MEDIA WATCH

NYT buries story of airstrikes on Afghan civilians

Jan. 9— On Dec. 30, US airstrikes hit the village of Niazi Kala (also called Qalaye Niaze) in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians. The attack was major news in several British newspapers, with the Guardian and the Independent running front-page stories. The headlines were straightforward:

“US Accused of Killing Over 100 Villagers in Airstrike” (Guardian, 1/1/02); “US Accused of Killing 100 Civilians in Afghan Bombing Raid” (Independent, 1/1/02); “‘100 Villagers Killed’ in US Airstrike” (London Times, 1/1/02).

In contrast, the New York Times first reported the civilian deaths at Niazi Kala under the headline “Afghan Leader Warily Backs US Bombing” (1/2/02).

The United Nations (UN) estimated that 52 civilians were killed by the US attack, including 25 children, and disputed Pentagon claims that those killed were linked to al-Qaida. According to the UN, “unarmed women and children” were “chased and killed by American helicopters,” some “as they fled to shelter” and others “as they tried to rescue survivors” (London Times, 1/4/02). Noting that “innumeracy, rapid burial, damage to bodies, propaganda” and “remoteness” make it difficult to reach a precise count of any of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the Guardian reported that surviving villagers estimated anywhere between 32 and 107 dead, with the higher number coming from staff at the local hospital (1/7/02).

The Pentagon contends that the village was a legitimate military target because it sheltered Taliban leaders, al-Qaida fighters and an ammunition dump, and reporters who toured the destruction saw evidence of a substantial weapons cache. But local residents denied links to the Taliban or al-Qaida, and said that in fact many of those killed were guests in town for a wedding. As the Los Angeles Times has pointed out (1/8/02), the attack “raises difficult questions about the accuracy of the local information the United States is getting about the whereabouts of remaining al-Qaida fighters.”

Descriptions of the destruction in Niazi Kala from reporters on the scene have been shocking. Guardian correspondent Rory Carroll (1/7/02) reported seeing “bloodied children’s shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided gray hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations.” Similarly, the Los Angeles Times’ Alissa J. Rubin reported “fragments of skull with black braided hair decorated with silver thread — an accessory common among women in this region,” a child’s “severed shoe” and other evidence that “makes clear that women and children were killed by the US bombing” (1/8/02).

The New York Times, however, has shied away from such graphic accounts. In its Jan. 2 article, the Times treated reports that “up to 100 villagers in Paktia Province had been killed” not so much as a story in its own right, but as background to the issue of whether Hamid Karzai, head of the interim Afghan government, was holding firm in “his support for the war against terrorism.” Further details on the killings at Niazi Kala were scarce, but NY Times readers did learn that “part way through the interview, an aide entered carrying two scones” sent by Karzai’s sister-in-law in Baltimore. The Times apparently included this information to support Karzai’s contention that “things now seemed quite organized and civilized” in Afghanistan.

The following day, the New York Times provided more information about Niazi Kala, but once again nestled the story within an article on a related topic, this one about accusations that warlord Pacha Khan Zadran has provided false information to the US, leading to the airstrikes that last month struck a convoy of tribal leaders (1/3/02). The attack on Niazi Kala — which some have suggested was also targeted on Zadran’s recommendation (Independent, 1/4/02) — came up when the Times reported Zadran’s “assessment” that the villagers had been linked to the Taliban and therefore legitimate targets. Commendably, the Times did contrast Zadran’s version on the story with the UN’s “far more chilling account of the human cost of destroying the weapons stash,” quoting the report at some length. Unfortunately, these important details were buried in the middle of the page A15 story, reflected neither in its headline nor its lead.

In response to international pressure, including a British Member of Parliament’s formal demands for an inquiry, the Pentagon has agreed to investigate the attack on Niazi Kala (Guardian, 1/4/02, 1/7/02). So far, the New York Times has not reported this fact.

The Times’ poor reporting of this story comes in the midst of a general failure of the mainstream US press to seriously investigate the extent of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and the legality of the US attacks.

