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by
David Edwards and Media Lens
March
19, 2003
"The American population was
bombarded the way the Iraqi population was bombarded. It was a war against us,
a war of lies and disinformation and omission of history. That kind of war,
overwhelming and devastating, waged here in the US while the Gulf War was waged
over there." (Howard Zinn)
The
public has little idea of the true scale of the horror that is about to be
perpetrated in their names, because they have little idea of the horror that
preceded it. Crucially, this is not the case for other people around the world.
A recent BBC Panorama programme comparing attitudes in Jordan and the United
States revealed a great divide: whereas the American public has little or no
knowledge of US/UK crimes in the Third World, people in countries like Jordan
know only too well what has been done to the people of Palestine, Iraq and
Afghanistan, and many others. Unbeknownst to the Western public, for many
around the world the assault on Iraq heaps atrocity upon obscenity.
Honest
commentators who attempt to draw attention to the anger rooted in this widespread
awareness are automatically denounced as apologists for mass murder. In his
latest book, Power And Terror, Noam Chomsky responds:
"It's
not that I'm apologetic. It's just a matter of sanity. If you don't care if
there are further terrorist attacks, then fine, say let's not pay any attention
to the reasons. If you're interested in preventing them, of course you'll pay
attention to the reasons. It has nothing to do with apologetics."
(Chomsky, Power And Terror, Seven Stories Press, 2003, p.15)
In
seeking these reasons, Chomsky refers to the work of Edward Herman, who has
reported an awesome reality:
"There
are significant positive relationships between US flows of aid and negative
human rights developments (the rise of torture, death squads and the overturn
of constitutional governments)." (Herman, The Real Terror Network, South
End Press, 1982, p.126)
Herman
and others have shown how US military support for countries like El Salvador,
Guatemala, Chile, Colombia, Iraq, Indonesia and Turkey typically peaks along
with their abuses of human rights. This is not out of bloodlust, Herman writes,
but for 'pragmatic' reasons:
"The
operative principles dictating US support and hostility in the Third World have
been business criteria first, military convenience second, and any humanistic
considerations third and thus effectively irrelevant. In fact, they are less
than irrelevant - they are in conflict with the first two criteria, and
therefore when we get to practical situations, as in Brazil 1960-64, humanising
forces like Church activists, educators and union organisers become
'threats'." (Ibid, p.45)
The
point being, as Chomsky explains:
"Well,
how do you improve the investment climate in a third-world country? One of the
best ways is to murder union organisers and peasant leaders, to torture
priests, to massacre peasants, to undermine social programmes, and so on."
(Op., cit, p.47)
The
mass media may dip their toes in this reality - gesturing in the direction of
the fact that Saddam Hussein, for example, was armed to the teeth and protected
from exposure by the West at the height of his crimes in the 1980s - but the
broader truth, and the monstrous logic behind it, is all but unmentionable in
the mainstream press.
Instead,
the role of the media is to pretend that Third World dictatorships are not
extremely well arranged to serve western interests; to play down crucial
Western involvement in the emergence and spread of Third World tyrannies; and,
above all, to distract public attention from the suffering of literally
hundreds of millions of people under these systems of terror.
To
read Chomsky's latest book is to read the words of someone who, after all these
years, continues to be almost speechless in the face of the hypocrisy and callous
indifference around him:
"So
yes, if you count crimes, it's an ugly record, but it's only the enemy's crimes
that count. They're the ones we deplore and agonise about, and so on. Our own,
which may be monstrously worse, they just don't enter into our field of vision.
You don't study them, you don't read about them, you don't think about them,
nobody writes about them." (p.80)
What
is so astonishing about our society is that the dictates of power - of what
simply must not be said if power is to retain the appearance of legitimacy -
are so effective in silencing almost literally everyone on the subject of what
we have done to the rest of the world:
"When
you try to get someone to talk about this question, they can't comprehend what
your question is. They can't comprehend that we should apply to ourselves the
standards you apply to others. That is incomprehensible. There couldn't be a
principle more elementary. All you have to do is read George Bush's favourite
philosopher [Jesus]. There's a famous definition in the Gospels of the
hypocrite, and the hypocrite is the person who refuses to apply to himself the
standards he applies to others. By that standard, the entire commentary and
discussion of the so-called War on Terror, is pure hypocrisy, virtually without
exception. Can anybody understand that? No, they can't understand it."
