Normalizing the Unthinkable
John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on
the failure of the world’s press
By Sophie McNeill
06/03/06 "Information
Clearing House" -- -- The late journalist Edward R. Murrow might
well have been rolling in his grave on April 21. That’s because
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a lecture that day in
Washington, DC to journalists at the Department of State’s
official Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists.
For the Bush administration to use the memory of a person who
stood up to government propaganda is ironic to say the least.
Secretary Rice told the assembled journalists that “without a
free press to report on the activities of government, to ask
questions of officials, to be a place where citizens can express
themselves, democracy simply couldn’t work.”
One week earlier in New York City, Columbia University hosted a
panel on the state of the world’s media that would have been
more in Murrow’s style than the State Department-run symposium.
Reporter and filmmaker John Pilger, British Middle East
correspondent for the Independent Robert Fisk, freelance
reporter Charlie Glass, and investigative journalist for the New
Yorker Seymour Hersh appeared together at this April 14 event.
Before the afternoon panel began, I met up with John Pilger at
his hotel. He’d just flown in from London and was only in New
York for the panel before flying to Caracas, Venezuela the next
day. A journalist for over 30 years, Pilger has reported from
Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Palestine, and Iraq—to name a few
of the countries to which his investigative reporting and
filmmaking had taken him.
Pilger told me that he’d never been as concerned about the state
of the media as he was today. “I think there’s a lot of reasons
to be very concerned about the information or the lack of
information that we get. There’s never been such an interest,
more than an interest, almost an obsession, in controlling what
journalists have to say.”
Despite the fact that the war in Iraq is reported daily in most
U.S. newspapers and networks around the world, Pilger didn’t
think the world’s press accurately conveyed the reality of life
for Iraqi civilians. “We get the illusion that we are seeing
what might be happening in Iraq. But what we’re getting is a
massive censorship by omission; so much is being left out,” he
said. “We have a situation in Iraq where well over 100,000
civilians have been killed and we have virtually no pictures.
The control of that by the Pentagon has been quite brilliant.
And as a result we have no idea of the extent of civilians
suffering in that country.”
I asked Pilger what the untold story of Iraq was that’s just not
getting through. “Well, the untold story of Iraq should be
obvious,” Pilger said. “But it never is. The untold story of
Vietnam was that it was an invasion and that huge numbers of
civilians were killed. And in effect it was a war against
civilians and that was never told and that’s exactly true of
Iraq.”
With the majority of the world’s press holed up behind 4.5 miles
of concrete barrier in the green zone, it seems impossible for
the standard of reporting to improve anytime in the near future.
I asked Pilger if he blamed journalists for not wanting to put
their lives at risk? “No, I can’t,” he said. “But I don’t see
the point of being in the green zone. I don’t see the point of
wearing a flak jacket and standing in a hotel in a fortress
guarded by an invader.
“But there have been journalists—and others—who have actually
gone with the insurgents; who have reported about them. One of
them, for instance, is a young woman named Jo Wilding, a British
human rights worker. She was in Fallujah all through that first
attack in 2004. Jo Wilding’s dispatches were some of the most
extraordinary I’ve read, but they were never published
anywhere.”
Pilger said the mainstream press needs to get over its hang up
of “our man in Baghdad” and prioritize whatever information can
be obtained by whoever is brave enough or has the best contacts.
“There are sources of information for what is happening inside
Iraq. Most of them are on the web. I think those who give a damn
in the mainstream really have to look at those sources and
surrender their prejudice about them and say we need that
reporter’s work because he or she has told us something we can’t
possibly get ourselves. And I think that’s the only way we will
really serve the public.”
We had talked too long and had to quickly jump in a cab to make
it to the panel on time. The hall was packed with university
students, professors, and the public.
Charlie Glass
The event quickly got underway with Charlie Glass as the first
speaker. A former ABC America correspondent in the Middle East,
Glass drew laughs from the crowd when comparing his experience
to the other panelists. “When I began journalism I approached it
in the way a lot of young naïve people do, in that it was a
vocation, a higher calling to tell the truth. My three
colleagues up here have managed to do that throughout their
careers. I tried very hard to do that throughout my career…but I
worked for an American network. It’s not easy,” joked Glass.