Source: Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): www.fair.org

For NPR, violence is calm if it’s violence against Palestinians

Jan. 10— Before the Jan. 9 gun battle on the Gaza Strip, National Public Radio (NPR) had for weeks been telling its listeners that Israel/Palestine was in a period of “relative quiet.”

“Morning Edition” anchor Bob Edwards on Jan. 3 stated that US envoy Anthony Zinni was coming to the region during “a time of comparative quiet.” In another report the same day, correspondent Linda Gradstein referred to “the relative calm of the past few weeks.” Other NPR reports have mentioned the “recent calm” (1/5/02) or the “fragile period of quiet” (1/7/02).

What NPR means by this was spelled out most explicitly by Linda Gradstein in a Jan. 4 report on the envoy’s mission. “You know, there’s been actually three weeks of relative quiet,” she said. “Only one Israeli has been killed in those three weeks, as opposed to 44 Israelis who were killed when Zinni was here last time in November and early December.”

What Gradstein didn’t mention — and what someone who relied on NPR for their Middle Eastern news would have little idea of — was that this has been in no way a period of calm for Palestinians. In fact, in the three-week period that Gradstein referred to, at least 26 Palestinians were killed by occupation forces — more than one a day.

Media critic Ali Abunimah documented the killings in a letter of protest to NPR (1/8/02), starting with 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob, shot in the head on Dec. 13 while playing near his home in Rafah, Gaza. Most of the deaths cited by Abunimah were of unarmed civilians; six were minors, ranging in age from 12 to 17.

But none of these deaths received much attention from NPR, leaving the impression that calm for Israelis was calm for Palestinians as well. One of the few times that the Palestinian toll was even vaguely referred to was in this Dec. 24 exchange between “All Things Considered” anchor Robert Siegel and correspondent Peter Kenyon:

SIEGEL: “There was a resumption of violence today, I gather, a shooting of a Jewish settler.”

KENYON: “That’s right, the first such shooting of a Jewish settler after a week of comparative quiet. There have been some deaths on the Palestinian side in the past week. But tonight a Jewish settler was shot in the chest, seriously wounded by Palestinian gunmen up near Nablus and the West Bank. One of the gunmen was also shot, and he was killed.”

Kenyon agrees with Siegel’s claim that Dec. 24 marked a “resumption of violence,” even while acknowledging that “there have been some deaths on the Palestinian side.” In fact, there had been at least five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the previous week, including 12-year-old Muhammad Huneidek, shot in the chest at a checkpoint near the Neve Dekalim settlement near Gaza. Are we to conclude, then, that the killing of Palestinians is not violence?

That’s the contention of the Israeli government, and NPR appears to take this position seriously. Here’s a Jan. 5 report by Kenyon:

“The raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip have continued. They were yesterday in the West Bank village of Tel up near Nablus. They killed one Palestinian; four arrested. The army said they were all Hamas members.... But the Israelis don’t consider these military raids to be violence. They consider that [they are] doing what Yasser Arafat should have been doing, by their rights, which is arresting these people and rounding them up.”

The unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian deaths is a long-standing pattern at NPR; a FAIR study of six months of the network’s coverage (Extra!, 11-12/01) found that 81 percent of Israeli conflict-related deaths were reported, but only 34 percent of Palestinian deaths. Strikingly, NPR was even less likely to report the deaths of Palestinian minors killed; only 20 percent of these deaths were reported, as compared to 89 percent of Israeli minors’ deaths. While NPR was more likely to cover Israeli civilian deaths than those of Israeli security personnel (84 percent vs. 69 percent), the reverse was true with Palestinians (20 percent vs. 72 percent).

Of course, NPR is not the only outlet that has misreported the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by downplaying violence against Palestinians. When a battle in Israeli-occupied Gaza recently left four Israeli soldiers and two Hamas guerrillas dead, the New York Times described the story on its front page (1/10/02): “Palestinian gunmen in Gaza put an end to a lull in the violence, ambushing and killing four Israeli soldiers before being shot dead.” The fact that the story inside acknowledges that “at least 20 Palestinians have died violently” in recent weeks only underscores how some violence doesn’t seem to register with mainstream US media.

Source: Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): www.fair.org