DAMMAM, 11 April 2003 — No doubt the biggest toll of the war in Iraq is human lives and human suffering, but the media has also suffered immensely in terms of credibility. Slanted news reports, biased analysis, and prejudiced coverage have created a kind of revulsion among the viewers and readers in this part of the world. One war was fought in Iraq, but at the same time another war was fought on our TV screens. People in Saudi Arabia — and for that matter around the world — were stunned to see how insensitively the Fourth Estate behaved.
The other day Fox News, a quasi-governmental American channel, was broadcasting a group discussion on the aftermath of the war while, in the other half of the frame, showing clips of injured civilians in an Iraqi hospital. It was a gruesome scene, but to Fox audiences it was made more repulsive by its juxtaposition with the panelists, who were cracking jokes and laughing, completely ignoring the human tragedy.
Throughout the war, the so-called embedded reporters unashamedly propagated the American and British point of view. Not a single journalist of Fox News, Sky TV, CNN and the BBC ever questioned the legitimacy of the war when the Anglo-American forces failed to recover weapons of mass destruction.
American Brig. General Vincent Brooks, at a press briefing in Qatar, said that the focus of the war had never been the WMD but the removal of Saddam’s regime. Not a single journalist present at the briefing tried to point out the volte face that had taken place. Rather, the Western media itself shifted its approach to the war and gradually started calling it a mission for the liberation of Iraq.
There is no doubt that in this war the media has butchered the cardinal principle of journalism — unbiased, unprejudiced reporting.
But I must admit that there is no inconsistency among the Western journalists. This has been their style for years. In 1990-91 I had the opportunity to meet some big names like Carol Murphy of the Washington Post, Michael Gordon of the New York Times and Christiane Amanpour of CNN during the Operation Desert Storm. One thing common among Western correspondents was their rigid attachment to their preconceived notions. Most of them tried to bend the facts to fit their hypotheses.
One such example during that period was a press conference by Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation. The conference was held at King Abdul Aziz Air Base just a few days before the bombardment of Iraq. The Joint Information Bureau had set up a press pool consisting of journalists from newspapers and the electronic media. I was also included in that pool. Michael Gordon asked Prince Sultan: “Will you allow Allied forces to hit Iraq from Saudi soil?” Adel Al-Jubair, the then adviser to the Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar, and currently special adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, was the interpreter. Prince Sultan very clearly said: “Saudi Arabia will not take any unilateral decision but will act only after consulting all the partners in the coalition.” It was a very clear statement.
But when the pool sat down to write the story, Michael Gordon, insisted that the lead of the story should be that Saudi Arabia refused to allow an attack on Iraq from its soil. He was reminded of the exact words used by Prince Sultan. The tape was played umpteen times but he insisted.
Eventually the story was written with the lead suggested by Gordon, and it was on the creed as well as on news channels. There are so many similar incidents which showed the preconceived notions of the Western media and their total disregard for hard facts.
The same approach was evident during the present war — Saddam is a bad guy; Bush and Blair are the good guys and hence come what may, the bad guy has to be attacked and the good guys defended. After every bombing of the civilian population, the anchor cast doubt on the Iraqi contention that it was Americans who hit the residential areas, and came up with the harebrained theory that the Iraqis might have bombed their own people. It was the courage of Robert Fisk of the Independent that brought reality before the world. But unfortunately, there are very few journalists of Robert Fisk’s stature and courage. If there were more Fisks around, then the effect of the war in Europe would have been very different. The revulsion and anger felt in this part of the world would have then certainly spread to America and Britain and elsewhere.
The continuous showing of Iraqis celebrating their “new-found freedom” will certainly have an effect on anti-war protests, and no doubt Bush and Blair will be cast as the heroes. Who will be there to remind naive audiences that the two are also responsible for the killing and agony of thousands of innocent Iraqis?
