Covering The Middle East
By Robert Fisk
Pacifica Radio
01 June, 2003
Over the course of a quarter century covering the Middle East can you describe the kinds of press restrictions you have been operating under at different times?
Fisk:
You know I think we mischaracterize it with the word restrictions. In most cases journalists turn up on assignments on major stories, certainly in the case of the American Media, with a clear idea of what limits there are and what constraints there are. This of course particularly applies in the Arab/Israeli dispute. Where the concern that a criticism of Israel, however soft and remote will elicit an overemotional response and the reporter will be accused of being an anti-Semite or a racist, has produced a situation in which journalists, American journalists covering the middle east question, particularly new arrivals, are so sensitive and so careful of the way they report things, always putting the word alleged or reported around anything which might impugn the integrity of an Israeli army officer or Ariel Sharon the prime minister, their reporting is almost unintelligible. I want to know what the reporter thinks, not what Israelis or Palestinians say. I know that. So in a sense, once a major story breaks in the region, the restrictions are very much, the front line runs very much through the mind of a reporter I am afraid to say.
If you take the case of the 1991 gulf war, any journalist who remotely tried to question, I mean American, I questioned it, the British press questioned it, but anyone who questioned the motives of that war was immediately accused of being a Saddam lover, a man who was obviously for terrorism, who hated America, etc... Even worse was the reaction of September 11. I was actually crossing the Atlantic on 9/11 of course the plane turned around when the US closed its airspace. And from the satellite phone on my seat in the plane, I was on deadline, I realize this was a Middle East story, it must be Arabs, we didn’t even know that then. And I wrote an 800 word story that said "so it has come to this. The lies of the Balfour declaration, the promises that we made, the lies, British to the Arabs, all the deceit of the decades, all the one sided peace process, all the suffering of the children of Iraq”, I thought, and I said "seems to have produced this international crime against humanity" , which is what it was. And the most extraordinary response to this, emails saying I was in league with the devil that I had a pact with Bin Laden. A Harvard professor went on Irish radio saying I was an evil dangerous liar, that to be anti American, and whatever that is, I suppose I was being accused of it was the same as being anti-Semitic. In other words to be opposed to Mr. Bush you become a Jew hater, a Nazi, a racist. An extraordinary attempt, even if you were British to stop you from asking why.
American journalist for example could ask who and how they did it. That was acceptable. It was alright to say they were Saudi Arabians, they were Arabs. Those were the countries they came from. But to then ask what was wrong with the countries they came from was absolutely forbidden, it was a no no, it was a taboo question.Not for us, we kept pushing it through the British press. But in America it was unpatriotic to ask that question because it meant you were giving credit to terrorists
And so, By and large journalists don't need restrictions they restrict themselves, in this country I am sorry to say.
Pacifica:
Do you recognize a goal of objectivity; do you see a distinction between writing commentary and what a reporter thinks, and reporting facts?
Fisk:
I think we are dealing here with a problem in American journalism school, which thank god we brits don't go through. We do politics and history and other subjects at University. I think that the foreign correspondent is the nerve ending of a newspaper. My paper sends a correspondent to live abroad to tell us what happens there, not to tell us what two sides are saying, I can read that on the wire.
Over and over again for example, when I am in Jerusalem or Damascus, or Cairo, I talk to my American Colleagues. Who are just like me, same jobs much better salaries of course, but the same role. And what they tell me is fascinating. They really have a deep insight many of them, into what's happening in the region, but when I read their reports its not there. Everything they have to tell me of interest has been erased. when they want to put forth a point of view, they ring up some guy in America who has very little knowledge usually in one of the places I call the tink thanks, the think tanks, the Brookings institute, the Rand corporation, and this guy blathers on for two paragraphs of bland prose, and this is put in as opinion. But I want to know what the reporter thinks, if you send a reporter to a region, if you send him there because you think he is intelligent, fair, decent reporter; you don't have to ask him to give 50% of every paragraph to each side. I mean if you follow the rules that a journalist seems to have to follow in the Middle East, what do you do say if you cover the slave ship and the slavery campaign? Do you give the same amount of time to the slaves and the slave ship captain? Or what if you are covering the Second World War, do you give the same amount of time to prisoners and an SS guard? NO. You have to have some sense of morality, and passion and anger. You know when I am at the scene for example the slaughter of Hamer in 1982, where the Syrian army crushed the people of Hamer, up to 20,000 dead, destroyed their mosques in the old city. I managed to get in there, and my piece if you read it now, drips with anger at the way in which this massive armed force run by the then president’s brother was erasing a city and its history and its people. If you read my account of the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by the Israelis allies in 1982 as Israeli soldiers watched, the same thing happens. We should not be employed to be automaton to effectively just be a voice for spokesman. We should be out there telling it how it is, how journalism used to be.
Pacifica:
But if a sense of passion, morality, anger leads to a journalist like yourself being considered Pro Palestinian
Fisk:
I'm not considered pro Palestinian
Pacifica
But do you ever hear that characterization and does it undermine your credibility?
Fisk
Absolutely not. Of course Israelis who don't like to see their misbehavior narrated into the paper will say you're pro Palestinian, pro terrorist. Of course they do. And I have many times written about Arab misbehavior and immorality and immediately I am accused of being a mossad agent. Indeed I appeared at a conference in Boston called the right of return conference. In which I criticized the corruption of Arab American groups, in which I criticize their total disassociation from the actual the dirt and filth of the refugee camps and emails soon began to go around from various Arab students around the united states saying I had been judaized, this apparently based on the idea that I give a lecture once a year in Madison Wisconsin organized by a Jewish family, and that I was a member of Mossad. And you get it from both sides, and you have to take it. But if you see, you want to be an uncontroversial journalist, and I am not a controversial journalist, I am a correspondent for a mainstream newspaper and I do my job. but if you are going to be frightened by people who are going to use this cheap language, if you are going to write so carefully not to offend anyone, then you are going to produce the path that appears in the American media now.
