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Foreword to the original publication of Voices from the Underground ABE PECK, 1991 A nother decade, another war. And another round of media coverage, warts and all. As I write in early February 1991, reporting on the Persian Gulf war has been as whiz-bang as the technology waging it. Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy about the global village has been validated in CNN real time. Hundreds of reporters have done their best to get the story, despite varying degrees of censorship invoked by every key nation involved in conflict. Skepticism of Pollyanna-ish Pentagon claims has come earlier than it did in Vietnam; less than three weeks into the war, page 1 of the New York Times questioned blithe pronouncements of victory. There’s certainly more freedom to criticize one’s own government in Washington than there is in Baghdad, and the Gulf War isn’t a clone of Vietnam. But reading Voices from the Underground as somebody who was an underground newspaper editor the last time around, I’ve been struck by how familiar many of the limits of today’s mainstream coverage seem—not only to me, but to the writers who have recounted their own underground press experiences in its pages: • The reportage that amazes also overwhelms and numbs the nervous system; minutiae from each up-close-and-personal briefing has buried discussion of whether or not war is necessary. As Chip Berlet, one-time underground-news-service writer turned muckraker of the Far Right, writes: “There is a distinctively American school of reporting—unconnected , ahistorical, anti-ideological . . . history and news covered as a sporting event. ‘[Enemies] bomb 3 ships but Navy sinks 2 gunboats . . . pix at eleven.’ There is never time to explain why. Everything is a random event on this toteboard of history. We don’t get information; we get box scores.” • Personalities and sidebar stories have obscured issues. As in the 1960s, there’s been little mass-media questioning of whether a society in which millions are unemployed, homeless, addicted, or abused can afford to wage this war. “Only the pressing problems of the socialist countries . . . were (or are) described as systemic in our mass-marketing media,” recalls John Woodford, the former editor of Muhammad Speaks turned executive xx | Foreword editor of the University of Michigan’s News and Information Services. “If Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are failures of socialism, then what are Puerto Rico, Harlem, Brazil, Zaire, and the Philippines proof of the failure of?” • We’ve learned little about what the “other side” believes, and why. Saddam Hussein’s all-too-real ruthlessness has been portrayed, but there hasn’t been much insight into why he is supported by many in the Third World. Similarly, the language used to describe the conflict has had an underlying spin. Kuwaitis and Saudis have been “brave soldiers,” not representatives of a tribal oligarchy or a plutocratic theocracy. The war has been one of “liberation,” with little mention of a postcolonial restoration. No wonder underground press veterans hear echoes. As Ken Wachsberger, this book’s editor, asks in his look at the East Lansing, Michigan, scene, “Was a Black Panther described as being ‘militant’ or ‘a black activist?’ Were members of the Viet Cong ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters?’” • Official statements may be questioned, but they soon enter Official Reality. George Bush’s equation of Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler was debated, but in the end it made pulverizing his soldiers that much more acceptable. • Access and predisposition have governed the spin put on stories. The missile attack on Tel Aviv rallied world opinion to Israel (and pierced my heart), in part because the Scuds landed on live television as reporters donned gas masks. But the Holocaust-laden image was based on to-date erroneous reports of chemical terror. And the missiles’ explosions demolished casualty comparisons with the Israeli shelling of Beirut in 1982, or of news about Palestinian aspirations. • Despite wider domestic opposition to war than existed until the Vietnam War was years old, nearly all coverage has been shot through a red, white, and blue lens. Prior to conflict, as the Village Voice has noted, magazine covers asked, “Will there be war?” not “Can there be peace?” With conflict on, television stations have told their audiences how to write to soldiers, but not how to contact peace activists. Peter Arnett faced backlash for his CNN reports from Baghdad, but George Bush somehow avoided going one-on-one with...

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