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When
the US Viceroy to Iraq Paul Bremmer announced to the
assembled Baghdad press core that Saddam Hussien had
been captured, a loud cheer went up from the prime
of the world’s media, followed by a round of
hearty and thunderous applause. Whilst I'm sure some
of those journalists there must have felt uncomfortable
with this, as far as I'm aware none thought to say
so in their TV/Radio newscasts or in articles they
wrote for the following day's newspapers, nor incidentally
did they appear to challenge with any vigour Bremmer's
account of the capture of Saddam, which in the main
they quoted word for word...
That
they did not do so, coupled with the cheers and applause
on Bremmer’s announcement of Saddams capture,
displays the depths to which the reporting of the
Iraqi occupation and the resistance to it has sunk.
The US/British occupation authorities and their Governments
back home, almost without exception set the agenda
as far as reporting from inside Iraq is concerned.
It is not an exaggeration to say there are few instances
of independent reporting coming out of Iraq. The honourable
exceptions are Robert Fisk of the London Independent
and one or two others. Whilst home based western journalists
commentate on the situation within Iraq, they mainly
do so from the perspective of how it affects political
developments within the USA and UK; in the U.S., how
continued resistance will affect the forthcoming Presidential
campaign and Bush's chance of a second term as President
and in the UK, how the failure to find weapons of
mass destruction and the lies Tony Blair told in the
run up to war will affect his position as Prime Minister.
The
manner in which combat situations between the Iraqi
resistance and US forces are reported is shameful.
Reporting the US armed forces press officers without
question is the norm. Take this report from AP, which
was syndicated around the world in countless newspapers:
"By
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq- An American soldier died in a rebel
ambush and two others were killed in bomb explosions
Friday, one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military
since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein.
Two of the deaths occurred in Baqouba, a centre
of guerrilla activity northeast of Baghdad in a
Sunni Muslim area that served as a power base for
Saddam, the former Iraqi dictator. U.S. forces,
which have a base in the town, often conduct raids
and arrest suspected insurgents. One of the U.S.
soldiers killed Friday was in a U.S. convoy that
came under attack, said Capt. Jefferson Wolfe of
the Army's 4th Infantry Division. Another soldier
was injured, but troops fired back, killing two
attackers, he said.
In a separate incident in the same area, a soldier
tried to defuse a homemade bomb, but it blew up
and killed him, Wolfe said. Such bombs are a favoured
weapon of rebels, who leave them on roadsides and
detonate them as military convoys pass. The guerrillas
used that tactic Friday in Balad, north of Baghdad,
setting off a bomb that killed one soldier, the
U.S. military said.
In the capital, a car exploded on the road to the
airport, killing its two occupants. U.S. soldiers
at the scene said they suspected the two men were
bombers whose bomb exploded prematurely. Further
north, three soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st
Airborne Division were wounded in an ambush in Mosul
when their convoy came under small arms fire, said
Maj. Trey Cate, the division spokesman. The soldiers,
who were searching the city's streets for bombs,
returned fire but did not catch their attackers,
Cate said. Witnesses claimed a taxi driver was killed
in the firefight, but the spokesman could not confirm
the report. On Thursday, Iraqi insurgents shelled
an American base in Baqouba, 30 miles northeast
of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers, the military
said. Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack,
Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division
said. A total of 11 U.S. soldiers have died from
hostile action since Monday."
What
can we make of such reporting, and more importantly
what does it tell the reader or viewer about the current
situation within Iraq? To be blunt, very little is
the answer to the second question. Almost the only
source of information is clearly, as I said above,
the occupying US Forces. The report is totally one
sided hardly worthy of an apprentice journalist court
reporting for his local paper. The above is written
as a US army press officer briefed the journalist.
No attempt has been made to verify the facts or to
check on Iraqi casualties. If we are to believe the
reports it is as if the US soldiers come under attack,
take incoming fire, hardly return fire, and pick up
their dead and injured comrades from where they fell
and retreat from the scene. Leaving behind at most
a dead Iraqi cabbie. Now this would be bad enough
if this was an odd report that slipped through a careless
sub editor back home, but this type of tripe is broadcast
and published within the world’s electronic and
printed media daily.
Long
ago seems the days when the US army allowed the embedding
of journalists with their combat troops. This was
possible during the invasion when large-scale battle
groups were the order of the day, thus making any
embedded reporters output controllable. Today the
majority of soldering in the front line is done at
platoon level, seek and destroy operations with bayonets
fixed. The last thing the US Brass wants is for journalists
to see US troops getting their hands dirty, dragging
Iraqi women and children out of their beds at night,
their homes trashed in search of Saddam's phantom
army, whilst their menfolk are blindfolded, beaten
and cuffed as a substitute for it. This war is turning
out more like the Falls Road Curfew of the early 1970s
than the Mekong Delta. It was whilst following British
troops engaged in these type of urban night operations
in the north of Ireland that reporters like Bob Fisk
cut their teeth and with their reporting from the
north of Ireland first exposed the US/UK public to
the brutalities of the British Army's role there.
Increasingly the hopelessness of fighting such a war
became obvious to the general public in the US and
UK; sadly it was decades before the political establishments
within those countries realised this truth.
Such
wars cannot be won without tarnishing the democratic
ideals that the West's nations are based on. Thus
to repeat the mistakes of the British in Ireland and
the US in Vietnam cannot but diminish both countries
and the freedoms their people enjoy. Whilst the situation
in Iraq is not identical to the aforementioned conflicts,
the only viable outcome is. That is a political settlement
that brings justice to the Iraqi people and an end
to the occupation. The sooner the better.
To
date this absence of reporters working alongside combat
troops on the ground and more importantly living amongst
the Iraqi people whilst they go about their daily
tasks has restricted what the general public know
about the true situation within Iraq… Whilst
this is denied there can be no understanding on the
part of the media as to how the occupation affects
the Iraqis in their daily lives, nor any real assessment
of how widespread is the resistance to the US/UK occupation.
If the reporters on the ground have so little understanding
of what is going on within Iraq, how can we, their
readers and viewers, form an informed opinion of what
is taking place?
Journalists
on the advice of the occupation authority live in
enclosed areas, protected from 'the enemy' by the
forces of occupation, the real enemy of freedom of
information. Although the journalists seem blissfully
unaware of it when they post from the Baghdad Sheraton
Hotel, etc., they are living in today's equivalent
of the protected villages the British first crowded
the Kenyan peasants into during the Mau Mau rising
against the British occupation of Kenya. This tactic
by forces of occupation soon became common currency
and was later copied by the US army in South Vietnam.
All for the peasants' own good of cause, however as
with the media today in Iraq, in reality it was designed
to keep the peasants at a distance from those doing
the actual resisting. It is time the media broke free
from their minders from the occupation administration
in Iraq and starting serving their communities in
an open, honest, democratic way. For without a Free
Press no society can be free and democratic…
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