Alarmist corporate media coverage of the "threat" from Iran is everywhere, thanks to a Senate appearance yesterday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

But Clapper said very little in his remarks that would justify the propagandistic coverage we're seeing.  His main point was that Iran could launch attacks if it felt threatened. It is hard to see how this is particularly surprising. Clapper pointed to the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. as evidence that Iran seems more eager to assert itself, perhaps even inside the United States. But there were many people who raised serious questions about that rather implausible scenario (which involved hiring a Mexican drug gang to carry out the assassination).

As the Wall Street Journal reported (one of the few corporate outlets I saw pushing back against the official alarmism):

There is still widespread doubt that an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was authorized at the highest levels in Tehran, said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"If that's the only data point, I think it's a stretch to conclude that the regime is now looking to commit acts of terror on U.S. soil," he said.

That kind of caution was in short supply on the network newscasts. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (1/31/12) announced:

Iran's threat. Not just the nuclear program. Tonight, U.S. intelligence warns Iran may be prepared to strike on American soil.

Williams called Clapper's testimony  a "chilling new assessment about the scope of the threat from Iran." As correspondent Andrea Mitchell explained,  "Experts warn that the U.S. is even more vulnerable than Israel if Iran retaliates or launches a pre-emptive bomb plot.... Soft U.S. targets like embassies throughout the Persian Gulf, and 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan, next door to Iran."

It wasn't until the end of Mitchell's report that any notes of caution were sounded:

Still, intelligence officials told the Senate today they don't think Iran has taken the final step, deciding to build a bomb. But Israel does think Iran has crossed that red line, and U.S. officials say if attacked, Iran would not hesitate to retaliate against both Israel and the U.S.

So Iran is a substantial threat, though then again it might not even be developing the weapons the U.S. and Israel claim are in the works. And really, the "threat" seems mostly that Iran might be ready to respond to an attack on its country--something virtually any country in the world would do.

But for sheer propaganda value, ABC World News' January 31 broadcast would be tough to top.

First, start with alarming graphic:

Then Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz announced, "The saber rattling from Iran has been constant."

Match that with threatening B-roll footage from the enemy country. Weapons  on display at a military parade, for instance:

Iran "may be more ready than ever to launch terror attacks in the United States," Raddatz explained. Cue footage of apparently menacing soldiers:

Don't forget to show the enemy county's leader (or, rather, a close approximation) meeting with other Official Enemies. Like this:

And why not one more, while reminding viewers that such figures "have little love for the U.S.":

It's important to remember, amidst all this hoopla, that it is U.S. military officials and the president who have regularly threatened that "no options" are "off the table" in dealing with Iran. That is code for using nuclear weapons--and Barack Obama's latest repetition of that apocalyptic threat got a standing ovation from Congress.

It is hard to argue honestly that the real escalation  is coming from the Iranian side. But that's what propaganda is for.

The New York Times (11/13/11) had a Sunday Style section profile of ABC Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz that started off on a bad note--only to get much worse.

First the bad:

If there has been a glamour beat in television news in recent years, it may well be war correspondent. Starting with the original "Scud Stud," Arthur Kent of NBC in the 1991 gulf war, conflict reporters, including the current slate of Richard Engel (NBC), Lara Logan (CBS) and Ms. Raddatz's ABC colleague Alexander Marquardt, have become news media celebrities not just for acting fearless but for looking fabulous.

You might think the fact that Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while reporting from Egypt--which the Times piece mentions toward the end--would make Times reporter Jennifer Conlin think twice about referring to war coverage as a "glamour beat." But then you probably wouldn't have introduced the subject of your profile this way:

Glamour is probably not an adjective at the forefront of Ms. Raddatz's viewers' minds. At 58, she is older than most of her on-air competitors, and though she looks great--petite, blond and remarkably put together

I suppose a Style profile is the place one should expect a reporter to point out that a female TV reporter is "put together" and yet still not totally glamorous.

Then the piece gets much worse. Conlin writes:

Her approach to the beat is to cover war in its entirety, not just not on the battlefield.

