-Caveat Lector-
>From FAIR
> FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 130 W. 25th Street
> New York, NY 10001
>
> WILL THE MEDIA REMEMBER AL-SHIFA?
> Embassy Bombings Commemorated Without Mention of Factory Attack
>
>
> August 17, 1999
> Contact: Seth Ackerman
>
> This month marks the anniversary of the August 7, 1998 terrorist
> attacks on American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which
> claimed the lives of 224 people, including 12 Americans. The
> anniversary has received substantial media attention, including
> stories on NBC's Sunday Today (8/8/99), ABC's World News Saturday
> (8/7/99), CBS's Evening News (8/7/99), and the Washington Post
> (8/8/99), the New York Times (8/7/99), and Los Angeles Times
> (8/7/99).
>
> But virtually absent from this coverage has been any mention of
> the U.S. response which followed those attacks: the cruise
> missile raids launched two weeks later by President Clinton
> against camps in Afghanistan and against the Al-Shifa
> pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan.
>
> Although U.S. officials originally claimed the Sudanese factory
> was involved in the production of chemical weapons and had links
> to accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, those assertions—along with
> many of the subsequent, shifting allegations offered in the days
> following the attack—have turned out to be inaccurate.
>
> To date, the U.S. has presented no convincing evidence directly
> linking the factory to either bin Laden or chemical weapons. But
> it should be noted that even if the U.S. could offer credible
> evidence that the Al-Shifa plant made chemical weapons, or that
> it was linked to bin Laden, the missile strike would almost
> certainly still be a violation of the United Nations charter and
> a serious contravention of international law. The Charter permits
> countries to use force only in "self-defense" against an "armed
> attack"—an attack which, according to the accepted legal
> standard, must be so imminent as to leave "no choice of means,
> and no moment of deliberation."
>
> August 20 will mark the anniversary of the Al-Shifa attack. With
> the notable exceptions of the Washington Post and U.S. News &
> World Report, which recently ran informative articles about the
> Al-Shifa case (Washington Post, 7/25/99; U.S. News &World Report,
> 8/16-23/99), the mainstream media have paid little attention to
> the Al Shifa case.
>
> FAIR encourages journalists to use the anniversary of the cruise
> missile attacks as an opportunity to review the evidence upon
> which the Sudan attack was based, and the legality of the attacks
> on both Sudan and Afghanistan. Media outlets should look back in
> their reporting not only on crimes committed against the U.S.,
> but also on possible crimes committed by the U.S.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
>
> For more information on the media's response to the Al-Shifa
> attack, please read "Media in Cruise Control."
> In These Times
>
> MEDIA CRITIC:
>
> Media in Cruise Control
>
> By Jeff Cohen and Seth Ackerman
>
> In the wake of U.S. military strikes abroad, mainstream media
> coverage tends to follow a traditional script. International law,
> if mentioned at all, is treated as mere platitude, not as a
> specific body of precedent. After the recent cruise missile
> attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and Afghan
> paramilitary camps, for example, few reporters inquired into what
> "self-defense" actually means in international law. (See
> "Inalienable Right," below.)
>
> Civilian casualties of U.S. attacks--if shown at all in the
> mainstream media--appear briefly and after warnings that the
> footage is likely part of a propaganda campaign. In contrast to
> U.S. victims of foreign terrorists, we rarely learn the names of
> civilian victims or hear their families' reactions to the attack.
> True to script, Sudanese civilian victims made only cameo
> appearances in American media.
>
> And only because of the media-hyped sex scandal raging around
> Bill Clinton did some mainstream reporters diverge from the
> traditional script to question the President's political motives
> (a la Wag the Dog). It's refreshing to see Washington reporters
> finally asking such questions--queries rarely raised when past
> presidents capitalized politically on military adventures.
>
> Another departure from script, though slow in coming in U.S.
> media, was the questioning of the Clinton administration's
> evidence for targeting the Sudan factory. Within two days of the
> attack, the European press was quoting factory managers, among
> others, to puncture the initial U.S. claim that the Sudan plant
> was a terrorist-funded nerve gas factory with no civilian
> purpose. In fact, terror suspect Osama bin Laden had no
> discernable link to the plant, which produced much of Sudan's
> medicine. Perhaps slowed by the U.S. media mantra that Sudanese
> openness to plant inspection was a propaganda ploy, it took the
> New York Times more than a week to clearly report that U.S.
> justifications had been "inaccurate, misleading or open to
> question."
>
> More telling was the relative lack of emotion about White House
> deception. In the days prior to the missile attack, editorials
> and commentaries in top U.S. outlets marshaled unprecedented fury
> in castigating Clinton for not telling the whole truth about his
> sex life. There was almost no mainstream outrage at Clinton for
> not telling the whole truth about an illegal bombing that killed
> and wounded civilians.
>
> Here's a chronology of the first days of mainstream news coverage
> of the missile attacks.
