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Peter Arnett gave Iraqi television an interview over the weekend, and got fired for it. My first reaction to the news was, well, he ought to be fired for giving a propaganda interview. He’s supposed to be a reporter. Would that MSNBC routinely fired people who gave propaganda interviews; god knows we’ve seen enough of ‘em on Fox.

Let’s break down the transcript . First off, he gives Iraq credit for being cooperative and courteous; probably untrue but meaningless fluff. Second, he says there’s “growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war.” He also says “It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments.” The first is true, mostly due to media coverage of recent events, and the second — well, if we fired people for saying that, we’d have to fire Ann Coulter.

Second statement: “… the population is responsive to the government’s requirements of discipline…” That’s pure propaganda and I’m kind of uncomfortable with it.

He then goes on to discuss the marketplace bomb, and points out that both the US and Iraq are pointing fingers; true enough, and I don’t see anything objectionable there. He follows that up with more discussion of the danger of civilian casualities. All accurate and true.

Finally, he says that the administration misjudged the likely resistance and that they’re rewriting the war plan. You can read similar statements in the New York Times and the Washington Post; can’t find anything to fault there.

So is the bit where he talks up the resistance of the population enough to fire him for? Not, I think, if he said it on the air on a US station. But with the knowledge that it would be broadcast on Iraqi television as a propaganda piece for Saddam? I think he was walking really close to the line. Arnett has been eager to get back into the spotlight since CNN fired him and I have to wonder how far he’d be willing to go to get good stories.

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Den Beste has his own commentary on the Arnett issue, and completely misses, and I think it’s a bad enough miss to be worth some discussion.

His issue is with the portion of the interview in which Arnett says “So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments.” Den Beste claims that Arnett’s interview — and specifically that interview — will encourage the Iraqi leadership to kill civilians in an attempt to turn public opinion against Bush.

I have to wonder how stupid Den Beste thinks Saddam is. Is he, perhaps, under the impression that Saddam has no idea what’s on CNN? What the front page of BBC News looks like? Saddam doesn’t need Peter Arnett to tell him or anyone that public opinion, particularly as it relates to civilian casualities, is an important factor in this war. Arnett’s error wasn’t giving Saddam information he already had. His error was using his position as a reporter to legitimize false information.

Den Beste’s condescending assumption that Arnett is telling Saddam something he doesn’t know smacks of the same arrogance that led our leaders to believe that the regime would collapse as soon as we invaded. They’re just Iraqis, after all. Treating an enemy as stupid, alas, is one of the quickest ways to wind up in more trouble than is necessary.

But there’s more than that here, because if you follow Den Beste’s logic a little further you’re forced to consider the possibility that anyone reporting on public opinion has the blood of dead Iraqi civilians on their hands. (“But if this does encourage the Iraqi government to start creating lots of death scenes to blame on us, then the people killed will actually be dead, and their blood will be on Arnett’s hands.”) This is the belief that by controlling the flow of information, you can control what people will do. It misses one very important point.

We don’t live in that era anymore. You cannot control information flow. Weblogs, smart mobs, embedded reporters — information (both true and false) will flow no matter what you do, and arguing about how best to control and contain it is a futile game.

People like talking to each other. Give the world a megaphone, and it will collectively use it.

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If you’re using Brad Choate’s Textile plugin for Movable Type, you’ve no doubt noticed it’s a pain to edit the pre-formatted <a> tag that’s generated by your MT bookmarklet. And if you haven’t, well, I have. Here’s how to patch your MT installation to make it all pretty and Textile-like.

1. Edit the file lib/MT/App/CMS.pm in your MT installation
2. Go to line 631, which should read:
   $param{text} = sprintf qq(<a title="%s" href="%s">%s</a>\n\n%s),
3. Replace that line with:
   $param{text} = sprintf qq("%s":%s\n\n%s),
4. Go down 3 more lines, to the second instance of:
   
   scalar $q->param('link_title'),
5. Delete that line (line 634 in an unmodified CMS.pm)

Enjoy.