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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

This is how western media describes about Middle East and Islam

It is now an established fact that truth is always the first casualty of war; and “when truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage.”1 Nowhere has this been more evident than in western military interventions in the Middle East. Journalists have, wittingly and unwittingly, contributed to the distortion of facts and spread of misinformation. To this extent, Brazil’s ambassador to China was right when he told a media summit of the BRICS countries in Beijing in 2015 that, “Generating information is the most important source of power today. When you generate information, you generate perception.”2


Western media coverage of Middle Eastern issues has varied from one location to another. Financial interests and the political persuasions of media baron have influenced the editorial policies of newspapers as well as TV and radio stations. Given that most media outlets are today owned by major multinational corporations, financial profit very often takes precedence over substance and accuracy.3 In their landmark study Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman argued that the media operates on the basis of certain ideological premises, relies uncritically on elite sources for information and engages in propaganda campaigns to support those interests.4


Linguistically, the word media is the plural of the word medium, which can be defined as “the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses.”5 Hence, air, for example, can be described as a medium because it transmits sound. It is a neutral carrier of vibrations. Contrary to frequent claims of impartiality, though, the Western media’s coverage can hardly be described as neutral, when facts are routinely distorted, suppressed and covered up. It is one thing for a journalist to be “nuanced”, but it is an altogether different matter not to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Spooks and journalists

We cannot discuss the crisis in Iraq today without referring to the 2003 US-led invasion. Shortly before the troops went in, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan revealed that the intelligence dossier used by the Blair government to justify war had been

“sexed up” to strengthen the government’s case. Instead of being commended for exposing the fraud, Gilligan was sacked by the BBC. The corporation’s director of news, Richard Sambrook, told the subsequent Hutton Inquiry into the war that the journalist had failed to appreciate the “nuances and subtleties” of broadcast journalism.6 Gilligan’s case was indicative of a wider problem at the heart of western news and comment coverage of the Middle East.


The New York Times published an editorial on 26 May 2004 admitting that its coverage of the “weapons of mass destruction” controversy in Iraq was based on false information. Much of the information that the newspaper relied upon was provided by Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. David Rose of the Observer newspaper in London also admitted that he had used information from Chalabi and that he was a victim of a “calculated set-up” devised to advance the propaganda for war.7 Whereas the New York Times has apologised for being misled by the intelligence agencies, no British newspaper has done so. In what was called “Operation Mass Appeal”, agents from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, supplied the media with fabricated stories about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.8 The subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq set in motion a chain of events that led to the chaos that has engulfed the country, affecting the lives of millions of people.


“We now know the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the Secret

Intelligence Service,” veteran Australian journalist and writer John Pilger once told an audience at New York’s Columbia University. According to former MI6 officer Kim Philby, who defected to Moscow in 1963, the Secret Intelligence Service had penetrated the “English mass media on a wide scale” even then, and was directing the activities of agents in the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Daily Mirror, Financial Times and Observer.9


In the US, newspapers like the New York Times apparently concluded secret agreements with the CIA to employ at least 10 agents as reporters or clerks in foreign bureaus.10 The agency did not, however, recruit British agents in Reuters because it was British-owned and the Americans saw this as MI6 territory; they did, however, utilise them when the need arose.11


In August 1989, the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was arrested in Iraq after an explosion destroyed the Al-Iskandaria weapons complex south of Baghdad. It was reported that he confessed to being an Israeli spy. One investigative journalist, Simon Henderson, said that Barzoft was working for British intelligence and that he was given containers by a contact in the British Embassy in Baghdad to test soil samples in the area of the complex. He was executed by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in March 1990. Five months later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and thus began the drift towards the First and Second Gulf Wars. Kadem Asker, an Iraqi intelligence officer who claimed to have interrogated Barzoft, said that he knew the journalist was innocent but Saddam was determined to execute him.12


