MAY 2007
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the
distorted vision of the corporate media
April 17, 2007
MEDIA ALERT: THE BBC'S GAVIN ESLER
INTERVIEWS US UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE NICHOLAS BURNS
“You want to know something? We are still in the
Dark Ages. The Dark Ages — they haven’t ended
yet.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
Who would guess from media reporting that Iraq is being
convulsed by a human cataclysm? And who would guess that
this catastrophe is the result of American and British
criminality?
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union Commented last week:
“Since US troops first set foot in Afghanistan in
2001, the Defense Department has gone to unprecedented
lengths to control and suppress information about the
human costs of war.” (‘ACLU Releases Files on
Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ April
12, 2007; http://www.aclu.org/natsec/foia/29316prs20070412.html)
The reality of what has been done to Iraq ought to
produce a level of moral revulsion to shake our political
establishment to the core. It ought to generate mass
movements demanding that those responsible be held to
account, that changes be made to ensure such an outrage
is unthinkable in the future.
How, after all, can our political system have become so
rigged, so unrepresentative, that a vast mass of voters
opposed to the war are forced to choose between a Labour
party that launched the invasion and a Tory party that
insists it would have invaded even if it had known there
were no WMD? How can we have become so fundamentally
disenfranchised?
One reason is that the means of mobilising dissent are
monopolised by a corporate media system that is closely
allied to the state. Over the course of three days last
week, the extent of the BBC’s servility to power was
starkly revealed.
Day One - April 10
On April 10, the press reported that the United Nations
would hold a conference in Geneva (April 17-18) to
address the humanitarian needs of Iraqis who have been
made into refugees by the war. The numbers are almost
beyond belief - 4 million people have now been displaced
out of a population of 22 million, UNHCR report. Since
the beginning of 2006, 730,000 Iraqis have been displaced
by violence. UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman,
Ron Redmond, told reporters:
"Although the world is aware of the military and
political situation in Iraq, the immense and growing
humanitarian needs are not well-known.” (‘Plans
for UN meeting on Iraqi refugees,’ UPI, April 10,
2007; http://www.upi.com/International_Intelligence/Briefing/2007
/04/10/plans_for_un_meeting_on_iraqi_refugees/)
But how can it be that this humanitarian crisis is
“not well known”? Western media are reporting
from Iraq every day, are they not? The violence is
prominent in many news bulletins.
Readers will recall the searing images of thousands of
civilians fleeing the fighting and bombing in Kosovo in
1999. The BBC and ITN repeatedly showed dramatic footage
of whole hillsides swarming with refugees, with daily
reports, interviews and investigation. The outrage was
palpable. By contrast, the fact that nearly one-fifth of
the Iraqi population has been displaced by violence is a
matter of almost complete indifference.
Day Two - April 11
On April 11, the press covered a report by the Red Cross
which pulled few punches:
“The conflict in Iraq is inflicting immense
suffering on the entire population. Civilians bear the
brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor
security conditions that are disrupting the lives and
livelihoods of millions. Every day, dozens of people are
killed and many more wounded.” (http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall
/iraq-report-110407/$File/Iraq-report-icrc.pdf)
The Red Cross ran through some of the horrors:
“Health-care facilities are stretched to the limit
as they struggle to cope with mass casualties day-in,
day-out. Many sick and injured people do not go to
hospital because it’s too dangerous, and the
patients and medical staff in those facilities are
frequently threatened or targeted.
“Food shortages have been reported in several areas.
According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, malnutrition has
increased over the past year. The vastly inadequate
water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is
presenting a risk to public health. According to the
Iraqi Ministry of Health, more than half the doctors have
left the country.”
The report featured graphic eyewitness testimony from
Saad, a young humanitarian worker in Baghdad:
"Once I was called to an explosion site. There I saw
a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother’s
body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was
talking to her, asking her what had happened. He had been
taken out shopping by his mom."
Day Three - April 12
One day later, April 12, and anchor Gavin Esler
interviewed Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State
for Political Affairs, for the BBC’s flagship
Newsnight programme. The subjects up for discussion were
the situation in Iraq in light of the bomb attack inside
the Iraqi parliament that day, and Iran. Esler said:
“I began by suggesting that today’s Baghdad
bomb means of course that no one in Iraq is safe.”
Burns responded that the American government was
determined to regain control of the streets “to
build a more stable government and environment for the
Iraqi people”.
