Robert Fisk: Journalists are under fire for telling the
truth
(The Independent)
18 December 2002
First it was Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel, who
advised the US President to take the "harshest measures possible" against
those who attacked America on 11 September, 2001.
Let us forget, for a moment, that Fox News's Jerusalem bureau chief is
Uri Dan, a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the author of
the preface of the new edition of Sharon's autobiography, which includes a
revolting account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinian
civilians and Sharon's innocence in this slaughter. Then Ted Koppel, one
of America's leading news anchormen, announced that it may be a
journalist's duty not to reveal events until the military want them
revealed in a new war against Iraq.
Can we go any further in journalistic cowardice? Oh yes, we can. ABC
television announced, a little while ago, that it knew all about the
killing of four al-Qa'ida members by an unmanned "Predator" plane in Yemen
but delayed broadcasting the news for four days "at the request of the
Pentagon." So now at least we know for whom ABC works.
The Pentagon said that the murdered men – and let's not lose sight of
the "murdered" bit, though that's not the word ABC used – were between
"two to 20" of the top ranks of al-Qa'ida. Really? So were they numbers
two, three, four and five in al-Qa'ida? Or numbers 17,18,19 and 20? Who
cares? The press are onside. Don't ask who is resisting forthcoming US
censorship of the Iraq war. Ask who is first to climb aboard the
bandwagon.
In Canada, the situation is even worse. Canwest, owned by Israel Asper,
owns over 130 newspapers in Canada, including 14 city dailies and one of
the country's largest papers, the National Post. His "journalists" have
attacked colleagues who have deviated from Mr Asper's pro-Israel
editorials. As Index on Censorship reported, Bill Marsden, an
investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette has been monitoring
Canwest's interference with its own papers. "They do not want any
criticism of Israel," he wrote. "We do not run in our newspaper op-ed
pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle
East..."
But now, "Izzy" Asper has written a gutless and repulsive editorial in
the Post in which he attacks his own journalists, falsely accusing
reporters of "lazy, sloppy or stupid" journalism and being "biased or
anti-Semitic". These vile slanders are familiar to any reporter trying to
do his work on the ground in the Middle East. They are made even more
revolting by inaccuracies.
Mr Asper, for example, claims that my colleague Phil Reeves compared
the Israeli killings in Jenin earlier this year – which included a goodly
few war crimes (the crushing to death of a man in a wheelchair, for
example) – to the "killing fields of Pol Pot". Now Mr Reeves has never
mentioned Pol Pot. But Mr Asper wrongly claims that he did.
It gets worse. Mr Asper, whose "lazy, sloppy or stupid" allegations
against journalists in reality apply to himself, states – in the address
to an Israel Bonds Gala Dinner in Montreal, which formed the basis of his
preposterous article – that "in 1917, Britain and the League of Nations
declared, with world approval, that a Jewish state would be established in
Palestine". Now hold on a moment. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 did not
say that a Jewish state would be established. It said that the British
government would "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people." The British refused to use the words
"Jewish state".
This may not matter much to lazy writers like Mr Aspen. But when it
comes to the League of Nations being involved, we really are into
mythology. The League of Nations was created after the First World War –
had it existed in 1917, it might have stopped the whole war – and Mr Asper
is simply wrong (or, as he might have put it, "lazy, sloppy or stupid") to
suggest it existed in 1917.
At no point, of course, does Mr Asper tell us about Israeli occupation
or the building of Jewish settlements, for Jews and Jews only, upon Arab
land. He talks about "alleged Palestinian refugees" – about as wrongheaded
a remark as you can get – and then claims that the corrupt and foolish
Yasser Arafat is "one of the world's cruel and most vicious terrorists for
the past 30 years". He concluded his speech to Israel's supporters in
Montreal with the dangerous request that "you, the public, must take
action against the media wrongdoers".
Wrongdoers? Is this far from President Bush's "evildoers"? What in the
hell is going on here?
I will tell you. Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth,
for trying to tell it how it is. American journalists especially. I urge
them to read a remarkable new book published by the New York University
Press and edited by John Collins and Ross Glover. It's called Collateral
Language and is, in its own words, intended to expose "the tyranny of
political rhetoric". Its chapter titles – "Anthrax", "Cowardice", "Evil",
"Freedom", Fundamentalism", "Justice", "Terrorism", Vital Interests" and –
my favourite – "The War on..." (fill in the missing country) tell it
all.
Meanwhile, rest assured, the journalists are getting onside, to tell
you the story the government wants you to hear. |
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28 December 2002 22:52
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