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Wednesday, December 1, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
December 1, 2004
MEDIA ALERT: PROTEST THE BBC ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2 - THIS IS WHY! PART 2
IntroductionTomorrow, December 2, the peace group A Call For Light is organising a peaceful vigil outside the BBC, Bush House, Aldwych, London, between 5:30pm and 7:00pm.
(http://www.acallforlight.org/)Like the rest of the mainstream media, the BBC did next to nothing to expose the devastating effects of US-UK war and sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq from 1990 onwards. Ahead of last year's war, the BBC endlessly echoed and channelled UK government propaganda claims, almost never subjecting those claims to serious challenge.
Post-invasion and post-Hutton, the BBC has presented the occupation of Iraq as a flawed but well-intentioned act of 'liberation' and 'rebuilding'. Yesterday, the UN's Integrated Regional Information Network reported of Fallujah:
"Approximately 70 percent of the houses and shops were destroyed in the city and those still standing are riddled with bullets." ('Fallujah still needs more supplies despite aid arrival', http://www.irinnews.org, November 30, 2004)
You would not know from BBC coverage that a vast war crime has taken place in Fallujah. If Saddam Hussein had demolished 70% of Kuwait in 1990, it would surely have been declared one of the great atrocities of the twentieth century.
Legitimising The IllegitimateThe US-UK "coalition" would soon "hand over power to the Iraqis" on June 30, Laura Trevelyan declared on BBC1 in May. (16:45 News, May 23, 2004) Thus "soon the occupation will end", Orla Guerin observed. (BBC1, 19:00 News, June 16, 2004)
The death of a British soldier in Basra was particularly tragic, Guerin noted on the day of the "handover" (June 28), because he was "the last soldier to die under the occupation". (BBC1, 13:00 News, June 28, 2004) On the same programme, Matt Frei declared Iraq "sovereign and free" on "an enormously significant day for Iraq". It was an "historic day", anchor Anna Ford agreed.
Guerin described how Iraqi troops participating in an official ceremony "have waited all their lives for freedom", and so "feel satisfaction that power will be back in Iraqi hands". (Guerin, BBC1, 18:00 News, June 28, 2004)
Back in the real world, Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times:
"The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday... In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave." (Krugman, 'Who lost Iraq?', New York Times, June 29, 2004)
Robert Fisk wrote in the Independent:
"Alice in Wonderland could not have improved on this. The looking-glass reflects all the way from Baghdad to Washington... Those of us who put quotation marks around 'liberation' in 2003 should now put quotation marks around 'sovereignty'." (Fisk, 'The handover: Restoration of Iraqi sovereignty - or Alice in Wonderland?' The Independent, June 29, 2004)
In November, Anna Ford continued with the BBC's preferred version of events:
"Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has said he has given American and Iraqi forces the authority to clear Fallujah of terrorists." (Ford, BBC1, 13:00 News, November 8, 2004)
Caroline Hawley noted in July that the interim Iraqi government would need to ensure the security of the Iraqi people "if it's to keep their support". (Hawley, BBC1, 18:00 News, July 28, 2004)
We await credible evidence of this support for the US puppet regime.
Nicholas Witchell said in September:
"Dr. Allawi may say, 'we're winning', and there may be a time soon when that claim is more obviously justifiable. If that time arrives, there is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis will be delighted." (Witchell, BBC1, 22:00 News, September 23, 2004)
On October 20, Ben Brown said:
"The people of southern Iraq know they have their freedom." (Brown, BBC1, 22:00 News, October 20, 2004)
Imagine our reaction if a Russian journalist had said the same of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
On October 21, Caroline Hawley observed:
"It's hard to imagine that there can be free and fair elections across this country without a dramatic improvement in security." (Hawley, BBC1, 22:00 News, October 21, 2004)
With the United States having so far lost 1,100 troops killed in action in Iraq, with ten times that number wounded, at a cost of $200 billion, some find it hard to imagine that Bush and Rumsfeld would allow free and fair elections +regardless+ of the 'security' situation.
Dr. Wamidh Omar Nadhmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad University, and an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein's government, is official spokesman for the Iraqi National Foundation Congress. Nadhmi says:
"We suggested to the occupation forces and Iraqi government four requirements for an Iraqi election: an international committee of oversight; an immediate ceasefire because we cannot have elections under bombardment and rockets; [the] withdrawal of American troops from the major cities one month before the election." (Quoted, Dahr Jamail, 'Iraqi Critics Speak Out on Occupation, Elections,' The New Standard, November 22, 2004)
Ignoring these suggestions, which Nadhmi describes as prerequisites for a free and democratic election, the interim government declared martial law. Nadhmi asks:
"How can we have a free election under martial law?... Martial law is one of the nails in the coffin of this regime. The last pretext for democracy here is now buried. Their declaration of martial law is a declaration of political bankruptcy."
From An Establishment PerspectiveIn a 2003 Panorama special, Matt Frei said:
"There's no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power." (Frei, BBC1, Panorama, April 13, 2003)
New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman allows us to decode the propaganda:
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." (Quoted, John Pilger, 'The New Rulers of the World', Verso, 2001, p.114)
US presidential candidate and congressman, Dennis Kucinich, wrote in March, 2003:
"Is President Bush's war in Iraq about oil? Of course it is. Sometimes, the obvious answer is the right one: Oil is a major factor in the President's march to war, just as oil is a major factor in every aspect of US policy in the Persian Gulf." (Kucinich, 'Obviously Oil', AlterNet, March 11, 2003)
The BBC's John Humphrys said:
"So maybe it's not being too naive to think America really does want to use its position as the world's only superpower to spread freedom and democracy. The truth is, it's a question of where. Only last week James Woolsey - who once ran the CIA and has been appointed to run the new information ministry in Iraq - claimed America had been actively promoting democracy for most of the past century." (Humphrys, 'Bush turns a blind eye to the wars he doesn't want to fight', Sunday Times, April 13, 2003)
Mel Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former CIA analyst, takes a different view:
"None of this smells right at this point....and points to the politicization of the reconstruction process. Too many contracts have already gone to Cheney's old firm (Halliburton) and Shultz's old firm (Bechtel). The possible appointment of Jim Woolsey is total farce. Woolsey was a disaster as CIA director in the 90s and is now running around this country calling for a World War IV to deal with the Islamic problem. This is a dangerous individual who should not be part of any reconstruction process." ('War in Iraq With Mel Goodman, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy', April 15, 2003,
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/03/sp_iraq_goodman041503.htm)On the BBC's Newsnight programme, Gavin Esler noted that US crimes at Abu Ghraib prison had produced: "Images that shamed America's mission in Iraq." (Esler, Newsnight, August 24, 2004)
Much as crimes in Kabul "shamed" the Soviet Union's mission in Afghanistan in the 1980s, perhaps.
In March 2003, Newsnight's Kirsty Wark's observed that the declining humanitarian situation in Iraq threatened to "take the shine off" the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign. (Wark, Newsnight, March 21, 2003)
Much as the humanitarian situation threatened to "take the shine off" Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
In July 2004, Newsnight described how Iraqi insurgents were "blighting US attempts to bring peace and stability to Iraq". (Newsnight, July 5, 2004)
Resistance to an illegal superpower invasion by a quarter of a million troops is the real obstacle to peace, according to the BBC. Imagine the BBC declaring (not merely reporting) that the US-UK occupation was blighting international attempts to bring peace and stability to Iraq.
On October 1, Nicholas Witchell reported that a series of insurgent car bombs in Baghdad were "intended to undermine the future". (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, October 1, 2004)
As opposed to the +Americans'+ version of "the future".
On the BBC's Politics Show, Jeremy Vine suggested that the failure to discover any WMDs in Iraq would be "toe-curlingly embarrassing for the politicians". (Vine, The Politics Show, BBC1, May 4, 2003)
Imagine launching an illegal invasion, occupation and devastation of a defenceless Third World country, killing tens of thousands of civilians on a completely concocted pretext. What could be more "embarrassing"? Or indeed a more compelling case for a war crimes tribunal?
Earlier this year, Nicholas Witchell was happy to confuse the issue of the Daily Mirror's pictures of alleged abuse of Iraqis with the wider issue of British abuse:
"After the appalling +reality+ of what the Americans have been doing, the Mirror's pictures threatened to compromise the work of every British soldier." (Witchell, BBC1 22:00 News, May 14, 2004, original emphasis)
But British abuses +were+ real. For example, according to the Red Cross, married father of two, Baha Mousa, was among nine men seized at a hotel in Basra by British troops in September 2003:
"'Following their arrest, the nine men were made to kneel, face and hands against the ground, as if in a prayer position,' the report said. 'The soldiers stamped on the back of the neck of those raising their head.'" (Agencies, 'Red Cross report details alleged Iraq abuses', The Guardian, May 10, 2004)
Amnesty International launched "a scathing attack on the British military in Iraq", the Guardian reported. Amnesty produced evidence of eight cases in which Iraqi civilians, including a girl aged eight, were shot dead by British soldiers in southern Iraq.
Naming The Bad GuysDiscussing the war against the insurgency, Newsnight's Kirsty Wark asked a US military expert: "Can you choke off terrorism in Iraq?" (Newsnight, September 23, 2004)
James Robbins reported that the interim government was faced by: "Saddam loyalists joined by al Qaeda elements." (Robbins, BBC1, 13:00 News, June 28, 2004)
Most experts reject the claim that al Qaeda and other foreign fighters are at the heart of the insurgency. Toby Dodge, a British-based analyst, told the Al Jazeera website:
"[The] Insurgency is a national phenomenon fuelled by alienation. I don't think this war is winnable because they have alienated the base of support across Iraqi society." (Quoted, James Cogan, 'Iraqi elections announced amid mass repression,' November 22, 2004)
http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=2299)
On November 16, the Los Angeles Times reported that US-UK forces are fighting "a homegrown uprising dominated by Iraqis, not foreign fighters." According to the paper:"Of the more than 1,000 men between the ages of 15 and 55 who were captured in intense fighting in the center of the insurgency over the last week, just 15 are confirmed foreign fighters, Gen. George W. Casey, the top US ground commander in Iraq, said Monday."
