Only dictators ban television news The WE News Archives

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Only dictators ban television news

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- The raid by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials on an Arab television network bureau in Baghdad and the ban on its broadcasts hardly fits my idea of how to spread democracy in the Middle East.

Isn't that the first thing dictators do -- shut down broadcast outlets and newspapers? For those in power, tolerating a free press is difficult, even in a democracy. As a foreign occupier in Iraq, we are proving it is intolerable.

The terrible irony here is that we pride ourselves on offering a model to the rest of the world on how to design -- and live by -- our constitutional freedoms. Journalists around the globe have been taught to emulate our approach to newsgathering, hopefully in an atmosphere free of government restraints.

At the same time, we're snuffing out news outlets we don't like.

On Monday, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government raided the Baghdad bureau of the Al-Arabiya TV network. The network's crime was to broadcast an audiotape from Saddam Hussein complaining about Iraqis who were cooperating with the U.S. occupation force and calling for resistance. The tape had been sent to Al-Arabiya's headquarters in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

The network, which has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell in the past, is one of the largest TV outlets in the Arab world.

Any tape portraying Saddam's views on life fits the definition of news, if for no other reason than it is evidence that he is still alive and able to secretly communicate from wherever he was hiding.

Al-Arabiya and its competitor, the al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, have a wide following throughout the Middle East. Al-Jazeera caused Washington much discomfort in the lead-up to the war by broadcasting statements from Saddam. The White House strongly offered "advice" to U.S. TV outlets to shun those tapes but the American networks generally ignored the unhelpful hints.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused both Arab stations of being hostile by covering news of the guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces.

Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau was hit by a U.S. missile on April 8, killing a reporter-cameraman. The network also has complained of an attack on its marked vehicle April 7.

On Nov. 13, 2001, during the U.S. war on Afghanistan a U.S. missile went "awry," according to the Pentagon, and destroyed the al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the move against Al-Arabiya, noting that "statements from Saddam Hussein and the former Iraqi regime are inherently newsworthy and news organizations have a right to cover them."

Rumsfeld grouses that the two stations were violently against the American coalition. He hopes to counter their influence when a U.S.-controlled TV satellite channel begins broadcasts next month.

Then will the Iraqis and the Arab world be guaranteed the truth?

In a brilliant speech earlier this month before the National Conference on Media Reform, broadcaster and former newspaper editor Bill Moyers warned that American media conglomerates may find common cause "with an imperial state."

But Moyers said "the greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it."

Against that statement of values, the recent performance by U.S. journalists does not measure well.

White House and Pentagon reporters initially pulled their punches in reporting on the Iraqi war. Some media outlets admittedly did not want to rock the boat by showing grisly photos or videotape that could be disturbing to Americans.

As a result, many Americans tuned in on foreign news channels to get the full picture of the war.

Even now, with the administration's pro-war arguments reduced to a pile of confetti, many news outlets have failed to demand accountability from the Bush administration for what appears to be systematic dishonesty in trying to justify the U.S. attack.

This failure and the U.S.-led suppression of newsgathering in Iraq show that the historic American model for a free and independent press needs courageous bolstering.


©1996-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Weapons of Mass Deception
Monday 25 April 2005
By Christian Hendersonn


	Schechter analysed the US mainstream media for his film

In the prelude to the war, the Bush administration hinted at the existence of a link between Iraq and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

However, intelligence investigations commissioned by the White House and Congress have since determined the suggested links were false.

According to Danny Schechter, a media veteran of almost 40 years who nicknamed himself the News Dissector, the 70% figure suggests US media failed their public and led them to believe a baseless claim.

As the invasion played out on television screens around the world, Schechter "self-embedded" in his living room and examined US media coverage of the war.

He turned his conclusions into Weapons of Mass Deception www.wmdthefilm.com, a documentary film that examines how the media covered the war.

In the post-September 11 nationalistic ardour, the film concludes the US mainstream media failed to challenge Washington over its reasons for going to war, shut out anti-war voices and blurred the lines between commentary and journalism.

Aljazeera.net spoke to Schechter on the sidelines of last week's Aljazeera Television Productions Festival in the Qatari capital, Doha, where Weapons of Mass Deception was shown.

Aljazeera.net: Why did you make this film?

Danny Schechter: I have been a journalist since the 1960s. And in some ways, this project grew out of a lifetime of work. I worked in radio; I worked in local television; I worked in cable news; I worked in ABC; I worked in mainstream and I worked in independent [media] so I think I had a wide range of experience.

I have also written six books about media issues, so I have had a chance to think about it more deeply; I think all that uniquely qualified me to take on this project.

Aljazeera.net: What are you trying to do in this film?

Danny Schechter: I try to offer some fresh insights. I also try to speak to journalists about what this means in terms of our responsibilities to challenge and what this means in terms of democracy.

In the film, I make the suggestion that the Bush administration practices deception as part of its strategy and military strategy.



WMD accuses the US media of group think

We know that everything they were saying about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)and the link with Usama [bin Laden] were not true and many of us knew it then and we said so, but everyone was saying something different.

