Media Workers Against the War

Jon Snow, Channel 4 news anchor, reveals his anger on Radio 4 at the news blackout on Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan. On a programme stacked with pro-war journalists, he was asked by media analyst Steve Hewlett how he felt when he found out there had been an embargo. Snow replied:

I was absolutely enraged. I couldn’t believe that 400 editors could have signed up to this.

Why?

Because we have a protocol which we live by on every working day of the week which is that if someone vulnerable in terms of national security is making a movement or whatever we may well know about it but we won’t in fact tell the listener

If Brown is going off to Iraq you know perfectly well because you have to make your own arrangements but you don’t talk about it

It seems to me that there was nothing so very different about a movement of Prince Harry to Afghanistan and if they wanted complete secrecy it could fit with that protocol

The argument from the media organisations that went along with it was that this was in essence what they had sort of done.

No, and it’s not true. I am certainly aware that the basis of the discussion was: if you do not sign up to this he will not go, we will not deploy. Therefore the media suddenly became charged with a role in the deployment of a soldier to Afghanistan, which seemed a most bizarre position to be in.

This was propaganda, this was not journalism, this was not ferreting about to get at the truth, this was doing somebody else’s bidding, this was the picture that the Ministry of Defence and others wanted put across the front pages of the newspapers, this was a hole in one for the Palace, the military authorities and Prince Harry, there was no journalism involved at all, not one element of it.

The media, certainly the BBC, who were in this like everyone else, would dispute that, they would say that the quality of access, that one of the reasons that the deal took some time to stitch together was that arguments over – it appears to me anyway, they appear to be saying - the quality and amount and depth of access, so they are saying that the access enabled them to tell more of the story, to let listeners and viewers see more of what is really going on in Afghanistan because of the access they got because of the deal they had done.

That’s complete garbage, isn’t it.

Do you think…?

Absolute garbage. What was going on? What was going on was a number of posed photographs. Did they say: “We moved around the village and Harry posed on a motorbike. Whose it was we don’t know, it was red, it was probably nicked from some Afghan.”

What was the truth? Does an air traffic controller actually shoot from a machine gun nest? The BBC didn’t reveal this to us.

No, this was a series of manipulated photo-opportunities, it was not journalism and did not in any sense describe what was going on in Afghanistan.

Were you surprised at the reaction to your comments?

Not remotely. Not remotely. Do you think 400 editors who have sold their souls for a mess of pottage are in some way going to start being nice to me about my one lone voice of rebellion? No, absolutely not.

But I know I was right. And I have to tell you, I have had a vast mailbag from editors, friends, journalists, other people saying: “Spot on mate” - and viewers too.

Has it done the prince any good?

I think it’s done the press a lot of harm. Has it done the prince any good? Of course. Of course it’s a much better image than someone rolling around in the street half drunk.

Lauren Booth, a Palestine campaigner and freelance journalist who writes for the Mail and Mail on Sunday, has been trapped in Gaza for the past two weeks after breaking the Israeli blockade in a boat laden with medical supplies. The Israeli authorities are now preventing her from leaving, ostensibly because she entered the country illegally.

Two peace boats, the “Free Gaza” and the “Liberty”, sailed from Cyprus to Gaza almost three weeks ago carrying 45 activists seeking to bring attention to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Most of her fellow protesters left on the same boats they arrived in last week, but Lauren and several other activists chose to remain behind.

Israel controls all access to Gaza, although there is one border crossing at Rafah for pedestrians into neighbouring Egypt. Israel insists, however, on the right to screen all goods travelling from Egypt to Gaza and the pedestrian crossing opens rarely. This means crossing into Israel is now the only realistic means for Lauren to leave.

“This is a punishment, and it’s a warning to the people who may in the future want to come on the boat: imprisonment in the largest internment camp in history,” Lauren told the Times.

“It seems we are political prisoners, if you like, of Egypt and Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” she told Press TV.

Lauren is Tony Blair’s sister-in-law. Tony Blair is official Middle East peace envoy.

A third peace boat is due to arrive in Gaza on September 22 carrying doctors and members of the European parliament.

The United Nations has found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, by Nato bombers in Afghanistan on August 21.

The UN investigation found that “the destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident with some seven to eight houses having been totally destroyed and serious damage to many others. Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties – including names, age and gender of the victims.”

This is far from an isolated incident.

In the latest case at the end of August over 70 people are believed to have been killed in a massive bombardment of villages in southern Helmand province.

