On the Message Board

March 6, 2008Commentmediabite

Under the headline ‘There are reasons to vote Obama — just not good ones’ Kevin Myers writes in the Irish Independent:

“Obama sought a programme to withdraw all US troops from Iraq by this March. In other words, no surge, no sweeping victories against al-Qa’ida in Anbar province, no Iraqi National Council of Reawakening; but instead, a timetable of capitulation, defeat and withdrawal, followed by regional catastrophe, starting some time around now.

So, as the US stares into the jaws of victory, he has promised instead to turn it into defeat, and to abandon the successful Iraqi policy of General Petraeus.” [27/02/08]

We wrote to question this assertion of ‘success’ in Iraq:

“While violence has recently begun to reduce, due in part to increased ethnic cleansing and internal and external displacement, it must be noted that this ‘success’ is still comparable to 2005 levels. The ‘success’ of this relative reduction can only be measured in terms of what it is hoped can be achieved, thereby differentiating what you or I might want from what the occupiers and instigators of the escalation in troop numbers want. Certainly the effect of the escalation points towards a successful division of Iraq along religious and ethnic lines, as opposed the establishment of a free and independent state.”

Mr. Myers responded:

Dear David Manning,

Thank you for your detailed letter,

The democratically government of Iraq does not agree with the points you make. Governments make policy, not opinion polls.

We all agree that the invasion was appallingly planned,and there are grounds for saying it was illegal, but that is now history. The US is by UN Resolution accepted as the lawful occupier of Iraq.

I look forward to the day when there are no more US troops in Iraq: but the man more likely to bring that about is John Mccain. It is not Barak Obama.

Again, thank you for your letter.

Sincerely

Kevin Myers

To which we replied:

“Fortunately the Iraqi government doesn’t have to agree with the information I’ve offered, it is verifiable fact whether they accept it or not. The policies you mention are not those of the Iraqi government, they are those of the occupying army – again as you say uninfluenced by Iraqi opinion, but in contradiction to it. My point was not necessarily that the occupiers should withdraw, though I do think this is the case, but that their continued presence prolongs the violence – a fact obscured by discourse routed in uncontextualised themes of “victories”, “surges” and “reawakenings”.

Further, if you accept that the US remains in Iraq under the conditions of international law it has a duty to fulfil all obligations under the charter. And of course the present UN mandate does not comment and has no bearing on prior judgements. Therefore if you accept it as legitimate, then the invasion and initial occupation must be judged by the same criteria – which poses serious questions for the interpretation of present circumstances, not just historical.”

In the March 3rd edition of the Irish Independent Mary Kenny writes under the headline ‘How boy soldier became a deft recruiting officer’ (referring to Prince Harry’s deployment in occupied Afghanistan) that the Afghan conflict was an act of ‘defence’. Ms. Kenny also criticises the short sightedness of peaceniks and hippies, who only ‘enhance the iron dominance of tyrants and oppressors’.

We wrote to question these claims:

“The act of aggression, the initial invasion, that spawned this conflict precluded any future claim to self defence. And this stark fact cannot be obscured by any amount of diversionary comparison with legitimate defence against Nazi aggression. It is this reality that exposes the sad truth behind Harry’s misplaced confidence in his and his army’s stern benevolence… “We Do Bad Things To Bad People.” He is one of those bad people.”

Ms. Kenny responded:

Well, different people will have different views on this.

I don’t include Afghanistan in the “Middle East”, by the way. It’s a complicated issue, but I do think that “defence” against Islamicist forces who HAVE attacked democratic western societies is indeed – defence. NATO clearly takes that view too in regard to the Afghan situation, where so many of the Islamicist training-camps are sited.

Elected politicians (in the NATO countries) have made this decision, not soldiers. In that sense, soldiers are always “pawns”: but they can be admired for doing their duty just the same.

And I certainly wish to be defended from suicide bombers, who have struck very close to my home.

Yours, Mary K

We responded the same day:

Dear Mary Kenny,

It’s a very strange concept of defence where, by the their own admission, the invasions actually increased the threat they were allegedly designed to defend against.

“A report by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre – which includes officials from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police – explicitly linked US-led involvement in Iraq with terrorist activity in the UK.” [The Guardian, July 19 2005]

“A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.” [New York Times, 24 September 2006]

“Dr Jonathan Eyal, the director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the al-Qaeda revival was down to the West’s inability to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made matters worse.” [The Telegraph, 25/02/2007]

It also seems unfair that you can on one hand take donnish umbrage with the inclusion of Afghanistan under the term Middle East and yet purposefully confuse Al Qaeda with the Afghan people. The Afghan people, and indeed the Afghan government, prior to and since the invasion have never attacked democratic western societies (I doubt you supported a British invasion of the Republic during the troubles) – the bombers were as you know predominantly of Saudi Arabian origin, yet we have witnessed no military aggression there.

I agree, soldiers are for the most part pawns, but it is those soldiers that refuse to do the unconscionable bidding of their corrupt leaders, knowing the likely punishment and ridicule, that deserve to be praised. Rather this than repeat the old lie…’Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori’.

Yours sincerely,

David Manning

Scribes of the Empire

January 22, 2008Interviewsmediabite

An Interview with Dahr Jamail

On March 15 2003, the eve of war, US President George Bush delivered the following radio address to the American people:

“Good morning. This weekend marks a bitter anniversary for the people of Iraq. Fifteen years ago, Saddam Hussein’s regime ordered a chemical weapons attack on a village in Iraq called Halabja. With that single order, the regime killed thousands of Iraq ‘s Kurdish citizens. Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky. Many who managed to survive still suffer from cancer, blindness, respiratory diseases, miscarriages, and severe birth defects among their children.

The chemical attack on Halabja — just one of 40 targeted at Iraq ‘s own people — provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit, and the kind of threat he now presents to the entire world. He is among history’s cruelest dictators, and he is arming himself with the world’s most terrible weapons.” [1]

In November 2004, over a year into the occupation, Dahr Jamail, an independent and unembedded American journalist issued the following dispatch from occupied Iraq:

“The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report.

“Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. “They used everything — tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.”

Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.

“They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. “Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.

He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns.” [2]

Continue reading Scribes of the Empire →

Distorting Democracy – The Media and Venezuela

January 10, 2008Analysismediabite

You can’t. You can’t walk with your own legs. You are not able to think with your own head. You cannot feel with your own heart, and so you’re obliged to buy legs, heart, mind, outside as import products.”[Eduardo Galeano, Democracy Now!, May 19, 2006] [1]

The context within which facts are presented has an inherent and inescapable influence on their interpretation. The context is essentially the product of various consciously and unconsciously imposed frames – providing a set of assumptions or standards via which the facts are to be understood. This context may not necessarily be supported by the facts, but the very method of offering them within it can be enough to either alter or bring into question their meaning.

Media Lens have commented, referencing Philip Lesly, author of a handbook on public relations and communications, that the PR method of creating ‘organised confusion’ can be used ‘to prevent profit-costly action being taken on everything from ozone depletion to global warming, to nuclear disarmament, to lifting sanctions against Iraq’:

“People generally do not favour action on a non-alarming situation when arguments seem to be balanced on both sides and there is a clear doubt. The weight of impressions on the public must be balanced so people will have doubts and lack motivation to take action. Accordingly , means are needed to get balancing information into the stream from sources that the public will find credible. There is no need for a clear-cut ‘victory’… Nurturing public doubts by demonstrating that this is not a clear-cut situation in support of the opponents usually is all that is necessary.” [Philip Lesly, ‘Coping with Opposition Groups,’ Public Relations Review 18, 1992, p.331] [2]

This system of ‘balancing information’ is essentially aimed at nurturing doubt. And while the above outlines an overt plan to undermine public perception, the creation of distorting frames can be similarly influential. These frames may lead the reader to believe they are interpreting the facts without prejudice; however, the preconceptions imposed by these distortions can imbue uncertainty which inevitably leads to an incorrect or biased understanding. This manufactured doubt is again likely to repress ‘motivation to take action’ – ensuring, whether the writer intends it or not, that the reader remains a passive consumer.

