Half-day conference
London School of Economics
Saturday November 17 2pm-6.30pm
Hosted by Media Workers Against the War
Contributors:
Andrew Gilligan, Peter Wilby, Michelle Stanistreet, Nick Davies, Sean Langan, Catherine Mayer, Sami Ramadani, Phillip Knightley, Moazzam Begg, Andrew Murray, Rachel Morarjee, Amir Amirani, Piers Robinson and others
Tickets: £10 / £7 – buy securely online: http://mwaw.net/conference
Major media outlets are becoming markedly less questioning and critical in their coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan. Independent studies show an overwhelming pro-war bias after 9/11.
The drums of a new war, this time with Iran, are beating. Will we allow the media to be used to sex up the Iranian “threat”? Sometimes it seems like the Iraqi WMD fiasco never happened.
With the recent breast-beating about media integrity, now is the time to look again at reporting the “war on terror”. This conference will set out the issues and debate how best to campaign to improve standards. It will seek to identify the main sources of pro-war bias as a first step to providing media workers with tools and resources for combating it.
* Have the media learned the lessons of Iraq?
* What are the pitfalls in reporting Iran?
* What can the BBC do to stand up to government bullying?
* What should accurate coverage of modern war look like?
* Are Muslims being unfairly targeted in the media?
Come and debate these key issues for our industry.
Tickets: £10 / £7 – buy securely online: http://mwaw.net/conference
“I am very critical of the way in which the media failed to ask the proper questions in the run-up to war, and the way in which much of the British media, if not the US, seems now to have put reporting from Iraq in the “too difficult” category. This is the most important story in the world and it’s amazing how little coverage it gets in the British press. “
Andrew Gilligan, sacked by the BBC
September 2007
“The press has apparently learnt nothing from the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the Iraq war.”
Peter Wilby, Media Guardian
April 2007
For more information and conference updates email thefirstcasualty@mwaw.net or call 07801 789 297