In July, coalition troops admitted that air strikes in Helmand killed civilians, as local people claimed that between 50 and 80 people, many of them women and children, had died.

Also that month, 47 people were killed and nine wounded on their way to a wedding in eastern Afghanistan. Among the dead were 39 women and children, including the bride-to-be.

More than 200 civilians were killed by coalition troops in Afghanistan in June, far more than are believed to have been killed by Taliban militants. The growing toll of civilian deaths came as the US airforce disclosed that it dropped over 272 tonnes of bombs on Afghanistan in June and July this year – more than the whole of 2006.

And how has this story been covered in the British media? Paratroopers shot dead four Afghan civilians on July 26, close to the site where, less than 48 hours earlier, snipers had killed a British army dog handler – and his dog.

None of the media coverage named the dead Afghans. But several outlets named the dog that died, and its pedigree.

Last month the press reported how friendly fire in a bungled assault killed a British soldier in Helmand last year. They all neglected to remind their readers, however, how they first reported the operation – as a noble tale of heroism and comradeship.

In January 2007 the British papers went wild over a “Rescue bid by heroes strapped to helicopters“. Describing how British soldiers had tied themselves to the wings of a helicopter to retrive a soldier’s body, an army spokesperson told the Mail:

“It was a leap into the unknown. It was an extraordinary tale of heroism and bravery of our airmen, soldiers and Marines who were all prepared to put themselves back into the line of fire to rescue a fallen comrade.”

Under the headline “Heroes of Helmand: the first amazing pictures“, the Observer talked of “a mission that carried echoes of Saving Private Ryan”, “a trip into the unknown, a mercy mission that has already etched itself into contemporary military folklore”.

The Guardian effused that the mission evoked “the manner of the heroes of the second world war film Flight of the Phoenix”.

The Times had this wonderful line: “Reports said that soldiers from 45 Commando Royal Marines did not want their 30-year-old section commander falling into the hands of insurgents, who they feared would mutilate his body.” Top marks there for demonising the enemy.

The Telegraph reported the operation’s success, followed by an army spokesperson’s words that it showed “the level of camaraderie and bravery of those soldiers involved.”

Now that the full MoD report on the mission is out, however, we learn that it was a tale of “poor training, confusion and friendly fire“. In the midst of the chaos, a British gunner had opened fire and shot another soldier dead. “A devastating board of inquiry report released by the Ministry of Defence exposed a catalogue of errors,” said the Guardian.

Of course most papers buried this news, and the Sun managed to tell it as a story of “MoD betrayal“.

So – when will the British media learn not to take MoD press releases at face value?

Dave Crouch

Every journalist owes the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne a debt of gratitude for last week’s Dispatches documentary exposing Islamophobia in our media. From the journalists on the Express and Star who refused to publish a page of inflammatory nonsense about Muslims, to the staff on the Barking and Dagenham Recorder facing foul-mouthed abuse from the BNP, every media worker who is concerned about anti-Muslim racism in the media will be uplifted by Oborne’s work.

This was a very serious piece of journalism, broadcast at an extremely sensitive time - on the anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London. Channel 4 made sure the documentary was copper-bottomed by commissioning accompanying research by the excellent Cardiff School of Journalism team under Prof Justin Lewis. Moreover, Oborne produced his own pamphlet to go with the film, “Muslims Under Siege“. Both should be required reading for journalists.

The mainstream media’s response to Oborne’s challenge, however, has so far been disappointing, and by no means matches the seriousness of the issues he raises.

The Independent gave Oborne space for two major articles, one of which in its media section, and columnist Mark Steele last week demolished the Sun’s response to Oborne. The Mail gave him a double page spread.

But apart from a few comment pieces by Muslims praising the documentary in the Guardian, the Observer and the Times, and a splendid piece by the Guardian’s Seamus Milne, the response has been either silence or hostility.

The Observer’s Andrew Anthony slagged it off, accusing Oborne of “blasting himself in the foot“. In the Sindy, Hermione Eyre accused Oborne, of all people, of “white liberal piety“. To add insult to injury, Oborne was disgracefully thrown out of parliament for distributing his pamphlet to MPs.

Readers of this blog might wish to questions aspects of Oborne’s approach, which, for example, doesn’t make explicit the link between the rise of Islamophobia and the “war on terror”. But we share his criticisms of the war in Iraq. In his Dispatches documentary in March, “Iraq’s Lost Generation”, he said: “The British Government has misled us in the run-up to war and is in denial now about what we are leaving behind. It has failed to bring liberal democracy to Iraq, brought danger to the streets of London, damaged our international reputation, alienated millions of our fellow citizens and betrayed the values we stand for in a moral and strategic disaster.”