In practice, distorting frames have been shown to turn common sense interpretation of verifiable facts on their head. Such that in this manufactured context – lack of evidence of a nuclear arms program points towards faulty intelligence, hostility towards occupying forces points towards outside interference and free and fair elections points towards a burgeoning dictatorship.

Absolute power and the ballot

Like much of the Western media, the Irish mainstream professes profound concern for Venezuela’s current political and economic direction. This interest generates masses of column inches, covering everything from protests and elections to the most insignificant of events there – such as a planned daylight savings time change, which led David Usborne of the Independent to mild hysterics: ‘Mr Chavez is seizing control of time’. Venezuela is by far the most talked about country in Latin America where the Western media is concerned. And their concern is borne out of distrust for just one individual, democratically elected President Hugo Chavez. [3]

Not content with the president’s democratic credentials or the significant improvements he has helped create for the Venezuelan people, entering their fifth year of economic growth – The UN Economic Commission for Latin America commented: “Thanks to rapid GDP growth and the ongoing implementation of broad social programmes, in 2006 alone the poverty rate was lowered from 37.1% to 30.2% and the indigence [extreme poverty] rate from 15.9% to 9.9%.” [4] [5] – the mainstream media have sought to cast the president in the role of ‘dictator in waiting’, faithfully echoing the US’s intransigent opposition:

“The US is bent on casting the president, Hugo Chavez, as a tyrant” [‘Pilger’s may be a partisan voice in the wilderness but few can quarrel with the evidence he presents’, Eithne Tynan, 26/08/2007] [6]

Although this program of undermining Chavez has been hampered thus far by events there:

Elections, over the 9 years since Chavez was first elected president, have been described by international observers as “a remarkable demonstration of democracy in its purest form.” [US President Jimmy Carter, Chicago Tribune, August 12 1998] [7]

In 2000, Chavez increased his winning margin from 56/40 to 60/38 percent in elections “monitored and certified by a variety of observers including the Organization of American States, the European Union and the Carter Center .” The Carter Centre concluded “that the presidential election legitimately expressed the will of the people.” [7] [8]

In 2004, following a publicly petitioned re-call (a democratic safeguard introduced by Chavez) in which Chavez took 59% of the vote, former US President Jimmy Carter and OAS Secretary General César Gaviria announced that the OAS electoral observation mission’s members had “found no element of fraud in the process”‘ and certified the vote as fair and open. [9] [10]

In March 2007 a report published by the US Department of State noted with predictable restraint, of the December 3 2006 national elections won by Chavez, that ‘Official observation missions from both the European Union and Organization of American States deemed the elections generally free and fair’. [11]

And following the latest referendum on constitutional reforms, December 4 2007, Latin American leaders and European ministers gave these comments of support:

[Former] Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner called President Chavez a “great democrat” and said he wished politicians in Argentina could practice the same recognition of democratic results.

Bolivian President Evo Morales praised Chavez “because he submits his thinking, his feelings, and his ideas to the decision of the people. And that is democracy.”

President of Paraguay Nicanor Duarte also praised the Venezuelan president, stating that “his posture demonstrates that he is a great democrat and it puts to death the impression that he is authoritarian.” [12]

Spanish Foreign Affairs minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said he was pleased to see that “free expression of people’s sovereignty has been accepted by all sides including those who had promoted the referendum.” [13]

Contrarily, the mainstream media chose to ignore these and other comments and instead sought the thoughts of the Western stakeholder:

“The US government has branded Chavez a menace to democracy in Latin America and welcomed his defeat.” [Brian Ellsworth, Chavez power play backfires in narrow referendum defeat, Irish Independent, December 4 2007] [14]

“The United States which considers Mr Chavez a threat to its influence in the region.” [Chavez’s idea of democracy… it’s a job for life, Irish Independent, August 17 2007] [15]

As discerning media readers will know, this is nothing new; the mainstream media appears almost completely reliant on the Washington perspective where international news is concerned.

Noam Chomsky offered the following explanation as to why Washington sees leaders such as Hugo Chavez as a ‘threat to their influence’:

“It is an extremely serious challenge. From Venezuela to Argentina the region is falling out of US control, moving toward independent policies and economic integration, beginning to reverse patterns of dependence on foreign powers and isolation from one another that go back to the Spanish conquests.

Morales’ election reflects the entry of the indigenous population into the political arena throughout the continent. Along with other popular forces, indigenous people are demanding control over their own resources, a serious threat to Washington’s plans to rely on resources from the Western hemisphere, particularly energy.” [BBC News, March 30 2006] [16]

A sentiment echoed by Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the opening ceremony of Banco Del Sur, the region’s answer to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund:

“I want, on such a special day for all of us, for all Argentineans, to tell you that never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a situation like this. Never, here, on a ninth of December in a white room in the casa rosada (the pink house), accompanied by presidents who, as I keep on saying, for the first time resemble their people.” [December 9 2007] [17] [18]

This inconsistency reveals a disparity of understanding as to what constitutes ‘democracy’ – between those that practice it independently and those who wish to impose it externally. In relaying events within the Washington context the media is compelled to understand the situation in those terms, the underlying assumptions, as we will see, appear to be shaping the coverage, the ‘facts being fixed around the policy’ as it were.

Don’t think of a dictator

The dominant frame that runs almost without exception throughout Irish mainstream coverage is that President Hugo Chavez is on the road to becoming a dictator. While it is perhaps counterproductive to introduce a distorting frame, it is necessary to recognise it in order to dispel it.

In the lead up to and following the recent referendum on proposed constitutional changes the Irish media devoted numerous articles to their discussion. But while the proposed changes numbered nearly 70, including “amendments that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or physical health; provide for gender parity for political parties; guarantee free university education and make it more difficult for homeowners to lose their homes during bankruptcy,” the media focused on just one – the proposed abolition of presidential terms limits. And despite the proposal being very clear: “The Presidential Period is 7 years. The President of the Republic may be re-elected.” (i.e. the citizens will remain in control of any re-elections), many journalists appeared to encounter severe interpretive difficulty in fully grasping the proposition. Thus we were served up some remarkably inaccurate statements and observations including the following: [19] [20]

“HUGO Chavez proposed sweeping changes to Vene-zuela’s constitution yesterday, which would make him president for life.” [Chavez’s idea of democracy… it’s a job for life, Irish Independent, August 17 2007] [15]

“He … is currently in the process of destroying the Venezuelan constitution to allow him become ruler-for-life.” [What’s the Spanish for a useful idiot?, Irish Independent, August 08 2007] [21]

“proposals were more focused on allowing Chavez to remain in office for as long as he wanted, and in the manner he wanted” [No, Mr. President, The Sunday Tribune, December 9 2007] [22]

“proposed changes to its constitution that would give its populist leader Hugo Chavez new tools to accelerate his socialist revolution and potentially remain president for life.” [David Usborne, Venezuela votes on Chavez revolution, Irish Independent, December 3 2007] [23]

“One of the most controversial proposals in the charter would abolish presidential term limits, giving the 53-year-old populist the opportunity to remain in office indefinitely.” [Proposal in Venezuela may mean less work, more play, Juan Forero, Irish Times, November 2 2007] [24]

This pervasive distortion of easily identifiable fact reinforces an underlying and corrupting ideology behind much of the mainstream reporting on Venezuela. That numerous intelligent and critical thinkers, which many journalists no doubt are, can settle on the same misrepresentation, one that coincidentally pars with the rhetoric of powerful Western leaders, either constitutes an amazing turn of chance or simply further evidences the embedded nature of corporate journalism.