Glass spoke about the censorship he had encountered as an
American TV reporter covering the Middle East, referring to a
story he filed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
There had been rumors of Israeli Shin Bath death squads
murdering Lebanese civilians in the South and Glass and his crew
had managed to film the evidence behind these killings. “We
nailed this story. We folded one of the death squads. We got to
the palace where they had assassinated a man half an hour after
he had been killed. We filmed it. We filmed the eyewitness. We
filmed UN soldiers, who had seen the same things, discussing
it,” recalled Glass.
“ABC news didn’t broadcast it. But they won’t tell you they’re
not going to broadcast it because they’re afraid of losing
advertising. They won’t tell you they won’t broadcast it because
they’re afraid of the public reaction. They tell you they just
didn’t have room that night or the next night or the next night.
And that’s just the way it is. That is why very few people in
this country have any idea what’s going on in the Middle East.”
Glass believes this kind of censorship has led to a chasm of
misunderstanding within the U.S. public. “You don’t understand
what’s been going on in Iraq because you’ve been lied to again.
Just like you were in Vietnam. Just like you were in Lebanon and
just like you were in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said.
“Nobody has a clue why things went wrong in Iraq. Well, I’ll
tell you why. They were always going to go wrong in Iraq. It
wasn’t because Bremer screwed up. It wasn’t because the U.S.
pilfered the Iraqi treasury, which is true. It wasn’t because
some soldiers misbehaved and shot some people in cars. It was
because it could never go right in Iraq,” Glass insisted. “The
U.S. was not trusted by any Iraqi because the U.S. history in
Iraq was so reprehensible—from the betrayal of the Kurds in 1975
when Henry Kissinger sold them out and they were massacred in
the tens of thousands by Saddam, from the time they aided Saddam
during the Iran/Iraq war, from the time they betrayed the
Kurdish and Shia rebellions in 1991, from the sanctions regime
that followed.
“Who would trust a power to liberate them who had already
behaved like that? It isn’t a question of what happened after;
it’s a question of what happened before. We had an obligation to
tell what happened before and we didn’t,” Glass said, before
pausing to take a moment. “I’ve lost my vocation. I actually
don’t really like this profession anymore,” Glass said
regrettably.
Robert Fisk
Next to speak was Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk,
arguably the world’s most experienced Western reporter in the
region. Fisk pulled out a copy of the New York Times and spread
it out on the lectern. “This is from this morning’s paper:
Al-Qaeda’s man in Iraq gets encouragement from HQ,” Fisk read
aloud. “An interior minister official said, officials said, the
American military said, the Iraqi government said, some American
officials here observed, and some military officials have said,
two American intelligence officials said, one Pakistani official
said, and I’ve only got to column two,” Fisk exclaimed. “I’ve
always believed that your major newspaper should be called
‘American Officials Say.’ Then you can just scrap all the
reporting and have the Pentagon talking directly.”
Fisk expressed outrage at the semantics of language that occurs
within much of the reporting in the Middle East. “In the
American press the occupied Palestinian territories become the
disputed territories, a colony becomes a settlement or a
neighborhood or an outpost. Here semantically, we are constantly
degrading the reasons for Palestinian anger. Over and over again
the wall becomes a fence. Like the Berlin fence— had it been
built by the Israelis, that’s what it would have been called.
Then for anyone who doesn’t know the real semantics of this
conflict, the Palestinians are generically violent. I mean who
would ever protest over a garden fence or a neighborhood? The
purpose of this kind of journalism is to diminish the real
reasons behind the Middle East conflict.”
Fisk went on to explain why he thinks the manipulation of
language in reporting skews the truth. “We have another phrase
we are introducing now. Have you noticed how these extraordinary
creatures keep popping up in reports from Baghdad? ‘Men in
police uniform’ took part in the kidnapping. ‘Men in police
uniform’ abducted Margaret Hassan. ‘Men in army uniform’
besieged police stations,” Fisk said, somewhat exasperated.
“Now do the reporters writing this garbage actually think there
is a warehouse in Fallujah with eight thousand made to measure
police uniforms for insurgents?” Fisk asked, then answered. “Of
course there aren’t, they are the policemen.”