(p.29)
Thus,
during the endless debate on Iraq over the last year there has been almost no
media discussion on the suffering inflicted by the West. The idea that Western
sanctions have killed a million people somehow does not register - it simply
can't be true. It has to be the product of overheated 'loony left' imaginations,
rather than the reason why UN diplomats who ran the sanctions programme
resigned in protest. Their words don't count either - they can't matter because
their view of the West can't be allowed to matter.
In
contrast to the tiny number of honest commentators like Chomsky are the highly
paid, compromised commentators of the power press - the morally mute.
The
Guardian - the country's (Britain) leading liberal newspaper, which is silent
on the reality and logic described above like everyone else - deems its silence
merely 'balanced'. Editor Alan Rusbridger writes:
"There
are all sorts of justifiable critiques you can make of many news
organisations... But we have concerns of fairness and balance which will never
meet the aspirations of people coming with a particular political bias - of
left or right. Few reasonable Guardian readers would recognise the portrayal of
our coverage that emerges from your highly-selective version of it."
(Email to Media Lens, February 14, 2003)
The
problem with Rusbridger's argument is that the monstrous history of Western
terrorism is not a theoretical construct rooted in the aspirations of
"people coming with a particular political bias" - it is described in
state documents, which are entirely clear on the goals and the motives behind
them. The absurdity of the mainstream press's dismissal of dissident arguments
as 'extreme' and 'off the wall' is that they are based on the actual, private
(as opposed to declared, public) view of the same establishment politicians and
institutions that the mainstream is so fond of reporting. The difference is
that while the mainstream reports what the establishment says it believes and
wants, dissidents report what it actually believes and wants.
If
polled, how many of The Guardian's readers, we wonder, would be truly aware of
what the West has done to Iraq through bombing, sanctions and the use of
depleted uranium? How many of them understand the logic and history of Western
support for mass murderers in the Third World? How many cases could they cite
where Western corporate interests and military intervention combined to ensure
profitable outcomes?
Deep
denial is everywhere in the media; it's virtually a job requirement. Responding
to the charge that the BBC has completely ignored Scott Ritter - UNSCOM chief
weapons inspector in 1998 - Richard Sambrook, director of BBC News, writes:
"We
have reported Scott Ritter's views on many occasions, including during his
visit to Baghdad in September 2002. On September 29th, Breakfast With Frost on
BBC 1 carried a major interview with Mr. Ritter. More recently he was
interviewed on BBC News 24 on March 1st this year.
"We
have also carried the views of other former inspectors such as David Kay who
was interviewed on Today on Radio 4 earlier this month " (Email forwarded
to Media Lens, March 14, 2003)
After
Sambrook's response was posted on the Media Lens message board, several readers
wrote in to say that they had indeed seen the March 1 interview with Ritter,
and that it had been shown at around 3:00am. Ritter, to reiterate, was chief
UNSCOM arms inspector - meaning that he is profoundly qualified to comment on
the success of previous arms inspections in the absence of a threat of war. He
is a key witness.
Sambrook's
response gives an idea of the level of deceptiveness, denial and sheer
manipulativeness afflicting mainstream media and politics. The problem runs so
deep that Sambrook probably believes he is being reasonable. But there is
nothing reasonable about the BBC interviewing Ritter once since September, or
that interview being broadcast on a minor channel in the middle of the night.