A study by Cardiff University found that the BBC displayed the most pro-war agenda of any broadcaster with regards to the war on Iraq.13 During the first three weeks of the conflict the BBC placed the least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, or on Iraqi opposition to the invasion. While representatives of the Stop the War Coalition were invited to speak on all TV stations before the war, the BBC refused to interview them. Later, a report by the corporation found that the journalists who were embedded with US and British troops had sanitised their reports and avoided images that would be too graphic or violent for British television. Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC News, told the Guardian: "For reasons that are laudable and honourable, we have got to a situation where our coverage has become sanitised. We are running the risk of double standards, and it is not a service to democracy."14 By concealing the images of death and destruction from the public, reporters were allowing the politicians and military leaders to act with greater freedom.

The power of words

The power of the media is not just dependent on the relationship between journalists and their editors or proprietors. In the Western context, claims Robert Fisk, it is also about the words, and the use of words.15 Some usage has at times fostered myths and misunderstandings. In Palestine, for example, we have been told for more than two decades about something called the “peace process” which in reality has been nothing but a charade and a shameless attempt by Israel and the US to impose an unjust solution on the Palestinians. In a 27 February 1994 article for the Independent on Sunday, Fisk pointed out that the Israeli settler responsible for the Hebron massacre two days earlier “undertook a weird transformation” in the media. “No longer referred to as an Israeli soldier, even though he was wearing his uniform and carrying his military-issue gun… he was being called ‘an American Jewish immigrant’.”


In a strictly legal sense, Israeli soldiers captured in Gaza during their frequent incursions and invasions of the Palestinian territory would be considered as prisoners of war. In the Western media, however, they are always described either as “hostages” or as having been “kidnapped”.16


Whenever the conflict in occupied Palestine turns military, the standard line from Western politicians — and repeated by too many compliant journalists without question — is that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” They never explain, however, which Israel they are referring to. Is it the “Greater Israel” that occupies Palestinian land and that of neighbouring countries or the Israel that was proposed by the UN





Partition Resolution in 1947? As it stands, the general approach is to give the impression that the Palestinians are always the aggressors and the Israelis are the victims “responding” to Palestinian violence; in fact, it is just the opposite. Western journalists have, nonetheless, seldom challenged the official line and are thus complicit in Israeli propaganda.


A classic example can be seen in all three Israeli military offensives on the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012 and 2014, which were launched after Israel broke the ceasefires agreed with Hamas. You would never have known that if you relied solely on the Western media for your news.17 Through their selection of topics and framing of issues, journalists try to shape public opinion. Palestinians are always portrayed as the aggressors and Israel is merely doing what any decent democracy would do in the circumstances by “responding in self-defence” and “protecting its citizens”. It is simply not true but, again, the Western media doesn’t tell us that.


From November 2012 to 7 July 2014, the human rights group Visualising Palestine recorded 191 Israeli ceasefire violations and 75 by the Palestinians. It noted that while Israel was responsible for 18 fatalities and dozens of injuries, nobody was killed by the Palestinian violations and only 3 people were injured.18


Similarly, journalists tell us regularly that Israel is “the only democracy” in the region. They never question its policies to determine if they are consistent with democratic principles, whether they meet internationally accepted standards or whether the democracy they speak of is for all Israeli citizens or just some of them.


Elsewhere, the Western media has played the dubious role of propagating falsehoods in order to bolster undemocratic regimes. Dictators like Hosni Mubarak and Zayn Al Abedin Ben Ali in Egypt and Tunisia respectively were always referred to as “strong men” who were supposedly invincible and, it could be deduced, essential to keep the region in check. It was not until 2011, when people across the Middle East broke the fear barrier, that these corrupt tyrants were challenged and overthrown. Ben Ali fled his country hours after the uprising started. Only then did we start to articles pointing out the corruption of the regimes against which ordinary people were rising up.