What does that mean? The piece says Raddatz goes to warzones, which is part of the job. What they seem to be saying is that she knows to keep American troops first: "Her network of sources also includes numerous families at bases back home." Again, it's hard to see how that would all that remarkable for a network correspondent.

The truth is that Raddatz is a faithful Pentagon correspondent who rarely strays from the preferred storyline. Drone strikes in Afghanistan? Sure, they kill innocents, but there's no other way, according to Raddatz:

They simply have to carry out air strikes over there. It's a very rapid response. It's real-time intelligence. It's certainly flawed at some points.

But I've been on these missions. I've been on a combat mission in a fighter jet. I've seen all the very, very careful steps they take. They go through what's called the nine line. In fact, the mission I went on, some French soldiers were calling for them to bomb and the pilot and the weapons officer said, "We can't bomb, we think there's a school, we think there might be people in there."

Praising American military leaders? Raddatz knows how to do that too:

A warrior and a scholar, Petraeus is sometimes jokingly referred to as a water walker, since almost everything he touches seems to turn to gold.

The point the Times drives home is that Raddatz is close to her U.S. sources-- she is "a reporter who shows the human side of war," a point illustrated by the fact that one general like her work. Raddatz "calls us and invites us over for dinner....  She knows both the soldier's side and the military family’s side."

The "human side," meaning the humans from her own country. As Raddatz says:

"I know how they notify families of the dead," she said. "No matter how you feel about this war or how we got into it, you have to care about our servicemen. I can’t pretend to be objective when it comes to service or sacrifice."

You read all of that, and yet the Times comes up with this idea in the very next sentence:

Despite her worldview, Ms. Raddatz is very much a denizen of the Beltway culture, having been married to three well-known Washington figures. Tom Gjelten, her husband of the past 15 years, is a correspondent for National Public Radio; Julius Genachowski, her second husband, was a law school classmate of President Obama and is now chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Her first marriage was to Ben Bradlee Jr., son of the legendary Washington Post editor--a relationship that propelled her into a gossip column dust-up earlier this year.

What exactly in her "worldview" would make her a Beltway outsider? All evidence would seem to point the other way.

Today's New York Times has a story by David Kirkpatrick and Rod Norland running down the exaggerations and misinformation that have been spread throughout the Libya War. There's been "spin from all sides," they report. Gadhafi's exaggerations are well-known, but this passage is rather striking:

Still, the rebels have offered their own far-fetched claims, like mass rapes by loyalist troops issued tablets of Viagra. Although the rebels have not offered credible proof, that claim is nonetheless the basis of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

And there is the mantra, with racist overtones, that the Gadhafi government is using African mercenaries, which rebels repeat as fact over and over. There have been no confirmed cases of that; supposedly there are many African prisoners of war being held in Benghazi, but conveniently journalists are not allowed to see them. There are, however, African guest workers, poorly paid migrant labor, many of whom, unarmed, have been labeled mercenaries.

So stories about African mercenaries are a racist mantra? If that's the case,  then point a finger at media outlets like the New York Times. While the warnings about mass rapes and mercenaries  fueled the supporters of the NATO bombing,  few reporters have detailed--mostly notably Patrick Cockburn in the Independent--that there was never solid evidence to support them.  They were nonetheless a regular part of the media coverage of the war, as I pointed out in a recent piece in Extra!:

A February 24 Washington Post editorial thundered, "Mr. Gadhafi has unleashed an orgy of bloodshed in the capital, Tripoli, using foreign mercenaries and aircraft to attack his own people." The day before, the New York Times editorial page (2/23/11) announced that in Tripoli "pro-government forces, relying heavily on mercenaries, were massacring demonstrators." The Times added that "there were reports of warplanes and helicopters being used to attack civilians"--though the paper did note that "authoritative information was difficult to come by."

"Gadhafi's brutal side has emerged once again," reported ABC's Martha Raddatz (World News, 2/22/11). "This time, flying in cargo planes full of African mercenaries, who don’t even speak the language, to do his dirty work. Trained killers gunning down residents and protesters in cold blood."

