ESSAY

By Michael Kinsley

They say it's Saddam Hussein's last weapon: the sight of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American bombs. Even if Saddam did not actually arrange for the martyrdom of these innocents, he has been using dead civilians in an attempt to undermine his opponents' resolve. But he needs help. So he has invited in the media of the nations allied against him, while carefully restricting what they can see and report. And -- presto! -- the media send the images he wants around the world. Are journalists aiding and comforting the enemy? Should somebody pull the plug?

No one, or almost no one, is talking censorship. The question is the responsibility of the media themselves. In wartime, when young men and women are preparing to give up their lives, shouldn't the media be decently prepared to give up some of their freedom? Are they (we) journalists first or patriots? Patriot missiles stop Saddam's weapons from reaching their targets. Shouldn't journalistic patriots do the same?

In fact there is no conflict here between journalism and patriotism. Consider those dreadful pictures of civilian casualties. Civilian casualties are inevitable and arguably justified in fighting a just war. But in a democracy, people have the right to make that decision for themselves. And they can't decide if they don't know. Saddam's propaganda weapon of advertising civilian casualties could succeed only by persuading people that the war is a bad idea and ought to cease. But if that did happen -- if enough people were genuinely convinced -- then, indeed, the war ought to cease.

People who watch the television reports from Baghdad bomb sites and turn purple with rage at the persuasive effect these may be having on viewers are saying, in essence: I am smart enough to put all this information in its proper perspective, but other people are stupider than I. I will sort out the facts from the propaganda, fill in what's missing (e.g., unshown brutalities % in Kuwait) and make an intelligent judgment, but other people won't. I can absorb the emotional impact of the terrible imagery of war without losing my ability to reason, but other people cannot. I am responsible enough to weigh the consequences of reversing course now that war has started, but my fellow citizens are not to be trusted.

Or perhaps the angry ones are saying: I myself am not to be trusted with the sight of piles of dead children. We've made the decision to go to war; now stop me before I think again. Such doubts about oneself and others may even be justified. Many people are fools. But in a democracy we have no choice except to trust ourselves.

If Saddam did manage to convince majorities in the Western democracies that the war against him should stop, fewer soldiers would die, not more. So invoking the sacrifices of our fighting troops is a red herring. But critics of the reporting from Baghdad make a more elaborate argument as well. Scenes of dead Iraqis, they say, will inflame the famously flammable Arab masses. Uprisings will threaten the Arab governments in the anti-Saddam coalition. This could force President Bush to start a ground war earlier than he otherwise might. And therefore more soldiers would die.

It is true that America's Arab allies are not democracies and do not have freedom of the press. Egypt has been scrupulously censoring TV reports from Baghdad. But this is not carte blanche for others to treat Arabs the way their leaders do. It is surely not the role of the Western press to prevent the people of these countries from learning the truth and having their say if they can. If George Bush were to start a ground war in order to get it over before too many people, be they Arabs or non-Arabs, change their minds, it would take true Rube Goldberg reasoning to blame the resulting casualties on the press.

Communications technology, especially satellite television, is one of the world's great liberating forces. It gets harder every day for undemocratic leaders to control what their people see and hear. It would be ironic for Westerners to attempt mind control that local dictators cannot.

As for viewers in the West, this, the first real-time TV war, reinforces the concern of some that the combination of democracy and television may make fighting a war nearly impossible. Seeing war's horrors will turn people against it. There may be something in this. But if so, so be it. If you are worried that dictatorships therefore have an unfair advantage in world - affairs, your quarrel is with democracy, not with journalism.

But doesn't it change the equation that journalists in Baghdad are not permitted to report the "whole truth"? The choice, of course, is not between partial truth and the whole truth; it is between partial truth and no truth at all. Reports from Baghdad, on CNN for example, come with more warning labels than a bottle of pills. But no amount of caveats and qualifications will satisfy some people, who want no pictures of dead Iraqis unless "balanced" by pictures of dead Kuwaitis. They are like people who complain that the media never report all the planes that land safely.

And their argument, if taken seriously, would foreclose reporting most information from the allied side, since it also is censored and one-sided. We see videos of smart bombs hitting buildings but no videos of stupid bombs missing buildings. Yes, sure, we can trust the good guys more than we can trust the bad guys. But that is because we believe the good guys are generally committed to truth as a value in its own right. That belief is undermined by those who argue that we should deny ourselves the truth from Baghdad for our own good.

There is a legitimate place for deception in wartime. If misleading Saddam about, say, when the ground war starts required deceiving citizens of the allied countries as well, few journalists would object. The test is simple: Is the genuine purpose to deny truth to the enemy? To deny truth to the folks back home because they might not handle it properly is to deny the premise of democracy. Real patriots don't do that.