Fisk’s main criticism was reserved for television coverage of
the conflict. “Television connives at war because it will not
show you the reality. If an Iraqi is lucky enough to die in a
romantic position he will get on the air,” Fisk said. He then
added, “But if he doesn’t have a head on or if he is like most
of the victims, torn to bits, you will not see him.”
Fisk talked of his television colleague’s pictures being
routinely censored by producers and editors back home. “I’ve
heard them say this down the line, ‘It’s pornographic to show
these pictures. We’ve got people at breakfast time; they will be
puking over their cornflakes... We can’t show this.’ My favorite
one is ‘We’ve got to respect the dead.’ We can kill them as much
as we want, but once they’re dead we’ve got to respect them,
right? And so you will be shielded from this war. You will be
shielded from this reality.”
Fisk believes having journalists holed up in the green zone
suits the military forces in Iraq. “The Americans, and to a
lesser extent the British, like it this way. They do not want us
moving around. They do not want us going to the mortuaries and
counting the dead.”
Fisk told of an experience he had when visiting a Baghdad
mortuary in August 2005. “The mortuary officials, against the
law of Iraq, which doesn’t count for much at the moment, let me
see the Ministry of Health computer that American and British
officials have ordered the ministry not to allow Western
journalists access to…which showed that in July alone last year
1,100 Iraqis had died by violence, just in Baghdad.”
Fisk challenged the standard reporting conventions hammered into
journalism student’s heads around the world. “There’s one that
comes up from the journalism school system which is you’ve got
to give equal time to both sides,” explained Fisk. “To which I
say well, if you were reporting the slave trade in the 18th
century, would you give equal time to the slave ship captain?
No. If you’re covering the liberation of a Nazi camp, do you
give equal time to the SS spokesman? No. When I covered a
Palestinian suicide bombing of a restaurant in Israeli west
Jerusalem in August 2001, did I give equal time to the Islamic
jihad spokesman? No. When 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered in
the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, did
I give equal time to the Israeli spokesman, who of course was
representing an army who watched the massacre as its Lebanese
Phalangist allies carried it out? No. Journalists should be on
the side of the victims,” Fisk said.
He closed with a sober warning to viewers and readers closely
following the Iraq war coverage. “We have a real disaster on our
hands because the American project in Iraq is dead and don’t
believe anything anyone else tells you in any newspaper. It is a
catastrophe and every reporter working in Iraq knows it, but
they don’t all tell you that,” Fisk said, pausing. “And that is
our shame.”
John Pilger
John Pilger addressed the audience next by challenging the very
idea that America and its allies are at war. “We are not at war.
Instead, American and British troops are fighting insurrections
in countries where our invasions have caused mayhem and
grief...but you wouldn’t know it. Where are the pictures of
these atrocities?”
Pilger referred to the first wars he covered, Vietnam and
Cambodia, and compared the role of journalists then to today.
“The invasion of Vietnam was deliberate and calculated—as were
policies and strategies that bordered on genocide and were
designed to force millions of people to abandon their homes.
Experimental weapons were used against civilians. All of this
was rarely news. The unspoken task of the reporter in Vietnam,
as it was in Korea, was to normalize the unthinkable. And that
has not changed.”
Pilger went on to explain his reaction to current reporting of
events in Iraq. “The other day, on the third anniversary of the
invasion, a BBC newsreader described the invasion as a
‘miscalculation.’ Not illegal. Not unprovoked. Not based on
lies. But a miscalculation. Thus, the unthinkable is normalized.
By concentrating on military pronouncements. By making it seem
like it is a respectable war, you normalize what is the
unthinkable. And the unthinkable is a war against civilians.
It’s a war that has claimed tens of thousands of people. There
are estimates that put it well over 100,000. When journalists
report it as a respectable geopolitical act and promote the idea
that it was to bring democracy to this country, then they’re
normalizing the unthinkable.”
Pilger turned his attention to the BBC. Generally accepted
worldwide as a reputable and independent source of information,
Pilger rejected this notion outright. “In Britain, where I live,
the BBC, which promotes itself as a sort of nirvana of
objectivity and impartiality and truth, has blood all over its
corporate hands.” Pilger cited a study conducted by the
journalism school of the University College in Cardiff that
found in the lead up to the war, 90 percent of the BBC’s
references to weapons of mass destruction suggested Saddam
Hussein actually possessed them.