The LA Times added: "American commanders said their best estimates of the proportion of foreigners among their enemies is [sic] about 5 percent." (Quoted, Norman Solomon, 'Will the Real "Iraqi Forces" Please Stand Up?', November 19, 2004
by http://antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=4008)In October, the BBC's Paul Wood referred to the "so-called 'resistance fighters'". (Wood, BBC1, 13:00 News, October 22, 2004)
Ben Brown described Fallujah as "a haven for Sunni extremists". (Brown, BBC1, 18:30 News, October 27, 2004)
In September 2004, Witchell said:
"As is so often the case in this conflict it's the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life - either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents." (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, September 30, 2004)
A research study published in The Lancet in October made a conservative estimate of 98,000 civilian deaths since the invasion:
"The researchers found that the majority of deaths were attributed to violence, which were primarily the result of military actions by Coalition forces. Most of those killed by Coalition forces were women and children... Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery." ('Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion', October 28, 2004
http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Burnham_Iraq.html)
Blair's PassionTony Blair "passionately believes" that Saddam Hussein had to be confronted to avoid future regrets, the BBC's Laura Trevelyan insisted. (Trevelyan, BBC1, 13:00 News, January 14, 2003)
By contrast, former cabinet minister, Clare Short, insists that Tony Blair used "various ruses" and "a series of half-truths, exaggerations, reassurances that were not the case to get us into conflict by the spring". (Patrick Wintour, 'Short: I was briefed on Blair's secret war pact', The Guardian, June 18, 2003)
Paul O'Neill, former US Treasury secretary, explained how the Bush administration came to office determined to topple Saddam Hussein, using the September 11 attacks as a pretext: "It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'" (O'Neill, quoted, Julian Borger, 'Bush decided to remove Saddam "on day one"', The Guardian, January 12, 2004)
O'Neill reports seeing one memorandum, long before September 11, 2001, preparing for war dating from the first days of the administration. Another, marked "secret" said, "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq". O'Neill also saw a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which discussed dividing Iraq's fuel reserves up between the world's oil companies. So much for Blair's passionate beliefs!
Matt Frei had this to say:
"If you remember, Paul O'Neill was sacked mainly because he was incompetent, and he was more infamous for his gaffes than his insights on economic theory. He once famously said that the collapse of the energy giant Enron was an example of the genius of capitalism, and perhaps more accurately that the tax code in America was 9,500 words of complete gibberish." (Frei, Newsnight, BBC2, January 12, 2004)
The 1991 Gulf War And The Effects Of SanctionsA Guardian report cited by historian Mark Curtis found that the issue of oil featured in 4% of BBC1 reports and in 3% of BBC2 reports - a remarkable achievement, given the obvious central concern. The BBC told its reporters to be "circumspect" about pictures of death and injury. ('"Circumspect" BBC', The Guardian, January 15, 1991)
David Dimbleby asked on live BBC TV:
"Isn't it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we've seen, is the only potential world policeman?" (Quoted, John Pilger, Hidden Agendas, Vintage, 1998, p.45)
Only 7% of the 88,500 tons of bombs dropped in the 1991 war employed 'smart' technology. The accuracy of these weapons was indicated by the performance of the much-vaunted Patriot missile system, declared 98% successful in intercepting and destroying Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1991 war. Professor Ted Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was asked by Congress to investigate the 98% claim. Much to his surprise, Postol found that the Patriot's success rate was rather less impressive than claimed:
"It became clear that it wasn't even close to intercepting +any+ targets, let alone some targets." (Postol, Great Military Blunders, Channel 4, March 2, 2000, original emphasis)
In a 2002 documentary, the BBC's John Simpson reported of the 1991 Gulf War:
"The big attack didn't bring the terrible loss of life that Saddam had feared." (Simpson, 'Saddam: A Warning from History', BBC1, November 3, 2002)
In late 1991, the Medical Educational Trust in London estimated that up to a quarter of a million men, women and children had died in the assault. On his return from Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the war, UN diplomat Marrti Ahtisaari wrote:
"Nothing that we had seen or read had prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results..." (Quoted, Milan Rai, War On Iraq, Verso, 2002, p.135)
The BBC's Ben Brown said of the effects of UN sanctions:
"He [Saddam Hussein] claims UN sanctions have reduced many of his citizens to near starvation - pictures like these [of a malnourished baby and despairing mother] have been a powerful propaganda weapon for Saddam, which he'll now have to give up." (Brown, BBC News, June 20, 1996)
In the Observer of June 23, 2002, John Sweeney reviewed arguments made in his BBC documentary on the same day:
"The Iraqi dictator says his country's children are dying in their thousands because of the West's embargoes. John Sweeney, in a TV documentary to be shown tonight, says the figures are bogus." (Sweeney, 'How Saddam 'staged' fake baby funerals', The Observer, June 23, 2002)
In his Observer article, Sweeney wrote:
"In 1999 Unicef, in co-operation with the Iraqi government, made a retrospective projection of 500,000 excess child deaths in the 1990s. The projection is open to question. It was based on data from within a regime that tortures children with impunity. All but one of the researchers used by Unicef were employees of the Ministry of Health, according to the Lancet."
We asked Hans von Sponeck, who ran the UN's 'oil for food' programme in Iraq, to respond. Von Sponeck described Sweeney's article as "exactly the kind of journalism that is Orwellian, double-speak. No doubt, the Iraq Government has manipulated data to suit its own purposes, everyone of the protagonists unfortunately does this. A journalist should not. UNICEF has used large numbers of international researchers and applied sophisticated methods to get these important figures.
"Yes, the Ministry of Health personnel cooperated with UNICEF but ultimately it was UNICEF and UNICEF alone which carried out the data analysis exactly because they did not want to politicise their work... This article is a very serious misrepresentation." (Email to Media Lens, June 24, 2002)
Former UN Assistant Secretary-General, Denis Halliday, who set up and ran the UN's 'oil for food' programme, has said:
"Washington, and to a lesser extent London, have deliberately played games through the Sanctions Committee with this programme for years - it's a deliberate ploy... That's why I've been using the word 'genocide', because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view at this late stage." (Interview with Media Lens, May 2000, www.medialens.org)
SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. We urge you to peacefully protest the BBC on December 2.
In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC News
Email: helen.boaden@bbc.co.ukYou can contact any of the BBC journalists named above by following the same pattern. For example, Matt Frei's email address is:
Email: matt.frei@bbc.co.ukPlease copy all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.orgMedia Lens readers may also wish to consider contacting the BBC's programme complaints unit at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/contactus/serious_form.shtml
Send your views to us
Email: editor@medialens.orgVisit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
This media alert will shortly be archived at:
http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.htmlPosted by David Edwards @ 01:28 PM GMT [Link]
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 30, 2004
MEDIA ALERT: PROTEST THE BBC ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2 - THIS IS WHY! PART 1
"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded. There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands." (Dr. Sami al-Jumaili, main Fallujah hospital, November 9, 2004)
"Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war." (Thich Nhat Than)
IntroductionThis Thursday, December 2, the peace group A Call For Light is organising a peaceful vigil outside the BBC, Bush House, Aldwych, London, between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. (http://www.acallforlight.org/)
Should you take time out to participate in this protest? Is it worth the effort and inconvenience involved?
If you are in doubt, we have selected below just a few examples indicating how the BBC has facilitated the mass killing of innocents in Iraq. We would all do well to recall the judgement of Nazi media boss, Julius Streicher, at Nuremberg:
"No government in the world... could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of mass extermination without having a people who would back them and support them... These crimes could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him." (Conot, Robert E, Justice At Nuremberg, Carrol & Graf, 1983, NY, pp.384-385)
The BBC, of course, is not the Nazi media, but there have been real war crimes in Iraq, a real mass slaughter, and the BBC has helped make it possible. Please read the examples below and protest on December 2 out of compassion for the suffering of the men, women and children of Iraq.
They Know They Can Trust USIn their history of the British media, Power Without Responsibility, James Curran and Jean Seaton show how the BBC has a long history of defending the establishment of which it is a part. They describe "the continuous and insidious dependence of the Corporation [the BBC] on the government". (Curran and Seaton, Power Without Responsibility, Routledge, 1991, p.144)
David Miller of Strathclyde University wrote earlier this year:
"BBC managers have fallen over themselves to grovel to the government in the aftermath of the Hutton whitewash. When will any of the BBC journalists who reported the 'Scud' attacks apologise? When will their bosses apologise for conspiring to keep the anti war movement off the screens? Not any time soon." (Miller, 'Media Apologies?', ZNet, June 15, 2004, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfmSectionID=21&ItemID=5713)
A Cardiff University report found that the BBC "displayed the most 'pro-war' agenda of any broadcaster". (Matt Wells, 'Study deals a blow to claims of anti-war bias in BBC news', The Guardian, July 4, 2003)
Over the three weeks of the initial conflict, 11% of the sources quoted by the BBC were of coalition government or military origin, the highest proportion of all the main television broadcasters. The BBC was less likely than Sky, ITV or Channel 4 News to use independent sources, who also tended to be the most sceptical. The BBC also placed least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, which were mentioned in 22% of its stories about the Iraqi people, and it was least likely to report on Iraqi opposition to the invasion.
Andrew Bergin, the press officer for the Stop The War Coalition, told Media Lens:
"Representatives of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition people from their programmes, even though everyone knows we are central to organising the massive anti-war movement...". (Email to Media Lens, March 14, 2003)
The BBC's own founder, Lord Reith, noted in his diary of the establishment:
"They know they can trust us not to be really impartial." (Quoted, David Miller, 'Is the news biased?' http://staff.stir.ac.uk/david.miller/teaching/7613bias.html)
Talking Up War - Talking Down PeaceThe first BBC Newsnight programme after the massive anti-war march in London on February 15, 2003, saw political correspondent, David Grossman, asking:
"The people have spoken, or have they? What about the millions who didn't march? Was going to the DIY store or watching the football on Saturday a demonstration of support for the government?" (Newsnight, February 17, 2003)
It was the biggest protest march in British political history!
A day later, Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman asked playwright Arthur Miller:
"You live in New York City... you must vividly recall what happened on September 11. In the world in which we live now, isn't some sort of pre-emptive strike the only defensive option available to countries like the United States?" (Newsnight, February 18, 2003)
Noam Chomsky reflects on the idea that this kind of strike might have been "the only defensive option available" in dealing with, say, the conflict in Northern Ireland:
"One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston, or to infiltrate commandos to capture those suspected of involvement in such financing and kill them or spirit them to London to face trial." (Chomsky, 9-11, Seven Stories Press, 2001)
Another, sane possibility, Chomsky comments, is "to consider realistically the background concerns and grievances, and try to remedy them, while at the same time following the rule of law to punish criminals".
Newsreader Fiona Bruce reported that the build-up of troops in the Gulf was "to deal with the continuing threat posed by Iraq". (Bruce, 18:00 News, January 7, 2003)
She meant the threat +alleged+ by Bush and Blair - not quite the same thing.