In
a leaked memo to senior editors, Sambrook wrote:
"Listening
to phone-ins and emails it seems to me we are attracting some of the more
extreme anti-war views. There is no question there is a majority public view
which is against unilateral US action. However those motivated to call in or
email are, to my ear, frequently from the more extreme end. (The 'lets have
regime change in washington london and Israel' variety). We may sometimes
unwittingly be nobbled by anti war campaigners (I heard exactly the same
question phrased the same way on 5 programmes in one day).
"I
think the 'mid ground' majority views (many centring on UN support for
legitimacy) may be either unmotivated or intimidated from calling. This is a
view built up over several weeks." (Richard Sambrook, February 6, 2003, to
BBC News Editorial-Board-Editors)
It
is interesting that "UN support for legitimacy" constitutes the
"mid ground" according to the BBC. Presumably, then, if the US/UK arm
twisting and arm breaking had worked, a pre-emptive assault defying the UN
Charter to liberate Iraq's oil would have been fair enough.
Again,
notice that swamping the airwaves with the likes of Richard Perle, Ken Adelman,
James Rubin, Michael Portillo and Peter Mandelson - while blanking all major
US/UK dissident intellectuals, activists and whistleblowers - constitutes
adhering to the "mid ground". When the public seeks to defy this
bias, a problem is identified, conspiracies are sensed. In fact, the BBC has
ignored the anti-war movement to an astonishing degree, with reports of
anti-war protest often relegated to local news. Andrew Bergin, the press
officer for the Stop The War Coalition, says:
"Representatives
of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the
BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition
people from their programmes, even though everyone knows we are central to
organising the massive anti-war movement... The Corporation is an Oxbridge
graduate elite which does not understand that millions of men and women in this
country have a real intellectual understanding of the arguments put forward for
war - and reject them." (Email to Media Lens, March 14, and The Mirror,
February 10, 2003, 'Fury at BBC gag on war protesters', Gary Jones and Justine
Smith)
Recall
that the BBC has ignored the Stop The War Coalition at a time when 2 million
people are willing to march against war in London and when some 90% of the
population opposes war without a second UN resolution.
The
contempt for readers and viewers is everywhere in the mainstream. The reason is
not hard to divine - the media is high status, highly paid and possessed of
power without responsibility. One of our readers received this typically
dismissive note from Ben Summerskill, assistant editor of The Observer:
"Saw
your note to Roger. I work on the policy area here so was a tiny bit surprised.
I just don't think medialens has even studied the Observer - all the evidence
is not - so am astounded that they assume to lecture other people about what's
in it." (Summerskill, forwarded to Media Lens, February 20, 2003)
Readers
familiar with our analyses of the reporting of, for example, Nick Cohen, John
Sweeney and others will know just how flatly false this is. We have
consistently presented detailed, referenced challenges to the Observer's
misrepresentation of key issues, and the paper has consistently responded with
abuse.
Sumerskill's
argument also struggles in light of the fact that we, for example, asked Hans
von Sponeck, who ran the UN's oil for food programme in Iraq, to comment on an
Observer piece by John Sweeney. Von Sponeck described the piece as
"exactly the kind of journalism that is Orwellian, double-speak... This
article is a very serious misrepresentation". (Email to Media Lens, June
24, 2002)
Ironically,
given Summerskill's criticism of Media Lens, Sweeney replied to us:
"On
Von Sponeck, has he never heard of garbage in, garbage out? I don't agree with
torturing children. Get stuffed." (Sweeney, Email to Media Lens, June 24,
2002)
Sumerskill
continues:
"Far
from one thrust of argument in the Obs claimed by them and you, we carried the
other day, for example, a page of letters about the war which reflected exactly
the proportion of those we had received from readers. (In fact they were two to
one against it.)..."