Palestinian author Raja Shahadeh has written about a friend, Sabri Garaib, in the central West Bank village of Beit Ijza. Garaib had for many years resisted efforts by Israeli settlers to seize his land. At the time of his death in 2012 his house was completely hemmed in on three sides, with only a few yards of space left for a garden between the house and a gigantic steel fence. “To get to the front door,” wrote Shehadeh, “I had to pass through a metal gate that is operated from the army camp nearby and walk down a narrow walkway lined with more steel fencing. Two cameras placed by the army monitor all movement through the gate.”19 Stories like this are commonplace and reflect life under Israel’s brutal military occupation but they rarely, if ever, make it into mainstream Western media outlets.


It must be pointed out, however, that the Western coverage of the Middle East has not been an entirely easy, one-way brainwashing process. In Britain, the media monopoly on perception is being challenged. People are increasingly rejecting the outward flow of disinformation from Israel which seeks to define the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign as anti-Semitic, and support for Palestinian resistance to its occupation as support for “terrorism”. Jeremy Corbyn MP was subjected to a vicious media campaign both before and after he was elected as leader of the Labour Party, no doubt in part because he supports Palestinian rights and has met with people who disagree with the Israeli narrative. Such connections have been used explicitly by the media as reasons why he should not be trusted.


While many journalists supported the 1999 NATO military intervention against Serbia in Kosovo because there was “genocide” taking place, no similar calls were ever made to stop Israel’s carpet bombing of Lebanon in 2006 or pounding of the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014. Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians, even in UN compounds and schools, is often described in the media as “surgical strikes” and not the state terrorism that it is. Under the guise of being a partner in the “war on terror” Israel has managed to deflect media scrutiny and criticism of its actions, allowing it to demonstrate its contempt for international laws and conventions.


At the height of the 2008-09 Israeli bombing of Gaza, the BBC refused to broadcast an appeal for humanitarian donations by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella body of major British charities. The corporation said that this was because of “question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story.”20 This was an astonishing act of duplicity because in 1999 the BBC had in fact broadcast a similar appeal for Kosovo during the NATO bombing campaign there.


At the same time, Israel has developed an extensive public relations network across Europe to monitor and influence reporting on the conflict. One of the main tasks of its operatives is to protest to the editors of newspapers and TV stations if there is any output critical of Israeli policies. The large numbers of complaints that arise discourages journalists and pushes them to engage in self-censorship in their reporting of Israel. The consequence of this is that it has given a licence and cover to the Israelis to act with impunity, knowing full well that their actions will not be reported accurately, let alone criticised. The late Palestinian scholar Edward Said rightly pointed out that Israel’s identification with Western civilisation was done “in the hope that more Americans and Europeans will see Israel as a victim of Islamic violence.” This tactic has definitely been successful, with many others around the globe joining in to highlight the dangers posed by “Palestinian terrorism” and the

“Islamic threat”.


Notwithstanding all of its discriminatory policies and systematic violations of international law, western agencies still refer dutifully to Israel as the only democracy in the sea of Middle Eastern dictatorships. The uncritical acceptance and accommodation these stereotypes have given the impression of support for the beliefs in the superiority of one race over another; that in itself is racism.21

This disdainful media approach to Palestinians has been replicated towards Arabs and Muslims generally. Historically, the American cinema has promoted racist stereotypes about Arabs who, it is believed, are “the most vilified group in the history of Hollywood”.22 One academic survey of 1,200 depictions of Arabs and Muslims in the movies revealed that roughly 97 per cent were unfavourable and marked by orientalist myths and racist demonising.


Islamophobia and the negative portrayal of Arabs, Muslims and Islam in the media have done a huge disservice to community relations within Western societies and in relations with people in the Middle East. According to Humera Khan, the founder and director of an American think tank, such views have a direct impact on the thinking of young people in the Middle East and the shaping of events there. “If they were just more responsible in their portrayal of Arabs and Muslims, that would actually help the environment on the ground,” she explained. What happens on the ground, in Syria and Iraq especially, is obviously paramount if anything is to change, but movies absolutely have a role to play. “Is any narrative going to be sufficient? No. Is this a necessary part of this landscape of needs? Yes.”23

In his 1997 revised version of his book Covering Islam (…How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world), the late Edward Said wrote that media coverage of Islam and Muslims “has licensed not only patent inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility.”


