Fisk on Iraq war: Media credibility is the first casualty, Mushahid Hussain

Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Fisk on Iraq war: Media credibility is the first casualty

Mushahid Hussain

Gulf News, 25-06-2003

Addressing students at the George Mason University in Washington, DC on the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, the prominent British journalist Robert Fisk made a rather telling comment before a jam-packed audience.

Fisk, one of the fiercest and most respected critics of the "war on terror", remarked that he had been in Pakistan to cover the war in Afghanistan, and it was his considered view that that the "Pakistani press is freer in its coverage of foreign policy issues than the American media".

Recent events, particularly in the aftermath of the Iraq war, seem to corroborate Fisk's critical perspective on the American media's view of the "war on terror", since it has almost become a partner of the Pentagon in promoting and projecting the officially-certified truth, even at the cost of its credibility and professional ethics.

Admitted in print

Within the past week, two major American national newspapers, reputed for their influence and independence, have had to admit in print that their coverage of the Iraq war was distorted, exaggerated, even forged and based on factual inaccuracies. In effect, they were, wittingly or unwittingly, propaganda tools in the Pentagon's "Information Warfare" as part of the "war on terror".

Soon after September 11, 2001, the Pentagon announced setting up of an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), whose unabashed purpose was to promote Pentagon propaganda. And the OSI came in for such strong criticism from within the American press, that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced to announce its closure. But the effort apparently continues, as is apparent from the remorseful accounts in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.

The Washington Post carried a long front-page account (it filled 13 pages on the Internet) on June 17, which basically revised and rebutted in its essentials its now-infamous story of April 3 of the "heroic" rescue of Jessica Lynch, an American soldier wounded and captured by the Iraqis during the early days of the war.

The story had made out that the 20-year old young woman soldier "fought fiercely, was stabbed and shot multiple times, and that she killed several of her assailants".

Even her "dramatic night time rescue" was filmed on video by Pentagon cameramen, and later disseminated widely over all the television networks. The Washington Post admitted that Jessica's tale "became the story of the war, boosting morale at home and among the troops."

While falling short of a formal apology, The Washington Post admitted that "Lynch's story is far more complex and different than those initial reports", adding that the newspaper's "initial coverage attracted widespread criticism because many of the sources were unnamed and because the accounts were soon contradicted by other military officials".

The newspaper's revised version was based, it said in its June 17 story, on an investigation to "document more fully what had actually happened to Lynch, and the result is a second, more thorough but inconclusive cut at history".

The facts, as it turns out, were contrary to the fiction that was first churned out: "Lynch tried to fire her weapon, but it jammed. She did not kill any Iraqis. She was neither shot nor stabbed." And of course, the Pentagon video was a fabrication, a page out of some of the finest Goebbelsian disinformation techniques.

On June 20, The Christian Science Monitor apologised for its story of April 25 which had maligned a leading British politician, George Galloway, MP, and a critic of the Iraq War, whom it had accused of being on Saddam's payroll apparently in return for his political support.

The story was said to be based on Iraqi documents "discovered" in the aftermath of the Baathist regime's collapse. It revised its own story with a public apology: "An extensive Monitor investigation has subsequently determined that the papers are, in fact, almost certainly forgeries. It is important to set the record straight. We are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologise to Mr. Galloway and to our readers."

While the sanctity of the printed word in America's most powerful and respected newspapers has certainly been shaken, what these episodes reveal is the close media-military nexus that has developed during the "war on terror" with the truth, predictably, being the first casualty.

What is even more significant in the longer term is the apparent transformation of the relationship between the Fourth Estate and the Executive it is supposed to monitor and hold accountable.

In a scathing attack on the somewhat sycophantic pandering to the presidency post-September 11, 2001, James Wolcott writes in the June 2003 issue of Vanity Fair that "since September 11, much of the press has dropped to both knees before George W. Bush to take dictation".

Earlier, Peter Sussman, a specialist on wartime journalistic ethics, had a piece on May 20 in the anti-Establishment U.S. website, alternet.org, accusing the American press for having "played this war as an action film, a video game writ large", and that "journalists underplayed opposition to the war".

In his recent book, The Web of Deceit, Mark Curtis holds the Western media "guilty of helping to weave a collective web of deceit".

Other aspect

The other aspect, apart from the U.S. using the western media as its political weapon, is the attempt to stifle overseas media criticism of the "war on terror", illustrated by the case of Al Jazeera.

As Peter Sussman rightly analysed in his article "Media Loses the War", that given this role of the American media, "is it any wonder that the American people would be unable to comprehend how, after the war was won on the battlefield, it may well have been lost in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, not to mention the rest of the Muslim World?"

Another important issue for Muslims living in the United States has been glossed over by a media otherwise "sensitive" to human rights violations in those parts of the world politically at odds with Washington's worldview.

On June 20, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged General Musharraf to "question President Bush about illegal detentions at Guantanamo and post-9/11 immigration policies that have violated the rights of non-citizens".

The HRW rightly sought placing this key agenda item at the Camp David Summit, underlining "the United States has an obligation to treat all detainees in accordance with international law, and Musharraf should tell Bush that".

The writer is a former Minister of Information and is currently a member of Pakistan's Upper House, the Senate. He can be contacted at mhussain@gulfnews.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).