Now, with study after study they say it was "group think" in the intelligence community. That's why they screwed up.

If there was group think in the intelligence community, what about the journalistic community? There was group think there, too.

Aljazeera.net: Are you influenced by Noam Chomsky and his theory of manufacturing consent?

Danny Schechter: Noam Chomsky doesn't watch television; he is more of an analyst of the New York Times and elite journalism so I didn't go to him for an interview.

I was more interested in journalists who covered the war and how they were debating it. So I feel that Chomsky had a brilliant analysis of media, but more of it is oriented toward print. It doesn't always take into account the techniques of the media.

Aljazeera.net: What do you think of Chomsky's critics who accuse him of overestimating the sophistication of media control, and that - in reality - it is more to do with day-to-day decisions and market forces?

Danny Schechter: I don't buy the conspiracy theories of media. I remember a group of Syrians came to our office and they said: 'We agree with you because we really know the Jews run everything.' This was their analysis. I said, excuse me, Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish the last time I looked.

You know the problem is corporate media and corporate-controlled media and how they operate within their framework.

Aljazeera.net: What do you mean when you use the term post-journalism era?

Danny Schechter: Journalism is at a crossroads. There are many journalists today who still believe in the values of journalism but who are frustrated by the difficulty of practicing it because the companies they work for do not really respect journalistic principles. What they are there to do is satisfy their bottom line concerns, they have closed bureau after bureau.



	The film accuses the media of shutting out anti-war voices

There has been a pattern of dumbing down, and by dumbing it down it means people inside media are dumbing themselves down. They are not asking good questions, they are not challenging official narratives the way they should be.

If you look at Fox News, there is very little journalism, very little reporting. Mostly it is talk shows posing as news programmes and [they are] opinion driven, you have three times more pundits on air as opposed to journalists. That's another sign of the post-journalism era.

Aljazeera.net: Are blogs an alternative to mainstream media sources?

There are now 10 million blogs. Of those, maybe 10% claim to be journalistic. Some of the bloggers are very responsible, really challenging and doing investigative digging that mainstream media are not.

Some are motivated just by ideological concerns. Recently, for example, Eason Jordan, the former chief of news at CNN - when he said at Davos 12 journalists had been killed by US soldiers there was a big shock and he was forced to resign. In that case, a blogger took an off-the-record meeting and just blasted it out there with out having a full record of what was said.

I think a lot of blogging can be very irresponsible and some of it is sponsored by political forces by the Republican party or the Democrat party and the like, so it has a political and ideological not a journalistic function.

But in my blog www.mediachannel.org what I try to do every day is take the top stories and report what is not being reported by comparing and contrasting.

Aljazeera.net: You credit American journalists who helped you make this film. Do you think many in the US media are sympathetic to your message?



Journalists review copies of the 9/11 Commission report

Danny Schechter: Whenever I talk to people in the media off the record, including anchormen, people are very supportive, people slip me footage from various networks. People are very helpful, but a lot of them are living in a lot of fear. Everybody feels vulnerable, people have mortgages; they have families - it's difficult to be courageous.

Many American media people feel vulnerable and as if they are being bullied, they feel totally insecure. In the culture of the newsroom, if you put your head up, it will get chopped off. Everybody is getting along by going along and that's a dangerous kind of conformity.

Aljazeera.net: If the US is involved in another war, how do you think it will be reported in the US media? Do you think the media have learned from some of the mistakes of the Iraq war.

Danny Schechter: The institutional practices have not changed. I feel like the coverage of the elections was very similar to the coverage of the war. The same templates are being used, the same approach, the lack of political scrutiny, the lack of other voices, the way things are being framed, the lack of investigative checking.

The American media reported the Iraqi elections as a great victory for democracy. Everyone else reported them and asked Iraqis why they were voting and they said to get the Americans out and to end the occupation. Their reasons are very different from the way it was presented on American televisions. So we still have this propaganda system, in effect, but its credibility is starting to be questioned. And I hope my film will contribute to that.

What I want to see is more journalists taking more responsibility for what they do and showing more solidarity when other journalists are shot and killed.

How many people in the American media protested the killing of Tariq Ayub [Aljazeera's correspondent slain in Baghdad by US fire on 8 April 2003]? That was blatant, a completely blatant assassination and yet nobody said a word. We need to challenge that and show more solidarity with other media workers.

Aljazeera - Features

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Falluja.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Picture: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Fallujah.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Photo: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

(left)	Body of loved one in Falluja. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004
(right)	Body of loved one in Fallujah. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004 Photos: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

Unspeakable grief and horror

Two small children killed as part of the mass killings by coalition occupation for oil forces, April, 2004

Photo: aljazeera.net

النتائج الأولية للحل الأميركي الحذر للمقاومة العراقية في الفلوجة (الجزيرة)

...and the circus of deception killing continues...

Most recent 'Circus of Killing' click here

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Circus of Torture 2003 — now

He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"

And of course I am.

Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.

"It's all illusion," I say. "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie. The game! The game, me girl, me boy! Takes on interest, don't you know. T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"

Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here

Let's change it!