A changing landscape






Under the UNESCO International Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism, journalists are obliged to report the truth and to avoid propaganda. They have, in other words, a professional duty to the public. Whatever the commercial and political pressures, journalists do have a code of ethics and obligation to the wellbeing of the societies upon which they report. The distortion of facts or silence with regards to human rights violations only helps to perpetuate them. Such ethical considerations have, for decades, been noticeably absent from much of the Western media coverage of the Middle East. Invariably, journalists have tended to adopt the official narratives of their own governments and their allies in the region.


The case of occupied Jerusalem is a striking example of this, with BBC journalists referring time after time to the city as the capital of Israel. No country or government in the world accepts this Israeli claim, and so, apart from being manifestly inaccurate, such deception by the BBC supports Israel’s claim to land which the international community recognises as occupied territory. Furthermore, academic studies of newspaper and TV coverage of Palestine have shown a consistently disproportionate number of column inches and amount of air time dedicated to airing the fears of Israel and its supporters in the West.


Of course, there have been notable exceptions, but they are few and far in between. Robert Fisk is probably the most prominent western correspondent in the Middle East. From his base in Beirut he has reported on all of the region’s defining events, including the Lebanese civil war, the Israeli invasions and occupation of that country, as well as the Gulf Wars. Fisk believes that journalists must "challenge authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take us to war."24 Like the Israeli journalist Amira Hass, he believes that, "There is a misconception that journalists can be objective... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centres of power."25

Though nowhere near what is required, there has been a noticeable shift taking place in the coverage of certain issues. The Washington Post and New York Times have been consistent in their criticism of the military regime in Egypt, for example. In March, the editorial board of the Washington Post called for US President Barack Obama not to “reward” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi for his violations against Egyptians, their freedom and economic and social lives.


The New York Times echoed this. “Mr. Obama has been willing to challenge longstanding assumptions and conventions about Washington’s relations with

Middle East nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia. But he has been insufficiently critical of Egypt. Over the next few months, the president should start planning for the possibility of a break in the alliance with Egypt. That scenario appears increasingly necessary, barring a dramatic change of course by Mr Sisi.”


In Britain, the former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell emerged in the late 1990s as a leading advocate of what is called the “journalism of attachment”. It is an approach to reporting born out of the war in former Yugoslavia, where Bell was stationed for the corporation. He defines journalism of attachment as a journalism which recognises the media as part of this world. It should be “aware of its responsibilities… will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor.”26 He argues that journalists should record the human and emotional costs of war rather than acting as “transmission vehicles” for governmental or military sources. On the contrary, asserts Bell, reporters cannot remain detached or neutral in the face of evils like genocide, but must side with the victims. He believes that journalists are not robots but human beings who have emotions and cannot be detached from human suffering and anguish. Journalists, he insists, must therefore embrace their emotional attachment to what they are witnessing.


For many decades past, western reporting on the Middle East has been dominated by media corporations; businesses that very often focused on eye-catching headlines and soundbites for profit. Context and detailed information about news stories has for the most part often been overlooked as a result. Moreover, in the name of “objectivity” and “balance”, they have allowed themselves to become detached from the realities on the ground and the people of the region. Ultimately, their failure to embrace the widespread human suffering has made many of their fellow human beings appear to be irrelevant.


Meanwhile, new actors have emerged on the scene, using all the latest technology at their disposal to inform and shape public opinion. The pioneering work done by Al Jazeera media network over the past two decades has spearheaded the mass circulation of news and information. “The breaking of the information blockade by satellite TV,” explains Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al Jazeera, “has been hugely strengthened by the spread of new technologies.”27 Further, despite the best efforts of regional states to censor news, young people across the Middle East have taken full advantage of the opportunities for news-gathering and dissemination provided by the internet, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media.


