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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Crime & Police : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Media : Political-Economy |
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World Tribunal on Iraq: Media Held Guilty of Deception |
Current rating: 0 |
by Dahr Jamail
(No verified email address) |
14 Feb 2005
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"What we are being asked to consider is not simply media bias, but rather the active complicity of media in crimes that have been committed and are being committed on a daily basis against the people in Iraq."
The tribunal said mainstream media reportage on Iraq violated article six of the Nuremberg Tribunal (set up to try Nazi crimes) which states: "Leaders, organisers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes (crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such a plan." |
ROME - A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq.
The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq made its pronouncement Sunday after a three- day meeting. The tribunal heard testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists, and member of the European Parliament Michele Santoro.
The Rome session of the WTI followed others in Brussels, London, Mumbai, New York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon. The Rome meeting focused on the media role.
The informal panel of WTI judges accused the United States and the British governments of impeding journalists in performing their task, and intentionally producing lies and misinformation.
The panel accused western corporate media of filtering and suppressing information, and of marginalising and endangering independent journalists. More journalists were killed in a 14-month period in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam war.
The tribunal said mainstream media reportage on Iraq also violated article six of the Nuremberg Tribunal (set up to try Nazi crimes) which states: "Leaders, organisers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes (crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such a plan."
The panel that heard testimonies included Francois Houtart, director of the Tricontinental Centre in Belgium that has backed several peoples movements in Latin America, and Dr. Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. Dr. Haleh Afshar, who teaches politics and women's studies at the University of York in Britain, and Italian author and newspaper editor Ernesto Pallotta witnessed the proceedings.
"This is not simply an exercise to denounce the mainstream media for their bias and incompetence," said Dr. Tony Alessandrini, a human rights activist who has published several articles on the U.S. colonisation of Iraq. "These denunciations have been going on for months. Here in Rome, we must go further.."
Alessandrini, who helped organised the WTI added, "What we are being asked to consider is not simply media bias, but rather the active complicity of media in crimes that have been committed and are being committed on a daily basis against the people in Iraq."
Several experts gave strong testimony. Dr. Peter Philips, director of 'Project Censured' at Sonoma State University in California where he teaches media censorship provided taped testimony. He said that at no time since the 1930s has the United States been so close to "institutionalised totalitarianism", and added, "U.S. society has become the least informed, best entertained society in the world."
The WTI Rome session also heard testimony from Dr. David Miller from Scotland, author of 'Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq'. "This is about condemning journalistic complicity of war crimes," said Dr. Miller, who is also co-editor of Spinwatch, a group that monitors public relations and propaganda.
Miller said the Pentagon "does not recognise the concept of independent journalists, because they are providers of unfriendly information", and that mainstream media in the United States and in Britain was "complicit in furthering the selling of the invasion, and ongoing occupation. All studies conducted on mainstream media show dominance by government policies, and wartime coverage of TV news in the UK was generally sympathetic to the government's case.."
Fernando Suarez, who lost his son Jesus during the invasion of Iraq when he is said to have stepped on an illegal U.S. cluster bomb, also testified at the tribunal.
Suarez testified that he was first told by the Pentagon that his son died from a gunshot to the head, then that he died in an accident, and then that he had died in 'friendly fire'.
On inspecting his son's body Suarez said he discovered that his son had died from stepping on a cluster bomb.
"I never had the truth from them," Suarez added. "I found the truth, and the truth was very simple. On March 26 the Army dropped 20,000 cluster bombs in Iraq, but only about 20 percent exploded. The other 80 percent are in the cities and the schools and acting like mines."
Suarez said: "Bush sent my son because he said Iraq had illegal weapons, and my son died from an illegal American weapon, and nobody has spoken about this. The media will not talk about the illegal American weapons."
Several witnesses testified about media disinformation over the siege of Fallujah. They were presented copies of the award winning documentary 'Weapons of Mass Deception' by journalist and film-maker Danny Schechter, who is also executive editor of Mediachannel.org, an online media issues network.
Alessandrini said evidence of active complicity of the mainstream media in wrongs committed against the people of Iraq, and the wrongs of deception and incitement, was now overwhelming.