However, both the Irish Times and RTE proved interpreting the actual meaning was not entirely impossible, though naturally the US government-orientated context and focus remain the same:

“President Hugo Chavez suffered defeat today as Venezuelans rejected his bid to run for re-election indefinitely.” [Chavez loses vote bid for new powers, Irish Times, December 3 2007] [25]

“Mr Chavez defended his constitutional reform plan, denying that he was seeking to ‘enthrone’ himself and saying a president’s re-election was ultimately in the hands of Venezuelan voters.” [Chavez plans to amend constitution, RTE.ie, August 16 2007] [26]

Having established that Chavez’s proposed constitutional amendments, to be voted on in referendum, were merely an unobvious attempt to secure long term power, the confused journalist then puts two and two together to get ‘one president for life’:

“Student protests spearheaded an opposition campaign with rights and business groups, opposition parties, the Roman Catholic Church all lined up against him. They accused him of pushing the constitutional reforms to set up a dictatorship.” [Brian Ellsworth, Irish Independent, December 4 2007] [14]

“While some should win broad support, including a shorter work day and increased pension rights, others prompted allegations of a dictatorship in the making .” [David Usborne, Irish Independent, December 3 2007] [23]

“The modern Latin dictator does not seize power with tanks. Rather, he gets himself more or less fairly elected, then promptly sets about dismantling every check on his power, closing down parliament, nationalising the media, stuffing the judiciary, vitiating the electoral commission, rewriting the constitution.” [Unlucky strike: why oil wealth is a curse, Irish Independent, August 1 2007] [27]

The inversion of logic and truth here is astounding – the distorted interpretation of democratic referenda is extrapolated to declare the existence of a dictator. This goes beyond mere lazy journalism and takes us well into the territory of willful misrepresentation, as always, presented as informed critical analysis.

An individual revolution

In the mainstream media vision Chavez does not ‘run’ or ‘lead’ the country like Western presidents and prime ministers, he ‘rules’ or ‘reigns’ over the country. He does not ‘lead’ a revolution; it is ‘his revolution’. This idea fits perfectly within the context of ‘the dictator in waiting’, despite the fact let us remember, that it is only through numerous public votes that the revolution has been progressed. Which is to say it is far from the truth and seeks only to further undermine the ‘democracy’ Venezuelans have chosen.

This idea of an individual revolution controlled entirely by a monarchical figure runs systematically throughout the reporting of Ireland’s liberal broadsheets. It is “his socialist revolution”, “his assault on “evil” capitalism.” [14] “his ongoing quest for what he calls “21st-century socialism” [22] “his programme of change.” [Defeat for Chávez, Irish Times, December 6, 2007] [28] and “his self-styled socialist revolution.” [Venezuela votes on extending Chavez’s reign, Rory Carroll, Irish Times, December 3, 2007] [29]

This supposition further predicates the unsubstantiated contention that Chavez does not ‘propose’ changes but rather he ‘imposes’ them – and directly conflicts with Chavez’s recognized and established position – again a matter of easily verifiable record which is studiously ignored. In an event broadcast on national TV December 15 2006 to celebrate the recent election victory President Chavez stated:

“the most important issue is socialism. I haven’t got a blueprint, I am calling on you to build socialism, so that we build it from below, from within, our own socialist model.” [30]

The economic and social revolution spear headed by Hugo Chavez has seen unprecedented popular support, and not just from a formally marginalised majority – the poor. It can only be from an elementary misinterpretation of this democratic backing that the mainstream media have seen fit to attribute the entire success, though it is rarely described as such, of the program to the President. And it is clear that far from being proof of an electoral attempt to temper ‘Chavez’s revolution’, the recent defeat of the referendum, marginal as it was (51/49), was simply evidence that the revolution will be progressed on the people’s terms.

The Sunday Tribune’s Eithne Tynan, reviewing journalist John Pilger’s film ‘The War on Democracy’, commented:

“Pilger points clearly to a wealthy, business elite that has long been pulling the strings politically (and I think we’re all well-acquainted with how that arrangement works). He visits rich, frustrated people in the posh suburbs of Caracas, who, like white South Africans before them, are now thinking of quitting Venezuela because those “bleddy natives” don’t know how to run a country.” [‘Pilger’s may be a partisan voice in the wilderness but few can quarrel with the evidence he presents’, Eithne Tynan, August 26 2007] [6] [31]

In accepting the ‘dictator’ frame and thus fully internalising the ‘rich, frustrated’ oppositions rhetorical position, a predominant feature of the Venezuelan mass media (a fact we are rarely exposed to), her colleagues in the Irish and Western media may have inadvertently internalised the underlying prejudice exposed in Pilger’s exposition. Alternatively, they may be well aware of what they are doing – eager only to prove their credentials to the mainstream media club which has so far rarely failed to support the Washington agenda.

This latest assault on the validity of Venezuelan democracy, one that undermines the Venezuelan people’s right to self determination, is alleged to haven arisen out of benevolent concern. However this ‘critical eye’ is not cast uniformly. On the contrary, much was made by those same benefactors, the media and Washington alike, of the purple stained fingers of Iraqi ‘democracy’. Despite the fact no recipe for free and fair elections existed, certainly nothing that remotely compared to the fairness and transparency of the elections which have taken place in Venezuela under Chavez, the Irish mainstream media remained unerringly confident in the occupier’s process and lavished praise upon them:

‘Poll success eclipses past blunders for US’ [Conor O’Clery, February 1 2005] and ‘Opportunity for Iraq’ [February 15 2005] proclaimed the headlines in the Irish Times, in its typically understated approval. [32] [33]

The unpalatable reality of militarily imposed ‘democracy’ thus successfully whitewashed, the perpetrators exonerated and the truth disappeared down the memory hole. And through this contrarian approach to analysis of democracy, a clear message sent to those not yet conforming – only when ‘we’ are there to hold your hand can you try democracy.

Suggested Action

Please open the debate with journalists and editors on these issues:

Irish Independent Editor, Gerald O’Regan independent.letters@unison.independent.ie

Irish Times Editor, Geraldine Kennedy gkennedy@irish-times.ie edsoffice@irish-times.ie

Letters to the Editor lettersed@irish-times.ie

David Usborne d.usborne@independent.co.uk

Juan Forero forero@nytimes.com

Brian Ellsworth brian.ellsworth@reuters.com

Conor O’Clery coclery@irish-times.ie

Rory Carroll rory.carroll@guardian.co.uk

MediaBite supports an open and constructive debate with the media and individual journalists, please ensure all correspondence is polite. Please copy all emails to editors@mediabite.org.

[Correction: It was suggested by a reader that the term ‘distorted frame’ was ambiguous, and should be replaced with ‘distorting frame’. 13/01/08]

1. http://www.democracynow.org/2006…legendary_uruguayan_writer
2. http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/2002-01/15edwards.cfm
3. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2984796.ece
4. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3023
5. http://www.newstatesman.com/200711260004
6. http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune…chavez&FC

7. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3009
8. http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/297.pdf#page=10
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum,_2004
10. http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/2020.pdf
11. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78909.htm
12. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2960
13. http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=12055&formato=HTML
14. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/south-america…1236273.html
15. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/south-america…1061096.html
16. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4813378.stm
17. http://hughgreen.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/if-the-wind-changes/
18. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNDfrovUk6vINegpO3Hw2A1OKUCA
19. http://www.newstatesman.com/200711210001
20. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3008
21. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/south…1053468.html
22. http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=…chavez&FC =
23. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/south…1235163.html
24. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/1102/1193444383892.html
25. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/1203/breaking53.html
26. http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0816/venezuela.html
27. http://www.independent.ie/other/unlucky-strike-why-oil…1049196.html
28. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2007/1206/1196838981122.html
29. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/1203/1196375209760.html
30. http://www.marxist.com/political-instrument-revolution-socialism201206.htm
31. http://www.johnpilger.com/
32. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2005/0201/1104400435753.html
33. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2005/0215/1107916246635.html

Embedded with power – Part 2

December 21, 2007Interviewsmediabite

An Interview with Pepe Escobar, journalist and author

‘For politics / economics, the real information is on the net’

In Part 1 of this interview Pepe Escobar discussed the way in which Hugo Chavez is portrayed in the mainstream media. In this second part of the interview he discusses the context of the corporate media more generally and some of the factors which lead to its fatal inability to reflect either reality or truth in the cases of Iraq and Iran.