How would Esler respond to these banal comments seeking
to portray America as a neutral bystander merely intent
on the welfare of the Iraqi people? Given the comments
made by the Red Cross and UNHCR, what would Esler have to
say about the lying, greed, criminality and mass killing
that characterise the US-UK catastrophe in Iraq? This is
what Esler said:
“But do you worry that it is however demoralising,
four years after the invasion of Iraq, several weeks of
the so called surge in US troops, more Iraqi troops on
the streets and so on, that you cannot guarantee the
safety of people in what’s supposed to be the safest
part of the country?”
Consider what Esler was actually asking: Was it
demoralising that a bomb exploded in the Iraqi
parliament, when 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes
in terror, when 655,000 Iraqis lie dead, 600,000 of them
as a result of violence?
Burns responded:
“We have to do our best to help the Iraqi people and
help the Iraqi government cope with this violence. The
violence of course is entirely unwarranted. Most of the
violence is not directed against foreigners, it’s
directed against Iraqis themselves... We know that
it’s really their fight, and their challenge to cope
with, but we have a role - we’re trying to play that
role.”
Again, one might wonder what Esler would say in response
to the suggestion that “it’s really their
fight”, as though the insurgency did not exist, as
though it was not fiercely determined to rid the country
of American troops, and when hundreds of thousands of
Shiite protestors had marched to demand just that outcome
a few days earlier. Would Esler point, for example, to
evidence supplied in the latest (November 2006) report to
the US Congress, ‘Measuring Sustainability and
Security in Iraq’? The report described the reality:
“In the past three months, the total number of
attacks increased 22%. Some of this increase is
attributable to a seasonal spike in violence during
Ramadan. Coalition forces remained the target of the
majority of attacks (68%), but the overwhelming majority
of casualties were suffered by Iraqis. Total civilian
casualties increased by 2% over the previous reporting
period.” (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/9010Quarterly-Report-20061216.pdf)
In other words, most of the violence +is+ directed
against the ‘coalition’, but Iraqis are
suffering most of the casualties. Last August, a
spokesman for the US military command in Baghdad reported
that of the 1,666 bombs that had exploded in July of that
year, 90 per cent were directed against the American-led
military force and Iraqi security forces. (Michael R.
Gordon, Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, 'Insurgent bombs
directed at G.I.'s increase in Iraq,' New York Times,
August 17, 2006)
And what would Esler make of Burns’ outrageous
suggestion that “we have a role”, as though the
US - the power that flattened 70 per cent of Fallujah in
2004 - is not the main cause, as well as leading author,
of the violence but merely an innocent bystander
attempting to keep the peace?
This was Esler’s response:
“Can we turn now to Iran? How far is the United
States convinced that Iran is in some way behind any of
the violence in Iran?”
Burns responded with the usual claims about Iranian
supply of armour-piercing roadside bombs, explosively
formed projectiles (EFPs) to Shia militants. The US is in
Iraq under a UN mandate, Burns added, with perhaps a hint
of discomfort, while Iran is in Iraq illegally - of
course America has to defend its soldiers. Esler’s
response:
“John Bolton, your former colleague, the ex-US
ambassador at the United Nations, wants you to go further
though - he says that you should move towards regime
change in Iran, that’s the only way to stop them
getting the bomb.”
This was a senior British journalist interviewing a
senior US official one day after the Red Cross reported
the “immense suffering” of “the entire
population” in Iraq, and two days after UNHCR
reported that 4 million Iraqis have been displaced by the
violence. There was no question of Esler asking by what
right any US politician - least of all Bolton, deeply
implicated as he is in the Iraq crime - dares talk of
further “regime change” in Iran.
Burns emphasised that the focus of America’s efforts
was on diplomacy with Britain, France, Russia, Germany
and China. Esler was not satisfied:
“But with the Iranians boasting this week of
industrial scale uranium enrichment, John Bolton’s
point is they’re stringing the Europeans along.
There’s no point in continuing a dialogue with them,
if they’re not prepared to do something.”
Burns responded:
“You know we’ve got some time to work with
here... We have to have a degree of patience about it,
you can’t make snap judgements, you can’t just
react in an emotional way when you’re talking about
very serious issues like a conflict between Iran and the
rest of the world.”
Esler continued:
“How concerned are you by the apparently rather easy
way in which the Iranians were able to kidnap British
sailors at gunpoint? Do you think something serious has
gone wrong here?”
