Telling Lies about Iraq - the record of the mainstream media

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Sunday March 26, 2006 21:15 by Topper

Three years after the invasion of Iraq, the mainstream media has consistently failed to report the truth about Iraq. This article looks at some of the most striking failures, and asks why

The record of the mainstream western media over Iraq has been strikingly poor. Myths and disinformation have been published repeatedly over the past four years, giving a totally false picture of the threat posed by the Iraqi regime before the invasion, and of the reality of life under occupation since 2003. Not only have media outlets got the facts wrong, they have also tended to impose a frame-work of information that distorts the facts even when they are reported accurately.

WMDS, DEAD IRAQIS AND THE TRUE FACE OF "LIBERATION"

The first major source of error, of course, was the question of the legendary WMDs supposedly possessed by Iraq. The New York Times could have been speaking for the media as a whole when it apologised to its readers in the following terms: “Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”(1)

Since 2003, the most striking failure of the media has been its reporting of civilian casualties in Iraq. An authoritative study by the Lancet that suggested 100,000 civilian deaths since the invasion began has been effectively sidelined by the media and excluded from discussion (2) . The Iraq Body Count estimate has generally been preferred, although its compilers have said that “our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position” (3) because it relies on media reports of civilian deaths.

Even if the Iraq Body Count survey is preferred, its findings still indicate that US-led forces have killed four times as many civilians as anti-occupation groups (4). Yet western media coverage has focused heavily on terrorist attacks by “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia”, giving the impression that such attacks are the main threat faced by the Iraqi people.

It is still possible for a pro-war Iraqi to write the following without inspiring hoots of derision: “Critics of the war claim that the liberation of Iraq has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. But this is absolutely false. Far more people are killed by terrorist attacks than were killed in the initial invasion, and multinational forces have worked hard with our democratically-elected government to restore order and give us a secure environment in which to live and ultimately prosper.” (5)

It’s likely that even readers of the Guardian would have found the following statement from an Iraqi politician surprising: “Ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime, abuses and atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians have been a regular, at times daily, occurrence throughout the country, including in Basra. These have been committed by American, British and Iraqi official forces.” (6)

With the reality of the occupation sanitised, the true attitude of the Iraqi people towards foreign troops has also been ignored. Opinion polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of Iraqis want the occupation army to leave: “In a poll commissioned by the British Ministry of Defence, 82% said they were “strongly opposed” to the presence of coalition troops and 67% felt less secure because of the occupation. Crucially, less than 1% believed coalition forces had improved security.” (7) Massive anti-occupation demonstrations have not received any coverage.

ACCOUNTING FOR BIAS

How can we explain this bias? In some cases, there is no mystery at all. Sections of the American media are quite frank about their propaganda role: “Fox and NBC have often boasted about their loyalty to Bush’s government. Owned by right-wing businessmen, they could reasonably be described as components of the military-industrial complex.” (8) It’s fair to see Fox in exactly the same light as Slobodan Milosevic’s broadcasting tool RTS.

This cannot account for the behaviour of other media outlets, however: not everyone is subject to the same tight regimentation as Rupert Murdoch’s battalions. One undoubted factor is the capacity of pro-war elements to generate “flak” whenever the media departs from the accepted script. The Gilligan affair was a spectacular illustration of this. Having made a minor error at the crack of dawn, while reporting a story that was substantially accurate, Andrew Gilligan lost his job – along with the two most senior officials at the BBC.

If a prominent reporter like Gilligan wasn’t safe, and a well-connected political operator like Greg Dyke couldn’t protect himself from the wrath of the Blair government, the message for junior reporters was clear: watch your step, and don’t anger powerful interests. Nobody need fear losing their job for writing a sloppy, poorly-sourced story that the pro-war camp will find congenial.

Another factor is ideology. There is a strong inclination to trust official sources and establishment spokesmen. As David Miller remarks: “They may lie here or there, or they may act in a foolish or misguided way, but to advance the proposition that they are calculating liars, in full consciousness of the outcomes of their policies is beyond the pale.” (9)

The media has a strong material interest in such credulity. As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman put it: “The magnitude of the public-information operations of large government and corporate bureaucracies that constitute the primary news sources is vast and ensures special access to the media … in effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidise the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become “routine” news sources and have privileged access to the gates.” (10)

BURYING THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

This stance leads to a striking historical amnesia. The role played by Britain’s “secret state” in political life had come to light long before the WMD controversy: its role in the Irish conflict and the miners’ strike had been well-documented. But most journalists showed no real awareness of this background. Seamus Milne had written in 1994: “An entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power in Britain is habitually left out of standard reporting and analysis. And by refusing to properly acknowledge that dimension, it is often impossible to make proper sense of what is actually going on.” (11)

The same blindness was apparent as the battle over intelligence raged: few seemed ready to believe that the secret services themselves would produce disinformation, without any prompting from their political masters. Yet this was evidently the case: “The reality is the M16 had been pushing the WMD agenda for a number of years … they used intelligence which they knew to be “crap” and some of which was undoubtedly forged.” (12)