[PE – Pepe Escobar, MB – MediaBite, David Manning and Miriam Cotton]

MB – Noam Chomsky, I believe, has suggested that it is sometimes instructive for readers to consider news reports in reverse, i.e. that important contextual information is often ‘tacked’ on loosely to the end of pieces. Would you have any advice for readers wishing to become more discerning or critical consumers?

PE – If you read the mainstream/corporate press, that’s exactly the case: the crucial info most of the time is in the next to last paragraph, and the story is buried in the bottom half of page A-21. News agency copy is required to provide contextual info – but it’s usually superficial and in many cases (e.g. Iran, Palestine, Russia) heavily biased. Papers always need to fill up blank space. That leads to papers in the Middle East, for instance, publishing agency copy – or conservative syndicated columns – that totally contradict their own reporting.

My suggestion is that readers forget about reading serious news on mainstream/corporate media: stick to the sports and entertainment pages. At least you can’t politicize infotainment to death – like Sarkozy having an affair with Carla Bruni (well, the Times of India put it on the front page, like it was a major political story…) In the case of weeklies, stick to the actual reporting and forget about editorials (well sometimes even that is impossible; in Time magazine ideology drips from every report). The Wall Street Journal or The Economist may carry excellent reportage, but frankly no one has to swallow as fact Wall Street and the City of London’s wishful thinking.

Continue reading Embedded with power – Part 2 →

Embedded with power – Part 1

December 21, 2007Interviewsmediabite

An Interview with Pepe Escobar, journalist and author

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian born journalist and writer. He has reported from many different countries and conflicts over his career so far, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, the US and China. He is a contributor to The Real News Network, a non-profit news and documentary network financed by its members; leaving it free from the pressures imposed by advertising, government and corporate funding. In his current role as the ‘Roving Eye’ of Asia Times Online, he is well placed to discuss world events and the ways in which they are interpreted and reported by international media. [1] [2]

Escobar has written in detail on the continuing conflict in Iraq and has been a continued source of unsanitised reality on the subject. In 2005, while many in the Irish media worshiped at the feet of US imposed ‘democracy’ in Iraq – ‘Poll success eclipses past blunders for US’ [Conor O’Clery, The Irish Times, February 1 2005] – Escobar pointed out the absurdity of what was happening: ‘History will salute it in kind: the US administration of George W Bush, parts 1 and 2, has introduced to the world the concept of election at gunpoint.’ [3] [4]

Continue reading Embedded with power – Part 1 →

Confronting Power – Part 2

November 12, 2007Interviewsmediabite

An Interview with Frank Connolly

In the first part of our interview with Frank Connolly he detailed the response of the Irish news media to what has come to be known as ‘Bertiegate’. The following, second part of the interview discusses more general issues of media reporting and the inherent constraints imposed by the corporate, advertising dependent, structure of mainstream outlets.

MB: We had one particular question we wanted to ask you and that is whether you think there is an inverse relationship between good journalism and journalists who have good relationships with those in big business and in government?

FC: I think that’s another way of putting the famous phrase that journalism is about revealing things that people in power don’t want to have revealed and I think that still is a consistent responsibility of investigative journalism. And where journalism is not questioning the powerful and the rich and those who control society including control of the economic future of society, I think it’s not good journalism. The problem is that there is a wider issue at stake here. One is the convergence of economic interests with media ownership which is very apparent in this country – and that goes into the whole matter of the oil and gas resources that we touched on earlier on. For instance, in the last week (October 2007) Independent Newspapers have published the fact the Providence Resources which is owned, by and large, by Tony O’Reilly and his family, have discovered oil off the southern coast in the Helvic field. In their statement announcing this they have described it as a very important discovery of what they used to call in the Independent ‘black gold’. There is no evidence that there has been a significant find in that field because they haven’t established the pressure at which the oil will flow. Everybody knows there is oil and gas off the Irish coast – particularly off the Atlantic coast. We know it through the Corrib find and through the Dunquin prospect off the south-west coastline. The big issue is how viable and how profitable and how rapid and strong a flow of oil will come from these fields. The technology is now more viable to explore these previously uninviting waters. But here is an example of where a possible attempt has been made, by using control of newspapers, to hype up the share prices of Providence Resources – without having significant proof of the nature of the find. The market price did go up initially after the announcement of ten days or so ago and then settled back down after the markets decided that maybe they didn’t have enough evidence. This happened in the 1980s with Atlantic Resources, also controlled by Tony O’Reilly, where hundreds if not thousands of people lost huge amounts of money by backing a suggestion published in his media organisation that there was a massive find off the southern coast by Atlantic. As it turned out, it never happened. So there is a problem where media ownership converges with very powerful economic interests and in this country it is a particular problem. It’s not exceptional to this country but it is a problem.

Continue reading Confronting Power – Part 2 →

Confronting Power – Part 1

November 12, 2007Interviewsmediabite

An Interview with Frank Connolly

“[I]t is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect” [George Orwell, Preface to ‘Animal Farm’, 1945] [1]

‘Freedom of the press’ is one of those few concepts that can bring erstwhile journalistic adversaries together in almost unanimous agreement. The term is generally bandied around for several weeks whenever some authoritarian oligarchy attempts to restrict or oppress the local press. The concept is of course admirable, and few competent commentators would reject the idea that this freedom provides a means to protect democracy. But it is often used to evoke a rose tinted idea of journalism – one where all journalists are forging their democratic paths in a truly campaigning vocation. The Irish Times editorial on World Press Freedom Day last year stated proudly – ‘A well equipped reporter with a satellite phone is virtually impossible for any regime to control’. However, these well-equipped reporters are subject to numerous controls far less obvious than the clumsy military fist. Where economic factors are concerned these ‘campaigning’ journalists have shown reluctance in certain instances to bite the hand that feeds them. And it is left to those journalists who not only understand but are willing to accept the consequences of confronting concentrations of power to fulfil an ideal the rest are only willing to pay lip service to. [2]

Continue reading Confronting Power – Part 1 →

An instruction from civilisation to barbarism

October 4, 2007Analysismediabite

Not listening to the Iranians

In the days leading up to and following President Ahmadinejad’s address at Columbia University during his recent trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, mainstream western media largely lost the run of itself in its eagerness to ensure that nothing he said could be interpreted other than through the prism of his being ‘a petty and cruel dictator’ – the words with which the President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, introduced Ahmadinejad in his ‘welcome’ address. Bollinger made another startling statement, one of many, as he greeted Ahmadinejad:

“…to be clear on another matter – this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any ‘rights’ of the speaker [the democratically elected leader of Iran] but only with our [US] rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.”

[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/lcbopeningremarks….html]He can hardly have meant it as such, but this must be the most apt summation of the Bush administration’s attitude to the rest of the world we are likely to hear.

