Role of the Media

A webpage on Thomas Friedman, maintained by Farrar, Straux & Giroux, declares that as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, he is in a “unique position to interpret the world for American readers. Twice a week, Friedman’s commentary provides the most trenchant, pithy, and illuminating perspective in journalism.” M. Shahid Alam pitches in.

”Dear reader, as Israel slides ever deeper into a morass of racism and ethnic solipsism, please do not rely too heavily on Haaretz to understand how or why this ‘light unto the nations’ has grown so dim.” Jonathan Cook examines the politically significant differences between the English and Hebrew versions of a newspaper thought to be the conscience of Israel.

The BBC reportedly received more than 1,000 complaints after it moved a documentary comparing Israel’s arms programme to that of Iraq from prime time to a “graveyard” slot and replaced it with a repeated film on windmills. Cahal Milmo reports for The Independent.

On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind. “Just for the record,” the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see — the filth and obscenity of corpses — cannot be shown. First because it is not “appropriate” to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war. Robert Fisk writes in The Independent.

With war looming it is no good the American public looking to its newspapers for an independent voice. For, says The Guardian’s Matthew Engel, the press have now become the president’s men.

John Wadham, director of the human rights watchdog Liberty, has warned of a “substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice” arising from the reporting of the recent terrorist arrests in Manchester and London. Mr Wadham said the addition of “government, MI5 and media spin” to the reporting of the arrests could unduly influence juries when the terrorist suspects’ cases come to court. Ciar Byrne reports in The Guardian.

“Since the creation of Israel in 1948, its supporters have been highly successful in ensuring that Israel’s version of its and its neighbours’ histories has been accepted as received truth. Dents have been made, notably by Israel’s own historians as they have had greater access to official documents, in the Zionist myths. But they have usually been hammered out with alacrity, both by Israel and our domestic broadcasters.” Tim Llewellyn, welcoming the ITC’s acquittal of John Pilger’s film “Palestine is still the issue” from false charges of undue bias, raises unsettling questions about mainstream media compliance with offical Israeli spin.

UK television regulators have cleared John Pilger of breaking broadcasting rules in his documentary, “Palestine is still the issue,” which attracted more than 100 complaints from viewers. The regulator ruled that the TV network, Carlton, had provided “persuasive evidence of the care and thoroughness with which it was researched.” Louise Jury reports in The Independent.

“It is increasingly clear that Arabs and Muslims are the new enemy in Washington, a national capital that many find reminiscent of the dark days of the McCarthy Era.” A presentation delivered by EI’s Laurie King-Irani at the seventh annual “Common Terms: The Dialogue of Civilizations” conference sponsored by the Imam Musa Sadr Foundation, 13 December 2002, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth about the situation in the Middle East, especially American journalists, writes Robert Fisk in The Independent. What’s wrong and how can it be fixed?