H-Net* US targeting journalists not portraying her viewpoint

[azmi]

US targeting journalists not portraying her viewpoint Updated on 11/20/2001 9:49:12 AM LONDON (Online): Journalists worldwide have expressed their concern at the bombardment of Kabul offices of Al-Jazeera TV and are convinced that it was targeted for being on the ‘wrong side’. The US had scored a direct hit on the offices of the Qatar-based TV station Al-Jazeera, leading to speculation that the channel had been targeted deliberately because of its contacts with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. If true, it opens up a worrying development for news organisation covering wars and conflicts: now they could be targeted simply for reporting a side of the story that one party wants suppressed, The Guardian reported in its Monday editions. Nik Gowing, a presenter on BBC World, was determined to get the issue raised at last week’s News World conference in Barcelona. While news executives spent most of the four-day event beating themselves up over how they had covered the September 11 disaster and its aftermath, Gowing and a number of fellow journalists wanted to alert their bosses to what they felt was a disturbing shift in US policy. Gowing’s argument was that Al-Jazeera’s only crime was that it was “bearing witness” to events that the US would rather it did not see. Indeed there is no clear evidence that Al-Jazeera directly supported the Taliban - simply that it enjoyed greater access than other stations. Certainly, Al-Jazeera reflects a certain cultural tradition: but only in the same way that CNN approaches stories from a western perspective. Gowing demanded that the Pentagon be called to account for the destruction of Al-Jazeera’s Kabul office. Journalists now appeared to be “legitimate targets”, he said. “It seems to me that a very clear message needs to go out that this must not be allowed to continue.” It has to be stressed that the Pentagon denies the charge. Indeed, few senior news executives were prepared to go on the record and give credence to the theory. But it is not the first time journalists have been deliberately targeted: Serb television was bombed during the Kosovo conflict because it was seen as an agent and advocate of state terrorism. Al-Jazeera is not an agent of a state, and few (except perhaps the US military) would claim that it is an agent of Bin Laden. However, the fact that Al-Jazeera has reported in such depth the other side of this conflict is troubling to the authorities. “Al-Jazeera has been providing some material that has been very uncomfortable,” Gowing said at News World. He believes that the western military forces are prepared to target journalists if they get in the way. He said that representatives of the British Special Forces had told him: “When a war is not declared, journalists are legitimate targets where they are inconvenient.” Al-Jazeera certainly believes it was a target. Speaking on the telephone to News World from Qatar, its chief editor, Ibrahim Hilal, said he believed that its Kabul office had been on the Pentagon’s list of targets since the beginning of the conflict, but that the US did not want to bomb it while the broadcaster was the only one based in the city. The situation is still confused. Al-Jazeera has a conspiracy theory that it cannot prove, but of which it is genuinely convinced. Wars are organized chaos and, however much it likes to suggest that it is capable of precision bombing, it is clear that the US has little idea of what has and has not been hit in this instance.