>
> August 20
> POSITIVELY REAGANESQUE
> Bill Press, the "left" on CNN's Crossfire, seeks Pat Buchanan's
> approval: "You know, Pat, I think this Wag the Dog talk is
> nonsense. I think the president did the right thing and I know
> you agree. I mean it was positively Reaganesque, what he did
> today. I just hope, since Osama bin Laden is still alive, that we
> have a few cruise missiles left and use them."
>
> PRIMETIME DIVERSITY
> Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) supports the cruise missile attacks on
> national TV five times in under three hours: CNBC's Hardball (8
> p.m.), MSNBC's The Big Show (8 p.m.), CNN's Larry King Live (9
> p.m.), CNBC's Rivera Live (9 p.m.) and Fox News Channel's Crier
> Report (10 p.m.). As an expert on integrity and truth-telling,
> Oliver North appears three times in less than two hours:
> Hardball, The Big Show and Rivera Live.
>
> August 21:
> QUIETING LIBYA
> Experts repeatedly cite Reagan's Libya bombing as evidence that
> air strikes reduce terrorism. On ABC's Good Morning America,
> ubiquitous TV guest Sen. John McCain remarks: "There are
> examples, such as our raid on Libya, where we bombed Tripoli back
> in 1986, which made Quadaffi rather quiet, and he's remained so
> ever since." (So quiet that two years later, according to U.S.
> intelligence claims, Libya had a hand in blowing up Pan Am 103
> over Scotland.)
>
> SORRY, WRONG COUNTRY
> Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntrye on CNN: "The U.S. picked
> the highly accurate cruise missiles for the strikes against the
> Afghan camp because of their ability to fly with pinpoint
> accuracy." Days later, asked about reports that a missile had
> cruised into Pakistan, hundreds of miles off course, McIntyre
> says, "It wouldn't be unprecedented."
>
> INALIENABLE RIGHT
> Lead sentence of the New York Times lead editorial: "The United
> States has every right to attack suspected terrorists if there is
> credible evidence showing that they were involved in attacks
> against American citizens or were planning such attacks."
> (International law recognizes a country's right to strike another
> only when defending itself against an attack that is "imminent
> and overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, no moment of
> deliberation.")
>
> EDITORIAL DIVERSITY
> Washington Post editorial: "The United States was correct to send
> its military forces into action against terrorist bases in
> Afghanistan and Sudan yesterday." Headline of Los Angeles Times
> editorial: "U.S. AIR RAIDS NECESSARY." Headline of USA Today
> editorial: "U.S. STRIKES ON TERRORISTS A GOOD BEGINNING."
>
> CIVILIAN VICTIMS AS PROPAGANDA
> New York Times correspondent Serge Schmemann writes: "Given the
> growing sophistication of militant groups in the use of media, it
> is likely that television cameras will be invited to record any
> civilian victims or wayward bombs, with the United States
> portrayed as a heartless bully."
>
> BUSH VS. BUSH
> On Nightline, Ted Koppel asks his guests to discuss how "we"
> should conduct foreign policy vis-a-vis terrorism. The two-person
> panel is comprised of George Bush's Secretary of State, Lawrence
> Eagleburger, and George Bush's director of the National Security
> Council, Richard Haass.
>
> August 23:
> SHREWD MOVE
> CNN correspondent Mike Hanna, one of the first journalists to see
> the destroyed plant in Khartoum, reports on the Sudanese
> government's response: "To allow unfettered media access to a
> suspected chemical weapons plant is either an act of extreme
> irresponsibility or it is a shrewd move to cast the burden of
> proof on the U.S. administration that authorized the attack."
>
> August 24:
> MORAL HIGH GROUND
> Mike Hanna reports: "Through a series of orchestrated
> demonstrations and by giving unfettered access to the media,
> Sudan appears intent on gaining the moral high ground. ... This
> is all part of the process, it appears, of the Sudanese
> government to gain the moral high ground, and certainly, they
> have been giving the media here every access to the site."
>
> August 25:
> A GLEAMING OPPORTUNITY
> In the Washington Post, Karl Vick reports: "In the smoldering
> wreckage of El Shifa, the rogue government of Sudan perceived a
> gleaming public relations opportunity." The Los Angeles Times
> reports: "As part of the Sudanese government's public relations
> effort, meanwhile, Western journalists were given access to the
> bombed-out factory and were shown prescription drugs described as
> having been manufactured there."
>
> August 26:
> A EUROPEAN VIEW
> A news article in the London-based Financial Times gauges the
> negative reaction of senior European diplomats in Khartoum,
> quoting one as saying, "On the basis of what we know of the
> factory and the evidence we have been given by the United States
> so far, there is no reason to believe that the United States knew
> what was going on inside that factory.... Nor is there any
> evidence that the factory had links with bin Laden. This robust
> support by other governments for the United States was frankly
> very stupid."
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- Jeff Cohen and Seth Ackerman are on staff at FAIR, the
> national media watch group based in New York.
<<Of course, Bill Jeff and Mad Maddy et al are going to
establish a fund to which they, personally, will pony up some
jack to offset the American taxpayers' bill for rebuilding the
aspirin factory ? A<>E<>R >>
A<>E<>R
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