On the BBC's 6 O'Clock News, Matt Frei noted, sagely:
"There may be a case for regime change in Iran, too. But for now the Bush administration is relying on change from within." (Frei, BBC1, 18:00 News, June 16, 2003)
Frei explained in September 2003:
"The war with terror may have moved from these shores to Iraq. But for how long?" (Frei, 22:00 News, September 10, 2003)
This at a time when even the British government had abandoned its desperate attempts to conflate the war in Iraq with "the war on terror", in the absence of any evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
In October 2004, the BBC's Rageh Omaar noted: "I have followed, reporting the war on terror, from Afghanistan to Iraq." (Omaar, BBC1, 18:00 News, October 26, 2004)
Two years earlier, Labour MP, Glenda Jackson, had said:
"We have also seen the government, quite deliberately in my view, attempting to blur the line between the activities of al-Qaeda and the seeming threat of Saddam Hussein." (Newsnight, BBC2, November 25, 2002)
Inspectors - Were They Pulled Or Were They Pushed?The BBC's Jane Corbin stated on Panorama that "the inspectors were thrown out... and a divided UN Security Council let Saddam get away with it." (Panorama, 'The Case Against Saddam,' BBC1, September 23, 2002)
On the BBC's Lunchtime News, James Robbins reported that inspectors were "asked to leave" after relations with Iraq broke down. (BBC1, 13:00 News, September 17, 2002)
The BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, sent this email in response to one of our readers who challenged his claim that UN inspectors had been "kicked out" of Iraq in December 1998:
"Dear [Name Deleted].
If I am in your house, made to feel unwelcome and not allowed to wash or pee (not likely, a metaphor) and then, as a result, leave, you might be technically able to say that I had not been 'kicked out' - no leathered toe had been applied to my rear. But I might well use that phrase. Here as I understand it, is the sequence of events in 1998. I don't think my phrase increases the likelihood of war and will continue to try to report fairly on a subject where - I assure you - I don't feel or act as a mouthpiece of the Blair govt." (Forwarded to Media Lens, January 21, 2003)Scott Ritter, former chief Unscom weapons inspector, who was an inspector in Iraq between 1991-98, said:
"If this were argued in a court of law, the weight of evidence would go the other way. Iraq has in fact demonstrated over and over a willingness to cooperate with weapons inspectors." (Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, War On Iraq, Profile, 2002, p.25)
Ritter claims that Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" of 90-95% of its WMDs by December 1998. He also claims that inspections were deliberately sabotaged by US officials in 1998 precisely +because+ the Iraqis were rapidly approaching 100% compliance - so removing justification for continued sanctions and control of Iraq. In December 1998, Ritter said:
"What [head of Unscom] Richard Butler did last week with the inspections was a set-up. This was designed to generate a conflict that would justify a bombing." (Quoted, New York Post, December 17, 1998)
Last year, Richard Sambrook, then BBC's director of news, told us that Ritter had been interviewed just twice: on September 29th, 2002, for Breakfast With Frost, and on March 1, 2003 for BBC News 24. Newsnight editor Peter Barron told us that Newsnight had interviewed Scott Ritter twice on the WMD issue before the war: on August 3, 2000 and August 21, 2002.
A BBC news online search for 1 January, 2002 - 31 December 2002 recorded the following mentions:
George Bush Iraq, 1,022
Tony Blair Iraq, 651
Donald Rumsfeld Iraq, 164
Dick Cheney Iraq, 102
Richard Perle Iraq, 6
George Galloway Iraq, 42
Tony Benn Iraq, 14
Noam Chomsky Iraq, 1
Denis Halliday, 0
The Fall Of BaghdadIn April 2003, the BBC's Nicholas Witchell declared of the US drive into central Baghdad:
"It is absolutely, without a doubt, a vindication of the strategy." (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, April 9, 2003)
The BBC's breakfast news presenter, Natasha Kaplinsky, beamed as she described how Blair "has become, again, Teflon Tony". The BBC's Mark Mardell agreed with her: "It +has+ been a vindication for him." (BBC1, Breakfast News, April 10, 2003)
Retired general William Odom, former head of the US National Security Agency, sees it differently:
"Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost. Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends." (Quoted, Sidney Blumenthal, 'Far graver than Vietnam', The Guardian, September 16, 2004)
BBC journalist Rageh Omaar reported his emotions as Baghdad fell:
"In my mind's eye, I often asked myself: what would it be like when I saw the first British or American soldiers, after six years of reporting Iraq? And nothing, nothing, came close to the actual, staggering reaction to seeing American soldiers - young men from Nevada and California - just rolling down in tanks. And they're here with us now in the hotel, in the lifts and the lobbies. It was a moment I'd never, ever prepared myself for." (Omaar, BBC1, 18:00 News, April 9, 2003)
Ex-Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey was one of these same "young men from Nevada and California" in the main invasion force all the way to Baghdad. In May 2004, Massey said:
"It sickened me so that I had actually brought it up to my lieutenant, and I told him, I said, you know, sir, we're not going to have to worry about the Iraq [people] - you know, we're basically committing genocide over here, mass extermination of thousands of Iraqis." ('Ex-US Marine: I killed civilians in Iraq', Democracy Now, May 24, 2004,
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/24/148212)Infamously, on the day Baghdad fell, Andrew Marr declared:
"Well, I think this does one thing - it draws a line under what, before the war, had been a period of... well, a faint air of pointlessness, almost, was hanging over Downing Street. There were all these slightly tawdry arguments and scandals. That is now history. Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren't going to thank him, because they're only human, for being right when they've been wrong. And he knows that there might be trouble ahead, as I said. But I think this is very, very important for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence. He confronted many critics.
"I don't think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he's somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result." (Marr, BBC1, 22:00 News, April 9, 2003)
By contrast, on November 20, 2004, journalist Dahr Jamail quoted an Iraqi, Abu Talat. Talat, we are told, was crying and distraught as he spoke:
"'I am in a very sad position. I do not see any freedom or any democracy. If this could lead into a freedom, it is a freedom with blood. It is a freedom of emotions of sadness. It is a freedom of killing. You cannot gain democracy through blood or killing. You do not find the freedom that way. People are going to pray to God and they were killed and wounded. There were 1,500 people praying to God and they went on a holiday were people go every Friday for prayers. And they were shot and killed. There were so many women and kids lying on the ground. This is not democracy, neither freedom.'" (Jamail, 'Terrorizing Those Who Are Praying...,' November 20, 2004, www.znet.org)
Marr said of joining the BBC:"When I joined the BBC, my Organs of Opinion were formally removed." ('Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor', The Independent, January 13, 2000)
This was fortunate indeed. Prior to joining the BBC, Marr had written articles with titles such as:
'Brave, bold, visionary. Whatever became of Blair the ultra-cautious cynic?' (The Observer, April 4, 1999)
and:
'Hail to the chief. Sorry, Bill, but this time we're talking about Tony.' (The Observer, May 16, 1999)
Marr declared himself in awe of Blair's "moral courage", writing: "I am constantly impressed, but also mildly alarmed, by his utter lack of cynicism."
Part 2 will follow shortly...SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. We urge you to peacefully protest the BBC on December 2.
In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC News
Email: helen.boaden@bbc.co.ukYou can contact any of the BBC journalists named above by following the same pattern. For example, Matt Frei's email address is:
Email: matt.frei@bbc.co.ukPlease copy all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.orgMedia Lens readers may also wish to consider contacting the BBC's programme complaints unit at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/contactus/serious_form.shtml
Send your views to us
Email: editor@medialens.orgVisit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
This media alert will shortly be archived at:
http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.htmlPosted by David Edwards @ 12:44 PM GMT [Link]
Friday, November 26, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 26, 2004
MEDIA ALERT: FALLUJAH - THE BBC'S DIRECTOR OF NEWS RESPONDS
On November 8 and 11 we published two Media Alerts: 'Legitimising Mass Slaughter in Fallujah,' in which we commented on the bias and inhumanity of BBC and ITV News reporting on Fallujah.These alerts generated a massive response from readers - one of the biggest we have seen - and contributed, we believe, to a short-lived improvement in both BBC and ITV reporting. As a flood of emails was being copied to us, the BBC in particular began paying attention to the plight of civilians in Fallujah in a way that it had conspicuously not done earlier in the week. This could of course have been a coincidence, but we doubt it. We suspect that BBC editors and journalists were shocked by the intensity and extent of public feeling, a suspicion strengthened by a response of unprecedented seriousness from the BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden (see below).
We also suspect that some journalists at the BBC, including front-line journalists, were already uneasy about the savagery of the US demolition of Fallujah and the BBC's response to it. On October 11, news anchor Anna Ford sent short messages of this kind to several readers:
"I've taken your concerns to the Head of TV News Roger Mosey. Daily discussion here on our coverage." (Forwarded to Media Lens, November 11, 2004)
It is worth bearing in mind that while no one likes to receive even rational criticism, journalists can use challenges of this kind to raise important issues within their organisations. Like all corporations, media companies are essentially totalitarian institutions subject to a strict, top-down hierarchy of control. Journalists are expected to be 'team players', 'focused' and 'disciplined' - code words that refer to the need to remain focused on 'pragmatic' bottom line goals of profitability and market share. In the BBC's case, it also means not inviting the kind of devastating punishment the government meted out over the Andrew Gilligan affair.
To attempt to take a moral stance in this environment is difficult; it risks raising issues that are deeply threatening to senior management. The BBC's senior management, of course, is appointed by the government. A flood of well-argued emails rooted in concern for human suffering allows journalists to challenge government and/or corporate malfeasance with less risk of their being labelled 'committed', 'crusading' or 'ideological'.
On November 16, we received the following from the BBC's Helen Boaden:
Dear Medialens
It's good to have considered feedback and I am sorry that you are troubled by some of our coverage of the assault on Fallujah. Our correspondents in Iraq are working under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions and we are proud of them.Our aim as BBC journalists is to approach all stories, including wars, from an impartial standpoint, reflecting events and significant opinions in a fair and balanced way.
It is often incredibly difficult to disentangle the strands to get at the truth. However, editors, producers, researchers and correspondents are constantly assessing every aspect of coverage. Our aim is to inform our audiences and put developments in context so as to explain a complicated and developing story. We are well aware of the need to report on the widest possible range of opinion about what is going on.
THE TV HEADLINEWe have monitored our reports on BBC Television News, BBC Radio and BBC News Online from lunchtime on November 8th. The BBC One TV One o'clock News opened with the headline "US-led troops are about to launch a major offensive on the city of Fallujah" which was accurate. The closing headline to which you refer was not as precise as we would have wanted and lessons have been learned from this. However, there was no sense of ambiguity whatsoever about who was leading the assault.
