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News :: Media |
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Collecting Lies Reported In The America Media. |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sascha Meinrath
Email: sascha (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified!) |
24 Mar 2003
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The U.S. media has been reporting information that appears to be blantantly false once researched. The UCIMC is collecting information about lies and blatant misrepresentations that are being reported. This information is intended to help set the record straight. Please only post materials where counter evidence is corroborated. |
From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-621720,00.html
During the 1991 Gulf War Arabs had to watch Western channels such as CNN. The recent emergence of Arab satellite channels is a direct challenge to their Western counterparts. Leading the pack is al-Jazeera, which, in its seven years, has built a reputation for uncompromising coverage of Arab affairs, a far cry from other Arabic stations’ generally fawning coverage of their leaders’ activities.
The station constantly runs foul of Arab regimes, causing diplomatic headaches for Qatar and occasionally leading to arrests, bans and deportations of its reporters. A death sentence passed by a Jordanian court against al-Jazeera’s Amman correspondent was revoked only days ago.
But al-Jazeera also takes puckish delight in needling the United States. Its coverage of the war in Afghanistan drew accusations of bias from Washington, and its reporting from Iraq looks set to do the same.
“US Air Force General Richard Myers: All British and US planes returned safely to their bases,” ran a news line along the bottom of the screen. At the same time al-Jazeera’s camera was broadcasting live footage of Iraqi soldiers and civilians closing in on suspected coalition pilots apparently hidden on the bank of the Tigris, having baled out over Baghdad. “The US is lying,” the Baghdad correspondent said.
In Basra, another coalition claim was contradicted. On Saturday the US Central Command announced that Brigadier-General Khaled al-Hashemi, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 51st Division, had surrendered with all his soldiers. Not so, al-Jazeera said yesterday and broadcast an interview with General al-Hashemi in Basra.
“These are American lies,” he told al-Jazeera. “The army is here in Basra and we are fighting to defend its people. We are sacrificing ourselves.”
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Also, does anyone know the homepage for Al Jazeera? |
Comments
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Al-Jazeera Contact Info |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Mar 2003
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Here's the webpage, but unless you've mastered Arabic, it's going to be a challenge:
http://www.aljazeera.net/
I haven't tried this one, but it might be helpful since it appears al-Jazeera was not able to get a long-promised English version of its website up before the war started. ML
From DC IMC by stopthemess
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=58762&group=webcast
If you want a good live auto translation of the Al Jazeera website, go to Tarjim (arabic for translation) at http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1 then key in this URL (or any other that you want) http://www.aljazeera.net/special_coverages/waroniraq/index.htm |
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Scud Missiles Were Not Used. |
by Sascha Meinrath
sascha (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
24 Mar 2003
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From: http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=820&version=1&template_id=282&parent_id=258
On the first day of the attack, Iraqi missiles fired into Kuwait were unequivocally reported on the main BBC bulletins as consisting of Scud missiles, even though this had not been confirmed and doubt was cast on the hypothesis by minority audience BBC programmes. BBC News 24, the globally available service continually repeated the spin.
On the morning of the 21st March BBC, reporter Ben Brown said the word 'Scud' into a two minute news report at least 10 times. Just as many news outlets pointed out the use of Scuds would be a material breach of UN resolution 1441. But the missiles were not Scuds as information confirmed the next day. The correction never received the prominence of the original reports.
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Re: Collecting Lies Reported In The America Media. |
by Mink!
mink (nospam) tcp.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 5
24 Mar 2003
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LexisNexis Academic has just added a service of news transcripts from Al Jazeera, translated into English.
They have stuff dating from January 2002. You can
get to this service at UIUC, I believe. Just look for
Al Jazeera in Full Text.
For more info contact the UIUC library.
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NPR: "Humanitarian Crisis Hasn't Happened" |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Mar 2003
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The commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, Robert Seagal, (24 March 2003) just reported, "Many experts believed a war on Iraq would trigger a humanitarian crisis. That has not happened..."
Well, I beg to differ. Clearly civilians are suffering due to bombing in many places (including a whole bus), refugees have been reported fleeing in many places, and it looks like, as the Red Cross is reporting, that one million Iraqi civilians in Basra are facing a humanitarian crisis caused by lack of access to water.
And it completely ignores the fact that 12 years of sanctions produced a long term, ongoing humanitarian crisis even before last Wednesday's "decapitation strike" started Bush's War for Re-election.
Sheesh, this kind of statement from NPR is really making all of its reporting suspect when it starts off with questionable statements like that. |
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More Al Jazeera |
by Travas
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Mar 2003
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Al Jazeera site with a few English language articles:
http://www.cursor.org/aljazeera.htm
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Lack Of Skepticism Leads To Poor Reporting On Iraq Weapons Claims |
by FAIR
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Mar 2003
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NEW YORK - March 25 - A lack of skepticism toward official U.S. sources has already led prominent American journalists into embarrassing errors in their coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, particularly in relation to claims that proof had been found that Iraq possesses banned weapons.
On March 20, the second day of the invasion, U.S. military sources initially described missiles launched by Iraq as "Scuds"-- the U.S. name for a Soviet-made missile used by Iraq during the Gulf War. They exceed the range limits imposed on Iraqi weapons by the 1991 ceasefire agreement.
While some reporters appropriately sourced the Scud reports to military officials, and cautioned their audience about the uncertainty of the identification, others rushed to report claims as facts. NBC's Matt Lauer's report was definitive: "We understand they have fired three missiles. One of those was a Scud missile. It was destroyed by a Patriot missile battery as it headed toward Kuwait."
