It is now an established fact that
truth is always the first casualty of war; and “when truth is a casualty,
democracy receives collateral damage.”1 Nowhere has this been more
evident than in western military interventions in the Middle East. Journalists
have, wittingly and unwittingly, contributed to the distortion of facts and
spread of misinformation. To this extent, Brazil’s ambassador to China was
right when he told a media summit of the BRICS countries in Beijing in 2015
that, “Generating information is the most important source of power today. When
you generate information, you generate perception.”2
Western media coverage of Middle Eastern
issues has varied from one location to another. Financial interests and the
political persuasions of media baron have influenced the editorial policies of
newspapers as well as TV and radio stations. Given that most media outlets are
today owned by major multinational corporations, financial profit very often
takes precedence over substance and accuracy.3 In their landmark
study Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky
and Herman argued that the media operates on the basis of certain ideological
premises, relies uncritically on elite sources for information and engages in
propaganda campaigns to support those interests.4
Linguistically, the word media is the
plural of the word medium, which can be defined as “the intervening substance
through which impressions are conveyed to the senses.”5 Hence, air,
for example, can be described as a medium because it transmits sound. It is a
neutral carrier of vibrations. Contrary to frequent claims of impartiality,
though, the Western media’s coverage can hardly be described as neutral, when
facts are routinely distorted, suppressed and covered up. It is one thing for a
journalist to be “nuanced”, but it is an altogether different matter not to
tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Spooks and journalists
We cannot discuss the crisis in Iraq
today without referring to the 2003 US-led invasion. Shortly before the troops
went in, BBC journalist Andrew
Gilligan revealed that the intelligence dossier used by the Blair government to
justify war had been
“sexed up” to strengthen the
government’s case. Instead of being commended for exposing the fraud, Gilligan
was sacked by the BBC. The
corporation’s director of news, Richard Sambrook, told the
subsequent Hutton Inquiry into the war that the journalist had failed to appreciate
the “nuances and subtleties” of broadcast journalism.6 Gilligan’s
case was indicative of a wider problem at the heart of western news and comment
coverage of the Middle East.
The New
York Times published an editorial on 26 May 2004 admitting that its
coverage of the “weapons of mass destruction” controversy in Iraq was based on
false information. Much of the information that the newspaper relied upon was
provided by Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. David
Rose of the Observer newspaper in
London also admitted that he had used information from Chalabi and that he was
a victim of a “calculated set-up” devised to advance the propaganda for war.7
Whereas the New York Times has
apologised for being misled by the intelligence agencies, no British newspaper
has done so. In what was called “Operation Mass Appeal”, agents from Britain’s
Secret Intelligence Service, MI6,
supplied the media with fabricated stories about Saddam Hussein having weapons
of mass destruction.8 The subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq
set in motion a chain of events that led to the chaos that has engulfed the
country, affecting the lives of millions of people.
“We
now know the BBC and other British
media were used by MI6, the Secret
Intelligence Service,” veteran
Australian journalist and writer John Pilger once told an audience at New
York’s Columbia University. According to former MI6 officer Kim Philby, who
defected to Moscow in 1963, the Secret Intelligence Service had penetrated the
“English mass media on a wide scale” even then, and was directing the
activities of agents in the Daily
Telegraph, Sunday Times, Daily Mirror, Financial Times and Observer.9
In the US, newspapers like the New York Times apparently concluded
secret agreements with the CIA to employ at least 10 agents as reporters or
clerks in foreign bureaus.10 The agency did not, however, recruit
British agents in Reuters because it
was British-owned and the Americans saw this as MI6 territory; they did,
however, utilise them when the need arose.11
In August 1989, the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was
arrested in Iraq after an explosion destroyed the Al-Iskandaria weapons complex
south of Baghdad. It was reported that he confessed to being an Israeli spy.
