Another
Casualty:
Coverage Of The Iraq War
By Dahr Jamail
26 March, 2007
Foreign Policy In Focus
The
primary reason why reporting from Iraq is dangerous for all journalists
is the horrific security situation. Iraqi journalists reporting from
the streets are in perpetual danger. If any of the countless militias
does not want a certain story made public, it will make sure that the
journalist has filed his or her last story. Not to mention the scores
of reporter deaths which have been the combined handiwork of the Iraqi
government, occupation forces and/or criminal gangs.
Despite President Bush’s
assertion that life in Iraq is improving, a senior Iraqi journalist
was found dead in the capital on March 3, 2007. On the same day the
body of the managing editor of Baghdad’s al-Safir newspaper, Jamal
al-Zubaidi, was found shot in the head.
The Realities of Repression
The United States continues
to claim that its military operations in Iraq bring freedom and democracy.
But such freedom apparently doesn’t extend to Iraqi journalists.
Several journalists critical of the United States or the U.S.-backed
Iraqi government have been killed. For instance, on March 4, 2007 gunmen
killed prominent journalist Mohan al Zaher in his home. That Sunday,
his column concluded with the lament, “...if this is the democracy
that we (Iraqis) dreamt of.” His earlier articles questioned U.S.
policies in Iraq.
The U.S. military has also
conducted direct raids on media establishments and representatives.
During the invasion, on April 8, 2003, a U.S. warplane bombed the al-Jazeera
bureau in Baghdad, killing 35-year-old journalist Tareq Ayoub. Britain’s
Daily Mirror later cited the “top secret” minutes of a meeting
during November 2004 where George W. Bush attempted to get British Prime
Minister Tony Blair to consent to the bombing of the al-Jazeera headquarters
in Doha, Qatar.
More recently, on February
23, 2007, U.S. soldiers raided and ransacked the offices of the Iraq
Syndicate of Journalists (ISJ) in central Baghdad. The soldiers arrested
ten armed guards and seized ten computers and 15 small electricity generators
meant to be donated to families of killed journalists. Youssif al-Tamimi
of the ISJ in Baghdad told one of my close colleagues, “The Americans
have delivered so many messages to us, but we simply ignored all of
them. They killed our colleagues, shut down our newspapers, arrested
hundreds of us and now they are shooting at our hearts by raiding our
headquarters. This is the freedom of speech we received.” Many
Iraqis believe that the U.S. soldiers were conveying from their leadership
to Iraqi journalists the message of zero tolerance for criticism of
the U.S.-led occupation.
The U.S.-backed Iraqi government
also directly controls the media. The Coalition Provisional Authority
under the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, created the Media and
Communications Commission as an instrument of control. This commission,
incorporated into the Iraqi constitution, regulates licensing, telecommunications,
broadcasting, information services, and all other media establishments.
Under the authority of this commission, in July 2004, security forces
of the interim Iraqi government raided and shut down the Baghdad office
of the Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera. Initially the network faced
a month-long ban on reporting out of Iraq. In November 2004 the Iraqi
government announced that any al-Jazeera journalist found reporting
in Iraq would be detained. Subsequently the ban was extended indefinitely
and continues today.
Another instance of blatant
media repression by the Iraqi state took place on November 11, 2004.
During the siege of Fallujah when Iraqi journalists along with this
writer were reporting the killing of civilians and the use of prohibited
weapons like white phosphorous by the U.S. military, Iraq’s Media
High Commission issued a warning on the official letter head of the
prime minister. The letter instructed reporters to, “Stick to
the government line on the U.S. led offensive in Fallujah or face legal
action” and also to “set aside space in your news coverage
to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations
of most Iraqis, clear.”
The international NGO Reporters
Without Borders, which advocates freedom of the press, releases an annual
worldwide press freedom index. Countries are ranked on the basis of
surveys designed to record any kind of harassment of journalists and
state violence against them that forces them to flee or abandon their
work. In 2002, under Saddam Hussein and his draconian control of the
media, Iraq ranked a dismal 130. In 2006, after three years of U.S.
occupation, Iraq fell to 154. The NGO has also declared Iraq to be among
the world’s worst hostage market, with 38 journalist kidnappings
in three years.