Pilger added, “We now know that the BBC and other British media
were used by MI-6, the secret intelligence service. In what they
called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in
his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these
stories were fake. But that’s not the point. The point is that
the role of MI-6 was quite unnecessary because a systematic
media self-censorship produced the same result.”
To Pilger the most significant way journalists are used by
government is in what he calls a “softening up process” before
planned military action. “We soften them up by dehumanizing
them. Currently journalists are softening up Iran, Syria, and
Venezuela,” Pilger said. “A few weeks ago Channel 4 News in
Britain, regarded as a good liberal news service, carried a
major item that might have been broadcast by the State
Department. The reporter presented President Chavez of Venezuela
as a cartoon character, a sinister buffoon whose folksy Latin
way disguised a man, and I quote, ‘in danger of joining a rogues
gallery of dictators and despots—Washington’s latest Latin
nightmare.’
“Rumsfeld was allowed to call Chavez ‘Hitler’ unchallenged.
According to the reporter, Venezuela under Chavez was helping
Iran develop nuclear weapons. No evidence was given for this
bullshit.” He cited a recent report by the media watchdog FAIR,
which found that 95 percent of the 100 media commentaries
surveyed expressed hostility to Chavez, with terms such as
“dictator,” “strongman,” and “demagogue” regularly used in
publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street
Journal. “The softening-up of Venezuela is well advanced in the
United States. So that if or when the Bush administration
launches Operation Bilbao, a contingent plan to overthrow the
democratic government of Venezuela, who will care? We will have
only the media version, another lousy demagogue got what was
coming to him. A triumph of censorship by omission and by
journalism,” he concluded.
Seymour Hersh
The last speaker, Seymour Hersh, had just published his report
on the Bush administration’s secret plans for an attack on Iran,
which he spoke about. “Here we’ve got a situation, which is
really unique in our history. This is a president who is
completely inured to the press. It doesn’t matter what we write
or say. He has got his own vision, whether he’s talking to God
or doing things on behalf of what his father didn’t do or
whatever it is. He has his own messianic view of what to do and
he’s not done,” warned Hersh.
The moderator questioned Hersh about his use of anonymous
sources and the possibility that his Iran story was from a
government plant. “It’s an appropriate question,” he remarked.
“People would say are you part of the process, trying to put
pressure on the Iranians by using psychological warfare and
planting the story? I really wish they had that kind of
cunning…that they would think in a Kissingerian way,” he
laughed. “But the fact is with George Bush, it’s been very
consistent. What you see is what you get.”
“It was not a plant,” Hersh explained. “This [report] came from
people willing to take bullets for us… willing to put their
lives on the line, who understand combat and who are scared to
death about this guy in the White House.” Hersh went on to warn
the audience about what he thought would happen with the Bush
administration and Iran; “Folks, don’t bet against it because
he’s probably going to do it; because somebody up there is
telling him this is the right thing to do.”
Hersh considered the damning words of his colleagues. “Yes, it’s
important to beat up on us. As usual we deserve it. As usual we
failed you totally,” Hersh remarked wearily. “But above and
beyond all that, folks, by my count there are something like
1,011 days left in the reign of King George the Lesser and that
is the bad news. But there is good news. And the good news is
that tomorrow when we wake up there will be one less day.”
To a large round of applause, the afternoon ended. I asked
Pilger his final thoughts. He paused and then replied,
“Journalists, like politicians, like anybody really, should be
called to account for the consequences of their actions.
Journalists have played a critical role in sustaining wars.
Starting them and sustaining them. And we have to face that
discussion. There’s nothing wrong with journalism, it’s a
wonderful privilege, it’s a craft actually, and I’m very proud
to be a journalist. But it’s the way it’s practiced. It’s as if
it has been hijacked by corporatism and we should take it back.”
Sophie McNeill is a freelance video journalist whose work
regularly appears on Australia’s SBS Television “Dateline”
program. She lives in New York.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments -
Click Here For Comment Policy
Are Comments Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us