- An ancient Roman aphorism made a crucial
point: "The senators are good men, but the senate is a beast."
In the same way, no matter how deeply media corporations may be compromised
by profit-orientation and links to establishment power, some journalists
will always be willing to respond reasonably to criticism.
-
- On March 30, a Media Lens reader challenged
the BBC's World Affairs Correspondent, Paul Reynolds, about his article
reviewing the possibility of a US attack on Iran. Our reader, noting that
Reynolds had made no mention of the illegality, or otherwise, of a US
attack, asked:
-
- "How can you find space to discuss
the operational considerations of a mission but not the implication for
international law?" (Darren Smith, email forwarded, March 30, 2006)
-
- Within a matter of hours, the following
paragraph had been appended to Reynolds' article on the BBC website:
-
- "Of course, the legality of any
attack would be hard to justify. The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
told reporters this week: 'I don't happen to believe that military action
has a role to play in any event. We could not justify it under Article
51 of the UN charter which permits self defence.'" (Paul Reynolds,
'Will US use Iran military option?', March 30, 2006; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4860492.stm)
-
- One reader, writing one reasonable and
rational email, had made a difference. Paul Reynolds told us:
-
- "I often respond to readers' suggestions
and this was one such. As was obvious, the piece was more about the military
and political issues but I did feel on reflection that I should not leave
out legality entirely." (Email, March 31, 2006)
-
- This willingness to respond honestly
to criticism is admirable.
-
- In February, the Observer journalist
Mary Riddell described how "Britain is embroiled in two... ill-judged
interventions" in Afghanistan and Iraq (Riddell, 'The soldier's song
has become a lament,' The Observer, February 5, 2006). When a reader challenged
this description of what, in fact, are major war crimes, Riddell responded:
-
- "Many thanks. Apologies for my understatements;
you're quite right to point them out." (Forwarded, February 26, 2006)
-
- The BBC also deserves credit for a film
broadcast by Newsnight on March 29: 'Soldiers: Coming Home.' The film
followed members of Iraq Veterans Against The War on their "Walkin'
to New Orleans" protest march against the Iraq war (see: http://www.ivaw.net/).
-
- A veteran on the march, Jody Casey, was
asked if the US military had been concerned about the people of Iraq.
He replied:
-
- "Oh no. Definitely that was not
a concern at all... I was not concerned about them at all."
-
- Asked if this was simply his personal
view, or the view of the military in general, Casey responded:
-
- "No! I mean that's why they call
them 'Hajji' [the Iraqi equivalent of 'Gook']. I mean you have got to
de-sensitise yourself from them: 'They're not people they are animals'.
[There was a] total disregard for human life."
-
- The veteran described how Iraqi civilians
discovered in the vicinity of detonated Improvised Explosive Devices (IED)
were routinely shot:
-
- "I have seen innocent people being
killed. IEDS go off and you just zap any farmer that is close to you...
hit him with the 50 [heavy machine gun] or the M-16 [rifle]. Overall there
was just the total disregard - they basically jam into your head: 'This
is Hajji! This is Hajji'. You totally take the human being out of it and
make them into a video game... If you start looking at them as humans,
and stuff like that, then how are you gonna kill them?"
-
- Former soldiers claim that this attitude
extends up the chain of command, right to the top. In April 2004, the
Daily Telegraph reported great unease among senior British army commanders
in Iraq at the "heavy-handed and disproportionate" military
tactics used by US forces who, they said, viewed Iraqis "as untermenschen.
They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life... their attitude
toward the Iraqis is tragic, it is awful". (Sean Rayment, 'US tactics
condemned by British officers,' Daily Telegraph, April 11, 2004)
-
- An apparent example of the kind of indiscriminate
killing described by Casey was reported in The Nation on April 12:
-
- "On November 19, after a roadside
bomb killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 15 Iraqi civilians including
seven women and three children were allegedly shot and killed by
a unit of US Marines operating in Haditha, Iraq. Then, this past Friday,
a battalion commander and two company commanders from the same unit were
relieved of their duties.