The day of the Columbia address, the US media was in shrill mode. Bollinger’s was of course very much the perspective all round and over on the Hannity and Colmes programme on Fox News, for example. In the studio former and present students at Columbia were gathered to discuss whether it was right for Ahmadinejad to have been invited at all. Aliza Davidovit, a prominent journalist and TV producer herself and whose website carries an endorsement from Benjamin Netanyahu testifying to her fairness, had torn up the original copy of her diploma from Columbia, she was so outraged. [http://www.davidovit.com/cms/]

Davidovit, challenging the idea the Iranian President had a right to freedom of speech, said that if someone has threatened to kill your mother, you don’t invite them to talk about it. When it was pointed out by co-host Colmes that “There’s some dispute as to whether he actually said that or whether he ever said he wanted to kill anybody” Davidovit jumped seamlessly from Iran to Iraq. In a breathtaking knight’s move devoid of logic she said – “I don’t need [him] to say it. We have dead bodies coming home every day”. Saddam being conveniently dead, and the US’s own abject military failures in Iraq pushed firmly aside, Ahmadinejad is now to accept full responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers there, despite having formerly welcomed the US’s removal of Saddam in Iraq. Colmes and Davidovit were agreed, though, on Davidovit’s description of Ahmadinejad as a “meshugena” – Yiddish for a crazy person. “A good word” Colmes said.

[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297937,00.html]Closer to home we haven’t fared much better when it comes to reporting news about Iran.

‘Syrian ‘incident’ underlines growing threat from Iran’ proclaimed a headline in The Irish Times on the 24th September (the day before Ahmadinejad’s speech) as if it were a matter of solid fact. Charles Krauthammer, the Irish Times’ favourite US neo-con, offered his customary fare but the subheading gave the game away, if anyone was likely to spot it beneath the certainty of its parent:

“On September 6th, something important happened in northern Syria, writes Charles Krauthammer. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they’re not saying.”

[http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0924/…html]But we do know that Iran is responsible, whatever it is. Why? How? Shouldn’t we be being more vigilant about this, given that the destruction of another Middle Eastern country is being advocated? What if, as in Iraq, the media allows itself to be unthinkingly deployed in cheering on yet another genocide, and on yet another false premise?

The Irish Times often relies on press agency reports without screening them for accuracy or fairness:

‘Ahmadinejad hits out at Israel and the US’ ran another exaggerated headline over a Reuters report, which characterised Bollinger’s aggressively insulting speech as merely being ‘tough’. The Irish Times allowed the report to go to press replete with multiple assertions long since proven to be unfounded, of which more below.

[http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/…breaking11.html]An online RTE report introduced its account of the Columbia University event, “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with a US academic at a forum in New York,” entirely reversing the character of Ahmadinejad’s calm response and projecting Bollinger’s aggression onto to the former instead.

[http://www.rte.ie/pda/news/2007/0924/1162604.html]What Ahmadinejad did not say

While in New York, Ahmadinejad gave the western media the opportunity it was praying for. He was widely thought to have undermined his already much disrespected credibility with his statements on homosexuality, which appeared to say it was unknown in Iran, despite, for instance, the execution of two teenage boys there a couple of years ago for practicing it. An Iranian scholar has responded to that interpretation of his words, however. Ali Quli Qarai, in an essay that international observers would do well to heed, has lamented the often crude nature of both western and Iranian translations of Farsi into English which have caused widespread misrepresentation of Ahmadinejad’s words on numerous occasions. While debunking the most notorious of the resulting distortions of the Iranian president’s words, AQQ insists that the Iranian leader did not say anything so ludicrous as that there was no homosexuality in Iran. What Ahmadinejad was actually saying, AQQ says, was that homosexuality is not an issue that is regarded the same way in Iranian society as it is in the US – a very different thing. But the tabloids and broadsheets have had a field day – they will no doubt continue to prefer their version, regardless.

[http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18471.htm]International condemnation has been loud about human rights abuses in Iran including that of homosexuals, justifiably so. There is an uneasy agreement between pro and anti war factions about this and the US government and its supporters in the media have made much of the issue in building the case for an attack on Iran. The question therefore arises why we hear no similar condemnation from them of Saudi Arabia (friend of the US and the Bush family in particular) and many other countries where oppression like this is as bad and in some instances far worse. On these contradictions and hypocrisies, however, the mainstream media is silent.

In communication with Noam Chomsky about the Columbia episode, he offered us these comments:

“Bollinger’s tantrum was utterly depraved. The best comment on it I’ve seen is in Asia Times (9-25), by Pepe Escobar:

‘An even more appalling measure of Western arrogance – also speaking volumes about “us” when confronted with the incomprehensible “other” – is the diatribe with which the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, chose to “greet” his guest, a head of state. Bollinger, supposedly an academic, spoke about confronting “the mind of evil”. His crass behavior got him 15 minutes of fame. Were President Bush to be greeted in the same manner in any university in the developing world – and motives would abound also to qualify him as a “cruel, petty dictator” – the Pentagon would have instantly switched to let’s-bomb-them- with-democracy mode.’

To which we may add that Bush’s crimes vastly exceed, by a huge margin, anything attributed to Ahmadinejad.

The hysteria also has its comical aspects — or what would be comical if it were not so serious. Since Ahmadinejad didn’t say much that was offensive, the media and commentators leaped on his statement about homosexuality. There’s a little more to that that one might say about the US-UK attitudes towards homosexuality. For example, the murder of the very distinguished mathematician, biologist, and computer scientist Alan Turing by the British government, which forced him to undergo hormone therapy for his “disease,” leading to suicide. The year? 1953, which has a certain significance in US/UK-Iran relations.

It also might be worth remembering the reaction in the media and Columbia university to that interesting year, in which the US-UK destroyed the Iranian parliamentary system and installed a brutal tyrant. The New York Times editors wrote that “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders,” who will have a clear-eyed understanding of our overriding priorities” (Aug. 6, 1954 — we may put aside the symbolism of the date). As for Columbia University, it invited the Shah to deliver the university’s 1955 Gabriel Silver Lecture Dedicated to International Peace, the New York Times reported, also granting him an honorary degree. The headline read: “Shah Praises U.S. for Peace Policy; Iran’s Ruler Calls on West to Bolster Independent Nations” (Feb. 5, 1955), as the US and UK had just done with such grace and nobility in Iran.”

Which brings us to the point of this MediaShot. An Iranian response to the shrill western media chorus that surrounded Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University might have been anticipated – eagerly looked for even – and in fact, there has been one. But there is so little mention of it in the media it’s likely to be news to many that a letter from seven heads of Iranian universities has arrived in response to Lee Bollinger’s attack on Ahmadinejad. Addressed to Bollinger, this is a letter that deserves attention – at least as much attention as Bollinger’s own laughable address has received. It poses ten questions, some of them the most urgent of the immediate time, where international relations with Iran are concerned:

1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?

2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow Iran’s national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah’s dictatorship?

3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?

4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran ‘s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?

5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?

6- Why does the US administration support the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) despite the fact that the group has officially and openly accepted the responsibility for numerous deadly bombings and massacres in Iran and Iraq? Why does the US refuse to allow Iran ‘s current government to act against the MKO’s main base in Iraq?

7- Was the US invasion of Iraq based on international consensus and did international institutions support it? What was the real purpose behind the invasion which has claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that the US claimed were being stockpiled in Iraq?

8- Why do America’s closest allies in the Middle East come from extremely undemocratic governments with absolutist monarchical regimes?

9- Why did the US oppose the plan for a Middle East free of unconventional weapons in the recent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors despite the fact the move won the support of all members other than Israel?

10- Why is the US displeased with Iran’s agreement with the IAEA and why does it openly oppose any progress in talks between Iran and the agency to resolve the nuclear issue under international law?
[Full text: http://www.farsnews.com/English/newstext.php?nn=8606300370]

The Iranian academics should have added an eleventh question:

“Why is the US, the possessor of an apocalyptic arsenal of nuclear weaponry, threatening for a second time to undermine a country, Iran, that does not possess even one – on the pretext that Iran’s interest in nuclear capability is the greater threat to the world ?”

But the letter, to all intents and purposes, has not ‘happened’. Bollinger has so far been unequal to a return bout of ‘tough’ questions, it seems. At the time of writing, 2nd October, we could not find a single mention of the academics’ letter in the Irish mainstream media – and very little concern for it internationally either.