And those "racist overtones" were fairly common in the pages of the New York Times. From February 22:

By Monday night, witnesses said, the streets of Tripoli were thick with special forces loyal to Colonel Gadhafi as well as mercenaries. Roving the streets in trucks, they shot freely as planes dropped what witnesses described as ''small bombs'' and helicopters fired on protesters....

Two residents said planes had been landing for 10 days ferrying mercenaries from African countries to an air base in Tripoli. The mercenaries had done much of the shooting, which began Sunday night, they said. Some forces were using particularly lethal, hollow-point bullets, they said.

February 23:

Witnesses said groups of heavily armed militiamen and mercenaries from other African countries cruised the streets in pickup trucks, spraying crowds with machine-gun fire.

February 24:

Distrustful of even his own generals, Colonel Gadhafi has for years quietly built up this ruthless and loyal force. It is made up of special brigades headed by his sons, segments of the military loyal to his native tribe and its allies, and legions of African mercenaries he has helped train and equip. Many are believed to have fought elsewhere, in places like Sudan, but he has now called them back.

It's worth noting that David Kirkpatrick, co-author of today's piece, also co-authored all of the articles excerpted above.

One has to wonder if the Times is changing the story now because they believe the war is over. What better time to start exercising skepticism than now?

Afghan president Hamid Karzai denounced once again U.S./NATO airstrikes that killed civilians. In this recent incident,  14 were killed, including 11 children. This prompted ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer (5/31/11) to call in ABC reporters to sort things out, leading to this exchange with Pentagon reporter Martha Raddatz:

SAWYER: He's talking to the Afghan people. But Martha, he put restrictions on what U.S. troops can do, what the NATO troops can do. How onerous are these?

RADDATZ: Well, he's trying to put restrictions on. I mean they simply have to carry out air strikes over there. It's a very rapid response. It's real-time intelligence. It's certainly flawed at some points.

But I've been on these missions. I've been on a combat mission in a fighter jet. I've seen all the very, very careful steps they take. They go through what's called the nine line. In fact, the mission I went on, some French soldiers were calling for them to bomb and the pilot and the weapons officer said, "We can't bomb, we think there's a school, we think there might be people in there."

So I think you will see a real fight over these restrictions, but the airstrikes and these night raids just simply have to continue if they're going to go after the enemy.

So bombing raids in Afghanistan "have to continue," for the sake of having a "rapid response" to "real-time intelligence." And Raddatz, who has "been on a combat mission," can assure you how "very, very careful" they are--why, on the mission she flew, they didn't bomb a target simply because they thought it was a school! This great care taken to not kill civilians sometimes gets more attention than the actual killing of civilians.

The piece helpfully included footage of Raddatz on her combat mission, gathering all the "facts" necessary to produce this kind of journalism.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post (12/29/10):

I've seen Petraeus give many briefings over the years, and it's a bit like watching a magician at work. Even though you've seen the trick before, and you know the patter, you still get mesmerized. He has the ability to make people believe the impossible might be doable, after all.

That sounds bad, but then I remembered this from ABC's Martha Raddatz (6/23/10):

A warrior and a scholar, Petraeus is sometimes jokingly referred to as a water walker, since almost everything he touches seems to turn to gold.

Joke's on us, I guess.

On the October 22 broadcast of ABC World News With Diane Sawyer, the anchor weighed in on the WikiLeaks Iraq War documents by noting, "Arab television is already trumpeting the revelations." Not exactly a promising start, but the correspondent Martha Raddatz did a pretty good job of conveying the findings:  hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints, thousands of unreported civilian deaths and torture of detainees.

Then the report went back to Sawyer for a follow-up question:

"I know there's a lot of outrage about this again tonight, Martha. But tell me, anything more about prosecuting the WikiLeaks group?"

From ABC World News, 11/11/09:

CHARLIE GIBSON: We understand he's raising new questions about a number of plans that are in front of him. What new questions are there to be asked after all this time?

MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, you would think he'd be through with the questions, Charlie.

Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (11/15/09):

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.

David Broder, Washington Post (11/16/09-- headline: "Enough Afghan Debate")

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.