His colleague Tim Russert was similarly certain, saying, "Because of last night's activity, clearly the Iraqis are now trying to respond with at least one Scud fired at the troops mapped on the border of Kuwait and Iraq." Fellow NBC anchor Brian Williams added, "We learned one Scud had been intercepted, but two missiles had made it to Kuwaiti soil."
On NPR that day, anchor Bob Edwards was equally sure about what happened: "Iraq this morning launched Scud missiles at Kuwait in retaliation for the American strike on Baghdad a few hours earlier." Correspondent Mike Shuster helpfully pointed out that "these Scuds are banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions and have a range of up to 400 miles."
ABC's Ted Koppel, "embedded" with an infantry division, reported matter-of-factly that "there were two Scud missiles that came in. One was intercepted by a patriot missile." ABC anchor Derek McGinty had earlier explained that "there was a Scud attack, one Scud fired from Basra into Kuwait. It was intercepted by an American patriot battery, and apparently knocked out of the sky. There is still no word exactly what was on that Scud, whether or not there might have been any sort of unconventional weaponry onboard."
Fox News Channel's William La Jeunesse was not only asserting that a Scud had been launched, but was drawing conclusions about its significance: "Now, Iraq is not supposed to have Scuds because they have a range of 175 up to 400 miles. The limit by the U.N., of course, is like 95 miles. So, we already know they have something they're not supposed to have."
As the day went on, however, the Pentagon was less definitive about what kind of missile Iraq was using, prompting some journalists to back off the story. Associated Press reported on March 22 that "Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference that the Iraqis have not fired any Scuds and that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers."
Even so, the next day, columnist Peter Bronson (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/23/03) was still writing, "The Scuds he swore he did not have were fired at Kuwait, and Iraq was launching lame denials while the craters still smoked." Apparently the corrections of the earlier, incorrect reports had not reached even all of those whose job it is to follow the news.
Reporters were also embarrassed on March 23 by an evaporating story about a "chemical facility" near the town of Najaf, Iraq, that was touted by U.S. military officials as a possible smoking gun to prove disputed claims about Saddam Hussein possessing banned chemical weapons. While journalists were not typically as credulous of this claim as they were with the Scud story, and generally remembered to attribute it to military sources, accounts still tended to be breathless and to extrapolate wildly from an unconfirmed report.
ABC's John McWethy promoted the story with this report: "Amidst all the fighting, one important new discovery: U.S. officials say, up the road from Nasarijah, in a town called Najaf, they believe that they have captured a chemical weapons plant and perhaps more important, the commanding general of that facility. One U.S. official said he is a potential 'gold mine' about the weapons Saddam Hussein says he doesn't have."
NBC's Tom Brokaw described the story thusly: "Word tonight that U.S. forces may have found what U.N. inspectors spent months searching for, a facility suspected to be a chemical weapons plant, uncovered by ground troops on the way north to Baghdad." NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski added what seemed to be corroborating details: "This huge chemical complex... was constructed of sand-casted walls, in other words, meant to camouflage its appearance to blend in with the desert. Once inside, the soldiers found huge amounts of chemicals, stored chemicals. They apparently found no chemical weapons themselves, and now military officials here at the Pentagon say they have yet to determine exactly what these chemicals are or how they could have been used in weapons."
Fox News Channel, less cautious than some of its competitors, treated the report of a chemical weapons factory as fact in a series of onscreen banners like "Huge Chemical Weapons Factory Found in So. Iraq."
Some print outlets also hyped the story the next day, as when the Philadelphia Daily News (10/24/03) reported it as the "biggest find of the Iraq war" and "a reversal of fortune for American and British forces at the end of the war's most discouraging day."
As it turned out, however, the "discovery" seemed to be neither a big find nor a reversal of fortune, but simply a false alarm, and TV reporters began changing their stories. The Dow Jones news service reported (3/24/03), "U.S. officials said Monday that no chemical weapons were found at a suspected site at Najaf in central Iraq, U.S. television networks reported. NBC News reported from the Pentagon that no chemicals at all were found at the site. CNN, also reporting from the Pentagon, said officials now believe the plant there was abandoned long ago by the Iraqis." On March 25, the New York Times reported that "suggestions on Sunday that a chemical plant in Najaf might be a weapons site have turned out to be false."
U.S.-based journalists are generally quick to caution readers, when describing an allegation made by Iraq, that the information "could not be independently confirmed." The fact is that information provided by any government should be treated with skepticism; reporters might try extending their critical approach to the U.S. military's statements.
ACTION: Write to the leading broadcast and cable TV news outlets and urge them to be skeptical when relaying information from either side in this war.
NBC Nightly News
mailto:nightly (at) nbc.com
Phone: 212-664-4971
Fox News Channel
mailto:comments (at) foxnews.com
Phone: 1-888-369-4762
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair (at) fair.org with your correspondence.
http://www.fair.org |
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Re: Collecting Lies Reported In The America Media. |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -2
26 Mar 2003
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I saw the Iraqi's doing search and rescue in the Tigris by firing machine guns into the banks of the river. Face it, you folks are animals and the world will come to realize this as the facts are presented. Al-Jazeera is a tool of extreme Islam and Arab dictators who support and need the West but cannot control their own populations. Your people and your style of government have not invented anything new in over 100 years. Wait until we unless freedom upon them. Then you will be proud of your race.
Go to Hell and get your virgins, but be careful that they are not men named Bubba show say "you got a pretty mouth". I do not want to keep you, as there may be someone at the front desk trying to check in.
Jack |
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