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University might have been a turning point had it been conducted in the spirit in which it was originally intended by Dean John Coatsworth, the man who had originally invited him. Only moments before Bollinger’s abusive address Coatsworth had described the occasion as “…an extraordinary opportunity to engage in an atmosphere of civility and restraint.”
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/…pagewanted=print]

When, as it inevitably will, the falsity of the basis for the war is finally acknowledged (the action over, the profits secured) we will be able to look back to Ahmadinejad’s visit to America and this letter from Iranian universities – two more examples of the rejected offers which the Iranian government made to co-operate and communicate over several years – and wish that we had availed ourselves of those opportunities. Offers that included, among other things, the possibility of cessation of support for Hamas and the conversion of Hezbollah into a ‘purely socio-political organization’. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell is quoted in a revealing, if depressing, article on the Washington Notes website as follows:

“I also outlined for my audience all the times – some of them when we had maximum leverage – that we refused dialogue over the past four years. The default decision by the cabal [Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush] – after it had flummoxed the statutory process – was achieved: no talks with evil people, particularly those occupying prominent positions on the axis.”
[http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001320.php]

The mainstream media might ultimately experience a fleeting moment of self-doubt about its failure to document the true role of the US in all of this but it will recover quickly and move on, as it did with alarming speed in the case of Iraq. It knows who it must serve, after all. Here in Ireland, a poster on the current affairs website politics.ie, quite possibly an elected politician, when told that war on Iran was now more probability than possibility, noted without a hint of sarcasm: ‘We have to put our own national economic interests first. Charity begins at home. And remember this – if the US couldn’t go through Shannon they would just go through a UK airport like Prestwick instead. End result: the length of the war would be unaffected but thousands of jobs at Shannon would be lost – remember that 70% of the airport’s revenues come from the US military. Sometimes the price of principle is too high.’
[http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php…postorder=asc&start=24]

This is the true nature of capitalism’s success and what the US really means when it speaks of ‘bringing democracy’ to others for its own benefit – that the preservation of livelihoods in one part of the world is pitted favourably against death and destruction in another. Of course, If we were talking about a situation in which the lives of citizens of the US, the UK, France or any other European country were being weighed up against the economic interests of the Shannon region, nobody would dare to express such a grotesque opinion.

Suggested Action

We would encourage readers to write to the media in a constructive way to challenge them about inaccuracies and bias in their reporting.

Complaints, RTE complaints@rte.ie

Michael Good, RTE News Editor Michael.Good@rte.ie

Letters to the Editor, The Irish Times lettersed@irish-times.ie

Geraldine Kennedy, Irish Times Editor gkennedy@irish-times.ie edsoffice@irish-times.ie

Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times Assistant Editor fotoole@irish-times.ie

Gerald O’Regan, Irish Independent Editor independent.letters@unison.independent.ie

Tim Vaughan, Irish Examiner Editor tim.vaughan@examiner.ie

MediaBite supports an open and constructive debate with the media and individual journalists, please ensure all correspondence is polite. Please copy all emails to editors@mediabite.org.

Tipping the balance west

September 20, 2007Analysismediabite

“They are prisoners of their own assumptions. There is this assumption that western power is being used benevolently for the good of mankind and this colours all reporting.” [David Miller, the Glasgow Media Group] [1]

In 2003 a group of researchers at Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies conducted two studies of the UK media’s reporting of the Iraq war [‘Shoot First and Ask Questions Later’ and ‘To Close for Comfort?’] [2]. They found that the mainstream media, and in particular the highly regarded BBC, had been ‘too sympathetic’ to the government line. Professor Justin Lewis commented that “far from revealing an anti-war BBC, our findings tend to give credence to those who criticised the BBC for being too sympathetic to the government in its war coverage. Either way, it is clear that the accusation of BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or sustained analysis.” [3]

The study’s authors were careful to clarify the nature of bias exposed:

“During the war, television coverage helped create a climate in which pro-war positions became more relevant and plausible. This was not the result of crude forms of bias, but the product of news values which privileged certain assumptions and narratives over others.” [4]

It is this privilege of certain assumptions and narratives that allows a conflict of logic and disparity of principle to exist whereby the BBC can on the one hand be concerned with Russian media taking an unashamedly pro-government line, and yet see little problem in regurgitating their own government’s line:

“Digital broadcasting and the internet are sweeping away the limitations of the analogue world and weakening the grip of many though not all repressive regimes. Even so, there’s still plenty to concern us all: The recent Russian elections saw many broadcasters taking an unashamedly pro-government line. [Mark Byford, BBC Acting Director-General, 2004] [5]”

As outlined in our previous MediaShots there is a valid case to be made that RTE, the Irish public service broadcaster, has not fared much better in its reportage of the Iraq conflict. Given the enormity of the consequence, it is a great pity this type of study can only be carried out in retrospect.

Reporting Iraqi deaths – Banal, becoming wearisome

A recent and fairly innocuous RTE online news article entitled ‘US attack in Baghdad leaves 14 dead‘ read as follows:

“At least 14 people have been killed and nine wounded in a US air strike in Baghdad. The attack in western Mansour district of the capital, a stronghold of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, destroyed several houses. The US military has launched a series of operations, including air strikes against what it calls rogue elements of the Mr Sadr’s Mehdi Army. It says many of these groups have links to Iran, which it claims is supply weapons and training. Iran denies the charge.” [6]

Relatively speaking, this represents just another inconsequential report of the death of 14 more Iraqis. It simply adds to the innumerable pile of other reports detailing just a fraction of Iraqi deaths – over 1.2 million, according to a recent report by British polling agency Opinion Research Business (ORB) [7] – an inconvenient fact still to be reported by RTE, despite numerous emails. Yet even in the most banal of reporting obvious inadequacies and inaccuracies become apparent. This particular report falls short in two regards: a) it is a report on deaths in Iraq yet includes no Iraqi perspective be it of local officials or residents, and b) it relies completely on the official US perspective for context.

We wrote to RTE.ie editor Bree Treacy to question this lack of contextual substance.**

Dear Bree Treacy,

With reference to RTE News online article ‘US attack in Baghdad leaves 14 dead’, would it be possible to add the official Iraqi statement on the incident? To report an incident such as this using only the official US position appears a little odd, and perhaps misleading.

Agence France-Presse reported: “US combat helicopters and tanks bombarded a Baghdad neighbourhood in pre-dawn strikes on Thursday, killing 14 sleeping civilians and destroying houses, angry residents and Iraqi officials said. Amid the rubble of one house was a mattress covered in blood with human body parts scattered about. Neighbours said a family of six had been killed in the house, including a 12-year-old girl.” [8]

RTTNews reported: “”The attacks on the houses took place while people were sleeping. There were no clashes. The area had been quiet,” said an interior ministry official on conditions of anonymity. “Two to five houses were destroyed. Among the wounded are several women,” the official said.” [9]

I think you’ll agree these official statements and eye witness accounts are in direct conflict with the official US account, and are therefore something RTE readers should be aware of.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

David Manning [Email, 6th September 2007]

We received the following response a day later:

The RTÉ report you refer to (http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0906/iraq.html) was not written from a US statement or based on US accounts. It was taken directly from AFP – which in turn had taken its information from named Iraqi government officials. All foreign news copy (when not from RTÉ correspondents) is based on AFP or Reuters wire sources.

We had access to both sections of text quoted in your email, however it is RTÉ policy not to base news stories on the accounts of ‘angry residents’, unnamed officials or those speaking ‘on conditions of anonymity’. The lack of verifiable information in this case was the reason the news story you refer to was so short. Accurate reporting of the incident was our first priority and that is why we omitted information (however dramatic) that could not be attributed to an official source. I hope this clarifies things, thank you for your interest in the website.

