On Wednesday, April 2, a hotel in Basra where correspondents from the Arabic-language news station al-Jazeera were staying was shelled, according to a report in The Guardian.
Flashback to November 2001, when al-Jazeera’s central office in Kabul was destroyed. Both times, al-Jazeera claimed that U.S. forces were given warning as to their reporters’ whereabouts, and both times the U.S. has denied responsibility (in the more recent incident, “the Pentagon denied it had deliberately targeted al-Jazeera, but said it could not explain why the Kabul office was hit”).
On top of this, six days after the Basra attack, the Baghdad offices for both al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV were hit by U.S. bombs. According to the Times of India, al-Jazeera correspondent Majed Abdul-Hadi said on air that “the bombardment of the Al-Jazeera office is to cover up the great crime which the Iraqi people are subjected to at the hands of the United States.”
So what are we to make of all this? Couple these attacks with the recent terminations of liberal-leaning personalities like Bill Maher, Phil Donahue, and Peter Arnett by the major networks, the underreporting of anti-war actions here in America, and the fact that our press is “embedded” with our troops (where the military can control what they see), and a pattern begins to emerge.
The war in Iraq is being fought in two arenas: in the country itself, and in the minds of people around the world. The incidents described above demonstrate how the latter battle is being fought by the U.S. government. It silences voices of opposition either by ignoring them, buying them off or destroying them altogether.
The propaganda war is in full swing, and the corporate media is, unfortunately, all too eager to prostitute itself and its influence to the administration. They regurgitate government statements; distort the truth, and refuse, again and again, to ask the “hard questions” out of fear they too might be subject to termination.
On top of this, the line between the government and the media seems to be blurring: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting did a study of on-camera network news sources quoted on Iraq, and found that 76 percent of those quoted were either current or former government officials. Anti-war activists made up less than 1%.
The problem here is that the media are becoming more and more connected in every way to the society of which it is supposed to be an unbiased observer. The media are a businesses. Media is based on ratings and profits, not truth. One need look no further than to whom major media outlets belong: NBC is owned by GE, which is also a manufacturer of weapons parts for the U.S. military. CNN is owned by AOL/Time Warner, some of the richest people on the planet. ABC is owned by Disney, who has connections to the oil industry. CBS is owned by Westinghouse, who makes nuclear power plant technology. And Fox — well, Fox is owned by “billionaire tyrant” Rupert Murdoch, but Fox is hardly worth mentioning anyway.
The point is, however, not what these companies do, but simply the fact that they are companies, and extremely lucrative companies to boot. Our media should be independent, unobstructed by ties to money and power. It is not.
This is especially disturbing in wartime. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting associate Norman Solomon, in a report entitled War Needs Good Public Relations, quoted Eugene Secunda, a professor of marketing and former senior vice president of the J. Walter Thompson firm: “Operation Desert Storm allowed only one view of the battle: the one authorized by the military. … Like travelers led from their buses by tour guides, the TV crews were given an opportunity to videotape the ‘panoramic vista’ before them and then were whisked to the next officially authorized destination.”
Remember this when you are seeing images of a statue being torn down and people smiling and cheering. Maybe 200 people in a city of 5 million really do reflect the whole society, but remember this too: If you were starving and had a family to feed, would you not smile pretty for the camera as well? Maybe a soldier will throw an MRE to you.
It just amazes me that the same people who say that 8,000 anti-war protestors are an insignificant part of the population here in the U.S. will insist that all of Iraq is “dancing in the streets” after seeing a few images on the television.
And that is the central issue here. Unless we have actually been to Iraq and have seen things personally, we only know what is told to us from other sources. I don’t argue that leftist media is any more trustworthy; indeed, there is no such thing as objective media. I am saying, however, that those who rely solely on CNN or Fox News for their information should not be taken seriously. One must look at any and all available information in order to make any kind of informed judgment on an issue.
So go ahead and watch the networks and read the papers, but also attend teach-ins, read alternative media and hear what everyone has to say before you synthesize an analysis. This is, after all, the age of information, and we need to take the power back.
Kyle Myhre ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.