Direct Manipulation
Currently there are two main
channels for information on Iraq: the Pentagon and the Iraqi stringers
who work for Arab media outlets. For audiences unfamiliar with Arabic
or alternative news sources on Iraq, the only available news comes from
daily press releases by the U.S. military that are parroted by the establishment
media.
Another dubious source of
information is the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi television station al-Iraqiyah
that began broadcasting in May 2003. In January 2004, the U.S. Defense
Department awarded the Florida-based Harris Corporation a 12-month contract
to manage the Iraqi Media Network, including al-Iraqiyah, and provided
the physical infrastructure for the expansion of the network.
The U.S. military also hired
the Washington-based public relations firm Lincoln Group to manipulate
Iraqi public opinion in favor of the United States. The group’s
covert program, worth millions of dollars, included various media activities
that faked independent journalism in order to conceal the fact that
it was U.S. state and military propaganda. Former Lincoln Group employees
claim that U.S. military officials were aware of payments to Iraqi newspapers
to print pro-U.S. articles and editorials.
Such state control has a
boomerang effect. False news generated for the Iraqi public in local
papers also comes to the United States as “news.” This indirect
state-meddling abroad, coupled with direct repression of the media at
home, is also reflected in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom
index. In 2002, the United States ranked 17th. In 2006, after six years
of Bush administration, the rank has fallen to 56th.
Covering the War at Home
Unlike in Iraq, the problem
in the United States began before the 2003 invasion. In the prestigious
New York Times, Judith Miller dutifully parroted the propaganda issued
by the Bush administration about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
during the lead-up to the invasion. Quoting one anonymous source after
another, she became a highly effective vehicle of the Bush administration
in disseminating misinformation and lies about Saddam Hussein’s
possession of and attempt to acquire WMDs.
Later, during an interview
with PBS Frontline conducted on July 13, 2006, in the presence of her
lawyer, Miller brazenly defied criticism of her WMD coverage saying,
“I didn’t feel that I had anything to apologize for with
my WMD coverage.”
Once the invasion was launched,
anchorman Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News announced to viewers nationwide,
“One of the things that we don’t want to do...is to destroy
the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we’re going to
own that country.”
The Pentagon’s “embedded”
program where mainstream media journalists volunteer to act as propagandists
requires a journalist to sign a contract giving the military control
over her or his output which amounts to total censorship. Embedding
continues to this day, as does corporate ownership of the media. Together
they ensure coverage of the occupation that is biased in favor of the
state as the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
(FAIR) has exposed.
Corporate ownership of the
media has much to do with the transformation of nationally televised
news personalities into cheerleaders for war. Take the example of the
Associated Press. Its board of directors includes the CEOs and presidents
of ABC, McClatchy, Hearst, Tribune, and the Washington Post. Two of
the directors belong to extremely conservative policy councils like
the Hoover Institute, a Republican policy research center located on
the campus of Stanford University and referred to as “Bush’s
brain trust.” Douglas McCorkindale, another member of the AP board,
is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense
contract company. The board of AP displays a clear tilt toward right-wing
conservative views, represented by a huge corporate media network of
the largest publishers in the U.S.
Today in the United States,
our media is more homogenized than ever. Only six corporations control
the major U.S. media: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, General
Electric, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. These corporations
also happen to be heavy financial supporters of the elite political
groups (Republicans and Democrats alike) that control this country.
They put politics ahead of responsible journalism.
“As news outlets fall
into the hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries,
conflicts of interest inevitably interfere with news gathering,”
according to FAIR. “Independent media are essential to a democratic
society, and...aggressive antitrust action must be taken to break up
monopolistic media conglomerates.”
Until that happens in the
United States, media coverage of Iraq is likely to worsen. As for Iraqi
journalists, promises of free speech and freedom of the press--just
like the earlier promises of liberation, economic opportunity, and freedom
for the Iraqi people--will not materialize before the end of the U.S.
occupation of the country.
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