Regards

Ray Donoghue, Senior Journalist, RTE [Email, 7th September 2007]

RTE’s policy appears quite straightforward then, it implies that all ‘angry residents’ and anonymous officials are unreliable sources of information. Contrastingly, statements by ‘disinterested’ parties such as the US military go unquestioned.

We responded the next day:

Dear Ray Donoghue,

Thanks for the quick response. You write that the report was ‘not written from a US statement or based on US accounts’ and yet the report states: “The US military has launched a series of operations…against what it calls rogue elements of the Mr Sadr’s Mehdi Army.” and “It says many of these groups have links to Iran, which it claims is supply weapons and training.” Both these statements, forming the only context, are from an official US perspective.

It is unusual that on the one hand RTE has reservations about quoting the accounts of understandably ‘angry’ residents and yet sees no issue with endorsing the unsubstantiated US allegations of Iranian complicity in insurgent violence.

Your explanation for lack of reference to other conflicting accounts: ‘it is RTÉ policy not to base news stories on the accounts of ‘angry residents’, unnamed officials or those speaking ‘on conditions of anonymity” strikes me as unfair given the obvious dangers of speaking publicly in Iraq at present. RTE has in the past had no qualms about basing news stories on the accounts of unnamed officials or those speaking ‘on conditions of anonymity’; therefore I see no reason to make an exception in this instance. For example:

“An unnamed US official is reported to have said that more than 600 insurgents have been killed in the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah.” [10]

“A US army helicopter carrying 15 people has been reported missing near Fort Drum, New York, a military official has said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there are few details on the circumstances surrounding the UH-60 helicopter. ‘It is missing,’ the official said. ‘There were 15 people on board.” [11]

“A defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the pictures matched those gathered by the US military two years ago as part of its investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.” [12]

“One defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the idea would be to create ‘a momentary overlap’ of at least a brigade, or roughly 3,500 troops.” [13]

“A US official, speaking to the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence was obtained through satellite photographs.” [14]

“A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, earlier confirmed reports in leading US newspapers that the Bush administration was preparing to issue an executive order blacklisting the group in order to block its assets.” [15]

It seems the implementation of RTE’s policy in this case has been unfair to both the subject and the readers. I am still hopeful RTE can redress this issue.

Kind regards,

David Manning [Email, 8th September 2007]

That RTE’s editorial policy can be manipulated to endorse certain anonymous officials and not others poses serious problems for journalists striving to offer balanced and impartial accounts to readers.

We have had no further response from RTE and there has been no amendment to the ‘offending’ article. Apparently, reporting death in Iraq has become wearisome.

Feeding the machine

For over a year now reports and statements have been ‘leaked’ from Washington, alleging Iranian complicity in attacks within Iraq. Little convincing evidence has been offered to support these claims, yet they continue to be issued, and continue to be communicated uncritically by the mainstream media. This leads to another important aspect of this report, though it is by no means unique in this respect – while the US military appear to have killed 14 people, they are still given the opportunity to shift the blame. In this case, the blame is shifted to Iran. Interestingly, the AFP report RTE based its report on contains no mention of Iran.

In the last month RTE has published 7 separate articles which lay the blame for deaths and ‘destabilisation’ in Iraq at Iran’s door.* The source of these allegations remains constant:

“The US military accuses the Quds Force (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) of training, funding and arming Iraqi extremists to launch attacks on its troops in the country.” [16]

“Mr Bush had last night said that he had authorised his military commanders in Iraq to confront what he called ‘Iran’s murderous activities’ in the country.” [17]

“Washington has accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard of being involved in destabilising Iraq and Afghanistan, charges Tehran has strongly denied. Critics of the US, however, believe it was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that led to its destabilisation.” [18]

“The US military claims that such special groups of Iraqi extremists are trained, armed and funded by Iran’s elite Quds Force, a unit of the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guard. The military accuses these groups of directing attacks against US-led troops and inciting sectarian violence in Iraq. Iran has strenuously denied the accusations.” [19]

“A US General has claimed that Iran has increased supplies of weapons to Shia militias in Iraq…Iran denies any role in Iraq and says the US invasion in 2003 is the cause of sectarian strife.” [20]

“The US has criticised Iran’s role in Iraq and accuses it of backing and arming Shia militias, which carry out attacks on US forces and Iraqis. The charges are vehemently denied by Iran.” [21]

This claim and counter claiming raises quite complex issues in terms of balance. The credibility of statements by the Iranian government is undermined by its commitment to violating its own citizens’ basic human rights. The disturbing reality of Iran’s human rights record therefore has an implicit and unavoidable effect on readers’ perception of any denial of foul play. On the other hand, the US position remains ‘The Shining City Upon a Hill’ despite the immediacy of evidence to the contrary. [22]

Consequently, statements by Western officials are blessed with a more favourable starting point. We tend to want to believe our representatives have honourable intentions; to believe otherwise would undermine the very idea of democracy. Thus as far as balance is concerned, claim and counter claim both by Western officials provides the most level playing field.

David Miliband, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, had this to say to the Financial Times on the subject of Iranian complicity in Iraq’s violence:

FT: What do you think of Iran’s complicity in attacks on British soldiers in Basra?

DM: Well, I think that any evidence of Iranian engagement there is to be deplored. I think that we need regional players to be supporting stability, not fomenting discord, never mind death. And as I said at the beginning, Iran has a complete right, and we support the idea that Iran should be a wealthy and respected part of the future. But it does not have the right to be a force of instability.

FT: Just to be clear, there is evidence?

DM: Well no, I chose my words carefully…

FT: I know, but I’m now asking you.

DM: Well as you know, we are very careful about what we say about these things. [23]

Seen in this much ignored context, the US allegations should appear to the experienced journalist as at least dubious, if not suspicious. The context of this incident would become massively altered by simply offering the same quality of opinion in both claim and counter claim. For instance, the article could have feasibly read: “The US military says many of these groups have links to Iran, which it claims is supplying weapons and training. However David Miliband the British Minister for Foreign Affairs has been careful to downplay this claim.”

But this is of course irrelevant. Just because the US military makes a claim shouldn’t make it newsworthy. Certainly, the context of its use in the previous articles is counterintuitive:

In allowing Washington to set the agenda and to exclusively define the context, RTE has put itself in a position which forces it to essentially turn the reality of the situation on its head in order to apply ‘balance’. It is an uncontroversial fact that the US-led invasion of Iraq was responsible for the destabilisation of the country and potentially the region, yet RTE are forced to devalue the fact in the interests of contrived ‘impartiality’ by re-badging this manifest state of affairs as a claim assigned to a ‘critic’.

The present push by the US military to blame Iran for fomenting violence in Iraq is designed a) to shift the focus of attention; b) to shift responsibility for its own belligerence and c) to ‘demonise’ Iran. In relaying these ‘official’ statements so uncritically and with little regard for their basis in fact RTE are creating “a climate in which a pro-war position becomes more relevant and plausible.” The potential consequences of this are obvious.

Suggested Action

Please write to RTE to ask they provide a more balanced account of the current stand-off with Iran.

Michael Good, RTE News Editor Michael.Good@rte.ie

Joe Zefran, RTE.ie News Editor Joe.Zefran@rte.ie

Bree Treacy, RTE.ie Editor Bree.Treacy@rte.ie

Ray Donoghue, Senior Journalist, RTE Ray.Donoghue@rte.ie

Complaints at RTE, complaints@rte.ie

MediaBite supports an open and constructive debate with the media and individual journalists, please ensure all correspondence is polite. Please copy all emails to editors@mediabite.org.

* It should be noted that RTE’s website represents only a small fraction of its overall output, there are numerous radio and television news programmes transmitted daily.