One investigative journalist, Simon Henderson, said that Barzoft was working
for British intelligence and that he was given containers by a contact in the
British Embassy in Baghdad to test soil samples in the area of the complex. He
was executed by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in March 1990. Five months
later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and thus began the drift towards the First and
Second Gulf Wars. Kadem Asker, an Iraqi intelligence officer who claimed to have
interrogated Barzoft, said that he knew the journalist was innocent but Saddam
was determined to execute him.12
A study by Cardiff University found
that the BBC displayed the most
pro-war agenda of any broadcaster with regards to the war on Iraq.13
During the first three weeks of the conflict the BBC placed the least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, or on Iraqi
opposition to the invasion. While representatives of the Stop the War Coalition
were invited to speak on all TV stations before the war, the BBC refused to interview them. Later, a
report by the corporation found that the journalists who were embedded with US
and British troops had sanitised their reports and avoided images that would be
too graphic or violent for British television. Mark Damazer, deputy director of
BBC News, told the Guardian: "For reasons that are laudable and honourable, we
have got to a situation where our coverage has become sanitised. We are running
the risk of double standards, and it is not a service to democracy."14
By concealing the images of death and destruction from the public, reporters
were allowing the politicians and military leaders to act with greater freedom.
The power of words
The power of the media is not just
dependent on the relationship between journalists and their editors or
proprietors. In the Western context, claims Robert Fisk, it is also about the
words, and the use of words.15 Some usage has at times fostered
myths and misunderstandings. In Palestine, for example, we have been told for
more than two decades about something called the “peace process” which in
reality has been nothing but a charade and a shameless attempt by Israel and
the US to impose an unjust solution on the Palestinians. In a 27 February 1994
article for the Independent on Sunday, Fisk pointed out that the
Israeli settler responsible for the Hebron
massacre two days earlier “undertook a weird transformation” in the media.
“No longer referred to as an Israeli soldier, even though he was wearing his
uniform and carrying his military-issue gun… he was being called ‘an American
Jewish immigrant’.”
In a strictly legal sense, Israeli
soldiers captured in Gaza during their frequent incursions and invasions of the
Palestinian territory would be considered as prisoners of war. In the Western
media, however, they are always described either as “hostages” or as having
been “kidnapped”.16
Whenever the conflict in occupied
Palestine turns military, the standard line from Western politicians — and
repeated by too many compliant journalists without question — is that “Israel
has a right to defend itself.” They never explain, however, which Israel they
are referring to. Is it the “Greater Israel” that occupies Palestinian land and
that of neighbouring countries or the Israel that was proposed by the UN
Partition Resolution in 1947? As it
stands, the general approach is to give the impression that the Palestinians
are always the aggressors and the Israelis are the victims “responding” to
Palestinian violence; in fact, it is just the opposite. Western journalists have,
nonetheless, seldom challenged the official line and are thus complicit in
Israeli propaganda.
A classic example can be seen in all
three Israeli military offensives on the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012 and 2014,
which were launched after Israel broke the ceasefires agreed with Hamas. You
would never have known that if you relied solely on the Western media for your
news.17 Through their selection of topics and framing of issues,
journalists try to shape public opinion. Palestinians are always portrayed as
the aggressors and Israel is merely doing what any decent democracy would do in
the circumstances by “responding in self-defence” and “protecting its
citizens”. It is simply not true but, again, the Western media doesn’t tell us
that.
From November 2012 to 7
July 2014, the human rights group Visualising Palestine recorded 191 Israeli
ceasefire violations and 75 by the Palestinians. It noted that while Israel was
responsible for 18 fatalities and dozens of injuries, nobody was killed by the
Palestinian violations and only 3 people were injured.18
Similarly, journalists tell us
regularly that Israel is “the only democracy” in the region. They never
question its policies to determine if they are consistent with democratic
principles, whether they meet internationally accepted standards or whether the
democracy they speak of is for all Israeli citizens or just some of them.
Elsewhere, the Western media has played
the dubious role of propagating falsehoods in order to bolster undemocratic
regimes. Dictators like Hosni Mubarak and Zayn Al Abedin Ben Ali in Egypt and
Tunisia respectively were always referred to as “strong men” who were
supposedly invincible and, it could be deduced, essential to keep the region in
check. It was not until 2011, when people across the Middle East broke the fear
barrier, that these corrupt tyrants were challenged and overthrown. Ben Ali
fled his country hours after the uprising started. Only then did we start to
articles pointing out the corruption of the regimes against which ordinary people
were rising up.
