For the first two weeks of the war, Western news channels and the better part of the American print media refused to look the realities of the war in Iraq squarely in the face. Journalists and commentators — who were happy to remain largely in the dark about events — put great effort into speculation and positive glossing when just a little of that effort would have gone a much longer way toward discovering the truth. That is now changing.
Just as the generals and the US/UK troops on the ground have refused to remain silent in the face of apparent hiccups, so Western journalists and columnists are beginning, at long last, to find their voice.
Arab News has been criticized for, on the one hand, having a largely anti-war tone in its opinion pages while, on the other, giving stories from the front line which in some respects contradict the opinion of the editorials. But such criticism is unfounded.
It is not the job of this or any other newspaper to censor its correspondents so they conform to a predetermined agenda or ideology. Nor is it, conversely, the job of these reporters to provide a comprehensive overview of the war in context. Rather, it is their job to report what they see, honestly and truthfully, without letting their opinion interfere with the factuality of their articles.
The US Army bargained that embedded reporters would turn into rank-and-file members and therefore useful tools in the propaganda machine. But reports from The Washington Post and elsewhere suggest that the army has been nurturing vipers in its bosom, who will report on — to give recent examples — apparent military miscalculations and a shortage of rations for the troops in the field they are seeing.
One reporter cast serious doubt on the US version of events surrounding the killing of women and children in a minibus at an army checkpoint. And yesterday, an embedded CNN correspondent repeatedly dismissed US military claims that Iraqi Army was firing from one of Shiite’s holiest mosques in the city of Najaf. It’s simply not true, he insisted.
Most remarkable, perhaps, is that the daily press briefings at the Pentagon are beginning to turn into events which reflect the principle of freedom of speech, which the US claims it is desperate to make a reality in Iraq. No longer are the snarls of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld an effective deterrent to journalists, who probed and pressed him with refreshing vigor on Tuesday. The journalists at these briefings no longer appear cowed by the Pentagon’s oft-repeated claim that their questions would not be “helpful to the American public.”
This is partly because a critical examination of the US war effort can now focus on the strategic and logistical errors growing ever more apparent as the war effort gets dirtier. These queries concern the welfare of the US troops, and so do not expose journalists to easy accusations of lack of patriotism or a secret sympathy with Saddam. Nonetheless, it is satisfying to see journalists doing at last what they are being paid to do.
The foggier the war becomes, the greater the need for journalistic objectivity. Despite obvious restrictions, often self-imposed, and for reasons that may have as much to do with ratings or sales as with ethics or ideologies, the Western media is beginning to flex its muscle.
