The media's war PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 30 November 1999 00:00

In the last few weeks before the Northern Alliance overran much of Taleban-controlled Afghanistan, a very significant shift in attitudes towards the war against Afghanistan was becoming clear.
 
 
"This War is a Fraud"
Opinion polls showed almost half of those questioned already opposed to sending troops, just weeks into the campaign. Among those surveyed, 65% of Alliance voters were against giving military support to the US. At the Alliance National Conference in South Auckland on 10 November, a motion from the floor directing the Alliance Caucus to withdraw its support was only narrowly defeated.
 
"This war is a fraud" declared one speaker, setting the tone for many others.
 
This sentiment is now starting to make itself heard in the mainstream media. On 29 October Britain's mass circulation Mirror tabloid showed a graphic photo of Afghan victims of American bombing on its front page. "The irresponsibility of this conflict is breathtaking. It is not about terrorism British forces are little more than mercenaries for the hidden agenda of US imperial ambitions," said the Mirror, introducing an article by left-wing journalist John Pilger.
 
Here the Evening Post ran a prominent front page article on 6 November with the headline "War Fervour Fading," outlining fears that Afghanistan was rapidly turning into another Vietnam "quagmire."
 
While we shouldn't exaggerate the level of active opposition - as opposed to the growing but still largely passive unease - the fact that such strong opposition is being heard in the mainstream press is certainly significant. Just compare it to, say, the Gulf War ten years ago.
 
Which brings us to an important question: How could anyone support the war? For most of those in the anti-war movement, it must seem obvious - bombing the shit out of one of the poorest countries in the world to make everyone love the US and stop further terrorist attacks? Yeah, right!
 
 
The media's war
From the moment the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, most media outlets effectively surrendered editorial control to the US State Department. In what was quickly dubbed "the ideal news story" - a visually stunning, hugely emotional drama unfolding in real time - the usual pretence at objectivity went out the window as montages of the attacks were endlessly replayed over syrupy background music.
 
Many "liberal" defenders of press freedom quickly called on the media to censor themselves. These included the NZ Herald, which, in an extraordinary editorial on 12 October, "When All the Facts Can be too Costly," called on the media to censor "enemy" statements:
 

Informing the public must not entail crossing an invisible boundary which jeopardises the lives of the media's own countrymen and women. Nor must the media allow themselves to be used by enemies whose aim is to destroy its country and its people When lives are at risk, each medium will be guided by its conscience.

 
Obvious, isn't it - in order to defend freedom we must limit it as much as possible.
 
Meanwhile, Britain's Guardian reported that CNN has ordered its reporters to end every report from Afghanistan with a reminder that the Taleban regime harbours terrorists who supported the 11 September attacks on the US. Apparently, the network feels it would be "perverse to focus too much attention on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan." Newsreaders on the US service are required to end each report with a formula such as:
 

We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this, that the Taleban regime in Afghanistan continues to harbour terrorists who have praised the September 11 attacks that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US.

 
Other similar formulas may be used, to avoid sounding too repetitive. The CNN order concludes, "Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time."
 
Whilst some dissenting voices are increasingly heard, Op-Ed pieces like Auckland University academic Stephen Hoadley's latest effort, Civilisation Depending On War Against the Dark Side, still dominate.
 
 
Media to blame?
Against such a barrage it's very tempting to blame support for the war on an all-powerful media effectively brainwashing people. The reality is more complex.
 
The mainstream media is mainstream precisely because it reflects how the world seems to ordinary people most of the time. The coverage has used two arguments over and over again. On the one hand, a terrible and inexplicable catastrophe has taken place. On the other, Important People are going to take care of it for us.
 
This pretty much accords with everyday reality for most of us. We know instinctively how little control we have over our lives. Major disasters seem to have nothing to do with folks like us.
 
The problem with the many liberal-left critics who have taken courageous and principled stands against the war is that they do tend to see the media as all-powerful. But this pessimism does not acknowledge the quite unprecedented scale of unease about the war at such an early stage. Vietnam, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo - have all left deep misgivings amongst many people who are now moving towards overt opposition to the war.
 
A great deal of course depends on what actually happens in Afghanistan. If the section of the American ruling class around Colin Powell predominates, the war will end as soon as possible and it is unlikely that anything more than the beginnings of an anti-war movement will be seen.
 
If, on the other hand, a prolonged and bloody ground war eventuates, and the US spreads the war to other countries such as Iraq, then the situation will be dramatically different.
 
The growing number of people coming into the anti-war movement will be forced to confront a whole host of issues - from the media's lies to the nature of imperialism and US power and their whole world view. The fact that this war is already less popular at this stage then any other conflict in recent history should give us all hope.
 
Thanks to Socialist Alternative magazine for some ideas about the media's role.
 
 
 
 
 
Isn't it great being conservative!
 
