News
As Propaganda For The Victor
By George Monbiot
13July 2004
The Guardian
When
starving people find food, they don't worry too much about the ingredients.
Michael Moore's film is crude and sometimes patronising. He puts words
into people's mouths. He finishes their sentences for them. At times
he is funny and moving, at others clumsy and incoherent. But I was shaken
by it, and I applauded at the end. For Fahrenheit 9/11 asks the questions
that should have been asked every day for the past four years. The success
of his film testifies to the rest of the media's failure.
Tomorrow the Butler report will reopen the debate about who was to blame
for the lies with which we went to war - the government or the intelligence
agencies. One thing the news networks will not be discussing is the
culpability of the news networks. After this inquiry, we will need another
one, whose purpose is to discover why journalists help governments to
lie to the people.
I don't need to
discuss the failings of the US news networks. Fox and NBC have often
boasted about their loyalty to Bush's government. Owned by rightwing
businessmen, they could reasonably be described as components of the
military-industrial complex. But the failures of the British media,
in particular the BBC, require more explanation. Studies by the Cardiff
School of Journalism and the Glasgow University Media Group suggest
there is a serious and systematic bias among British broadcasters in
favour of the government and its allies.
The Cardiff study,
for example, shows that 86% of the broadcast news reports that mentioned
weapons of mass destruction during the invasion of Iraq "suggested
Iraq had such weapons", while "only 14% raised doubts about
their existence or possible use". The claim by British and US forces
that Iraq had fired illegal Scud missiles into Kuwait was reported 27
times on British news programmes. It was questioned on just four occasions:
once by Sky and three times by Channel 4 News. The BBC even managed
to embellish the story: its correspondent Ben Brown suggested that the
non-existent Scuds might have been loaded with chemical or biological
warheads. Both the BBC (Ben Brown again) and ITN reported that British
commanders had "confirmed" the phantom uprising in Basra on
March 25. Though there was no evidence to support either position, there
were twice as many reports claiming that the Iraqi people favoured the
invasion as reports claiming that they opposed it. "Overall, considerably
more time was given to the original [untrue] stories than to any subsequent
retractions," the researchers found.
The Glasgow study shows that BBC and ITN news reports are biased in
favour of Israel and against the Palestinians. Almost three times as
much coverage is given to each Israeli death as to each Palestinian
death. Killings by Palestinians are routinely described as "atrocities"
and "murders", while Palestinians deliberately shot by Israeli
soldiers have been reported as "caught in the crossfire".
In the period the researchers studied, Israeli spokespeople were given
twice as much time to speak as Palestinians. Both BBC and ITN reports
have described the West Bank as part of Israel. By failing to explain
that the Palestinians are living under military occupation, following
the illegal seizure of their land, correspondents routinely reduce the
conflict to an inexplicable "cycle of violence". Even this
cycle is presented as being driven by the Palestinians: the Israelis
are reported as "responding" or "retaliating" to
Palestinian attacks; violence by the Palestinians is seldom explained
as a response to attacks by Israelis. Both networks regularly claim
that the US government is seeking peace in the region (ITN has described
it as "even-handed") while omitting to mention that it is
supplying some $3bn a year of military aid to Israel.
The BBC emerges
very badly from these studies. The Cardiff report shows that it used
US and British government sources more often than the other broadcasting
networks, and used independent sources, such as the Red Cross, less
often than the others. It gave the least coverage to Iraqi casualties,
and was the least likely to report Iraqi unhappiness about the invasion.
A separate study by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of news networks
in five different countries showed that the BBC offered the least airtime
of any broadcaster to opponents of the war: just 2% of its coverage.
(Even ABC news in the United States gave them 7%). Channel 4 News, by
contrast, does well: it seems to be the only British network that has
sought to provide a balanced account of these conflicts.
Of course, this
problem is not confined to the broadcasters, or, for that matter, the
rightwing press. On Sunday the Guardian's sister paper, the Observer,
asked: "Why was the prime minister's foreword [to the dodgy dossier]
so unequivocal about the threat Saddam Hussein posed? Why was inconclusive
evidence presented as fact?" The same questions should be asked
of the Observer, which took the government's part in the invasion, and
published a number of incorrect reports - which it has yet to retract
- about weapons of mass destruction and the links between Saddam and
al-Qaida.
So why does this
happen? Why do broadcasters (and newspapers) that have a reputation
for balance, impartiality and even liberal bias side with the powerful?
There appear to be several reasons. One of them is that they assume
- rightly or wrongly - that the audience doesn't want complexity. One
BBC journalist told the Glasgow team that he had been instructed not
to provide "explainers": what the editors wanted was "all
bang-bang stuff". Analytical and investigative reporting has given
way to breathless descriptions of troop movements and military technology.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this leaves the audience without the faintest
idea of what's happening: in one of the groups of viewers the researchers
interviewed, the people who said that the occupied territories had been
occupied by the Israelis were outnumbered by those who believed they
had been occupied by the Palestinians. Another is that, as in all professions,
you are rewarded for greasing up to power. The people who are favoured
with special information are those who have ingratiated themselves with
the government. This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our
most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most
credulous sycophants.
While you are rewarded
for flattery, you are punished for courage. The US, British and Israeli
governments can make life very difficult for media organisations that
upset them, as the BBC found during the Gilligan affair. The Palestinians
and the people of Iraq have much less lobbying power. The media are
terrified of upsetting the Israeli government, for fear of being branded
anti-semitic. Powerful governments can call on the rightwing press for
support. Rupert Murdoch, who has a commercial interest in the destruction
of the BBC, is always happy to oblige.
When most of our
journalists fail us, it's hardly surprising that the few who are brave
enough to expose the lies of the powerful become heroes, even if their
work is pretty coarse. When a scruffy comedian from Michigan can bring
us closer to the truth than the BBC, it's time for a serious examination
of why news has become the propaganda of the victor.
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