It is time for the dangerous Islamophobia that is rampant in the British media to be recognised and debated.

We must not let the issues that Oborne has raised be brushed under the carpet.

N.B. Last week the Independent reported record numbers of racist incidents – from verbal abuse to stabbings – are being reported to police, fuelling fears that levels of Islamophobia are rising.

The Guardian made a welcome mention on its pages on July 1 that Israel is “an undeclared nuclear power”. But you would struggle to learn from the British media that Israel has a huge nuclear arsenal. In the prolific discussion of Iran and Syria’s nuclear programme in our media the past 2 months, this fact has gone almost unnoticed. Instead we are encouraged to believe that Iran and Syria are the real cause for nuclear concern in the Middle East.

Take the Guardian, for instance. Since Hilary Clinton’s remark on April 22 about “obliterating Iran”, the paper and its website have published over 100 items mentioning Israel in the context of the spread of nuclear power or weapons in the Middle East – about one every day. Yet only 8 of these mention Israel’s nuclear capacity, and only 4 appeared in the newspaper – the rest were online comment pieces, which carry far less import.

Of the newspaper articles, only one specified the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The other two brief mentions in news items are here and here. The final mention came in a comment piece by Jonathan Freedland which was overwhelmingly an argument against Tehran.

In the same period, the paper published two editorials on Iranian nukes with no mention whatsoever of Israel’s nuclear weapons. One merely repeated Freedland’s handwringing of the day before, the other talked about “declaration of nuclear assets” – but without mentioning Israel’s undeclared weapons.

Notably, former US president Jimmy Carter talked at length about Israel’s nukes at a press conference at the Hay literary festival in May. The Guardian reported Carter’s press conference, but ignored that aspect of it.

As the US and Israel prepare for war on Iran, non-reporting of the balance of nuclear power in the Middle East adds to the sense that “something must be done” about Iran, strengthening the assumption that Iran is in the wrong and action of some sort is justified.

We saw this over Iraq. The US media specialist Ed Herman calls it “normalising the unthinkable“. MWAW will be writing to the Guardian on this score.

Freelance journalist Shiv Malik must hand over his source material on terrorism to the police, the High Court ruled last week, slamming Malik for daring to take the case to a judicial review - and forcing him to pay costs.

Malik’s crucial test case succeeded in reining in the police, who had raided his house in March in search of his notes. The court’s main ruling two weeks ago spelt out that the police have no right to conduct speculative “fishing expeditions” to force journalists to hand over their research.

But the case has starkly revealed how the terror laws mean journalists must go to the authorities if they suspect that a source has information about “terrorism”.

Given the broad-brush definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2006 – which includes “glorifying” terror and possessing terrorist materials without the intention of committing an offence – the latest ruling means many Muslims will perceive journalists as a direct extension of the police. Anyone with genuine information about the terrorist milieu will have to weigh up the risk that talking to a reporter is like talking to the cops.

The court’s first ruling, however, was welcomed by Malik, who stressed how it circumscribed police powers. He told Free Press: “It’s a victory for common sense in that, from the wider perspective, we can protect confidential sources – that’s a big victory.

“The High Court said production orders are allowed, but in my case they really do have to be precisely drafted, the police can’t just go on fishing expeditions. Protecting journalists’ sources should be paramount, and now the High Court has said even in terrorism cases journalists are allowed to maintain confidential sources.”

The NUJ also emphasised how the initial ruling sent a clear signal to police that they can’t see journalists as “simply another tool of intelligence gathering”. Speaking outside the High Court after the ruling was announced, general secretary Jeremy Dear said that Greater Manchester Police had “failed to recognise the special nature of journalistic material. Rather than take the time to consider what information they really needed, the police went fishing, hoping a general order would dredge up something of use.”

Malik is an established freelance who has written extensively on terrorism for national newspapers and magazines. He is working on a book with the former Islamist Hassan Butt, who is linked to a forthcoming terrorism trail in Manchester in the autumn. Greater Manchester Police, who raided Malik’s home in March in pursuit of his notes, have also served draft production orders on the BBC, the Sunday Times, Prospect magazine and CBS demanding that they hand over materials they believe to be connected with the case.