Palestinian author Raja Shahadeh has
written about a friend, Sabri Garaib, in the central West Bank village of Beit
Ijza. Garaib had for many years resisted efforts by Israeli settlers to seize
his land. At the time of his death in 2012 his house was completely hemmed in
on three sides, with only a few yards of space left for a garden between the
house and a gigantic steel fence. “To get to the front door,” wrote Shehadeh,
“I had to pass through a metal gate that is operated from the army camp nearby
and walk down a narrow walkway lined with more steel fencing. Two cameras placed by the army monitor all
movement through the gate.”19 Stories like this are commonplace and
reflect life under Israel’s brutal military occupation but they rarely, if
ever, make it into mainstream Western media outlets.
It must be pointed out, however, that
the Western coverage of the Middle East has not been an entirely easy, one-way
brainwashing process. In Britain, the media monopoly on perception is being
challenged. People are increasingly rejecting the outward flow of
disinformation from Israel which seeks to define the growing Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign as anti-Semitic, and support for
Palestinian resistance to its occupation as support for “terrorism”. Jeremy
Corbyn MP was subjected to a vicious media campaign both before and after he
was elected as leader of the Labour Party, no doubt in part because he supports
Palestinian rights and has met with people who disagree with the Israeli
narrative. Such connections have been used explicitly by the media as reasons
why he should not be trusted.
While many journalists supported the
1999 NATO military intervention against Serbia in Kosovo because there was
“genocide” taking place, no similar calls were ever made to stop Israel’s
carpet bombing of Lebanon in 2006 or pounding of the Gaza Strip in 2008-09,
2012 and 2014. Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians, even in UN
compounds and schools, is often described in the media as “surgical strikes”
and not the state terrorism that it is. Under the guise of being a partner in
the “war on terror” Israel has managed to deflect media scrutiny and criticism
of its actions, allowing it to demonstrate its contempt for international laws
and conventions.
At the height of the 2008-09 Israeli
bombing of Gaza, the BBC refused to
broadcast an appeal for humanitarian donations by the Disasters Emergency
Committee (DEC), an umbrella body of major British charities. The corporation
said that this was because of “question marks about the delivery of aid in a
volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence
in the BBC’s impartiality in the
context of an ongoing news story.”20 This was an astonishing act of
duplicity because in 1999 the BBC had
in fact broadcast a similar appeal for Kosovo during the NATO bombing campaign
there.
At the same time, Israel has developed
an extensive public relations network across Europe to monitor and influence
reporting on the conflict. One of the main tasks of its operatives is to
protest to the editors of newspapers and TV stations if there is any output
critical of Israeli policies. The large numbers of complaints that arise
discourages journalists and pushes them to engage in self-censorship in their
reporting of Israel. The consequence of this is that it has given a licence and
cover to the Israelis to act with impunity, knowing full well that their
actions will not be reported accurately, let alone criticised. The late
Palestinian scholar Edward Said rightly pointed out that Israel’s
identification with Western civilisation was done “in the hope that more
Americans and Europeans will see Israel as a victim of Islamic violence.” This
tactic has definitely been successful, with many others around the globe
joining in to highlight the dangers posed by “Palestinian terrorism” and the
“Islamic
threat”.
Notwithstanding all of its
discriminatory policies and systematic violations of international law, western
agencies still refer dutifully to Israel as the only democracy in the sea of
Middle Eastern dictatorships. The uncritical acceptance and accommodation these
stereotypes have given the impression of support for the beliefs in the
superiority of one race over another; that in itself is racism.21
This disdainful media approach to
Palestinians has been replicated towards Arabs and Muslims generally.
Historically, the American cinema has promoted racist stereotypes about Arabs
who, it is believed, are “the most vilified group in the history of Hollywood”.22
One academic survey of 1,200 depictions
of Arabs and Muslims in the
movies revealed that roughly 97 per cent
were unfavourable and marked by orientalist myths and racist demonising.
