Propaganda & spinning the news: truth has been called the first casualty of war. Is it now?

• Author: Vilbig, Peter
• Position: International

AN AMERICAN B-52 OPENS ITS BOMB BAY DOORS over Afghanistan and out pour not bombs, but 385,000 slips of paper, some containing a picture of a U.S. soldier shaking hands with an Afghan man, others a message urging Afghans to tune their radios to U.S broadcasts.

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the U.S., dispatches a videotape from his Afghan hideout to an Arab television station. Up close and personal, bin Laden's face suddenly stares from TV screens worldwide, delivering his anti-American message.

So it goes, day by day, in the battle for information control being waged by the U.S. and its opponents in the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration is trying to persuade audiences here and abroad to support the war. At the same time, it is trying to control the release of information about military intelligence and operations.

The effort is a backhanded acknowledgment that bin Laden and the Taliban forces that support him in Afghanistan are formidable propaganda foes, having spent years winning the hearts and minds of much of the Muslim world.

Through news briefings and highly orchestrated press tours, both sides try to make the most of successes and minimize setbacks. This is done through methods that range from spin control to pure propaganda. Spin control gives a partial picture of the truth, to portray an event, such as the results of a battle, in the best possible light. Propaganda is a tricky term that is often misused to label opposition statements as untrue; in fact, it means any information spread deliberately to further your cause, or to damage your opponent's, such as the leaflets dropped by the B-52s.

"They are trying to manipulate world opinion in a way that is advantageous to them and disadvantageous to us," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says of the enemy. "And we need to do everything we can to make sure the truth gets out." Rumsfeld, however, makes it clear that he sees acceptable shades of gray between telling the whole truth and outright lies. "There are dozens of ways to avoid having to put yourself in a position where you're lying," he says.

BESIDES LIMITING INFORMATION THAT COULD ERODE public support or help the enemy, the Pentagon has heated up its psychological operations, using methods such as the flyers dropped by the B-52s. One of them offers this justification for the bombing campaign: "On September 11, the United States was the target of terrorist attacks...