Furthermore, on the BBC One Six 0'Clock News, Andrew Marr made it clear that while the British government wanted to emphasise that the Fallujah attack was Mr Allawi's decision, there was a different interpretation. He said, "There are Americans backed up by British troops going in there, so responsibility for whatever happens in Fallujah will be shared by the Prime Minister and the American president."
I have reminded our newsrooms that it is important to use the word "interim" when talking about the Iraqi government, to reinforce the fact that it is as yet non-elected by popular vote.
CIVILIANS>From the outset we have raised questions about civilian casualties both in the city and those who have fled. Getting first hand information from within Fallujah has been extremely difficult. We have made clear that correspondents embedded with the marines have seen little of civilians and their reports are restricted. In Fallujah in the past week, we, in common with other broadcasters, have not been able to report freely from civilian areas for safety reasons; but we have tried to remedy this as much as we can. We have reported what's being said by aid officials in the city; we have talked by phone to ordinary residents (three such contributors to last Wednesday's Newsnight alone); we are interviewing Iraqis in the UK and we are using Arabic media reports and the BBC Arabic Service.
>From the start, Newsnight and other outlets have interviewed Fadhil Badrani, who is a journalist in Fallujah, who reports for the BBC World Service in Arabic. He has spoken of the street battles and the "hell" which the people left in Fallujah have to endure.
We have also interviewed a journalist who was in Fallujah until a few days before the US assault.BBC News Online have carried Arab press reviews and special reports from Fadhil Badrani.
INSURGENTS
The use of such words is often contentious. This term was decided upon because it describes people who are "rising in active revolt". It is the best word to use in situations of rebellion or conquest when there is no free-standing government.We aim to provide our audiences with the information they need to make their own judgements. . Having consulted widely, this is probably the most appropriate word to use in the case of the fighters in Fallujah, as distinct from civilians who may be staying in the city for other reasons, such as they're old or ill or want to protect their homes from possible looting.
On Radio Five Live's Drive programme there was a discussion on this very issue. The broadcaster and sociologist Professor Laurie Taylor was asked about whether the BBC should call the fighters in Fallujah
VCS.MOSGW5.TVC.BBC.MOS VCS audio insert
NAME: FALLUJAH terminology row
NUMBER: 14642
IN WORDS: Insurgents... that is the word
OUT WORDS: ...what we're talking about
DURATION: 1'10''NEWTVCENPS05 00000000E1DFEB67 FALLUJAH terminology row 44100 3087000 2 EDITORS-1835-2 "insurgents", "resistance fighters" or "militants". He replied: ".We should probably credit the BBC with getting it right.with the word insurgent."
As for use of the word terrorist, it is the Americans and Mr Allawi who have used this word. We have simply reported it.
BIASWe do not agree that the BBC is biased and acting as the mouthpiece for the US/UK government.
We have consistently reported on a wide range of arguments in the run up to, and now during, the Fallujah offensive.Here are a few examples. We reported:
*on the significant opposition to the Iraq war of Sir Stephen Wall, Tony Blair's one-time right-hand man on European matters..
*the political fall-out within Iraq - the resignation from the interim government of the main Sunni Party, in protest at the Fallujah assault.
*Radio 4's World At One interviewed Iraq's former foreign minister about his "grave concerns about a protracted and bloody military operation in Fallujah."
"It also heard from Gwyn Prins, joint alliance research professor at the LSE and Columbia University who, while believing there's military and political logic behind the decision to deal with the "Fallujah problem" said the situation should not have reached such a pitch.*Radio 4's PM interviewed the UK spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic party, Fareed Sabri. (The Americans last tried to take Fallujah in April. The military operation failed but it was followed by a negotiated peace. Fareed Sabri took part in that negotiation)
*Last Friday's TV 10 o'clock News kicked off its second piece on the story with Kofi Annan's criticisms of the coalition action and included Peter Kilfoyle MP as a domestic critic of the war.
MEDIA CHOICES (Part 2)Our BBC One Six and Ten o'Clock News bulletins led with Fallujah on November 8 and 9. On November 10 the story ran second to Darfur, a new and very significant breaking story. Fallujah was still the lead on that day's Newsnight; and we have devoted considerable airtime to Fallujah in all our output since November 8.
On the question of Fergal Keane's reporting from Darfur: he was a witness to brutal behaviour by the Sudanese authorities. If one of our reporters saw brutal behaviour by Iraqi or coalition forces we would similarly report that. You may remember that we gave extensive coverage earlier this year to the abuses revealed in Abu-Ghraib.
Indeed, on Monday, November 15, the BBC One Ten O'Clock News carried the NBC television network footage of what it says is a US soldier shooting dead an unarmed, wounded Iraqi prisoner at a mosque. The allegations and the US Army's investigation into them were reported across all BBC networks.
Thank you for your continuing interest.
Yours sincerely,Helen Boaden
Director, BBC News
Media Lens ResponseWe are grateful for such a substantial and thoughtful response.
Boaden argues that "there was no sense of ambiguity whatsoever about who was leading the assault."
This is correct, although not in the way Boaden intends. The BBC's lunchtime news anchor, Anna Ford, opened her report on the programme in question with this statement:
"Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has said he has given American and Iraqi forces the authority to clear Fallujah of terrorists."
On seven occasions in this one programme, the BBC gave the impression that Allawi was the final authority in Iraq, thus indicating that the assault on Fallujah was an Iraqi government operation directing US and Iraqi forces to the attack. There was no ambiguity whatever, as Boaden rightly points out.
Entrenched habits of patriotic journalism are such that the media finds it impossible to report objectively, much less critically, on wars in which British forces are involved. Journalists reflexively slot conflicts into 'us' versus 'them' frameworks, with 'us' portrayed as reluctant, chivalrous interventionists intent on 'bringing peace', 'restoring order', 'rebuilding the country' (we have destroyed) and so on. 'Them' on the other hand refers to 'terrorists', 'murderers' and, in this case, 'Saddam loyalists' and 'foreign fighters' (essentially the same devilish 'foreign agitators' of Cold War propaganda).
It is difficult to maintain the 'us' and 'them' view of the world when we are illegal occupiers killing ordinary Iraqis resisting our occupation - so the illegality and the ordinary Iraqi resistance fighters are hardly mentioned. The issue of oil, of course, is not allowed even to exist, although it would be at the forefront of reporting on the crimes of an official enemy.
Remarkably, at the height of the attack on Fallujah, the broadcast media repeatedly switched from news of the attack to news from the rest of Iraq with comments such as: "Elsewhere in Iraq there has been an upsurge in violence as insurgents attacked..."
The point was not made that there had +also+ been "an upsurge in violence" elsewhere in Iraq, as though the attack on Fallujah was not deemed to constitute violence. This also fits a generalised pattern. Violence is a pejorative term suggesting illegitimacy or illegality - the "coalition", by contrast, is involved in 'peacekeeping', 'maintenance of law and order', and 'security'; not violence.
As part of its patriotic role, the media is drip-feeding the British public the impression that Iraqis are in control of their country and are deeply committed to fighting the insurgency. This is crucial propaganda lending a veneer of legitimacy to an illegal occupation and the staggering violence by which it is being maintained. The reality - that a Western superpower is imposing its will on an impoverished but oil-rich Third World country against the will of its people - is nowhere in sight.
The US manipulation of local puppets in pursuit of this cause is intended to camouflage the reality. To present the words of such stooges as worthy of serious attention - which is exactly what happens when news programmes open with such words - is crude propaganda worthy of Goebbels or the commissars under Stalin.
Boaden suggests that Andrew Marr's comment indicated that "while the British government wanted to emphasise that the Fallujah attack was Mr Allawi's decision, there was a different interpretation". This is what Marr said:
"There are Americans backed up by British troops going in there, so responsibility for whatever happens in Fallujah will be shared by the Prime Minister and the American president."
The suggestion that different parties involved in a military action share responsibility for what happens does not in any way offer a "different interpretation" to the claim that +final+ responsibility rests with Allawi as ultimate author of the action. Boaden's argument is a red herring.
We did not raise the issue of the importance of using "interim" to describe Allawi's government. This is a trivial point beside the BBC's presentation of Allawi's regime as an independent, legitimate source of authority worthy of respectful, indeed headline, attention.Boaden writes that "From the outset we have raised questions about civilian casualties."
In fact the BBC main news said next to nothing about such casualties until a flood of complaints from our readers appeared to contribute to a short-lived change in reporting. Boaden appears to recognise this initial, low-key emphasis when she writes: "Getting first hand information from within Fallujah has been extremely difficult."
And yet reliable reports from doctors in the city, from escaping refugees, and from the Iraqi Red Crescent, +were+ being heard at a time when BBC TV news was finding them "extremely difficult" to access. In fact, the BBC's emphasis has been highly patriotic. It was initially focused on the preparations and goals of the US military, presenting the attack on Fallujah from a "coalition" point of view. The impression given was of a World War II-style 'just cause', which the attack on Fallujah most certainly was not.
Boaden's comment on use of the term "insurgent" was also not raised by us - another red herring.
Boaden writes "As for use of the word terrorist, it is the Americans and Mr Allawi who have used this word. We have simply reported it."
Why, then, has the BBC not repeatedly reported "use of the word terrorist" by commentators describing US and British military actions in Iraq? Is it because Allawi and the Americans are deemed legitimate in a way that the insurgents are not? Allawi, as we have discussed, has +zero+ legitimacy, while the Americans are acting illegally in occupying the country, as the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has made clear. Note, again, that Boaden brackets Allawi with the American government, suggesting comparable legitimacy.
Has the BBC ever reported that the British or US governments are involved in state terror? We doubt it. And yet both are undoubtedly using the demonstration effect of mass violence to terrorise insurgents, and Iraqis generally, into abandoning resistance to the occupation. US military officials have openly stated that the appalling fate suffered by Fallujah is intended 'pour encourager les autres' - a very clear example of state terrorism.
Boaden writes: "On the question of Fergal Keane's reporting from Darfur... If one of our reporters saw brutal behaviour by Iraqi or coalition forces we would similarly report that."
Recall that Keane said: "This was a day when the Sudanese government showed the face of raw power. When the international community was left powerless, and the most vulnerable, defenceless."
There was nothing in BBC TV reporting that expressed comparable moral outrage at the destruction of Fallujah by the Western superpower acting outside of international law. But in fact far worse violence was committed in Fallujah than featured in Keane's report. Here, too, the international community was powerless in the face of the slaughter, and the most vulnerable citizens in Fallujah were also its victims.
It was morally indefensible to subordinate our own ongoing and illegal mass killing in Fallujah to reports of lesser crimes by a foreign government for which we are not democratically or morally responsible. Instead of holding foreign secretary Jack Straw to account for his crimes against humanity in Iraq, he was respectfully invited by the BBC to comment on Sudanese crimes in Darfur. This was grotesque in the extreme.
