No
News Is Slow News
By John Pilger
15 September, 2006
JohnPilger.com
When
I began working as a journalist, there was something called "slow
news". We would refer to "slow news days" when "nothing
happened" - apart from, that is, triumphs and tragedies in faraway
places where most of humanity lived. These were rarely reported, or
the tragedies were dismissed as acts of nature, regardless of evidence
to the contrary. The news value of whole societies was measured by their
relationship with "us" in the west and their degree of compliance
with, or hostility to, our authority. If they didn't measure up, they
were slow news.
Few of these assumptions have changed. To sustain them, millions of
people remain invisible, and expendable. On 11 September 2001, while
the world lamented the deaths of almost 3,000 people in the United States,
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation reported that more
than 36,000 children had died from the effects of extreme poverty. They
were very slow news.
Let's take a few recent examples
and compare each with the regular news as seen on the BBC and elsewhere.
Keep in mind that Palestinians are chronically slow news and that Israelis
are regular news.
Regular news: Charles Clarke, a spokesman for Tony Blair, "revives
the battle of Downing Street" and calls Gordon Brown "stupid,
stupid" and a "control freak". He disapproves of the
way Brown smiles. This is given saturation coverage.
Slow news: "A genocide is taking place in Gaza," warns Ilan
Pappe, one of Israel's leading historians. "This morning... another
three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded. This
is the morning reap; before the end of the day many more will be massacred."
Regular news: Blair visits
the West Bank and Lebanon as a "peacemaker" and a "broker"
between the Israeli prime minister and the "moderate" Palestinian
president. Keeping a straight face, he warns against "grandstanding"
and "apportioning blame".
Slow news: When the Israeli army attacked the West Bank in 2002, flattening
homes, killing civilians and trashing homes and museums, Blair was forewarned
and gave "the green light". He was also warned about the recent
Israeli attack on Gaza and on Lebanon.
Regular news: Blair tells
Iran to heed the UN Security Council on "not going forward with
a nuclear programme".
Slow news: The Israeli attack on Lebanon was part of a sequence of carefully
planned military operations, of which the next is Iran. US forces are
ready to destroy 10,000 targets. The US and Israel contemplate the use
of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, even though Iran's nuclear
weapons programme is non-existent.
Regular news: "We have been making real progress in areas where
the insurgency has been strongest," says a US military spokesman
in Iraq.
Slow news: The US military has lost all control over al-Anbar Province,
west of Baghdad, including the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, which are
now in the hands of the resistance. This means the US has lost control
of much of Iraq.
Regular news: "It is quite clear that real progress has been made
[in Afghanistan]," says the Foreign Office.
Slow news: Nato pilots kill 13 Afghan civilians, including nine children,
during an attack to "provide cover" for British troops based
at Musa Kala in Helmand Province.
Regular news: Blair is Labour's most successful prime minister, winning
three landslide election victories in a row.
Slow news: In 1997, Tony Blair won fewer popular votes than John Major's
Tories in 1992. In 2001, Blair won fewer popular votes than Neil Kinnock's
Labour in 1992. In 2005, Blair won fewer popular votes than the Tories
in 1997. The past two elections have produced the lowest turnouts since
the franchise. Blair has the support of little over a fifth of the eligible
British voting population.
Regular news: In the age of Blair "ideology has surrendered entirely
to 'values'... there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to
the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain",
wrote Hugo Young, the Guardian, 1997.
Slow news: "Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme
international crime. They [Bush and Blair] should be tried along with
Saddam Hussein," says Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor of Nazi
crimes at Nuremberg.