Media Workers Against the War

How the Times’ cartoonist saw the row over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross:

Grumpy Muslims in 2012 Olympics terror shock! When Muslims are feeling tired and hungry during Ramadan they present a terrorist danger, alleges the Times.

The story is so pathetic that it barely warrants serious discussion. But it’s there in the Times. On page 4. And the article is typical of so much media reporting of Islam.

The paper published this “news” item on October 27 under the headline “Police warned of Ramadan tension during 2012 Games”.

The story claimed that Scotland Yard was concerned that the 2012 Olympics in London would “clash” with Ramadan, making it harder to “reduce tensions between Muslims and police” during the Games.

Instead of offering any proof, however, that a religious festival could present a problem for police, the Times article switched in its second paragraph to speculation about terrorism. The 40th anniversary of the shoot-out at the Munich Olympics – in which 9 Israeli hostages died after they were taken hostage by Palestinians – meant there was an “Islamic terrorist threat” to the 2012 Games, the paper said.

Only then did the story returned to Ramadan and the London Olympics. It quoted the head of the highly respected Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths that the police would need some basic training to deal with religious issues that might arise during the Games: “During Ramadan you’re going to have a lot of tired, hungry, less evenly tempered people because they haven’t eaten for 18 hours.”

The implication is clear: tired, hungry Muslims are more likely to lose their temper and… commit a terrorist attack on the Games.

MWAW contacted Dr Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute.  He wrote back that he was “very unhappy” with the Times article, which “failed to depict the conversation” that he had had with the paper’s reporter. He said it was “sensationalism of the worst kind” and was “inaccurate in its reporting about the Olympics, Ramadan and the proposed Munich commemoration”.

Dr Kessler has written to the Times to complain, but the paper has yet to publish his letter.

The Times’ method is clear: take a bit of flimsy information from the police, slap on some unrelated speculation about terrorism, throw in a quote – torn out of context – from a respected source to make the piece appear reasonable, and let the reader draw their own racist conclusions. The article is constructed to make it appear that fasting during Ramadan makes Muslims more likely to commit a terrorist atrocity.

This is dog-whistle reporting: the article is couched in reasonable language but sends out a clear message that Islam is dangerous.

It is because of reporting of this kind that MWAW is holding its conference this year on Islamophobia.

Dave Crouch

Last month The London Paper printed very serious allegations about four protestors on the June 15 demonstration in London against George Bush (see below).

One of our supporters wrote to the reporter whose byline accompanied the piece. He replied:

“We publicised a police appeal in exactly the same way we would publish a police appeal for a missing person, a rape suspect or a murder suspect.”

Our supporter wrote back to him:

“Your comparison of anti-war protesters with rape and murder suspects pretty much sums up why the mainstream media has so little credibility these days. You blindly parrot the police’s line without question and do not even ask any of the thousands of protesters in attendance what actually happened that day. What inspiring journalism on your part.”

Often reporters’ bylines appear on stories that they are unhappy about – senior editors present their material in ways that suit the newspaper’s editorial line, rather than the reporter’s understanding of the truth.

But in this instance it is clear that the reporter in question agreed wholeheartedly with the police. As the Stop the War Coalition noted, the reporter made “no attempt … to speak to the organisers of the demonstration, or indeed anyone who actually attended the protest without a police uniform”.

This was just plain bad journalism, and as such is indefensible. The reporter allowed himself to be an uncritical mouthpiece for views with which he agreed, rather than attempting to dig beneath the police press release and establish the facts.

Here is the full text of the article in The London Paper, which can  be found at: http://tinyurl.com/4jz33q

SUSPECTS SOUGHT OVER STOP THE WAR VIOLENCE

By Richard Moriarty

25/09/08

photos of four young men at top with byline

Picture caption: “Police are seeking these four men in connection with June’s Stop the War protest, which was marred by widespread disorder.”

THESE four men are wanted for questioning by police investigating a violent demonstration against George Bush, during which officers were pelted with metal bars, sharpened sticks and bottles.

At least 10 officers were hurt after protestors breached barriers during a Stop The War protest in Parliament Square as the US President visited George Brown.

Up to 2,500 people gathered at the height of the demo on 15 June and some, thought to be anarchists, tried to get through police lines to Downing Street. Police used batons to fight back, resulting in 25 arrests. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison said: “The Met will always facilitate lawful protest but what we will not tolerate is attacks on our officers under the guise of demonstration.