Next Thursday, December 2, the peace group A Call For Light is organising a peaceful vigil to protest BBC reporting outside the BBC, Bush House, Aldwych, London, between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. See our next Media Alert for more details and comment.
SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Please attend the December 2 vigil outside the BBC.
Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC News
Email: helen.boaden@bbc.co.ukPlease also send all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.orgVisit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
This media alert will shortly be archived at:
http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.htmlPosted by David Edwards @ 01:45 PM GMT [Link]
Sunday, November 21, 2004
MEDIA LENS COGITATION: TRANSFORMING SUFFERING INTO FREEDOM
By David Cromwell
November 21, 2004
"It's time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet."
(Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and philosopher)
What are you afraid of? What makes you anxious? Losing your health, your hair, your teeth, your looks? If you have children, perhaps you fear for them: for their health, the risk that they'll get wrapped up in drugs or crime, or that they'll miss out on a good education. If you're a parent, as I am, your biggest fear may well be that you'll lose your children. If you're not a parent, perhaps you desperately wish that you were. Or perhaps you'd prefer to remain childless, but fear becoming a parent accidentally.Are you in love, looking for love or falling out of love? Do you fear being alone in your old age, perhaps even dying alone? And what about feelings of inadequacy? About not having a slim, well-toned body, or not being clever enough, or not having the 'right' clothes, gadgets, education, luxurious home or several holiday destinations through the year. Fear, anxiety, loneliness, insecurity, suffering. Why should any of this matter to political activists anyway?
Well, who wants to live in a world where we aren't concerned about each other? We are all united in wishing to be happy, to be free from suffering. Arguing the case for social justice and ecological sustainability with accurate facts, figures, quotes, references, examples and proposals is all very well. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We bandy around words ike 'community', 'solidarity', 'peace' and 'freedom'. And yet, we so often become uncomfortable or even dismissive if asked, 'what motivates you?', 'how do you remain committed?', or even 'how's life with you?'.
These questions are so often deemed irrelevant to political activism and organising; an impediment, or simply a distraction, to the primary task of confronting state-corporate power or building a movement from the ground up. Why is it considered strong to be driven by anger at injustices in the world, but considered weak to take time out to examine ourselves and what it takes to make us cry, laugh, sad, happy, enthused or fulfilled?
Something my father said recently struck me hard: "Nobody asked to be brought into this world". This was in the context of how difficult life can be and how, simple and saccharine as it may sound, we ought to look out for each other. It is not a particularly original observation, of course, but at that moment it really resonated with me. Life can be hard; even for us in the 'privileged' and ' rich' countries of the west. The fact is, most of us at some time encounter stress, heartache, illness, frustration, ennui, depression, perhaps even despair. We should recognise those all too human frailties and afflictions in each other without scorn or discomfort, and without regarding it as a distraction from the political project of building a just and peaceful society. Rather than regarding such issues as a distraction, they should be recognised as utterly central to what we would like to achieve: true peace, freedom, happiness.
Fear of freedom>From the day that the baby realises that she is a separate entity from her mother, there is a striving to reproduce that primary tie; to connect with other individuals, and with human society as a whole. As the German psychologist Erich Fromm explained so well, the fear of being alone - of being an atomised individual in society - underlies the fear of genuine freedom: not so much freedom from things, such as poverty, repetitive work or damaging relationships; but the freedom to do things, to take responsibility for one's actions and thoughts, to cut the umbilical cord of dependency on 'higher' forms of authority, and to grow as a fully-integrated person.
The consequences of this fear can be harmful indeed: "in our effort to escape from aloneness and powerlessness", wrote Fromm, "we are ready to get rid of our individual self either by submission to new forms of authority or by a compulsive conforming to accepted patterns." (Fromm, 'Fear of Freedom', Routledge, London, 2002, p. 116). From there it is a slippery slope to simply knuckling under, getting on with life, doing whatever our 'benign' leaders want, or simply letting them get on with whatever it is they do; whether it be handing over yet more public revenue and power to corporations, introducing ever more draconian legislation to protect domestic 'security', or pulverising yet another already impoverished and devastated nation.
I was motivated to put these thoughts down, partly because of an exchange with someone I had on email three years ago, following the launch of the US/UK attacks on Afghanistan in late 2001. My correspondent is a decent person, a loving father, and someone with strong environmentalist leanings. And yet he told me: "The world isn't fair, never has been, never will be, and it's survival of the fittest whether we like it or not, so if we want to survive and maintain our pampered life-styles, we stay the fittest - and that doesn't necessarily mean the nicest if you're not part of our tribe." I was quite taken aback by this outburst.
I suspect, and it would admittedly be hard to verify this, that such a cynical 'pragmatic' view is held by a far greater number of westerners than we would like to think. It is a selfish notion that seems to accord with Darwinian evolution, with its dictate of 'survival of the fittest'. Applied, inappropriately, to human societies, it seems to imply that 'might is right'. On this view, competition is what drives human behaviour or, at the very least, it is a major component in human makeup. Compassion, altruism and kindness are evolutionary adaptations, so we are told, that improved our fitness to survive and flourish. As psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, in his typically sweeping style:
"Family feelings are designed to help our genes replicate themselves." (Pinker, 'How The Mind Works', p. 30).
In other words, we might put ourselves out for a close relative, to the extent of risking our lives to save him or her, but we would be less likely to do so for someone not related to ourselves, goes the argument.
Pinker adds that the "tragedy of reciprocal altruism is that sacrifices on behalf of nonrelatives cannot survive without a web of disagreeable emotions like anxiety, mistrust, guilt, shame, and anger." (Pinker, 'The Blank Slate', Penguin, London, p. 256).
For example, we might well feel anxious about, and even angry towards, individuals who take unfair advantage of our kindly acts in order to accrue benefits for themselves. This may be as simple as feeling resentful at having had one's colleague round to our home not just once, but twice, and still not having received a dinner invitation in return! Or, to use Pinker's examples: gaining from, but not contributing to, the public good, such as hunting animals for food, building a lighthouse that keeps everyone's ships off the rocks, or banding together to invade neighbours or to repel their invasions.
A successful, thriving society requires cooperation and a measure of trust and honour between its members. Those who cheat are an unfair burden on society, and 'law-abiding' members of the group must punish them. Otherwise cheaters could end up destroying the cohesion, even the very survival, of the whole group. Consequently, claims Pinker, anger "evolved from systems for aggression and was recruited to implement the cheater-punishment strategy demanded by reciprocal altruism." (Pinker, 'The Blank Slate', Penguin, London, p. 272).
"Go ahead, make my day!"But is this depiction of anger as beneficial, providing evolutionary advantages, the whole truth? Psychologist Martin Seligman, pioneer of the burgeoning field of 'positive psychology' cautions: "We deem it honest, just, and even healthy to express our anger. So we shout, we protest, and we litigate. 'Go ahead, make my day,' warns Dirty Harry. Part of the reason we allow ourselves this luxury is that we believe the psychodynamic theory of anger. If we don't express our rage, it will come out elsewhere - even more destructively, as in cardiac disease. But this theory turns out to be false; in fact, the reverse is true. Dwelling on trespass and the expression of anger produces more cardiac disease and more anger." (Seligman, 'Authentic Happiness', p. 69)
Anne Harrington, a science historian at Harvard University, points out the systematic failings of science in the investigation of deep human values such as altruism and compassion. These values tend to be simply eliminated from the scientific analysis, says Harrington:
"Historically, the more deeply our sciences have probed reality, the less relevant concepts like compassion become. Behind altruism is strategizing for genetic fitness."
In, other words, as psychologist Daniel Goleman notes, the scientific reduction of altruism to notions of "genetic fitness" is "how evolutionary theory explains away such selflessness." (Daniel Goleman, 'Destructive Emotions And How We Can Overcome Them. A Dialogue with the Dalai Lama', Bloomsbury, London, 2003, p. 280)
Evolutionary theory is, of course, one of the most successful scientific theories of all times, but one must be careful in using it to 'explain' human qualities, particularly if such explanations are one-sided. As Seligman maintains:
"I believe that evolution has favored both good and bad traits, and any number of adaptive roles in the world have selected for morality, cooperation, altruism, and goodness, just as any number have also selected for murder, theft, self-seeking, and terrorism" (Seligman, p. xiii).
Seligman explicitly rejects pessimistic depictions of selfish human nature, or of anger being innate. This approach, he argues, is scientifically unsound: "Current dogma may say that negative motivation is fundamental to human nature and positive motivation merely derives from it, but I have not seen a shred of evidence that compels us to believe thisS [the] dual-aspect view that positive and negative traits are equally authentic and fundamental is the basic motivational premise of Positive Psychology." (Seligman, p. 211)
Letting go of old bad habits by focussing on othersReturning now to the individual, it is all too easy for personal attitudes to be shaped by our own narrow bundle of inwardly-directed anxieties. The German philosopher Ernst Cassirer expressed it well: "We live much more in our doubts and fears, our anxieties and hopes about the future, than in our recollections or in our present experiences."
Fear and anxiety so often dominate our reaction to people and the world around us. Isn't this terribly sad? By looking primarily inwards, at our own problems, which thus tend to multiply and magnify, we can too easily become attached to feelings of negativity, even misery. This almost becomes a badge of honour, a bundle of suffering that we must carry around on our backs wherever we go; excess baggage that we are, in fact, loathe to set down.
As psychotherapist Howard Cutler notes: "When it comes down to it, many of us resist giving up our misery - a vexing and baffling feature of human behavior I often observed in the past when treating psychotherapy patients. As miserable as some people might be, for many there is a kind of perverse pleasure in the self-righteous indignation one feels when one is treated unfairly. We hold on to our pain, wear it like a badge, it becomes part of us and we are reluctant to give it up. After all, at least our characteristic ways of looking at the world are familiar. Letting go of our customary responses, as destructive as they may be, may seem frightening, and often that fear abides on a deeply ingrained subconscious level."
That fear of letting go of our habitual tendencies can be conquered, or at least assuaged, by focusing on the needs of others, rather than our own. Seligman says simply: "When we are happy, we are less self-focused, we like others more, and we want to share our good fortune even with strangers. When we are down, though, we become distrustful, turn inward, and focus defensively on our own needs. Looking out for number one is more characteristic of sadness than of well-being." (Seligman, p. 43)
On the other hand, Seligman points out the evolutionary role of positive emotions: "They broaden our abiding intellectual, physical, and social resources, building up reserves we can draw upon when a threat or opportunity presents itself. When we are in a positive mood, people like us better, and friendship, love, and coalitions are more likely to cement. In contrast to the constrictions of negative emotion, our mental set is expansive, tolerant, and creative. We are open to new ideas and new experience." (Seligman, p. 35)
The conscious effort to undertake small acts of kindness for others is a good place to start. Though such acts may initially feel somewhat forced, it is worth the effort to weaken the fears, doubts and anxieties that afflict us all. It is a simple and fun pragmatic scientific experiment, at minimal cost, that anyone can try. When to begin? Now! As Marcus Aurelius wisely observed: "there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return." ('Meditations', new translation by Gregory Hays, Phoenix, London, 2003, p. 20).