Islamophobia and the negative portrayal
of Arabs, Muslims and Islam in the media have done a huge disservice to
community relations within Western societies and in relations with people in
the Middle East. According to Humera Khan, the founder and director of an
American think tank, such views have a direct impact on the thinking of young
people in the Middle East and the shaping of events there. “If they were just
more responsible in their portrayal of Arabs and Muslims, that would actually
help the environment on the ground,” she explained. What happens on the ground,
in Syria and Iraq especially, is obviously paramount if anything is to change,
but movies absolutely have a role to play. “Is any narrative going to be
sufficient? No. Is this a necessary part of this landscape of needs? Yes.”23
In his 1997 revised version of his book
Covering Islam (…How the media and the
experts determine how we see the rest
of the world), the late Edward Said wrote that media coverage of Islam and Muslims “has licensed not only patent
inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and
even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility.”
A changing landscape
Under the UNESCO International
Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism, journalists are obliged to
report the truth and to avoid propaganda. They have, in other words, a
professional duty to the public. Whatever the commercial and political
pressures, journalists do have a code of ethics and obligation to the wellbeing
of the societies upon which they report. The distortion of facts or silence
with regards to human rights violations only helps to perpetuate them. Such
ethical considerations have, for decades, been noticeably absent from much of
the Western media coverage of the Middle East. Invariably, journalists have
tended to adopt the official narratives of their own governments and their
allies in the region.
The case of occupied Jerusalem is a
striking example of this, with BBC
journalists referring time after time to the city as the capital of Israel. No
country or government in the world accepts this Israeli claim, and so, apart
from being manifestly inaccurate, such deception by the BBC supports Israel’s claim to land which the international
community recognises as occupied territory. Furthermore, academic studies of
newspaper and TV coverage of Palestine have shown a consistently
disproportionate number of column inches and amount of air time dedicated to
airing the fears of Israel and its supporters in the West.
Of course, there have been notable
exceptions, but they are few and far in between. Robert Fisk is probably the
most prominent western correspondent in the Middle East. From his base in
Beirut he has reported on all of the region’s defining events, including the
Lebanese civil war, the Israeli invasions and occupation of that country, as
well as the Gulf Wars. Fisk believes that journalists must "challenge
authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take
us to war."24 Like the Israeli journalist Amira Hass, he
believes that, "There is a misconception that journalists can be
objective... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the
centres of power."25
Though nowhere near what is required,
there has been a noticeable shift taking place in the coverage of certain
issues. The Washington Post and New York Times have been consistent in
their criticism of the military regime in Egypt, for example. In March, the
editorial board of the Washington Post called for US President Barack Obama not to “reward” Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi for his violations against Egyptians, their
freedom and economic and social lives.
The New
York Times echoed this. “Mr. Obama has been willing to
challenge
longstanding assumptions and conventions about Washington’s relations with
Middle East nations like Iran and Saudi
Arabia. But he has been insufficiently critical of Egypt. Over the next few
months, the president should start planning for the possibility of a break in the alliance
with Egypt. That scenario appears increasingly necessary, barring a dramatic
change of course by Mr Sisi.”
In Britain, the former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell
emerged in the late 1990s as a leading advocate of what is called the
“journalism of attachment”. It is an approach to reporting born out of the war
in former Yugoslavia, where Bell was stationed for the corporation. He defines
journalism of attachment as a journalism which recognises the media as part of
this world. It should be “aware of its responsibilities… will not stand
neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the
oppressor.”26 He argues that journalists should record the human and
emotional costs of war rather than acting as “transmission vehicles” for
governmental or military sources. On the contrary, asserts Bell, reporters
cannot remain detached or neutral in the face of evils like genocide, but must
side with the victims. He believes that journalists are not robots but human
beings who have emotions and cannot be detached from human suffering and
anguish. Journalists, he insists, must therefore embrace their emotional
attachment to what they are witnessing.
For many decades past, western
reporting on the Middle East has been dominated by media corporations;
businesses that very often focused on eye-catching headlines and soundbites for
profit. Context and detailed information about news stories has for the most
part often been overlooked as a result. Moreover, in the name of “objectivity”
and “balance”, they have allowed themselves to become detached from the
realities on the ground and the people of the region. Ultimately, their failure
to embrace the widespread human suffering has made many of their fellow human
beings appear to be irrelevant.