This again fed into standard US-UK propaganda, right down
to the detail of using the word “kidnap” to
describe Iranian capture of British forces. Writing in
the media section of the Guardian, former New Statesman
editor Peter Wilby commented:
“... the press has apparently learnt nothing from
the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the
Iraq war. British governments may be capable of all
manner of dissembling over pensions, NHS waiting lists
and school exam results but, when they are laying down
the law to foreigners, they are still assumed to be as
honest as the day is long. So a Ministry of Defence map
purporting to show the sailors were well inside Iraqi
waters was accepted by most papers without question.
“Only Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to
Uzbekistan who headed the Foreign Office's maritime
section from 1989 to 1992, pointed out that no maritime
border between Iran and Iraq has ever been agreed and
that the MoD's map was, to all intents and purposes, a
fake... the press's refusal to take him seriously recalls
its similar treatment of Scott Ritter, the former UN
weapons inspector who insisted before the Iraq war that
Saddam had been ‘fundamentally disarmed‘".
(Wilby, ‘A sailors’ story told without a hint
of scepticism,’ The Guardian, April 9, 2007)
None of this existed for Esler - his focus was on the
embarrassment that the “axis of evil” should be
able to “kidnap” our troops. Burns responded:
“Well, we have great respect and admiration for the
British sailors, and great sympathy for them. The fault
here lied [sic] entirely with Iran, and that’s the
way the world saw it... Britain acted in a very patient,
very firm and very effective way. Iran did not. And you
know, in the cold light of the dawn, it occurred to a lot
of people around the world that the Iranians had no right
to take the British sailors hostage, no right to hold
them for the length, the period, that they did. And I
think it reflects very badly upon them.”
This was reflexive propaganda. But like much of the
media, Esler’s concern was not with holding power to
account - even power as infamously deceitful as the US-UK
‘coalition’ - his concern was the honest to
goodness Boys’ Own question of who had won:
“But you know some people here think it’s been
a propaganda victory for the +Iranians+ because of the
way it’s been handled by the British
government.”
Again, the right-wing US government spokesman felt
compelled to rein in the liberal British journalist:
“I don’t think that’s true at all... I
don’t think many people feel that was a propaganda
victory for Iran - I think it made them look very
uncivil... So I don’t agree with you at all on
that.”
And that was the end of the interview.
There is nothing very complicated or difficult about our
work at Media Lens. We simply invite readers to consider
what the world learned about Iraq on April 10 and 11; to
consider what is known about US-UK responsibility for one
of the great human disasters of modern times; and to then
consider Esler’s response in his interview with a
politician described by him as “number three”
in the US state department.
If this isn’t friendly fascism - the normalising of
the unthinkable with presumably no limits at all (what on
earth, one might ask, would it take to stir the outrage
or even scepticism of Newsnight journalists?) - then we
don’t know what is.
We wrote to the Newsnight editor, Peter Barron, on April
13:
Dear Peter
I was trying to work out what Gavin Esler's interview
with Nicholas Burns reminded me of as I was watching last
night. It came to me - it was those old party political
broadcasts where a party colleague or some hired
celebrity posed questions to the party leader. You'll
remember how cringe-making they were, because although
one person was asking and one was answering, everyone
knew the leader had agreed the questions word for word,
so it made it all a farce, an act.
I'm obviously not suggesting that Esler was in cahoots
with Burns, but there was the same sense of tennis balls
being tossed up at a perfect height above the net for the
interviewee to smash them away for winners. And for
Newsnight to actually repeat Burns' comments about it
being "the Iraqis' fight" but that the US still
had "a role to play" - that was straight out of
Kafka or Pinter. You repeated it having failed to
challenge it or anything else Burns said.
When we use words like 'shameful' in describing these
performances, it's not because we're hysterical. It's
because they really do prepare the public mind for future
violence - acts that tear human beings apart, burn them
alive. That's the reality and it's the role you played in
2002-2003, and you're doing it again now. This is NOT
just an academic issue, an abstract discussion about
media issues - you are once again preparing the way for
mass killing.
Best wishes
David
Barron was away and unavailable for comment - his
deputies had nothing to say.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality,
compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write
to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a
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Write to Gavin Esler
Email: gavin.esler@bbc.co.uk
Write to Newsnight editor Peter Barron, c/o of Sarah
Teasdale
Email: sarah.teasdale@bbc.co.uk
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Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk
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