“We maintained a barrier line as part of security for the visit of President Bush. In a climate where London is at a severe level of threat from global terrorism, any attempt to breach security to protect the President had to be defended.

“What our officers did not deserve was to be the subject of such violence. A number of officers had sharpened sticks poked into their eyes.”

Anyone with information should call the investigation team on 07500 768 607, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111

(article ends)

Stop the War wrote to The London Paper, which refused to publish this letter:

“Your story about the demonstration in London on 15 June to protest against the visit of President Bush is one sided and full of unsubstantiated claims. Of the article’s two paragraphs one is almost wholly given over to quotes from Police Commisioner Chris Allison. The rest of the copy paraphrases a Metropolitan Police press release.

“Despite very serious allegations made against anti-war protestors,including the publication of 4 pictures of people apparently ‘wanted’ by the police, no attempt seems to have been made to speak to the organisers of the demonstration, or indeed anyone who actually attended the protest without a police uniform.

“The claim that Police officers ‘were pelted with metal bars’ for example is a complete fabrication. Given the accounts of the demonstration carried at the time in the press which described and pictured police baton attacks on peaceful protestors this article badly let down your readers, most of whom no doubt oppose Bush’s wars.”

When the financial crisis reached new depths in mid-September, Britain was gripped by a wave of anger at the spivs and speculators who had made fortunes out of others’ misery. But it didn’t take long for the British press to find someone else to blame for the crisis – an Afghan refugee single mother.

On the day that the British government revealed details of its plan to throw £400bn at the banks, the Sun splashed on “£170,000 benefits so mum of 7 can live in £1.2m mansion”.

The Sun made its argument clear: “Taxpayers hit by the credit crunch fund the swish seven-bedroom home enjoyed free by Afghan migrant…” The tone of the paper’s coverage was summed up by one of its readers: “I’m disgusted by what’s going on. Surely we should be taking care of our own people first.”

Instead of the multimillionaire bankers ripping off the country and ravaging the economy, the papers now turned to an easier target: 35 year old Toorpakai Saiedi and her 7 children.

The Evening Standard took up the story and ran with it three days in a row. Of course the Express and Mail got stuck in. Ealing Council’s reaction? It sacked three temporary workers whom it blamed for the situation.

And this was even before the columnists got started. Carol Malone in the News of the World described she wanted to “smack” the “workshy” Afghan woman. “It’s a given with refugees these days that the minute you hit British soil and step aboard the benefits gravy train, you need never do anything for yourself ever again.”

Rod Liddle in the Times suggested that the Taliban had the right idea in driving Ms Saiedi out of Afghanistan. Tony Parsons in the Mirror spelled it out:

“Personally, I can’t tell the difference between the unemployed investment banker and that Afghan woman who is in the news because she receives £170,000 a year in benefits. … To me this mother-of-seven looks exactly like the scalded fat cats who are being bailed out from Canary Wharf to Wall Street.”

These ravings made Richard Littlejohn sound mild in comparison.

The facts: Ms Saedi receives £1,600 a month – under £20K p.a. – to feed a family of eight. The private LANDLORD gets £12,000 a month from the state to house the family because there is no council housing.

Susie Rushton in the Independent is the lone sane voice among the press jackals. She writes that she is “ashamed by our sneaky, racist press”:

“Never mind that Mrs Saiedi appears to be highly deserving of asylum, and needs a seven-bedroom house because her kids are too old to share rooms; that she is diligently learning English; that she struggles to pay bills; nor that, thanks to the ludicrous property boom in the capital, £1.2m pounds doesn’t actually buy “a mansion” – even as prices fall, that’d hardly get you a two-bedroom flat in Notting Hill. It does however buy a pleasant enough family-sized house in a cheap part of west London.”

As the economic crisis bites, the media will lash out at the weakest and most defenceless people in society. If they are Muslim, they make an even easier target.

This is why the Media Workers Against the War conference “Under siege: Islam, war and the media” is potentially such an important event. For us, slump + war = resistance.

Dave Crouch

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.