Meanwhile, new actors have emerged on
the scene, using all the latest technology at their disposal to inform and
shape public opinion. The pioneering work done by Al Jazeera media network over
the past two decades has spearheaded the mass circulation of news and
information. “The breaking of the information blockade by satellite TV,”
explains Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al Jazeera, “has been hugely strengthened by the
spread of new technologies.”27 Further, despite the best efforts of
regional states to censor news, young people across the Middle East have taken
full advantage of the opportunities for news-gathering and dissemination
provided by the internet, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
One consequence is that while people in
the Middle East have given up on the perspectives of the Western media, their
counterparts in the West are also turning to alternative media sources for a better
understanding and appreciation of issues. Falling newspaper sales in the US and
Britain have reduced the ability of the corporate media to influence public
opinion. An example of the corporate media’s waning influence at home was
demonstrated in 2015 when the British media failed to prevent Jeremy Corbyn
from being elected leader of the Labour Party. Despite the efforts to besmirch
his character with accusations of anti-Semitism and association with “terrorist
sympathisers”, Mr Corbyn received 60 per cent of the votes, more than that
given to Tony Blair in 1994.
At the same time, alternative media
websites such as the Middle East Monitor,
Middle East Eye and Electronic
Intifada are becoming increasingly popular. Their reporting and analyses have helped to advance the
international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel in the
Global South as well as the North.
In the end, Western journalists are not
required to become campaigners for or against any particular cause. At the very
least, though, they should carry a moral duty to tell the truth and demonstrate
an element of concern for human suffering. In an area as volatile as the Middle
East, reporters can ill-afford the luxury of “bystander journalism” or to become
instruments in the hands of oppressors and people who profit from conflict and
war.
END NOTES
1. .
M. Chang, Brainwashed for War Programmed to Kill (Thinkers Library: Kuala
Lumper, 2006), p.249
2. .
D. Ryan, BRICS not Content to Leave West with Mass Media Monopoly, RT.com, https://www.rt.com, 24
December, 2015
3. .
C. Mullin, “Israel the Biggest Threat to World Peace” in D. Abdullah & I.
Hewitt (eds) The Battle for Public Opinion in Europe (MEMO Publishers: London,
2012), p. 121
4. .
E. Herman, “The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective”, Propaganda, Politics,
Power, Vol.1, 2003, p.1
5. .
D. Edwards & D. Cromwell, Guardians of Power, Pluto Press: London, 2006,
p.1
6. .
Chang, op.cit., p. 249
7. .
R. Keeble, “Hacks and Spooks – Close Encounters of a Strange Kind” in J. Klaehn
(ed) The Political Economy of Media and Power (Peter Lang Publishing Inc.:
Oxford, 2010), p.104
8. D.
Edwards & D. Cromwell, Newspeak in the 21st Century (Pluto Press: London,
2009), p.29
9. .
Keeble, op.cit, p.90
10. .
Ibid., p.97
11. .
Ibid.
12. .
Ibid., p.101
13. .
Edwards & Cromwell, Newspeak, op.cit., p.28
14. .
M. Wells, “Embedded Reporters ‘Sanitised’ Iraq War” in the Guardian.com, 6
November, 2003
15. .
R. Fisk, “Journalism and ‘the Words of Power” in Aljazeera.com, 25
May, 2010
16. .
R. Baroud, “Racism Plagues Western Media Coverage” in Counterpunch.org, 14
July, 2006
17. .
M. Peppe, “Israeli Cease Fire Violations and Media Propaganda” in Counterpunch.org, 5
November, 2014
18. .
Ibid.
19. .
J. Abourezk, “The American Press and the Middle East” in Counterpunch.org, 18
May 2012
- Edwards
& Cromwell, op.cit., pp.41-2
21. .
Baroud, op.cit
22. .
S. Rose, “Death to the Infidels!’ Why it’s Time to Fix Hollywood’s Problem with
Muslims” in the
- Guardian.com, 8 March,
2016
24. .
Ibid.
25. .
O. Miles’ review of R. Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation in the Guardian.com, 19
November,2005
26. .
Ibid.
27. .
M. Bell, In Harm’s Way, Penguin Books Ltd.: London, 1996), p.16
28. .
W. Khanfar, “Al-Jazeera is Helping to Break the Silence” in Theguardian.com, 7
February, 2011