Pacifica
Governments tell us that they are protecting journalists by creating closed military areas, by restricting journalist access to battle zones, do you accept that?
Fisk:
Well that is what the soviets said when they labeled cities closed military areas in the Soviet Union. Look: during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon I learned very quickly that whenever the Israeli army declared an area a closed military area it meant they were doing something which was meant to be hidden, and everytime they did that I got into the town to see what they had been doing and invariably there had been extra judicial executions, torture, or prisoners taken away and not being seen again, like what has happened here. Exactly the same happens in the west bank. The moment they declared Bethlehem a closed military area, I am talking about the first of the reoccupation of the west bank by Sharon’s soldiers, I went straight into Bethelehm, and I did the same in Ramallah. Our job as journalists when we here the words closed military areas is to go straight in because that is where the story is. It has nothing to do with our protection. Indeed in the case of the Israelis they have shot so many journalists and wounded so many journalists the last thing I think they are interested in is the protection of journalists.
Pacifica:
Have you ever written a story and looked back, and felt you jeopardized civilians or soldiers or anyone by reason of your story
Fisk:
No. I will give you a very practical example. And that is geography. It is very easy to do a color piece. "As we walked up the hill I saw a tank on my right" I always go through my copy saying have I identified that hill because if I have I am giving a Palestinian, or an Israeli, Or a Hezbollah a chance to get that tank. Of course they about it anyway, they know more about the military location than we do. But I am going to make sure we are not even open to the accusation. If, by reporting for example the massacre of Sabra and Shatila we are accused of being anti Semitic because we make people dislike Israel, well I am sorry that is an argument I want to be involved in. Because my job is to report what I have seen. And of course when a country, Syria at Hamer, for example, Israel at the time of Sabra and Shatila, Iraq at Halabja, when a nation uses its armed forces and behaves in a despicable way that amounts to a war crime well it may be that our reporting makes people angry at the country, well tough luck, that country shouldn't have committed those war crimes.
Pacifica
There was great controversy in America when the entire tape of an Osama bin laden broadcast was edited for the American availability but was broadcast in full on Al-Jazeera. What is the role of the internet, of access to Al-Jazeera and other news sources on Americans and people around the world getting a complete picture of what is going on?
Fisk
Well, we haven't fully understood yet the implications of the internet. Once the internet allowed Americans to tap into English language newspapers abroad, not just the Independent but the Guardian, the Financial times, the French press if they read French, or El Pais which is very good or is very good in Spain, suddenly a new depth was given to them. They were not reading in the English press what they were reading in the New York Times. I could tell immediately, at the moment at almost a thousand letters a week I am getting almost 50% from America. Now that is an indictment of the American media for start. I should be getting 20% from America and 80% from the United kingdom, But in fact more than half is coming from America, and many of them complain about what they refer to as one did of the lobotomized coverage in the American Press. Now what is the effect of this? I think that more and more Americans are saying, "hold on, why can't we read this in our newspapers why can't we watch this on our television" Yet again and again, even despite the fact, I don't think the American media realize the extent to which ordinary American citizens are looking at foreign publications, in itself an appalling reflection on the worth or lack of it in the American Media. Continually, still American reporters hedge their bets. I was reading an article which was referring to Sabra and Shatila which the Kahan Commission of Israel said that Ariel Sharon was personally responsible, page 93 I think it was. And the article in the Associate Press refereed to him "allegedly facilitating the militias that went into the camp". A total cop out. He was personally responsible. He sent the militias into the camp, where 1, 700 Palestinians were murdered. So I think what’s happening with the internet, there is a profound change coming among Americans interested in the region, or who have an intellectual interest in the Middle East. As for all the other Americans who are not interested in the Middle East I don't know. But certainly the internet is profoundly changing, not fast enough, but profoundly changing the way Americans look at regions that are not properly covered by their newspapers and television.
Pacifica
We call our program Clear and present danger. What from your perspective is the clear and present danger to free press in the United States?
Fisk
I will sum it up very briefly. The relationship of the press and television to government is incestuous. The state department correspondents, the white house correspondents, the pentagon correspondents, have set a narrative where instead of telling us what they think is happening or what they know is happening, they tell us what they are told by the spokesman. They have become sub spokesman. Spokesman for the great institutions of state. When an American correspondent visits the Middle East they turn up in Beirut, Damascus or Cairo and where do they go? The first visit is to the American Embassy for a briefing with the ambassador, the economic advisor, the defense attaché and no doubt the CIA spook. Then they go and see an Arab Minister of information who almost never knows any information about anything ever. Then they write a story. Now it’s not always that bad, but that is the main theme which is followed. So what you have I think is a general consensus in America, which I hope is breaking up, that to challenge American foreign policy is in some way, not just insensitive, but unpatriotic. Especially foreign policy in the Middle East which is still a taboo subject. You know in America you can talk about Lesbians, Gays, and Blacks but not about the relationship with Israel and the US Administration or congress. So I think it is this cozy, incestuous, dangerous relationship between press and administration, between sources and access which causes many of these problems.
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This interview was originally broadcast on Friday May 23 on Pacifica Radio's Peace Watch.