We
know from our email inbox that the Observer has often been flooded with letters
of complaint in response to our Media Alerts. Most notably, there was a massive
response after Observer editor, Roger Alton, sent this reply to an email from an
83-year-old veteran of the Second World War:
"This
is just not true ... it's saddam who's killing all the bloody children, not
sanctions. Sorry" (March 15, 2002)
The
Observer printed not one letter from any of our readers complaining about this
email or the article that prompted our initial Media Alert. On May 5, 2002,
Observer journalist, Peter Beaumont, gave an idea of the scale of another
response from our readers when he wrote:
"i
have replied to some of your more polite correspondents individually, but since
there are so many i submit this as a general reply." (Email to Media Lens,
May 5, 2002)
Again,
no letters appeared. The Observer had conveniently decided that people who had
read their arguments and our arguments had somehow been magically brainwashed
by us into complaining.
The
transparently self-serving claim that critics can't have read the papers or
watched the programmes they are criticising is endlessly repeated. Alan
Rusbridger wrote to one of our readers:
"I
wonder - from your email - if you actually read the Guardian, or whether you
are responding to a suggested form of words on a website?" (Email from
Alan Rusbridger to Media Lens reader, 7 February, 2003).
ITN's
head of news gathering, Jonathan Munro, wrote:
"It
would help if the correspondents had actually watched the programmes. Most are
round-robins and refer to pieces published in newspapers or in other
media." (Email to Media Lens, February 17, 2003)
Observer
editor Roger Alton here once again observes the customer-friendly protocol
familiar to all who have engaged with the press:
"What
a lot of balls ... do you read the paper old friend? ... "Pre-digested
pablum [sic] from Downing Street..." my arse. Do you read the paper or are
you just recycling garbage from Medialens?
Best
Roger
Alton" (February 14, 2003)
Recall
that these words were written by the editor of one of perhaps three or four UK
newspapers described as 'liberal'.
The
performance of the press is so pitiful, the contempt for popular opinion so
overwhelming, that it is hard to believe the public will continue to tolerate
it for long, particularly in the age of the internet. In an Economist article
titled, 'Fading - Things look pretty bad in the newspaper business. They are
worse than that,' we find that changes are indeed afoot:
"British
newspapers are in bad trouble - even worse than meets the eye." ('Fading',
The Economist, March 6, 2003)
The
Economist reports that newspapers are losing revenue and readers. In the second
half of 2002, circulation fell from the same period of 2001 at all but three of
the national titles, and at all broadsheet newspapers. Overall national
newspaper readership has dropped by a fifth since 1990, according to the
National Readership Survey (NRS). Most
disturbing of all for the industry, the number of newspaper readers under the
age of 24 has shrunk by over a third since 1990:
"Young
Britons are getting their news either online, or from television or
radio."
A
survey last year by Freeserve showed that, in the 50% of homes that are wired
to the internet, online news sites beat newspapers as the main source of news,
and were topped only by TV and radio. "Newspapers are not now usually the
first place that young people get their news," says Roger Pratt, head of
the NRS.
The
deeper truth is that filtered, pro-establishment 'news' is no longer enough.
People want the honest reporting that is their human right. They want versions
of the world uncompromised by the need to please advertisers, wealthy owners,
parent companies, political parties and other elite interests.
The
spectacular levels of resistance to the coming atrocity in Iraq suggest that,
if people manage to access that truth, there is real hope that fewer Third
World people will have to die under the bombardment of Western bombs and
Western propaganda in years to come.
David Edwards is the
editor of Media Lens, and the author of Burning All
Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (South End Press, 1996). Email: editor@medialens.org. Visit
the Media Lens website: http://www.MediaLens.org
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SUGGESTED
ACTION:
The
goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for
others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain
a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write
to the heads of BBC news and ITN expressing your views:
Richard
Sambrook, BBC director of news.
Email:
richard.sambrook@bbc.co.uk
Jonathan
Munro, head of ITN newsgathering.
Email:
jonathan.munro@itn.co.uk
Write
to the editors of The Guardian and The Observer:
Alan
Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email:
alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Roger
Alton, Observer editor
Email:
roger.alton@observer.co.uk
Simon
Kelner, Independent editor
Email:
s.kelner@independent.co.uk
Feel
free to respond to Media Lens alerts: editor@medialens.org