Malik’s High Court appeal is the first major test of the application to journalism of the Terrorism Act 2000, sections 19 and 38B (the latter was added in 2001) of which make it a criminal offence to withhold information. Formerly police had to satisfy a judge that the information they sought from a journalist was closely related to a “serious offence” – the 2000 Act contains no such restriction.

Malik said: “This makes it almost impossible for journalists working in the field of terrorism. It’s been a scythe hanging over our necks since it was enacted in 2000. Journalists in the field have been breaking the law and hoping they won’t get prosecuted.”

He believes the issue came to a head because the police decided he would be in no position to defend himself, so they imposed a wide-ranging production order. But the NUJ and the Sunday Times agreed to pay his costs.

There is a maliciousness in the police attack on Malik. As the court ruling states, the police interest in Malik is in what he can tell them about Hassan Butt, and not in whether he has committed offences under sections 19 or 38B. However, according to the Court, on May 9 Butt was arrested and extensively interviewed by police; he told them his earlier public statements about involvement in Al-Qaeda were untrue. He has now been released without charge.

The case shows that journalists face enormous difficulties researching the roots of Islamist extremism in Britain. As a result, policies aimed at preventing terrorism will come to rely even further on the shadowy secret services and the ill-informed prejudices of the Murdoch press.

Moreover, the line between legitimate support for resistance to western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and supporting “terrorism” will be further blurred, increasing the stigma attached to the Muslim community, where hostility to government foreign policy is strongest.

A range of high profile figures and organisations have supported Malik’s case. On March 19 leading figures from journalism and civil liberties organisations, including Jonathan Dimbleby and Shami Chakrabarti, signed a letter to the Times warning of its implications.

Dave Crouch
A version of this article will shortly appear in Free Press, www.cpbf.org.uk

Dear Colleagues,

Alarming changes are taking place in the BBC World Service structure and we are asking for your help.

The management has decided that 50% of language services should be transferred to countries where the language is spoken. As the law in most of those countries does not allow foreign media organisations to operate locally, the BBC is setting up private companies instead - BBC Pakistan Ltd., BBC India Ltd., BBC Nepal, etc.

Although preparations for offshoring different languages have been going on for the last 3 to 4 years, management neither took staff into confidence nor informed the unions of their plans. Hindi and Urdu services were told only a couple of months ago that 80% of Hindi and 50% of Urdu transmission and staff are to be transferred to BBC India and BBC Islamabad. Similar plans are in the pipeline for Nepali Service and there are signs that Bengali service will follow suit. Needless to say terms and conditions will be down-graded, and staffing levels will/may be cut.

The management argues that in the face of growing media competition we need to be closer to our audience. This is completely false premise and an extremely risky experiment which will mean moving independent journalists into the control zones of the governments of those countries and obliging them to comply with restrictive media regimes in those countries.

BBC World Service has built its reputation as the most independent and trustworthy international news organisation without its 32 language services ‘being close’ to their audiences. This is the most important issue in our campaign to stop offshoring plans. BBC World Service has earned respect and trust of its audience all over the world precisely because it was far removed from the political pressure of those countries and is perceived to be independent and unbiased. Programmes being broadcast from local stations and conforming to local media laws and political demands will not have the same authority, and BBC’s status as the world leader will be damaged for good.

Please support our campaign. Please discuss it at your next chapel/branch meeting; let people know in your communities, especially those from other Asian sub-continent; invite us to your meeting. And write to World Service management expressing your concern and challenging the wisdom of their plan, which is really about cost cutting.

You can write to:
Nigel Chapman – Director BBC World (nigel.chapman@bbc.co.uk)
Richard Sambrook – Director Global news
Thomson – Director General BBC
Sir Michael Lyons – Chairman BBC Trust

David Miliband - Foreign Secretary
Ede House
143 Westoe Road
South Shields
NE33 3PD
Telephone
(0191) 456 8910
Email: milibandd@parliament.uk

Thank you for your help.
Arjum Wajid
MoC
NUJ South Asia Chapel

For the first time a mainstream editor – who just happens also to be a professional media-watcher – has written a book attacking the Iraq war coverage by the US corporate press. The author of “So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits, and the President Failed on Iraq” is Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher – the US equivalent of the UK Press Gazette. The book is an edited collection of his extraordinary E&P columns from 2002 to 2007 about the war, which together constitute a powerful indictment of the big American newspapers.

Mitchell’s writing shows what comment should really look like – in contrast to the shallow hand-wringing that often passes for op-eds and editorials on Iraq in the British press. From the very start of the invasion he has raged at the media’s triumphalism and its downplaying of the loss of life. After Bush landed on an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, to declare “mission accomplished”, Mitchell slammed the New York Times’ coverage.