-
- "We also know that the Marine Corps
initially claimed that the 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by a roadside
bomb. But in January, after Time magazine presented the military with
Iraqi accounts and video proof of the attack's aftermath, officials acknowledged
that the civilians were killed by Marines but blamed insurgents nonetheless
who had 'placed noncombatants in the line of fire.'
-
- "However, video evidence shows that
women and children were shot in their homes while still wearing nightclothes.
And while there are no bullet holes outside the houses to support the
military's assertion of a firefight with insurgents, 'inside the houses...
the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as
well as the telltale spray of blood.'" (Katrina vanden Heuvel, 'Haditha,
Iraq,' The Nation, April 12, 2006;
- http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=76825)
-
- One eyewitness told Time: "I watched
them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then
they killed my granny."(Quoted, Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills,
'Iraqis killed by US troops "on rampage",' Sunday Times, March
26, 2006)
-
- This is how the incident was originally
reported in the Mirror:
-
- "Elsewhere, an ambush on a joint
US and Iraqi patrol north-west of Baghdad left 15 civilians, eight insurgents
and a US Marine dead. An improvised explosive device was detonated next
to the Marine's vehicle in Haditha on Saturday." (Brian Roberts,
'Brit toll rises after roadside blast kill soldier,' Mirror, November
21, 2005)
-
- The most shocking revelation in the Newsnight
film concerned the carrying of shovels and AK-47 rifles on US patrol vehicles
- these were regularly dumped beside bodies to give the impression that
they had been planting roadside bombs. Casey explained the orders he had
been given:
-
- "'Keep shovels on the truck and
an AK, and if you see anybody out here at night on the roads, shoot them.
Shoot them, and if they weren't doing anything, throw a shovel off.' At
that time when we first got down there, you could basically kill whoever
you wanted - it was that easy...
-
- "You're driving down the road at
3 in the morning, there's a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him...
you throw a shovel off."
-
- The IVAW website contains a harrowing
interview with Iraq veteran, Doug Barber, who subsequently took his own
life. Asked if he had seen any Iraqi civilians being killed, Barber replied:
-
- "You know, I didn't see any get
killed, but we heard about it on a daily basis. I knew some guys in our
unit had gone through it. They had experienced a situation where they
were ambushed and had to open up, uh, open fire, on these people. The
guys in the unit that had to open fire, well it really messed them up.
It really messed them up bad, it really got to them.
-
- "We would hear about our own friendly
fire from the helicopters and some other combat units would hurt or kill
civilians, things like that we knew were going on all the time."
(Jay Shaft, 'Interview with Spc. Douglas Barber- OIF Vet suffering from
PTSD', December 3, 2005;
- http://groups.google.com/group/Coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/msg/
2fe6cd944011c4b5?dmode=source)
-
- The killings at Haditha have generated
some media coverage - there have been eight mentions in national British
newspapers. One-off horrors of this kind are generally covered in brief
and in isolation. During the Vietnam War, the US massacre of up to 500
civilians at My Lai eventually received substantial media coverage. To
this day, My Lai continues to be presented as an isolated incident. In
reviewing Haditha, the Daily Mail wrote, for example: "It has chilling
echoes of America's darkest hour in Vietnam [My Lai]." (Charles Laurence,
Daily Mail, March 22, 2006)
-
- But in fact My Lai, part of Operation
Wheeler Wallawa, was unusual only in that it was reported. Newsweek journalist
Kevin Buckley wrote:
-
- "An examination of that whole operation
would have revealed the incident at My Lai to be a particularly gruesome
application of a wider policy which had the same effect in many places
at many times. Of course, the blame for that could not be blamed on a
stumblebum lieutenant. Calley was an aberration, but 'Wheeler Wallawa'
was not." (Quoted Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Political Economy
of Human Rights, Volume 1, South End Press, 1979, p.317)
-
- By contrast to coverage of the incident
at Haditha, Newsnight's even more disturbing eyewitness accounts - suggesting
the routine killing of civilians - have generated no response in the media:
not one article discussing these reports has appeared in any newspaper
since the film was shown.