"We work from the understanding that history will recall the crimes committed against the people of Iraq by the U.S.," he said. "It is our responsibility to record these crimes in order to ensure these crimes are never again repeated.â€
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net |
See also:
http://www.worldtribunal.org
http://www.worldtribunal.org/Events/rome.htm
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Embedded in the Spin Cycle... |
by Isaac Baker
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Feb 2005
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NEW YORK - An incisive new documentary is taking aim at the U.S. media's one-sided coverage of the war in Iraq, arguing that its collective complicity deceived the populace and made the war possible.
"WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception", which cost just 200,000 dollars to produce, points to a wide array of failures in the accuracy of the reporting, as well as an unwillingness to question the George W. Bush administration's claims and actions.
It was produced by Danny Schechter, a self-proclaimed "network refugee" who worked for CNN and as a producer for a prominent television news show.
"This is the central problem of our democracy," he told IPS in an interview. "This isn't a sidebar issue. You can't have a democracy when people aren't being informed."
The film documents the U.S. media's near-unanimous acceptance of the George W. Bush administration's claim that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed nefarious weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and therefore must be removed from power by unilateral U.S. military action.
The film also attacks the media's credulity of alleged links between Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network -- claims that were unsupported by any actual evidence.
"The fact that they [the media] allowed the Bush administration to manipulate the truth so grossly and so nakedly in the run-up to the war made the war possible," Eric Alterman, media critic and writer for the Nation magazine, says in the film.
Schechter told IPS he was disturbed at the adherence to the government's line and lack of journalistic questioning among U.S. news outlets before and during the Iraq war, a time he calls "a really shameful period for journalism."
"It hints at the emergence of a state media system in our country," he said.
The film references a study by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) of on-camera sources used in television news in the run-up to the war. Out of 1,167 experts brought on camera during news broadcasts, the study shows, only three percent opposed the U.S.-led invasion.
"You had this incredible imbalance where people who were critical couldn't be heard," he said.
The film argues that this marginalisation of dissent and the media's refusal to question the war in Iraq was in part due to journalists and networks fear of being seen as "unpatriotic."
"In the post 9/11 media there was a lot of patriotic political correctness," Schechter said. "You have a president who says, 'You're either with us or with the terrorists,' so if you criticise him you're with the terrorists. This created an intimidating environment."
One aspect of the "media war" the film deals with in detail is the vast number of "embedded" reporters in Iraq, a policy that Schechter says led to jingoistic coverage.
An embedded reporter eats, sleeps, and lives every day with a specific group of U.S. troops. The policy was championed by the Pentagon media chief Victoria Clarke and other public relations experts in the Defence Department, who had been planning it before the war started.
The film argues that since an embedded reporter's life is essentially in the hands of the soldiers, and they spend so much time together under extreme circumstances, the reporter grows attached to the troops. The bond that is formed jeopardises the reporter's ability to be accurate and objective and leads to cheerleading instead of critical journalism, Schechter says.
In the film, several embedded journalists talk about their experiences on the front.
"We got to know these soldiers and we wanted them to be successful," says Gwendolen Cates, a reporter for People magazine who was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. "How will I be able to handle it if one of my soldiers dies?"
Schechter believes that the problem of media irresponsibility goes deeper than just a few journalists or networks who reported the war in a biased manner.
"It's hard to get people to see this as an institutional problem," Schechter told IPS. "They focus first on policy failure, second on intelligence failure. I'm saying no, it's a media failure."
"WMD" has already received international acclaim and is being screened at theatres from Scotland to Australia. It won the Austin Film Festival and Denver Film Festival Awards for best documentary.
However, the documentary has also seen its share of criticism, much of it from the very U.S. media corporations and outlets the film targets.
Some critics have argued that Schechter's film is a poor spin-off of Michael Moore's 2004 high-grossing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." Vanity Fair magazine said Schechter was merely trying to "out Michael Moore Michael Moore."
Schechter, however, was quick to point out to IPS that he made his first documentary in 1968, years before Moore's debut.
The film is scheduled to come out on DVD in March to coincide with the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
http://www.wmdthefilm.com/mambo/index.php
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net |
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