** Correction: Joe Zefran is RTE.ie News Editor, Bree Treacy is now RTE.ie Entertainment Editor.

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23. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b9b5b078-2…0779fd2ac.html

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July 22, 2007Commentmediabite

A recent Irish Times opinion article by Theodore Dalrymple, ‘Fanaticism has real consequences for relations with Muslims‘, attempted to rationalise discrimination against Muslims:

“The fundamental problem is this: there is an asymmetry between the good that many moderate Muslims can do for Britain and the harm that a few fanatics can do to it. The one in 1,000 chance that a man is a murderous fanatic is more important to me than the 999 in 1,000 chance that he is not a murderous fanatic; if, that is, he is not especially valuable or indispensable to me in some way.

And the plain fact of the matter is that British society could get by perfectly well without the contribution even of moderate Muslims. The only thing we really want from Muslims is their oil money for bank deposits, to prop up London property prices and to sustain the luxury market. Their cheap labour that we imported in the 1960s in a vain effort to shore up the dying textile industry, which could not find local labour, is now redundant.”

We responded to Mr. Dalrymple’s piece, as did Gabriele Zamparini of ‘The Cat’s Dream‘:

Dear Ms. Kennedy,

Theodore Dalrymple’s piece in today’s Irish Times (via The LA Times), ‘Fanaticism has real consequences for relations with Muslims’, really should have began with “I’m not racist, but…”

His introduction explains that the lack of violence towards British Muslims following the recent terrorist attacks is a result of either Briton’s (but not British Muslims, they are different) tolerance or ‘inability, or unwillingness, to make the effort to defend’ themselves. A morally reprehensible cul-de-sac you would not have thought he could find his way out of. But you’d be wrong.

He continues – ‘we have had Somali, Pakistani, Arab, Jamaican, Algerian and British Muslim terrorists’, in an excellently crafted piece of work, that shrewdly omits unfortunate elements of the story which may have forced him to actually address the question of why Britain is a target. Such as the news that one of the latest terror suspects is an Iraqi doctor.

Media Sceptic, a UK based media monitoring organisation, noted that “Only 0.2% of all “terrorism” in Europe (in 2006) was “Islamist”, according to new figures from Europol.” In other words, it seems that, to use Mr. Dalrymple’s formula, the fundamental problem is that there is an asymmetry between reality and the Europe relayed in this article.

Of course what Mr. Dalrymple could not have been aware of is that being demonised and tarred with the same brush as a violent minority is not something Irish people are unfamiliar with.

Yours sincerely,

David Manning

The Irish Times has also made clear it’s refusal to put the Iranian nuclear ‘stand-off’ in perspective, obediently relaying the West’s (i.e. Washington’s) ‘suspicions’:

“Iran has offered to draw up an “action plan” to address Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is a front to obtain nuclear arms. Tehran says it needs nuclear technology only to generate power.”

We wrote to ask they consider the “possibility they are inadvertently helping to build a false case for another unwarranted and deadly war.”

RTE Radio 1 recently broadcast an interview with George Galloway and Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Political Science. However the interview was cut short following Galloway’s departure, though not before he had taken the opportunity to highlight the absurdity of what had gone before. We wrote to the interviewer Derek Davis, also copying the email to Professor Prins:

Dear Derek Davis,

Your interview with Professor Gwyn Prins on Today this morning struck me with the same impression George Galloway verbalised in his ‘brief interlude’; I could imagine a similar discussion took place somewhere in polite English society at the height of the troubles. You simply offered Professor Prins a ‘clear run’ to expound the merits and mistakes of ‘imperialism light’. Yet almost as soon as Mr. Galloway began, you interrupted him with your opinion – stating that Saddam was a ‘blood thirsty barbarian’, and thus had to be removed? That is no doubt the disparity that caused him to discontinue the interview.

In answer to your statement, an uncontroversial one at that, but one that actually implicitly defines your support for the invasion and thus highlights your opinion as that shared by Professor Prins, thus explaining his willingness to ‘engage’ – the US led invasion and occupation has caused far more deaths in the last 4 years than Saddam’s 24 years of rule. Saddam’s killing, as Professor Prins alluded to, was also made possible by tacit and direct Western support. Would you re-evaluate your position in light of this stark fact?

No one questions Saddam’s despotic title, what is validly questioned is the idea that Western imperialists acted with some sort of benign intent, or ‘moral motive’ – which was ‘devalued’ by unfortunate revelations of fabrications and deception. Not once did you posit that the invasion was not just a ‘mistake’ but a crime, as was stated by the UN’s Kofi Annan when he called the invasion ‘illegal’. Nor did you seek to examine the situation from an Iraqi perspective, a point made to you by George Galloway. The vast majority of Iraqi people are opposed to the continued occupation and a similar number support attacks on coalition troops – who are the predominant target of insurgents. Instead you simply offered Professor Prins the opportunity to eloquently hammer out, almost verbatim, the imperialist’s rhetoric.

I accept the Today show is light radio, but if you are going to treat issues such as these like this, perhaps it would be better to forgo the pretence of impartiality.

Yours sincerely,

David Manning

Professor Prins responded in defense of Derek Davis:

Dear Mr Manning

Thank you for taking the trouble to write.

I feel that you are being a little unfair to Mr Davis when you accuse him of unprofessionalism by reason of not opening a wider raft of questions than those which were slated for this interview. Plainly there is a debate to be had about “legality” – it has been had at great length; plainly there are different judgements about the strategic interests of the West (of which Ireland is part) and how best to pursue them; plainly there is – as always – a judgement on greater and lesser evils. Those especially were the delicate matters that I sought to open when the interview continued after Mr Galloway chose to go away. But the agenda for that conversation was none of those: it was about the consequences of the mess made by the stubborn and arrogant Mr Rumsfeld. That is an especially painful subject for thise, like me, who believe that the removal of the Saddam regime was moral (had both ius ad bellum and in bello), legal and made strategic good sense

I would have been perfectly prepared to discuss that in a triangular conversation with Mr Galloway; but he refused to do so and then behaved in the way that you heard. Calling names rarely advances understanding of anything in my experience.

But Mr Davis exposed nothing of his own views – certainly not those which you ascribe to him. He did, however, observe that he (as I also) had a knowledge of irish history when accused of not have such

Yours sincerely

We responded the same day:

Dear Mr. Prins,

Thank you for responding.

Like you I would have welcomed a debate between yourself and Mr. Galloway. Though my concern is that Mr. Davis really did relinquish all claims to professionalism for the reasons I mentioned; also pointed out by Mr. Galloway.

That Mr. Davis can, even with his extensive knowledge of Irish history, allow discussion of an event such as the invasion and occupation of a sovereign country descend in to abstract musings of mending broken china evidences much about the state of informed discussion on Irish radio. A moral case for the removal of Saddam perhaps did exist, but if it did, it existed at a time when the West fully supported the despot – and as you know indirectly encouraged his ‘despotic-ness’. ‘You cannot use deaths which occurred in 1988 as a post-hoc justification for invading in 2003. The only relevant statistic is what was happening in the years immediately preceding the war and on the eve of war, not what had happened fifteen or twenty years before.’ According to Amnesty International Saddam was responsible for ‘scores’ of killings in the years leading up to the invasion – a despicable record, but not a moral case for causing the deaths of over 650,000 people.

I realise too that there was debate over the legality of the war, but this has long since been clarified. There was no legal basis for regime change, therefore the facts were ‘fixed around the policy’ in order for it to appear an act of defence – which I may add was not in accordance with international law and could not have been thought to have been sanctioned by previous UN resolutions.

It was self evident that Mr. Davis fully agreed with the frame imposed by Washington and London, and that the interview sought not to discuss anything outside this illogical frame. This is supported by his interjection to Mr. Galloway’s, perhaps forthright, introduction. This is in direct contradiction to the weight of public opinion in both Ireland and the UK.

I co-edit a media monitoring organisation www.mediabite.org, would you object to my publishing this correspondence in full?

Yours sincerely,

David Manning

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