One consequence is that while people in the Middle East have given up on the perspectives of the Western media, their counterparts in the West are also turning to alternative media sources for a better understanding and appreciation of issues. Falling newspaper sales in the US and Britain have reduced the ability of the corporate media to influence public opinion. An example of the corporate media’s waning influence at home was demonstrated in 2015 when the British media failed to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from being elected leader of the Labour Party. Despite the efforts to besmirch his character with accusations of anti-Semitism and association with “terrorist sympathisers”, Mr Corbyn received 60 per cent of the votes, more than that given to Tony Blair in 1994.


At the same time, alternative media websites such as the Middle East Monitor, Middle East Eye and Electronic Intifada are becoming increasingly popular. Their reporting and analyses have helped to advance the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel in the Global South as well as the North.


In the end, Western journalists are not required to become campaigners for or against any particular cause. At the very least, though, they should carry a moral duty to tell the truth and demonstrate an element of concern for human suffering. In an area as volatile as the Middle East, reporters can ill-afford the luxury of “bystander journalism” or to become instruments in the hands of oppressors and people who profit from conflict and war.









END NOTES


1.      . M. Chang, Brainwashed for War Programmed to Kill (Thinkers Library: Kuala Lumper, 2006), p.249

2.      . D. Ryan, BRICS not Content to Leave West with Mass Media Monopoly, RT.com, https://www.rt.com, 24 December, 2015

3.      . C. Mullin, “Israel the Biggest Threat to World Peace” in D. Abdullah & I. Hewitt (eds) The Battle for Public Opinion in Europe (MEMO Publishers: London, 2012), p. 121

4.      . E. Herman, “The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective”, Propaganda, Politics, Power, Vol.1, 2003, p.1

5.      . D. Edwards & D. Cromwell, Guardians of Power, Pluto Press: London, 2006, p.1

6.      . Chang, op.cit., p. 249

7.      . R. Keeble, “Hacks and Spooks – Close Encounters of a Strange Kind” in J. Klaehn (ed) The Political Economy of Media and Power (Peter Lang Publishing Inc.: Oxford, 2010), p.104
8.      D. Edwards & D. Cromwell, Newspeak in the 21st Century (Pluto Press: London, 2009), p.29
9.      . Keeble, op.cit, p.90

10.  . Ibid., p.97

11.  . Ibid.

12.  . Ibid., p.101

13.  . Edwards & Cromwell, Newspeak, op.cit., p.28

14.  . M. Wells, “Embedded Reporters ‘Sanitised’ Iraq War” in the Guardian.com, 6 November, 2003

15.  . R. Fisk, “Journalism and ‘the Words of Power” in Aljazeera.com, 25 May, 2010

16.  . R. Baroud, “Racism Plagues Western Media Coverage” in Counterpunch.org, 14 July, 2006

17.  . M. Peppe, “Israeli Cease Fire Violations and Media Propaganda” in Counterpunch.org, 5 November, 2014
18.  . Ibid.

19.  . J. Abourezk, “The American Press and the Middle East” in Counterpunch.org, 18 May 2012
  1. Edwards & Cromwell, op.cit., pp.41-2
21.  . Baroud, op.cit

22.  . S. Rose, “Death to the Infidels!’ Why it’s Time to Fix Hollywood’s Problem with Muslims” in the
  1. Guardian.com, 8 March, 2016
24.  . Ibid.

25.  . O. Miles’ review of R. Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation in the Guardian.com, 19 November,2005
26.  . Ibid.

27.  . M. Bell, In Harm’s Way, Penguin Books Ltd.: London, 1996), p.16


28.  . W. Khanfar, “Al-Jazeera is Helping to Break the Silence” in Theguardian.com, 7 February, 2011