Four years later he was attacking the troop “surge” from the outset, condemning it as “a tragic escalation” of the conflict. When the US began blaming Iran for the mess, Mitchell wrote a column entitled: “We’ve been through this movie before”.

Over and over Mitchell comes back to the fact that a huge percentage of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks – a terrible condemnation of the US media. On the third anniversary of the invasion he wrote that pundits who agitated for an attack on Iraq should be “on their knees begging the American public for forgiveness”.

In one of his columns in April 2004 he made the first mentions of the deaths of US soldiers Casey Sheehan and Michael Mitchell – Casey’s mother and Michael’s father became prominent campaigners against the war. Another of Mitchell’s themes is suicides in the US army, the reasons for which he investigates to reveal the sheer awfulness confronting soldiers in Iraq. This has been largely ignored by the British media, although last year the Ministry of Defence disclosed that 17 serving personnel had killed themselves after witnessing the horrors of conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mitchell repeatedly castigates the refusal of newspaper editors to call for troops to be withdrawn, despite opinion polls showing this was a major, and even majority, opinion in the country. This changed fleetingly with a Los Angeles Times editorial in May 2007 entitled “Bring Them Home“, stating “The time has come to leave.” Two months later the New York Times stated boldly: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq”.

Even the best of the British newspapers, however, evade the issue of getting the troops out. In leader columns to mark the fifth anniversary of invasion in March, only one British national newspaper talked about British and American troops leaving Iraq, but even then the Guardian said merely that it was “time to listen” to Iraqi opinion, calling on the next US president to “set a date” for withdrawal and talking about the “gains” made by presence of British troops. The Independent published a blistering attack on the war, but sadly evaded the question of troops. Otherwise:

• The Murdoch papers praised the troops’ presence;
• The FT said Iraq should be broken up;
• The Telegraph attacked Obama for being “dangerously naive” to talk about ending the occupation
• The Sunday Telegraph published an op-ed by Richard Perle (!);
• And the Observer in an extraordinary editorial called for more military intervention around the world.

It’s important to note, however, that Mitchell’s core argument is for better journalism, not “anti-war journalism”. He writes: “Most of those against the war did not ask for a media ‘crusade’ against invasion, merely that the press stick to the facts and provide a balanced assessment: in other words, that [journalists do their] minimum journalistic duty.”

Mitchell’s book is also hugely witty and entertaining: for a taste of this, see his recent column on an evening of satire at a White House dinner for journalists.

Remember, you read it here first – the British media have so far ignored the book.

Robert Fisk sees the recent eruption of conflict in Beirut as a “proxy” war between Washington and Tehran. Add this observation to US accusations that Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants in Iran, and the American military’s promised dossier on Iran’s role in the Iraq war, and you can see that the old drumbeat of war on Iran is growing louder again.

Hilary Clinton’s shocking comment that the US would “obliterate” Iran if it should “foolishly consider” launching an attack on Israel is pandering to a broad constituency that wants to hear tough rhetoric about Iran. Clinton stood by her remarks this month: “I don’t think it’s time to equivocate. [Iran has] to know they would face massive retaliation. That is the only way to rein them in.”

Clinton has added to the chorus of neocon voices seeking an excuse to bomb Iran, including major media outlets. A disgraceful Washington Post editorial on April 13 talked of Iran as “a growing menace that the Bush administration, and its successor, cannot afford to ignore”. In Britain, the appropriately named Con Coughlin, the Telegraph’s political editor, is once again publishing British and US military reports on Iran’s “lethal meddling on the battlefields of the war on terror”, under the headline: “Why the West moves closer to bombing Iran“.

But it’s not all going the neo-cons’ way. In the first week of May the US faced major embarrassment when a cache of supposedly Iranian weapons seized in the Shiite holy city of Karbala turned out to be no such thing. The US military had just taken the word for it of local Karbala police. In fact, the US and Iran are on the same side in southern Iraq, both fearful of the Sadr resistance. Even the Iraqi government has distanced itself from the US talk of conflict with Iran.

The website Spinwatch has started an extremely useful blog by the retired US air force colonel Sam Gardiner which aims to follow the media’s twists and turns on Iran. Gardiner has performed extensive analysis of the media coverage before the war on Iraq, during the war and during the occupation as well as of the statements of Administration officials.

So don’t just watch this space for alerts on warmongering towards Iran – watch Gardiner’s too.