With Peter Wilby, columnist for the Media Guardian, formely editor of the New Statesman and the Independent on Sunday

Tom de Waal, Caucasus editor at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting

Stop the War Coalition speaker (tbc)

Tuesday September 9

7pm

Pearson Lecture Theatre
University College London, Gower Street WC1
Nearest tube: Warren Street or Euston

Map: click here

All welcome!

Download a leaflet for the meeting as a PDF file

More details: mediawar@riseup.net, or tel 07801 789 297

Called by Media Workers Against the War

Pete Wilby on the media coverage of war in the Caucasus:
In the Media Guardian

Tom de Waal on the war:
In the Financial Times
In the Guardian

N.B. our original meeting on Somalia on Sept 10 has been postponed because of the Caucasus crisis

The Guardian has revealed that a Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a new global propaganda push.

The Guardian correctly notes: “The disclosure that a Whitehall counter-terrorism propaganda operation is promoting material to the BBC and other media will raise fresh concerns about official news management in a highly sensitive area.”

According to the paper, the secret services’ report says: “We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg, a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media.”

These revelations raise very serious questions about recent corporate media coverage of the “war on terror”.

In June there was a string of stories in the British press stressing that al-Qaeda was “down but not out”, suffering set-backs in Iraq and Afghanistan – precisely the message being pushed by Whitehall counter-intelligence, according to the Guardian story. For example, Times columnist Gerard Baker wrote: “We are winning this war on terror“.

Yet the crisis in Pakistan and the killing of 10 French and 9 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan in successive weeks shows what rubbish this is.

The secret services in the UK and US have a disgraceful record of planting mis-information and propaganda in the media.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the Observer’s reporter David Rose became a mouthpiece for MI5 and MI6 propaganda - by his own admission. Rose now deeply regrets this.

In April the New York Times exposed that the Pentagon conducted a major campaign of placing retired generals on US TV news to put the case for war in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. In 2002 Rumsfeld’s “Office of Strategic Influence” inside the Pentagon had to be scrapped after it emerged that the OSI planned to plant “black propaganda” in foreign media.

The news that counter-intelligence is targetting the BBC should be a wake-up call to all journalists.

Most British newspapers carried a story on August 26 about a young Iraqi woman who allegedly was a suicide bomber, but who surrendered to police in Baqouba rather than blow herself up.

There were serious doubts about the story’s authenticity, however. For example, the Metro and the Telegraph reported that the circumstances of her arrest remain unclear, with US officials saying she turned herself in but Iraqi police claiming she was caught after behaving suspiciously.

The Guardian, however, published the claims of the Iraqi police without a shred of probing or scepticism. For example, the paper said that the girl’s father “had carried out a suicide bombing”, while Arabic TV stations showed both the girls’ parents sitting indoors.

Moreover, publishing Abu Ghraib-like photos and video of the young woman in such a humiliating situation verged on the pornographic. The Iraqi police certainly appeared to be enjoying the interrogation.

The Iraqi police have been shown on many occasions in the past to have made up stories. The widely-reported claim that women with Down’s syndrome blew themselves up in a market in Baghdad in February was full of holes.

Everyone in Iraq knows that all the police do after the bombing is washout the evidence. On numerous occasions eyewitnesses have said an explosion was a car bomb - with government number plates - while the police and the puppet government claim it was a suicide bomber. The truth is always the first casualty in these incidents.

All these recent claims about Iraqi women suicide bombers are either made by the US or by the Iraqi puppet government of the Green Zone in an attempt to show that the resistance in Iraq is defeated and therefore resorting to desperate measures. But very few people in Iraq believe that these security forces are there to protect them. According to Mohamed Al Dayni, member of the Iraqi parliament, there are at many documented cases of rape committed by members of the Iraqi security forces, yet to be properly investigated or prosecuted.

I telephoned the reader’s editor of the Guardian to lodge a complaint, in a polite but upset voice. The woman who answered the phone breathed a sigh down the phone as I was explaining to her my complaint as if she was bored.

Can I suggest that people write a short email or make a telephone call to the reader’s editor to complain about the Guardian’s article: reader@guardian.co.uk,
0207 7134736

Tahrir Swift

The Guardian’s Peter Wilby has again hit the nail on the head:

Whenever, to coin a phrase, a war breaks out in a faraway country of which we know little, I am reminded of a news editor I once worked for. He would go to a wall map showing the location of the paper’s correspondents, produce a ruler, and measure the distance of each from the area in question. Regardless of travel links or national boundaries, he decreed that the nearest should go.