-
-
- Children Are Dying Daily
-
- But this is hardly surprising, given
the almost complete indifference of so many British journalists to the
fate of Iraqis. Also ignored by the media was last week's report that,
"The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent
compared to the Saddam Hussein era," according to Dr Haydar Salah,
a paediatrician at the Basra Children's Hospital. Dr Salah added:
-
- "Children are dying daily, and no
one is doing anything to help them." (IRIN, 'Doctors, NGOs warn of
high infant mortality in Basra,' April 11, 2006; http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/LSGZ-6NRGZK?
OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635P5D)
-
- The causes are water-borne diseases and
a lack of medical supplies. Marie Fernandez, spokeswoman for European
aid agency Saving Children from War, reported:
-
- "For weeks, there were no I.V. [intravenous]
fluids available in the hospitals of Basra. As a consequence, many children,
mainly under five-years old, died after suffering from extreme cases of
diarrhoea. Hospitals have no ventilators to help prematurely-born babies
breathe."
-
- Fernandez added that, for the last three
years, the Maternity and Children's hospital in Basra has not received
any cancer drugs from the health ministry:
-
- "In all of Basra, a city with nearly
two million inhabitants, there's no radiotherapy department available."
-
- This was reported by the UN's Integrated
Regional Information Network but has not been covered since by a single
British newspaper. Recall that the protection of the civilian population
of Basra is the legal responsibility of the British occupying forces.
Why is the catastrophe befalling the children of Basra not filling the
front pages of the Guardian and Independent? Why are government ministers
not being called to account? Where are the demands for increased medical
assistance and supplies from one of the world's wealthiest countries?
Where are the campaigns for donations and support? Is this not a clear
example where even minimal media compassion would actually save lives?
-
- In similar vein, a recent survey conducted
by London-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting ranked Baghdad as the
worst city in the world in terms of the quality of living, with a total
score of 14.5. Other cities at the lower end of the scale were Brazzaville
in the Congo Republic (30.3), Bangui in the Central African Republic (30.6)
and Khartoum in Sudan (31.7).
-
- Fadia Ibraheem, a senior official at
the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Iraq, said:
-
- "We have to admit, this city is
getting worse everyday in regard to the quality of life. As long as US
troops remain, the city will continue to deteriorate." ('For quality
of life, Baghdad ranks last in world, survey finds,' April 11, 2006, www.irin.org)
-
- We can be sure that the better, more
compassionate journalists are doing what they can to bring these horrors
to the attention of a deceived British public. But the struggle is uneven
- major corporate media have everything to gain from the current insane
but lucrative status quo. And that status quo inevitably requires the
West's projection of military power for profits and control. The New York
Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it well:
-
- "The hidden hand of the market will
never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell
Douglas, the designer of the F-15." (Quoted, John Pilger, 'The New
Rulers of the World', Verso, 2001, p.114)
-
-
- SUGGESTED ACTION
-
- The goal of Media Lens is to promote
rationality, compassion and respect for others. When writing emails to
journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive
and non-abusive tone.
-
- We have written to Paul Reynolds to congratulate
him on his willingness to respond honestly to criticism. We have also
congratulated Newsnight editor Peter Barron for his film providing a
small glimpse of the suffering in Iraq.
-
- Write to:
-
- Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
-
- and
-
- peter.barron@bbc.co.uk
-
- Email: editor@medialens.org
-
- The first Media Lens book has now been
published: 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by David
Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London, 2006). Described by John
Pilger as "The most important book about journalism I can remember",
at time of writing (April 19), there have been no mentions or reviews
in any mainstream British newspaper. For further details, including reviews,
interviews and extracts, please click here:
-
- http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php
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