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http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.htmlPosted by David Edwards @ 12:27 PM GMT [Link]
Friday, November 19, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 19, 2004
MEDIA ALERT: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES AND THE REAL POLITICS OF FEAR - PART 2
Manufacturing The Myth Of 'America'American elites have long sought to manufacture and promote a shared myth of 'America' based on "symbols by which Americans defined their dream and pictured social reality." (Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy, UNSW Press, 1995, p.75)
Adam Curtis alluded to this myth-making in his BBC series The Power of Nightmares, but he portrayed it as a process initiated and pursued by neoconservatives from the 1940s onwards, inspired by the teachings of Leo Strauss.
There was no hint that these myths were small elements of a vast programme of social engineering carried out by US governments, both Democrat and Republican, and by powerful business associations, from the first days of the 20th century and earlier.
Indeed Curtis had nothing to say about the key issue of business control of American society - the words 'corporate', 'corporation' and 'business' were not mentioned in the series. The neocons were depicted as fanatical ideologues, with literally zero mention of their roots in the business community. In April 2001, the Guardian's Julian Borger reported:
"In the Bush administration, business is the only voice... This is as close as it is possible to get in a democracy to a government of business, by business and for business." (Borger, 'All the president's businessmen', The Guardian, April 27, 2001)
Robert Reich, Clinton's former labour secretary added: "There's no longer any countervailing power in Washington. Business is in complete control of the machinery of government." (Ibid)
The reality that the neocon project is profit-driven rather than ideology-driven makes a nonsense of the idea that it aims to "spread the good of democracy around the world". As the US historian Sidney Lens noted recently:
"Even a cursory look suggests that American policy has been motivated not by lofty regard for the needs of other peoples but by America's own desire for land, commerce, markets, spheres of influence, investments, as well as strategic impregnability to protect such prerogatives. The primary focus has not been moral, but imperial." (Lens, 'The Forging of the American Empire', Pluto Press, London, 2003, p.14)
Curtis, by contrast, uncritically accepted neocon rhetoric. On the election of Reagan as president in 1980, Curtis said:
"The neoconservatives believed that they now had the chance to implement their vision of America's revolutionary destiny, to use the country's power aggressively as a force for good in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union. It was a vision that they shared with millions of their new religious allies." ('The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. Part 1: "Baby, it's cold outside"', BBC2, October 20, 2004)
Curtis reiterated the point: "A small group in the Reagan White House saw... a way of achieving their vision of transforming the world." They would "bring down the Soviet Union and help spread democracy around the world. It was called the Reagan Doctrine." (Part 2, 'The Phantom Victory', October 27, 2004)
This is deeply misleading. In her seminal account of the business brainwashing of America from 1945-1960, Selling Free Enterprise, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf wrote:
"All this effort helped create a major political shift that would culminate in the election of Ronald Reagan, the subsequent tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, the elimination of regulation, and the severe cutbacks in social services." (Selling Free Enterprise - The Business Assault on Labour and Liberalism, 1945-60, University of Illinois Press, 1994, p.289)
Directly contradicting Curtis' thesis, Fones-Wolf noted that "the business community laid the ideological and institutional foundations for the nation's movement +toward+ a more individualistic ethos." (Ibid, p.289, our emphasis)
But there was nothing new in the neocon propaganda campaign:
"Indeed, perhaps Ronald Reagan best symbolises the continuity. Beginning in 1954, the future president of the United States spent eight years in the employment of General Electric, hosting a television programme and speaking to employee and local civic group audiences as part of the company's public relations and economic education programme. During that time, Reagan fine-tuned a message that he would repeat in the late seventies, warning of the threat that labour and the state pose to our 'free economy'."(Ibid)
Demolishing DemocracySimilarly, the Reaganite neocons (many still in power, now, as part of the Bush cabal) engaged in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and elsewhere. The concern was not to spread but to restrict democracy to protect US control of human and natural resources. Robert Pastor, director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council through the Carter years, explained:
"The United States... wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely." (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, 'Deterring Democracy', Hill And Wang, 1992, p.261)
The cover story for US intervention throughout the postwar period, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, was indeed the 'Soviet threat'. But as Harvard academic Samuel Huntington advised government planners in 1981:
"You may have to sell [US intervention] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has done ever since the Truman Doctrine [of 1947]". (Ibid, p.90)
The real enemy was independent nationalism, the risk that Third World resources might fall out of US control. To select at random, a US State Department official warned prior to the 1954 US coup in Guatemala:
"Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail." (Quoted, Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, Princeton University Press, 1991, p.365)
The CIA told the White House in April 1964:
"Cuba's experiment with almost total state socialism is being watched closely by other nations in the hemisphere, and any appearance of success there could have an extensive impact on the statist trend elsewhere in the area." (Quoted, Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1993, p.157)
Curtis ignored this documented historical reality. This is particularly significant as we know that Curtis +is+ aware of it. Two years ago, Media Lens challenged him following the broadcast of his BBC TV series, The Century of the Self, which purported to chart the rise of propaganda in the 20th century. In this series Curtis argued:
"Politicians and planners came to believe that Freud was right to suggest that hidden deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had lead to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again, they set out to find ways to control the hidden enemy within the human mind." (The Century of the Self - The Engineering of Consent, BBC2, March 24, 2002)
We suggested to Curtis that the real fear of politicians and planners was the existence of dangerous +rational+ desires and fears - popular desires for equity, justice and functioning democracy; popular fears that unbridled capitalism and militarism would once again lead to horrors on the scale of the two world wars. We asked him: "Do you really believe that big business was fundamentally motivated to avoid a repetition of the barbarism of Nazi Germany?" (Media Lens to Curtis, June 5, 2002)
We also asked Curtis why he had given detailed attention to Guatemalan history in that series, while failing to mention US responsibility for the 150,000 civilians killed as a result of its attack on Guatemala. On June 19, 2002, Curtis responded:
"I never said 'big business was motivated to avoid a repetition of the barbarism of nazi Germany'. I very clearly separated the early, naïve reaction of politicians and social planners to psychological evidence and the lobbying of ambitious psychologists, from the cynical and corrupt use of those ideas by big business and later cold-war politicians which then followed."
Curtis continued: "I explicitly used the Guatemala story as an example of that form of corruption."
Remarkably, of this "cynical and corrupt use" of ideas by big business there was not one word in The Power Of Nightmares.
Understanding Bin Laden - Motives Behind September 11As part of his idea of parallels linking Islamic jihadists and the US neocons, Curtis argued that both are motivated by a fear and hatred of "selfish individualism":
"The attacks on America had been planned by a small group that had come together around bin Laden in the late 90s. What united them was an idea: an extreme interpretation of Islamism developed by Ayman Zawahiri." (Part 3, 'The Shadows in the Cave', November 3, 2004)
Inspired by Sayyed Qutb, Zawahiri, who was bin Laden's mentor, came to believe that "the infection of [Western] selfish individualism had gone so deep into people's minds that they were now as corrupted as their leaders... It wasn't just leaders like Sadat who were no longer real Muslims, it was the people themselves. And Zawahiri believed that this meant that they too could legitimately be killed. But such killing, Zawahiri believed, would have a noble purpose, because of the fear and the terror that it would create in the minds of ordinary Muslims. It would shock them into seeing reality in a different way. They would then see the truth." (Part 1, 'Baby It's Cold Outside', October 20, 2004)
But in interviews, Osama bin Laden has clearly listed three political grievances as primary motives for the September 11, 2001 attacks: the oppression of Palestinians, the devastating effect of US-UK sanctions and war on Iraqi civilians, and US military bases in Saudi Arabia. The Independent's Robert Fisk wrote in 2001:
"Why do we always play politics on the hoof, making quick-fix promises to vulnerable allies of convenience after years of accepting, even creating, the injustices of the Middle East and South-west Asia? How soon before we decide - and not before time - to lift sanctions against Iraq, and allow tens of thousands of Iraqi children to live instead of die? Or promise (in return for the overthrow of Saddam) to withdraw our forces from the Arabian peninsula? After all - say this not too loudly - if we promised and fulfilled all that, every one of Osama bin Laden's demands will have been met." (Fisk, 'Promises, Promises', The Independent, October 17, 2001)
To ignore these serious political grievances and to focus instead on a fanatical hatred of Western "selfish individualism" is absurd.
In reality, the idea that the neocons and al Qaeda "shared the same fears" is a satisfyingly ironic fiction rooted in selective inattention to the facts. Both, in reality, are highly motivated by pragmatic concerns to do with the wielding and abuse of power.
Curtis's thesis is not entirely without merit. As he says, "much of this threat [of Islamic terrorism] is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media."
The 'threat' of al Qaeda clearly has been overblown by western politicians and a compliant media.
But the manufactured 'threat' of international terrorism is a fiction that distracts from a far more important truth: that Western governments are by far the most powerful and, in terms of numbers killed, most deadly agents of terrorism. This unpalatable truth was not even acknowledged by Curtis. Indeed it is hard to imagine that such a genuinely heretical and honest point could ever be made in a major BBC series.
In Hope Of Another "Crisis Of Democracy"Curtis also claimed that, like the jihadists, the neocons despised the "selfish individualism" of the 1960s, and the 'threat' to American morals it represented. But in reality this was a rhetorical cover for an attack on a different, very real enemy - the rise of civil rights, anti-war, environmental, feminist and other grassroots movements.
A 1975 study on the "governability of democracies" by the influential Trilateral Commission warned of an "excess of democracy" in the United States that was contributing to "the reduction of governmental authority" at home and a consequent "decline in the influence of democracy abroad." This general "crisis of democracy" resulted from the efforts of previously marginalised sectors of the population attempting to involve themselves in the political process. The study urged more "moderation in democracy" to overcome the crisis. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, Pluto Press, 1991, pp.2-3)
A top secret US Defense Department memorandum in March 1968 had earlier warned that escalating the war in Vietnam ran "great risks of provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions", including "increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities". These threats were very much on the minds of military planners as they decided whether to massively escalate the assault on Vietnam, or back off, after the Tet offensive. This naturally represented an intolerable interference in policy from the point of elites. (The Pentagon Papers, Vol. IV, p. 564, Senator Gravel Edition, Beacon, 1972)
The danger for the state is always that the public will see through the Machiavellian intrigues of political power, and refuse to acquiesce any longer in state-sponsored slaughter and corporate exploitation of the planet. Once again, the targeted enemy was not "selfish individualism" but cooperative altruism that threatened to precisely +challenge+ selfish vested interests.