It was a bit like that, I imagine, in many media offices when the conflict between Georgia and Russia broke out. Not only was it August, when many reporters are on holiday, it was also the Olympics, and the few still on duty were mostly in Beijing. The Financial Times headline, “Georgia says Russia at war“, may have seemed strange, but it summed up the state of Fleet Street’s verifiable knowledge as the armies moved into action. In the age of 24-hour news, however, the press cannot hang about waiting for reporters to arrive. Readers want bombs, tanks and death tolls. They need to be told who are the goodies and baddies. News, remember, is part of the entertainment industry.

Into the vacuum stepped the Georgian government. Its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, speaks English, wants to join Nato, sent troops to Iraq, got himself educated at Harvard, cultivates a media-friendly style, and sends Georgian university exam papers to be marked in Britain, though whether he expects to get them back is another matter. He took power in the Rose revolution of 2003-04 and professes to be a democrat. He’s clearly an all-round good egg. And he has a PR firm, Aspect Consulting, based in Brussels, London and Paris, which also acts for Exxon Mobil, Kellogg’s and Procter and Gamble.

Almost hourly over the five-day war, press releases landed on foreign news desks. “Russia continues to attack civilian population.” The capital Tblisi was “intensively” bombed. A downed Russian plane turned out to be “nuclear”. European “energy supplies” were threatened as Russia dropped bombs near oil pipelines. A “humanitarian wheat shipment” was blocked. Later, “invading Russian forces” began “the occupation of Georgia”. Saakashvili’s government filed allegations of ethnic cleansing to The Hague. Note the use of terms that trigger western media interest: civilian victims, nuclear, humanitarian, occupation, ethnic cleansing.

It would be unfair to accuse the British press of accepting the Georgian PR uncritically. Most papers dutifully reported that a Georgian attack in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, where most people want to join Russia, started the conflict. But casual readers might have struggled to understand that. The Mail’s headline announced: “‘1,500 die’ as the Russian tanks roll in” [August 9]. Only in the last paragraph of the story did it become clear that the Georgians, not the Russians, were alleged to have killed 1,500.

Russia’s behaviour, newspapers implied, was in a quite different category from Georgia’s. In the Sunday Times, Russian tanks went “rampaging” in South Ossetia, while Georgian tanks merely “moved”. If Georgian forces had bombarded civilians, it was “reprehensible”, the Telegraph allowed. Russia, however, was “offending every canon of international behaviour“. An analysis in the same paper avoided any mention of how Georgia provoked the crisis. Saakashvili was “paying the price” for his pro-western foreign policy. A “resurgent Russia” was “itching to flex its muscles and burning with post-imperial hubris”.

Such comments are illuminated by substituting Britain or America for Russia, and Iraq for Georgia. Try “resurgent Britain … itching to flex its muscles”, etc.

As the conflict went on, press coverage became more balanced, with several commentators noting, to quote the Independent’s Mary Dejevsky, that “it is quite hard to argue that there is one law for assisting Albanians in Kosovo and quite another for Russians and Ossetians in Georgia”. Increasingly, the press portrayed Saakashvili as a self-regarding fool who blundered into a war he was bound to lose.

But Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia went largely unexamined, and it was hard to find, from press accounts, what refugees from the province were fleeing from. Again, the Georgians played the PR game more skilfully. Western correspondents were welcomed into Gori and shown areas apparently bombed by the Russians. Saakashvili held international media phone conferences, got himself on TV news channels and even found time, within hours of war breaking out, to write for the Wall Street Journal. Russia, by contrast, allowed little access to South Ossetia. Its government attempted no comparable media offensive. Though it also has a PR agency, GPlus Europe in Brussels (and Ketchum in Washington), it was not asked to issue press releases. As a source wryly put it, “the press release is not a common tool of the Russian government”.

The brief war in the Caucasus was a classic example of the situation outlined in Nick Davies’s book Flat Earth News. Most newspapers hadn’t a clue what was going on and lacked sufficient resources to find out. So skilfully presented PR was at a premium. Most journalists treated it with at least some scepticism, but it inevitably had an effect. If there was a military war, there was also an information one, and Georgia got the better of it.

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.