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When a country
goes to war it is beneficial and even necessary for the people of the country to support the cause. The United States learned this when during the Vietnam war, most
of the country opposed it. But what caused such dissent? Part of the reason had to do with the media. When the evening
news shows uncensored footage from the battlefield; burning bodies, dying women and children, villages being set ablaze, it
is likely to be followed by opposition. The U.S. learned a valuable lesson from the war; The media has a huge influence on
public opinion.
So how does one get a
nation to support a war? There are two ways; either present a one sided story,
or do not present a story at all, and hide facts. After September 11th,
and before the war in Iraq started, the U.S. had to get the support of the people first.
It was the media’s task to do this. The week before and the week
after February 5, 2003, the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting conducted a study of the experts who appeared
on the major news shows. The study showed that out of almost 400 sources, only
three were affiliated with anti-war activism (Goodman 8). The “experts”
were limited to retired generals, terrorist experts, congressmen who supported the war, and others (Belloc 18). What the media rarely (or did not) report was that six percent of Americans supported more time for diplomacy
and inspections in Iraq. Or how about the fact that “in no European country was the support for a unilateral war more than
11%. The media downplayed the fact that on February 15, at least ten million
people around the world protested the war in Iraq
(Barsamian 28). Remember what most of the news channels covered after the 9/11
tragedy; the families of the victims killed in the attack? These people would
be on television telling their story, and many had messages such as “our grief is not a cry for war.” But when they wanted to tell the second part, the news would cut them off and go to a terrorism expert
(Goodman 19-21). But the cover-ups do not stop there, they go back even further. Back before the gulf war, Saddam Hussein was a close asset to Washington D.C. There
was money to be made from Iraq. Between 1985 and 1900, the U.S.
government approved the sale of $1.5 billion worth of high technology. Among
the products sold were helicopters (later used on Kurdish civilians) and $1.5 million worth of pesticides (despite the concerns
that they could later be used as chemical warfare agents). In 1989, these facts
were mentioned only 20 times in the media. But in March 2003, the fact that Saddam
Hussein had and used chemical weapons on the Kurds was used to justify the war, rarely mentioning who sold the weapons to
Iraq (Goodman 28-33). Before the Gulf War, the National Security Council offered a diplomatic choice to Iraq
(after it had invaded Kuwait). The offer called for total Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait,
and agreements on other linked issues, including Israel’s illegal
occupation of southern Lebanon. The U.S. refused to
consider these other issues, but the media suppressed the facts, only advertising Bush’s high principles. Months before Iraq invaded Kuwait,
the U.S. rejected another offer (this time by Iraq itself). Iraq proposed to destroy all chemical and biological weapons if other countries, including
Israel, also destroyed their weapons (Chomsky
63-65). Why did the U.S.
reject these proposals? Is it because of what the media fails to mention time
and time again, that the U.S. and Israel have close ties? Both in 1991
and 2003 have we gone to war; mostly due to the administration at the time, but also because of the failure of the media to
tell the whole truth.
After the beating of
the war drums, the media then finds ways to keep support for the war. The most
common way to do this is to hide the “real” war footage, and only present the “Hollywood”
version; the edited version. Recently, on November 8, 2004, the New York Times
Reported:
“In
April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage,
fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties forced the Americans to withdraw. American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently
how many civilians have been killed.”
The head of
Fallujah’s hospital, Dr. Rafie al Issawi, has consistently maintained that more than 600 people were killed in the initial
siege of Fallujah in April 2004 (a figure that rose to more than 800 as the siege was lifted).
Furthermore, an Associated Press tally discovered that in Fallujah, “two football fields were turned into cemeteries…
At one of the fields, an AP reporter was told by volunteer gravediggers on April 11 that more than 300 people had been buried
there.” An even lower estimate was given by the Health Ministry, all these
contrary to the Time’s assertion that the large civilian casualties are “unconfirmed” (New York Times). The news network Al Jazeera has been criticized
for its reports from the ground describing hundreds of civilian killed at the hands of U.S. forces (CNN). But why should
Al Jazeera be criticized if the American media is doing the same thing, only showing it from their side? Turn on the news and one can see a report about Iraqi insurgents blowing up vehicles or beheading innocent
people. This only adds to the sense of frustration and anger by Americans toward
Iraq.
The same argument is used against Al Jazeera, except saying that showing Iraqis getting killed adds to the anger they
have towards the U.S. And who can forget Bush’s ban on any filming of flag draped caskets returning from Iraq (Goodman 9)?
Why is it that the American
media is so biased in their reporting? As Amy Goodman puts it, “The lack
of diversity behind the news helps explain the lack of diversity in the news.” The lack of diversity behind the news refers to the fact that the number of corporations controlling almost
all of America’s newspapers, magazines,
TV and radio stations, is a mere six; Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation
(owns Fox News), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Time), Disney (ABC, ESPN), Viacom (CBS, MTV),
and Bertelsmann (Random House) (Belloc 11). All this is not to say that hope
is lost though. There are other ways of getting news and information. In The Free Press, Hilair Belloc suggests looking into a variety of sources (extreme left wing,
extreme right wing, anarchist, etc…) and drawing conclusions from all of them, without necessarily subscribing to their
ideologies. The internet, with its wide array of voices, is a very good source
to get information from. Independent media are finding victories in alternative
networks like Free Speech TV (FSTV), or programs like Democracy Now! Alternative
Radio or listener sponsored Pacifica Radio are additions to anti-corporate media. And
the dissent is spreading into films, with movies like The Corporation or Fahrenheit 9/11.
No, all hope is not lost. It is clear from these examples that more and
more people are seeking alternative sources of information, and telling corporate owned mainstream media that they are fed
up with their biased reporting.
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