Of course, this particular controversy led to the Hutton report, one of the most striking travesties the British legal system has ever seen fit to produce. Again, knowledge of the historical record would have inclined journalists to greet its findings with skepticism if not contempt: three decades earlier, Lord Widgery had produced a shameless compilation of lies to exonerate the British state after the Bloody Sunday massacre. Yet Widgery was rarely mentioned when Lord Hutton (who had represented the British army at the earlier tribunal) completed his report: Seamus Milne was one of the few commentators to make the connection. (13)

This historical amnesia perhaps reached its nadir when Newsweek reported that the Pentagon was considering the “Salvador option” (14). In El Salvador, pro-government death squads killed 20,000 civilians between January 1980 and April 1981(15). Most notoriously, the terrorist gangs armed by Washington murdered the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, while he was saying Mass. Yet the “Salvador option” was discussed in the media without the horror and revulsion that historical knowledge demanded.

THE ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL

The most notable departure from this pattern of conformity has been the coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The images of torture chambers maintained by the US government have come to symbolise the occupation. But this exception does little more than prove the rule.

The reporter who uncovered the scandal was Seymour Hersh, a legendary maverick who made his name by exposing US war crimes in Vietnam. His reports have appeared in the New Yorker, a cultural magazine that is mostly read by well-educated US liberals from the East Coast. His editor David Remnick explains how the story reached a broader audience:

“The producers of 60 Minutes, the CBS magazine show, had obtained the photographs, though not the Taguba report [the internal army inquiry leaked to Hersh], and had held off broadcasting them at the request of the Pentagon. We decided to ignore CBS and to publish immediately … on Wednesday evening, April 28th, Dan Rather went on the air with an excellent report on the photographs … Rather allowed that the network had delayed airing the report after an “appeal” from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but that, “with other journalists” – meaning, as it turned out, only Hersh – “about to publish their versions of the story, the Defence Department agreed to cooperate in our report”.” (16)

Without the prodding of the New Yorker, which is not subject to the same pressures as the mainstream media, CBS might have sat on the story for much longer. Hersh has clearly shown that responsibility for the scandal reached the highest levels (17). But many journalists have preferred to lay the blame for the torture of prisoners on low-ranking soldiers, quietly exonerating the higher command.

THE RESISTANCE OF PUBLIC OPINION

It cannot be claimed that the mainstream media was simply catering to the demands of an audience that didn’t want to hear about the crimes of “our side”. Public opinion in Britain and the United States has shown itself to be very open to anti-war views. In both countries, opinion polls have shown that a majority now believe the war was a mistake and want troops withdrawn, either immediately or in stages (18).

This stubborn refusal to buy the official line, no matter how often it is repeated, is one of the most remarkable facts of the last three years. As on so many occassions, popular opinion has shown itself to be smarter and shrewder than the elite consensus. Facts that have eluded "expert" commentators are obvious to countless people who have no access to privileged sources of information.

We should be prepared for a relentless campaign by US-UK elites to rewrite the history of the Iraq war - similar to the wide-ranging propaganda offensive that has whitewashed the bloody invasion of Vietnam. Keeping the memory of what has happened since 2003 alive will be a pressing task for anti-war activists.

The "Vietnam syndrome" haunted the US elite for decades. We need to foster an "Iraq syndrome" that has the same deterrent effect - otherwise the pattern of violent aggression will continue, whether in Iran, Colombia or any other part of the world.

(1) “The Times and Iraq”, May 26th 2004 - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middlee...RLAND

(2) “Bringing out the dead”, Guardian 8th November 2005 – http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/11/08/bringing-out...dead/,
Also - http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2472

(3) ibid.

(4) http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

(5) “What future do Iraqis want?”, Irish Times February 18th 2006 –
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2006/0318/3501....html

(6) “The Basra video should lay to rest a scurrilous lie”, Guardian February 16th 2006 -http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1710827,00.html

(7) “The occupation of Iraq is an ongoing disaster – and the first thing we have to do to help Iraqis is to end it”, Guardian March 14th 2006 - http://www.mikemarqusee.com/index.php?p=173#more-173

(8) “Greasing up to power”, Guardian July 13th 2004 - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/07/13/greasing-up-...ower/

(9) Miller, David (ed.), Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq (London, 2004) p.3

(10) Chomsky, Noam, and Herman, Edward, Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass media (London, 1994) p.19-22

(11) Milne, Seamus, “The secret war against the miners”, in Pilger, John (ed.), Tell me no lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs (London, 2005) p.312

(12) Dorril, Stephen, “Spies and Lies”, in Miller, David (ed.), Tell me lies p.114

(13) Milne, Seamus, “The Shadow of Iraq”, Guardian January 29th 2004 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1133903,....html

(14) “US considers “Salvador option” to tackle Iraq insurgents”, Guardian January 10th 2005 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,138681....html

(15) Pilger, John, Heroes (London, 1989) p.486

(16) Hersh, Seymour, Chain of Command (London, 2005) p.xviii

(17) ibid., p.1-72

(18) “Disappearing anti-war protests: media shrug off mass movement against war” - http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2677; “This misadventure has alienated most of the world from Bush", Guardian March 20th 2006 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1734803,....html