When two thugs from "SOS" (Save Our Squadrons - a group set up to oppose scrapping the Air Force's fighter jets) violently attacked a couple of peace demonstrators standing quietly on the pavement to the side of the SOS march, the media coverage wasn't quite what you might have expected.
 
Where even the slightest commotion on a student march or picket line leads to hysterical media rants about violence, numerous photos and TV coverage clearly showing Aaron Barlow and Gareth Hughes being violently assaulted produced no similar rush of blood to journalists' heads.
 
Suddenly becoming "objective" and "neutral," TVNZ described the two protesters as having "met" the SOS people. The Evening Post could barely contain itself:
 

Marchers to Parliament yesterday were in no mood for sarcasm as two students found out. "Some maladjusted child has some peculiar views of his own and just wants to be in the parade."

 
the Post gleefully reported one of the attackers as saying.
 
Anyway, surely the police, with ample video evidence of the attack, did something?
 
Surely they did. Aaron and Gareth were taken away for questioning.
 
SOS has as its spokesperson right-wing (and soon to be unemployed) academic David Dickens. Dickens' partner shares a medical practice with Mary English, wife of the new National Party leader. Socialist Review hastens to assure its readers that this is all purely coincidental.
 
Really.
 
 
 
 
 
"Voice of the Left"?
 
War certainly brings out people's (not to mention political parties) true colours. Just listen, for instance, to "left-wing" commentator Chris Trotter. This is what he had to say in his weekly syndicated column, From the Left, on 12 October:
 
Those who can supply the best reasons for going to war win the right to direct and shape its outcomes
...
I joined a "peace march" up Auckland's Queen Street.
"Justice - Not Revenge" declared the bright red banner of the Alliance. Unfortunately, this promising slogan was overshadowed by the seething animosities of unreconstructed Maoists and Trotskyists - all of whose watches appeared to have stopped in 1968.
Their banners and placards dripped with hatred for the United States and all its works.
"Stop America's War" yelled a dozen brown T-shirts. America's war? Nearly 6,000 innocent New Yorkers lives' brutally snuffed out in an unparalled act of terrorist aggression and, suddenly, somehow, this is America's war?
In the end I found the words I was seeking in the mouth of prime minister Tony Blair.
The Labour leader's solidarity encompassed more than Americans - reaching out to "the starving, the wretched, the dispossesed they too are our cause."
...
Until I hear more compassionate and persuasive words, I am - and will remain - under Tony Blair's spell.
 
So spoke the "voice of the left."
 
 
 
 
 
Censorship In Your Local Paper...
 
Per Hal's order, DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the US war on Afghanistan.
Our sister paper in Fort Walton Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails and the like.
Also per Hal's order, DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the US war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT. The only exception is if the US hits an orphanage, school or similar facility and kills scores or hundreds of children. See me if there are any special situations.
Failure to follow any of these or other standing rules could put your job in jeopardy.
ENDS
- Panama City (Florida) News Herald chief copy editor Ray Glenn's memo to staff.
 
 
 
 
 
Attack on civil liberties
 
"Terror Threat in Capital: Bodybuilders Unfazed by Security Scare" screamed the headline in the Post. Apparently, a "Muslim group" had threatened competitors at a bodybuilding contest in the capital and so a massive security operation swung into place.
 
Farcical "anti-terrorist" measures have been put in place since 11 September, from the army deployed at airports and the threat of armed goons on domestic flights, to the absurd sight of a rusty old Armourguard caravan parked outside Parliament (presumably to deter any stray 767s from hitting the building?), not to mention the almost unbelievable sight of the Eltham post office being treated as a major crime scene after the arrival of a suspicious letter from that well-known Al Qaeda base Palmerston North.
 
The Taleban, by the way, don't actually know where NZ is.
 
"Are you an Australian?" the Taleban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef's puzzled interpreter asked Seth Robson, a Press reporter in Islamabad.
 
"NZ is near Australia," he explained, much to the amusement of his Australian colleagues. Zaeef, perhaps fazed by his lack of geographic knowledge, declined to add Godzone to the list of Jihad-threatened states.
 
All this would be highly comical if it weren't for the massive attack on civil liberties that the "War on Terrorism" is being used as a cover for. Public outrage has forced the Labour-Alliance Coalition to delay draconian new laws. Public submissions were to be banned, and only a small number of individuals and groups invited to make contributions.
 
The measures proposed include sweeping new powers to freeze bank accounts, the power to designate organisations as terrorist and make it a criminal offence to recruit anyone to those organisations. The "Terrorism (Bombing and Finance) Bill" could make unions and protest groups into "terrorists" by broadening the definition of terrorism to include economic and property damage. Strikers, for instance, could become "terrorists" for harming the economy.
 
The bill defines terrorism as any act designed to intimidate or compel the population or government of any country to act in a certain way for the purpose of advancing an ideological, political or religious cause.