On this weird topsy-turvy planet, truth is not only a disappearing commodity, individuals and news outlets are not only being condemned for telling it, they are also being forced to make apologies. On the other hand, veracity evaders get pats on the back.
In this case, shouldn’t we revise old ways and set up mendacity schools to enable our children to perfect the techniques of misinformation, dissemination, spin and spiel as required career-launching assets?
Currently in for a beating is Amnesty International, which dared to call Guantanamo “the gulag of our times” and condemns the US for running “an archipelago of secret prisons”. But according to the Bush administration, which has often quoted Amnesty’s reports when they have focused on the perceived transgressions of its foes, Amnesty’s latest accusations are “absurd”, “offensive” and “reprehensible”.
Rushing to the administration’s defense over and above the usual propagandist suspects is the Washington Times. Its June 6 commentary titled “Amnesty Astray” makes no mention of more than 500 men being detained indefinitely without charge in Cuba, let alone the US administration’s policy of rendering whereby prisoners are being deliberately flown to torture-friendly countries.
Further, the paper ignores the horrendous physical and sexual abuses at Abu Ghraib, prisoner deaths at Bagram along with ghost jets, whose tail plates have been linked to the CIA and which carry ghost prisoners to ghost facilities. “Ghost prisoners have had their identities and locations withheld from relatives, the International Red Cross and even Congress,” reported US human rights lawyers attached to the Center for Constitutional Rights. So those whose ire has risen over the term “gulag” should perhaps think again. The scale may not be the same but the principle certainly is.
But the writer of the Washington Times’ column Michael O’Hanlon, who says he is a former Amnesty activist, is in no mood to investigate, analyze or process the resultant evidence. As far as he’s concerned, Amnesty’s accusations are false because “on the merits, they are wrong” (no whys or wherefores) and “they foster unwarranted anger against the United States and its friends and allies — that is, they risk aiding jihadism”.
What O’Hanlon seems to be advocating here is the burial of truth to ward off anger against his country when surely his patriotic duty is not to emulate the three wise monkeys but rather to work on exposing documented wrongs, surely the best diffuser of spiraling anti-American sentiment?
A victim of the exact same warped thinking was Newsweek, which published the Qur’an abuse story. A formerly respected publication, it morphed into an inciting rag almost overnight even though there have been numerous reports of similar desecrations from various human rights organizations and more than 20 direct from the mouths of released detainees.
When White House spokesman Scott McClellan blamed Newsweek for the Afghan riots and the ensuing deaths, its editor retracted the story, deemed “appalling” by the State Department. But that wasn’t enough. George Bush wanted his pound of flesh and urged the publication’s editor to do more to foster his administration’s reputation throughout the Muslim world. In other words, Newsweek should change its name to “Pentagon PR”.
Then much to Bush’s embarrassment out pop the results of a military investigation citing various Qur’an desecrations, which when added to NGO and detainee reports make Newsweek’s findings, albeit based on a single source, a lot more credible. Newsweek’s credibility is in tatters, however, following its obscene willingness to keel over at the first sign of pressure from the White House. Judging by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference’s insistence that desecrators of the Qur’an must be punished, the Muslim world is not impressed.
To be fair, Newsweek isn’t alone in this. Britain’s BBC turned out to be just as willing to hang Mark Gilligan the reporter on its Today program who said the government “probably knew” it was wrong to claim Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within 45 minutes.
Gilligan was fired along with the corporation’s popular director-general. Given there were no WMD and today it is generally conceded that the British government’s Iraq dossiers were full of exaggerations and deliberate omissions then who was right and who was wrong?
Yet another victim of veracity was CNN’s Eason Jordan, who was given a swift booting after he claimed the US has deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq. Yet several journalists, including veteran BBC reporter Kate Adie, have suggested as much, while the Paris-based Reporters without Borders went as far as to petitition the International Humanitarian Fact-finding Commission to launch an investigation.
A climate of shoot the messenger within the US is evidenced by the current debate over Mark Felt or Deep Throat, the former FBI employee who blew the whistle on Richard Nixon’s nefarious goings on. Is he a hero or a traitor is the question de jour in the US media? Surely, there shouldn’t even be such a debate given Nixon’s corrupt presidency. A letter penned by Richard D. Curtis published on the June 2 reader’s page of the Los Angeles Times perfectly sums this up:
“I am amazed at the discussion as to whether Mark Felt is a hero or a traitor. To me it comes down to: Should he be loyal to a crooked administration or loyal to his country? Many complain about the method he used to expose this mess. It seems it was the only avenue open to him, as direct confrontation with the administration could have been dangerous to him. These people were capable of anything to protect themselves...We can only hope that there are other Mark Felts in the current administration who would expose all the secretive dealings...”
Call me a naive old-fogy if you will, but even if exposure of the truth has unpleasant consequences in some cases, without it we are doomed to a world where hypocrites rule and where the end justifies the means, however ugly and brutal the means employed might be.
The defense of truth is a moral imperative of which journalists and their editors should be the gatekeepers, not the undertakers as is so often happening today. Sadly, those of their readers and viewers who believe silence is a manifestation of patriotism are complicit in the nurturing of a culture of denial. And one only has to re-read last century’s history books to know where that road can ultimately lead.
