as true (effective lie telling). The encryption used on these signals is non-trivial to be sure. It would take a lot of computing power to break through them. Also, they don't seem to have any reports from the West. Probably because they are blind to this information, which makes me have to agree with MtG that this info is coming from Iraqi troops.

[DanS]

Also, this "calling in emergency airstrikes" seems weird. I mean, isn't calling in airstrikes our MO anyway?

[Shi Huangdi]

It is amazing what sources the left wing terms as being biased. It used to be conservatives who would bash the media, now it seems to be the left and those who are anti-US. But the left has gone to unimaginable lengths in attacking the media. Going beyong attacking Fox News, they have painted CNN as just as bad. But now they are actually attacking the BBC as well, well known for not having bias. I wonder what is next, will they start attacking The Guardian as too left-wing?

Look, our media clearly isn't just spouting propoganda. It reports it when we have victories, but we also have reported problems we have encountered. When our forces suffered it's problem at Nasiyrah, it was reported. I think it safe to stick to BBC/CNN for accurate news coverage.

As one evidence of unreliability of Russian news media, they once said that a whole bunch of Special Forces units have been captured in Baghdad. Yet the only ones we have seen pictured of as captured have been those 6 from a service crew.

[Jaakko]

I hope you're not targeting that at me, Shi...

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Jaakko
I hope you're not targeting that at me, Shi...

Didn't have any particular poster in mind. It's just that on other threads most lefties have already condemned CNN as almost as bad as Fox News, and then on the war thread they are saying BBC is on the same level as CNN and Fox News.

[Dis]

I agree.

And even Fox News has been quick to report problems we are having in the battlefield.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
It is amazing what sources the left wing terms as being biased. It used to be conservatives who would bash the media, now it seems to be the left and those who are anti-US. But the left has gone to unimaginable lengths in attacking the media. Going beyong attacking Fox News, they have painted CNN as just as bad. But now they are actually attacking the BBC as well, well known for not having bias. I wonder what is next, will they start attacking the Guardian as too left-wing?

Shi: It's not so much that we think that the BBC or CNN are bad, it's just that they are inherently suspect to state propaganda. I read BBC.com a few times a day, and find it to be a good source of info. Not everything these news outlets report are lies, it's just that, as a matter of course, they are much more likely to report distorted information or propaganda material than say, the Russian news source cited earlier. This is pretty much old news, I am not sure why you are acting as if this is a massive left-wing conspiracy theory. If these news outlets were completely free of propaganda and subtle (or not so subtle) distortions, they would be absolutely unique in history for countries in time of war. Of course, the Russian source has it's own problems as well. But, on balance, I am sure that you will find it to offer a much more accurate depiction of the war as a whole.

[Joseph]

Well I stop reading after the tank statement. We have to many reporter in the field with our troops for them to lie to us. Now I was at work all day but yet to hear that we lost any tanks. To my knowledge either one or two AH-64 in combat. Between 7 and 12 POWs, and some 26 dead to all causes.

[Spiffor]

Shi :

I don't believe in a grand conspiracy intended to take control of the media, but here is why I think the western media is showing huge amounts of propaganda (I posted it 2 days ago)

The news networks must talk almost all day on the war in Iraq. They have much and much blah blah (sorry, lack of vocabulary) to produce each day. They also have to show new images to keep the public interested. Lastly, they have to be on the spot, and to give te information at the very moment they get it.

The military astonishingly eases their jobs : they hand their images, their reports and such to the networks, who are too happy of having a news material to comment on. The only sources other than the military to get news material would be to inquire on the field. They do this too (hence the raw of corpses shown on BBC, you bet the military wouldn't have boasted about them), but these inquiries produce blah blah much more slowly, and much less often than the materian handed by the army. Especially because it is difficult to do your job as a journalist in a country at war.

Hence, the army has the upper hand on the information sources the media rely upon. It is not false to say the media report military propaganda most of the day.
I think it'll be in order to read the newspapers tomorrow, for more in depth analysis, which will escape the hype of instant information.

[Dis]

but why would they focus so much on what has gone wrong in the war? There has been a lot of focus on U.S. failures and POW's.

[Spiffor]

Because they also have reports on it, and their teams probably went there and witnessed the resistance. I'm not saying the media is deliberately lying, I'm saying they depend mucho of the military as their sources of info, and of course the military will lie or present partial truth. Or this war is a first-time revolution in mankind's history.
Of course the media will be very discreet about inofs that don't fit with their political agenda : I hardly imagine Faux broadcasting images of angered Iraqis throwing stones at USUK soldiers as much as images of overjoyed Iraqis.
But overall, the media want to have a live coverage, and want to bring most information to the public. CNN is a specialist in this "right here, right now, no time to think" approach. The aim is of course to sway most viewers. The resistance in Umm-Qasr is an information item too, and they speak about it as such. It doesn't make the bulk of information less originating from the PR service of the army.

[Dis]

well I agree they depend on the military for much of their coverage. I'm not sure how that can be avoided if they want to cover the actual war and not be just a bunch of talking heads- which I hate.

[Spiffor]

Dissident :

True. I cannot condemn the media for depending of the military. Heck, I cannot blame the media for going almost only in areas where the military says it's safe (i.e cleaned) : it is normal these people don't want to lose their heads, and want to do their job, just like anyone else.

I'm just explaining why this very normal phenomenon leads the Western media to show a good chunk of USUK propaganda. It's not evil or abnormal per se, but it is good to know.

[Urban Ranger]

First of all, I don't think the Russians are completely off-base. I am not a SIGINT expert, but even I know there are a whole lot of methods/processes/etc. that can be used to extract information. Secondly, there are good reasons to believe that the "embeddeds" are own and controlled by the military, i.e., coalition command. They rely on the information given to them by the military, and they can't go everywhere they feel like. That's why Qatar's al-Jazeera televison has been such a success in the Arab world, since it provides a counterbalance to Western media, esp. in a wartime situation like this.

[DanS]

Al Jazeera is embedded with American troops.