By portraying the manipulation of fear as a recent development of neocon politicians, and by blanking the institutional realities of modern politics, The Power Of Nightmares contributed to the media deluge obstructing the re-emergence of another "crisis of democracy".
ConclusionIn his 2002 series, The Century Of The Self, Curtis claimed that politicians and planners had "set out to find ways to control the hidden enemy within the human mind" to ensure that "the unleashing of these instincts that had lead to the barbarism of Nazi Germany" could never surface again. In The Power Of Nightmares, Curtis spins more tall tales, claiming that the neocons are intent on using America's power aggressively "as a force for good" in order to "help spread democracy around the world."
The well-documented reality, of which Curtis is himself aware - that US leaders have long projected massive economic and military force in a conscious attempt to maximise profits and power, often regardless of the untold cost in human suffering - was nowhere to be seen.
Is it really such a surprise that Curtis's work is so well-received by the elite corporate media?
SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Adam Curtis, the writer and director of 'The Power of Nightmares':
Ask him why failed to address the promotion of fear and nightmares by +all+ US and UK governments in the past century. Why did he not locate the roots of neocon policies in business control of domestic and foreign societies for profit? Why did he almost entirely overlook the effects of this profit-drive in mass slaughters in Latin America and the Third World more generally? Is this very real "politics of fear" not central to an understanding of international affairs in the 20th and 21st centuries?Email: adam.curtis@bbc.co.uk
Write to Roly Keating, Head of BBC2:
Email: roly.keating@bbc.co.ukWrite to the BBC's commissioning editors, at:
Email: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/You can also leave messages at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nightmaresWrite to Jana Bennet, head of BBC Television
Email: jana.bennett@bbc.co.ukPlease also send all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.orgVisit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
Posted by David Edwards @ 04:00 PM GMT [Link]
Thursday, November 18, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 18, 2004
MEDIA ALERT: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES AND THE REAL POLITICS OF FEAR - PART 1"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." (H.L. Mencken, 1923)
Introduction - Pyrrhic Applause"Every so often a programme comes along that makes watching television not only a duty but a pleasure." So wrote Guardian TV critic Rupert Smith of the BBC2 series The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis. Smith's conclusion: "Documentary of the year, without a shadow of a doubt." (October 21, 2004) Writing in the same paper, Madeleine Bunting described the series as "hugely important". (October 25)
In the Times, David Chater observed: "If Curtis is even half right, The Power of Nightmares is not just the programme of the week, it is the documentary series of the year." (The Times, October 30) Chater's conclusion: "Unmissable". (The Times, October 23)
"Unmissable", agreed Kathryn Flett in The Observer (October 31, 2004) "Simply unmissable", was Thomas Sutcliffe's verdict in The Independent (October 21). For the Financial Times it was "a brilliant television essay". (Robert Shrimsley, October 22) The Evening Standard considered it "seriously brilliant". (Jim Shelley, October 26)
The adulation was all but unrelenting. We wonder if Adam Curtis felt just a little uneasy. Noam Chomsky once remarked:
"If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong."
(http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm)Curtis, who wrote and directed the series, summed up his thesis at the start of each programme:
"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism... But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians." (Curtis, 'The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear', BBC2, 3-part series broadcast on October 20, 27 & November 3, 2004)
This was a superficially interesting analysis of our current predicament. But Curtis was careful not to identify exactly when politicians' power ceased to come "from the optimistic visions they offered to their people". In fact, however fraudulently, politicians do still offer optimistic visions: improved public services, enhanced employment opportunities, greater equality of opportunity and justice, and so on. And our society is still deeply in love with the idea and promise of 'progress', as exemplified by the IT and telecoms revolutions. Many people's sense of the 'manifest destiny' of the human race is such that they believe high-tech wizardry will somehow avert even the threat posed by climate change and other horrors.
The idea that past dreams "have failed" so that people "have lost faith in ideologies" is Blairite nonsense. In reality, corporate globalisation has sought to crush meaningful politics - dismissed as "ideological politics" - regardless of the wishes of the public. Opinion polls and global mass protest movements show that vast numbers of people are frustrated that politicians are little more than "managers of public life", in fact servants of corporate power. The greatest, much-reviled, political coup of recent times involved Tony Blair's demolition of British party politics, by which the Labour Party was transformed into a Tory Party with a smiley face also serving big business.
Modern mainstream political discourse in Britain has been largely reduced to a meditation on the ancient Zen koan: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The sound was silence last year, for example, after 2 million anti-war protestors marched in London only to be ignored by the two leading parties, which were seamlessly united in supporting a breathtakingly cynical war.
The Story Begins When?!With regard to the series' main theme, Curtis declared: "The story begins in the summer of 1949" when Sayyed Qutb, an Egyptian living in Colorado, came to a grim judgement on the United States:
"American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards. They were becoming isolated beings, driven by primitive animal forces. Such creatures, Qutb believed, could corrode the very bonds that held society together. And he became determined that night to prevent this culture of selfish individualism taking over his own country."
At the same time, in Chicago, Curtis informed us, "there was another man who shared the same fears about the destructive force of individualism in America." This was philosopher Leo Strauss, who believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom "threatened to tear apart the shared values which held society together."
Just as Qutb came to inspire al Qaeda, so Strauss came to inspire America's neoconservatives, Curtis argued:
"The neoconservatives were idealists. Their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a way of uniting the people by giving them a shared purpose."
In response, they would target the Soviet Union in a mythical battle of Good against Evil: "And by doing this, they believed that they would not only give new meaning and purpose to people's lives, but they would spread the good of democracy around the world."
You have to admire Curtis's filmmaking nous. This version of international politics was +guaranteed+ to appeal to critics' liberal and artistic sensibilities. The idea that al Qaeda and the neocons closely mirror each other - with similar ideals, similar goals, and a similar need to demonise each other as terrible threats - is wonderfully ironic. It was certain to generate a delighted 'You couldn't make it up!' response from journalists. Alas, in fact, Curtis largely +did+ make it up.
The series also contained the 'subversive' suggestion that politicians exploit non-existent threats to manipulate the public. This is obvious to anyone who has heard of "dodgy dossiers", who noted pre-war attempts to link al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, who witnessed the rash of pre-war terror alerts in Britain last year, and who knows anything about earlier Red Scares. But it is deemed a dangerously radical idea by liberal journalists who delight in believing that they are, if anything, +too+ willing to embrace radical ideas. By contrast, +genuinely+ dangerous ideas - ideas that threaten to have journalists labelled 'crusading' and 'committed' - are dismissed without a thought and never discussed.
Curtis's message was mixed with suitably 'balancing' naivety - the neoconservatives "were idealists" who "would spread the good of democracy around the world", they were intent on using American power "aggressively as a force for good". The neocons, then, are bad apples, but well-meaning bad apples. And a focus on bad apples - Nixon, Clinton, Murdoch, Maxwell - is fine from the point of view of a propaganda system which, above all, fears exposure of institutional violence and corruption: the fact that party politics is a corporate sham, that the corporate media is a sham, that the Western promotion of human rights and democracy abroad is designed to camouflage the violent control and exploitation of defenceless people.
Above all, the series was isolated from meaningful political and economic context - key words like 'business' and 'corporation' were barely mentioned. This left the public in the dark about the real interests and goals shaping modern politics, economics and international affairs.
As a result, the series sailed through the filters of the liberal propaganda system to be greeted with rapturous applause. The BBC is thus able to claim to have lived up to perennial liberal hopes that it is a genuinely independent and subversive medium both able and willing to challenge established power.
But let's take a look at just how much Curtis left out of his analysis.
'Bludgeoning' The Public With The 'Communist Menace'As discussed, Curtis located key goals of modern US foreign policy in the beliefs of a group of myth-making "idealists" who were said to be motivated by a perceived need to counter the destructive impacts of "selfish individualism". Taking this seriously is no mean task. It requires that we ignore much political and economic reality, much recent history, and that we blindly accept state-corporate propaganda at face value.
In the real world, by the end of 1945, with the other Great Powers devastated by war, the United States had become the world's premier economic and military power. It was a state of affairs US leaders were naturally keen to entrench. George Kennan, head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, wrote in 1948:
"We have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." (Kennan, PPS 23, http://www.firethistime.org/georgekennanpps23.htm)
Maintaining this preferential "pattern of relationships" would require the ruthless and costly flexing of financial and military muscle. And, as ever, some justification other than the need to fatten corporate bank accounts would have to be provided for public consumption. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned that it would be necessary "to bludgeon the mass mind of 'top government' with the Communist threat in order to gain approval for the planned programs of rearmament and intervention." (Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Vintage, 1992, p.90)
In fact, of course, such bludgeoning would have to be directed at the entire population, if it was to be convinced of the righteousness of massive military budgets funding violent intervention. The Australian social scientist Alex Carey explained how this could best be done:
"A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms [i.e. good versus evil] will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. Conversely, a society where propaganda is extensively employed as a means of social control will tend to retain a Manichean world-view, a world-view dominated by symbols and visions of the Sacred and the Satanic." (Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy, UNSW Press, 1995, p.15)
The postwar assault on public opinion that followed was itself a version of earlier, business-driven propaganda campaigns. These focused on "identification of the traditional American free-enterprise system with social harmony, freedom, democracy, the family, the church, and patriotism; and identification of all government regulation of the affairs of business, and all liberals who supported such 'interference', with communism and subversion." (Carey, ibid, p.27)
Notice that this did indeed involve an attack on "selfish individualism" as a threat to the moral fabric of American society, as Curtis claims. But this was a concocted rhetorical cover for the real goal - business control of domestic society and foreign resources for the maximisation of power and profit - and was not, in itself, a genuine or motivating concern. To believe otherwise is simply to be deceived.
