U.S. "Making Matters Worse?"

1) The U.S. just can’t win. "Are the U.S. food drops on Afghanistan making matters worse? Some relief agencies say yes." So declared Peter Jennings on Tuesday night. ABC and NBC stressed the futility of the effort, how the U.S. bombing, by inhibiting ground transportation, has made matters worse -- and ABC just dismissed the food drop operation as U.S. "propaganda."

2) On CNN syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux defended Hezbollah as a group which is "simply defending their land" from Israeli invasion. She charged that the U.S. is aiding terrorism: "We cannot say that we don’t like terrorism but then we support Israel’s terrorism against Palestinians."

3) Americans first and journalists second. Seventeen news outlets knew two days in advance that an attack was imminent, but none reported it. More laudatory, a week before USA Today divulged how U.S. operatives were inside Afghanistan, Knight-Ridder had the story. But out of concern to endangering the operation, Washington Bureau Chief Clark Hoyt withheld the story.

4) Contrast Hoyt’s attitude with how back in 1989 CBS’s Mike Wallace and ABC’s Peter Jennings agreed that if they were traveling with enemy troops and learned of an ambush planned to kill U.S. soldiers they would not provide any warning. A Marine commander rued: "And Marines will die, going to get a couple of journalists."

5) Diane Sawyer repeatedly applied ideological tags to Rush Limbaugh in reporting how he had lost his hearing. She noted that "ditto heads" like him "for his cheerfully right-wing views." NBC’s Lisa Myers, in the only broadcast network evening story, passed along a doctor’s theory about what caused the hearing loss and Tom Brokaw remarked: "We wish him all the best."

6) Attention those subscribing to CyberAlert via Microsoft’s Hotmail: How to avoid having CyberAlerts diverted to your "junk mail" and have them placed into your regular in box.

>>> Terrorism Coverage: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly since September 11. The MRC has created a Web page listing all of our terrorist attack related CyberAlert items, Media Reality Check reports, columns by MRC President L. Brent Bozell and video clips. It’s a work in progress, put together by the MRC’s Liz Swasey with the assistance of the MRC’s Web team, so expect improvements and updates in the coming days. The page provides a useful one-stop point of access to everything the MRC has produced since the terrorist attack. To get to the page, go to the MRC home page and then click on "Terrorism Coverage" in the blue box in the center of the home page. <<<

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"Are the U.S. food drops on Afghanistan making matters worse? Some relief agencies say yes." So declared Peter Jennings at the top of Tuesday’s World News Tonight in showing that the U.S. can’t win with some who are always looking for the dark side of any U.S. decision. "Today some humanitarian aid workers were saying this effort is little more than propaganda," ABC’s Dan Harris soon charged. "And some say the U.S. is actually doing more harm than good," since bombing has stopped ground transport of food.

Instead of stressing how unusual it is in a war for a nation’s military personnel to risk their lives to try to feed indigenous people, ABC on Tuesday night and NBC on Tuesday morning stressed the futility of the effort, how the U.S. bombing, by inhibiting ground transportation, has blocked food distribution -- and ABC just dismissed it all as U.S. "propaganda."

On the October 9 Today, for instance, news reader Ann Curry complained: "The U.S. has also dropped 37,000 food rations for Afghan refugees. But relief agencies say the rations will do little as 7 million people are now near famine conditions."

On the same show, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, reporter Dana Lewis reported: "The U.S. has dropped more than bombs, 37,000 food packs for refugees airlifted on American C-7 transports. Flown 6000 miles from Ramstein air base in Germany. But relief agencies say the air drops will do little to feed 7 million people in near famine conditions....Aid agencies say before this crisis they were moving 10,000 tons of food per month into Afghanistan. And now to give you some perspective they say only about 2000 tons every week is getting, every month is getting in here. And they're saying that these American air drops simply will not feed the hungry refugees on the move."

Tuesday night on ABC’s World News Tonight, following the above-quoted tease from anchor Peter Jennings, Dan Harris in Islamabad outlined how the U.S. is supposedly making things worse. Harris began, as transcribed by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "They call it a ‘bombs and bread’ mission. While attacking the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, U.S. officials have reminded the public as often as possible that they’re also attacking hunger: 37,000 individual food rations dropped every night. Today some humanitarian aid workers were saying this effort is little more than propaganda." Nicolas Detorrente, Doctors Without Borders: "The main concern that we would have with air drops is that the amounts of food delivered so far are insufficient compared to the needs." Harris: "And some say the U.S. is actually doing more harm than good. The bombing raids have some truck drivers too scared to carry food into the country. Many of the humanitarian workers who stayed behind in Afghanistan are now fleeing for the same reason. The attacks have significantly hampered a large humanitarian effort, and the U.S. food drops simply can’t compensate for that. Also, Alex Renton of Oxfam International says while his group appreciates the U.S. food, there’s a real danger of dropping packets in a nation riddled with land mines." Alex Renton, Oxfam International: "Air drop is seen as a last resort. It’s highly expensive, it doesn’t target the needy, and it can create more problems than it solves." Harris: "The Secretary of Defense today partially conceded the point." Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense: "Anyone looking at it understands that delivering from the air is not your first choice." Harris concluded: "Rumsfeld says the goal is to create a safer situation on the ground. That way the U.S. can use the $320 million it recently pledged toward Afghanistan to deliver food via trucks. If the fighting continues, however, all that aid could be sitting on the sidelines as winter sets in."

I bet those Afghans who received a package dropped from the air have more appreciation for it than these aid workers in Pakistan who are complaining to sympathetic reporters.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001