Noam Chomsky comments:
"Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare was the earliest and most extreme resort to state power in twentieth-century America to suppress labour, political dissidence, and independent thought." (Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, Pluto Press, 1991, p.185)
"Selfish individualism" was not the problem. Carey fills in some of the detail:
"During 1918 business's most effective weapon for the ensuing confrontation with the unions was public apprehension about the threat to American society and institutions from 'un-American' sentiment and 'un-American' radicalism among the foreign-born... In January 1920 the Great Steel Strike collapsed, with disastrous consequences for the entire labour movement. It had predictably been represented by government and business interests as a Bolshevist revolutionary challenge to American society by un-American foreign-born workers. [...] Thereafter the business leaders of the Americanisation movement could permit a level of public indifference, for they had gained control over the presidency as well as public opinion and had begun the long process of closing the American mind to critical thought." (Carey, op.cit., pp.62-63)
This closing of the American mind continued through the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In a December 1948 speech, for example, J. Warren Kinsmann, chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers' Public Relations Advisory Committee and vice president of Du Pont, reminded businessmen that "in the everlasting battle for the minds of men" the tools of public relations were the only weapons "powerful enough to arouse public opinion sufficiently to check the steady, insidious and current drift toward Socialism." (Quoted, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise, University of Illinois Press, 1992, p.52)
But the demonising of foreign enemies did not begin with anti-communism. In 1816, echoing Curtis on al Qaeda, Thomas Jefferson wrote that Great Britain "hated and despised us beyond every earthly object." Britain was not just the enemy of the United States, but was "truly hostis humani generis," an enemy of the entire human race, in classic al Qaeda style. John Adams wrote that Britons were, "Taught from the cradles to scorn, insult and abuse" Americans, such that "Britain will never be our friend till we are her master." (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, p.25)
Similar propaganda has been used to demonise the menacing Spaniard, the Hun, the native Indian, international drug traffickers, single mothers - whoever happens to be the latest target for vilification. It is a very old and obvious theme of state propaganda, not a relatively recent neocon development, as Curtis claims.
Part 2 will follow shortly...
SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Adam Curtis, the writer and director of The Power of Nightmares:
Email: adam.curtis@bbc.co.uk
Ask him why failed to address the promotion of fear and nightmares by +all+ US and UK governments in the past century. Why did he not locate the roots of neocon policies in business control of domestic and foreign societies for profit?Write to the BBC's commissioning editors, at:
Email: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/You can also leave messages at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nightmaresPlease also send all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.orgVisit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
Posted by David Edwards @ 08:43 PM GMT [Link]
Thursday, November 11, 2004
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 11, 2004
RAPID RESPONSE ALERT: LEGITIMISING MASS SLAUGHTER IN FALLUJAH - PART 2
"We'll unleash the dogs of hell, we'll unleash 'em... They don't even know what's coming - hell is coming. If there are civilians in there, they're in the wrong place at the wrong time." (Sergeant Sam Mortimer, US marines, Channel 4 News, November 8, 2004)
The Face Of Raw PowerSometimes media choices are beyond all rational comprehension. On November 10, the BBC's 18:00 news began with a report of Sudanese government actions against refugees in the Darfur region of the country. The conflict, the BBC reported, "is thought to have killed more than 70,000 people in a little over a year - nearly two million people have been forced from their homes into refugee camps."
BBC foreign correspondent, Feargal Keane, reported that refugee shelters had been torn down by police. Video footage showed a village elder being kicked and beaten by police, tear gas was fired at women and children, a plastic bullet was fired at the BBC team. As police attempted to forcibly move the refugees, Keane noted that this represented "a clear breach of international law".
Keane concluded:
"This was a day when the Sudanese government showed the face of raw power. When the international community was left powerless, and the most vulnerable, defenceless." (BBC 18:00 News, November 10, 2004)
This did indeed represent an appalling abuse of defenceless people. But whereas the British media and public are not morally responsible for the abuses of the Sudanese government, we +are+ responsible when our own government shows "the face of raw power" to "the most vulnerable". Can we imagine Keane, or any other BBC journalist, using similar language to describe our government's actions?
Moreover, whereas the British public can do little to influence the actions of the Sudanese government, we have a very real ability to influence our own government through elections, protest and civil disobedience. In other words, by any sane moral standard, the actions of our government represent an incomparably +more+ important focus than the actions of the Sudanese government.
And whereas 70,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the Sudanese conflict in little more than a year, 100,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a result of our own government's invasion of Iraq since March 2003. Whereas 2 million people are said to have been displaced in the Sudan, a quarter of a million people are estimated to have been displaced from Fallujah in just the last few weeks.
There is, readers will recall, one further difference. Whereas the Sudanese police were shown tear-gassing civilians in Keane's report, US-UK forces are currently waging full-scale war on Iraqi civilian areas with main battle tanks, airburst firebombs, artillery barrages and helicopter gunships.
Which issue, then, should be prioritised in BBC news reporting?
And yet the BBC's late news on November 10 began by devoting eight minutes to the Sudan story, followed by five minutes on Fallujah.
ITV - The Three WordsOver on ITV (November 10, 18:30), it is Cartoon Time as anchors Nick Owen and Andrea Catherwood stroll down the catwalk to bring us the latest news from Fallujah. This was explained with the help of computer animation: cartoon Humvees trundled along streets and cartoon tanks blasted snipers in cartoon buildings.
An outraged friend of ours asked this simple question, a question that is all but unthinkable to the media:
"What +right+ have they got to do what they're doing to that city? What right?!"
It's an interesting question. There were no WMDs, no links to al Qaeda, the civilian population was not being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the year prior to the war. So what actually +is+ our justification for waging full-scale war on Iraqi cities? Who are we to do it? How is it that we are helping the people we are destroying?
It is indeed like a cartoon - the US and UK governments keep running in mid-air, though any pretence of legal and moral justification has long since fallen away. But they do not fall because we have no democracy, no political opposition to establishment control, and no freedom of speech.
Our friend's question does not exist for the elite media. For highly-trained, highly professional journalists the issue is more complex - there are caveats, nuances. But in truth, in their minds, this is just another campaign in the West's permanent Just War. There are different units, different campaigns, different enemies - but it's basically always the same righteous, liberating Just War.
So, for our media, Fallujah is on a par with the Battle for Normandy, it is another phase of Operation Desert Storm. We may be illegally attacking Third World residential areas housing thousands of helpless civilians, and a ragtag army of the people we came 'to liberate', but for our media it is the same Just War. Thus, anchorwoman Andrea Catherwood spoke over a map that might just as well have been of Arnhem:
"The US marines made steady progress... army chiefs say they have control of 70 percent of the city, including the strategically important Highway 10."
But why is Highway 10 strategically important? What are US forces doing there? What right do they have to be demolishing this Third World city that has never threatened America or Britain?
ITV tells us simply that this is "a prime example of urban warfare" - of the kind we often see in our endless Just War.
What other truths do we need to know about this urban war? More cartoons: "The marines can call on some of the latest technology, like The Buffalo, that can locate and destroy mines and booby troops using a robot arm."
A cartoon Buffalo is shown approaching a cartoon car, which explodes as the Buffalo's extendable arm touches it. There's more:
"They've also got the Packbot. It's a small remote-controlled robot fitted with a camera which can climb stairs and even open cupboards to search houses and other buildings for explosives."
A black and silver cartoon robot is shown climbing a block on a roof and touching it with a probe. This feels like an outtake from a programme on space exploration. But what is being explored here is a different moral universe - one inhabited by professional executives working for the ITV subsidiary of The Corporation.
Finally we are told: "Paul Davies reports on a day of urban warfare."
We see footage of a marine in action. The marine turns and growls to camera:
"We're going in, we're taking the city this time."
This is a classic moment from Hollywood versions of the Just War. This is John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Tom Hanks - we recognise this dialogue, we recognise this figure.
Davies repeats the marine's tough-guy promise, savours it, adding: "It's no idle boast, but it's been achieved the hard way." This, also, is straight out of Hollywood.
We see grainy shots of marines firing: "These remarkable images sent back over shaky video phones tell a story just about as far away from the clinical, long-range warfare the Americans would prefer to wage as it's possible to be."
Yes, how ironic for the US forces - they would surely prefer long-range combat and "clinical" killing. It's an interesting point, isn't it, as the superpower wages a war of colonial conquest on impoverished Third World streets? Davies continues:
"But the swift progress of this operation has been at a cost. Even before today's street battles, ten American soldiers had been killed, more than 40 marines and their Iraqi allies wounded. There are no accurate figures on the number of militants dead, or civilian casualties."
Throughout the whole report, these are the words we have been waiting for, and there are three of them: "or civilian casualties". Nothing more was said on the matter.
Are we to understand, then, that because there are no +accurate+ figures, the issue need not be discussed at all? Are we to understand that it is enough to drool over Buffalos, Packbots, tank attacks on Highway 10, how the marines are "going in", without discussing the fate of the innocent human beings being slaughtered in this city? Is this a human response to the assault on Fallujah? Is this even sane? Has there been any sense in TV reporting that this killing is, in fact, illegal?
After seeing ITV's earlier lunchtime news, we had written to the editor and director of the programme on the same day. This is what we sent:
Dear Nick Rabin and Jane Thompson
Paul Davies' claim on today's ITV lunchtime news that "there is no word yet of civilian casualties" in Fallujah is incorrect. The UN's IRIN agency [United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network] channelled this report from Red Crescent today:
IRAQ: Medical needs massive in Fallujah - Red Crescent
FALLUJAH, 10 November (IRIN) - Twenty doctors along with dozen of Iraqis were killed by a US air strike on a government clinic on Tuesday in the centre of Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who survived the strike.
"In the early morning the US attacked the clinic, a place that we were using for treating the injured people in the city. A girl and ten-year-old boy, I really don't know if they want to tackle the insurgents or the innocent civilians from the city," al-Jumaili told IRIN.
According to the health worker, the building was one of three community clinics that had been receiving civilians wounded since the assault on the city by US and Iraqi troops to destroy insurgents began on Monday. He said that the clinic was already running out from medicines and the only ambulance that was left in the city had also been hit by US fire.
People in the town say that hundred of houses have also been destroyed and other says that they are running out water and food, adding that shops and markets have been closed and there is no place to source food. Civilians are fearful that if they go out they could be targeted by US troops, now controlling much of the north and centre of the city.
Water and electricity had also been cut off since Sunday, and doctors say that together with the chronic lack of supplies, there is not a single surgeon in the city. Without electricity medical staff cannot keep blood refrigerated. Communication has also difficult, with telephones working only sporadically."
Not a word of this, or material like it, appeared on ITV on November 10.
ITV's evening news (18:30) continued to limit itself to the three words: "or civilian casualties". The late news (22:30) included additional combat footage, but the three words remained.
SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to Nick Owen:
Email: nick.owen@itn.co.ukWrite to Andrea Catherwood
Email: andrea.catherwood@itn.co.ukWrite to Paul Davies
Email: paul.davies@itn.co.ukWrite to ITN producer Nick Rabin:
Email: nick.rabin@itn.co.ukWrite to ITN news director Jane Thompson:
Email: jane.thompson@it