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CNN to Al Jazeera: Why report civilian
deaths?
New York, New York, Apr. 15 — As the casualties
mount in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, Qatar-based Al Jazeera
has been one of the only news networks broadcasting from the inside,
relaying images of destruction and civilian victims — including
women and children. But when CNN anchor Daryn Kagan interviewed the
network’s editor-in-chief, Ahmed Al-Sheik, on Monday (4/12/04)
— a rare opportunity to get independent information about events
in Fallujah — she used the occasion to badger Al-Sheik about whether
the civilian deaths were really “the story” in Fallujah.
Al Jazeera has recently come under sharp criticism from US officials,
who claim the Iraqi casualties are 95 percent “military-age males”
(AP, 4/12/04). “We have reason to believe that several news organizations
do not engage in truthful reporting,” CPA spokesman Dan Senor said
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/14/04). “In fact it is no reporting.”
Senior military spokesman Mark Kimmitt had a suggestion for Iraqis who
saw civilian deaths on Al Jazeera (New York Times, 4/12/04): “Change
the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The
stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and
children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that
is lies.”
Acting as the substitute anchor on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports,
Kagan began the interview by asking Al-Sheik to respond to those accusations,
citing US officials “saying the pictures and the reporting that
Al Jazeera put on the air only adds to the sense of frustration and
anger and adds to the problems in Iraq, rather than helping to solve
them.” After Al-Sheik defended Al Jazeera’s work as “accurate”
and the images as representative of “what takes place on the ground,”
Kagan pressed on:
“Isn’t the story, though, bigger than just the simple numbers,
with all due respect to the Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives
— the story bigger than just the numbers of people who were killed
or the fact that they might have been killed by the US military, that
the insurgents, the people trying to cause problems within Fallujah,
are mixing in among the civilians, making it actually possible that
even more civilians would be killed, that the story is what the Iraqi
insurgents are doing, in addition to what is the response from the US
military?”
CNN’s argument that a bigger story than civilian deaths is “what
the Iraqi insurgents are doing” to provoke a US “response”
is startling. Especially in light of official US denials of civilian
deaths, video footage of women and children killed by the US military
is evidence that needs to be seen.
Al Jazeera is not alone in reporting a reality very different from the
one US officials describe. Authorities have been able to keep a tight
rein on the information flow from Fallujah, with only one small television
network pool in the city that “travels and operates” under
the watch of the Marines (Television Week, 4/12/04). (It’s noteworthy
that the US has reportedly demanded, as a condition for lifting the
siege of Fallujah, that Al Jazeera cameras be removed from the city
— IslamOnline.net, 4/9/04.)
But independent journalists reporting from Fallujah have described a
scene consistent with the one broadcast by Al Jazeera. Rahul Mahajan,
a US journalist in Fallujah, estimated that of the 600 Iraqis killed
in Fallujah, 200 were women and 100 young children, with many of the
adult male casualties also non-combatants. He reported witnessing “a
young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head” and “a young
boy with massive internal bleeding” at a clinic (CommonDreams.org,
4/12/04). Mahajan recounted that during the “cease-fire,”
“Americans were attacking with heavy artillery but primarily with
snipers” — with ambulances among the targets. The sniper activity
was also reported by US journalist Dahr Jamail (NewStandardNews.net,
4/11/04): “Fallujah residents say Marines are opening fire randomly
on unarmed civilians and have attacked clearly marked ambulances.”
When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being
killed by US forces, CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera’s footage
to see if it corroborates those accounts — not badgering Al Jazeera’s
editor about why he doesn’t suppress that footage.
Source: FAIR
How the NewsHour changed history
By Norman Solomon
Apr. 15 — When the anchor of public television’s
main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he’s
setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people
watching are apt to assume that they’re getting accurate information.
But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very
troubling concerns about the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
Here’s what happened:
During a panel discussion Apr. 7 on the NewsHour, while battles raged
in close to a dozen Iraqi cities, a retired USAir Force colonel referred
to the American authorities’ closure of a newspaper that had
served as a megaphone for the anti-occupation Shiite leader Moktada
al-Sadr. “The immediate problem we have to remember is we started
this ... with the aggressive policies towards Sadr that came from
us, shutting down his press,” Col. Sam Gardiner said.
The program’s anchor spoke next.
Jim Lehrer: “The reason we shut down his press is because it
was calling for violence and anti-American —”
Col. Gardiner: “Sure.”
Lehrer: “I just want to get that on the record.”
But Lehrer’s comment — ostensibly setting the record straight
— was at odds with the available factual record about Sadr’s
newspaper. In sync with other news accounts, the New York Times had
reported two days earlier that “the paper did not print any calls
for attacks.”
I contacted the NewsHour and asked whether Lehrer’s statement
had been based on information contrary to what had been reported in
the Apr.5 edition of the Times. If so, I asked for any citation that
backed up his assertion. Or, if Lehrer did not have such a citation,
I asked if there were plans for an on-air correction to set the factual
record straight on the program (which reaches nearly 3 million viewers
across the United States each night).
In reply to my inquiry, a NewsHour spokesperson cited two articles:
A Chicago Tribune piece, dated Apr. 5, said that “the pro-Sadr
newspaper Al Hawza was shut down ... for allegedly printing false
information that incited violence against the coalition.” And
an Apr. 6 New York Times piece said that the Sadr newspaper “was
closed last week after American authorities accused it of printing
lies that incited violence.”
The NewsHour spokesperson, Lete Childs, told me: “I hope these
two articles help you understand the citations for Jim Lehrer’s
statement to Col. Gardiner.”
But the two articles that the NewsHour cited only seemed to underscore
the disconnect. Apparently, the NewsHour staff hadn’t been able
to find a single source to back up Lehrer’s on-air statement
that “the reason we shut down his press is because it was calling
for violence.” And the NewsHour did not provide any explanation
for why, in sharp contrast to the flat-out report in the New York
Times that “the paper did not print any calls for attacks,”
Lehrer had gone on the air and claimed that it did.
I reached the reporter in Baghdad who’d written the Chicago Tribune
article, Vincent Schodolski, and asked if he was aware of any evidence
that the American authorities shut down Al Hawza because it was “calling
for violence.” Schodolski replied: “I have no other citations
than the reasons given by the CPA itself.” My search of the official
Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation
authority in Iraq, turned up briefings and news releases with references
to Sadr’s newspaper — but no backup for what Lehrer had
said on the air.
At a Mar. 30 press conference, Dan Senor of the CPA charged that Al
Hawza had tried to “incite violence.” That was very much
in keeping with what the Apr.5 New York Times reported — that
while “the American authorities said false reporting, including
articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch
off violence,” nevertheless “the paper did not print any
calls for attacks.”
Lehrer’s refusal to correct his evident error is especially striking
because he had emphasized his incorrect statement on the air by immediately
adding: “I just want to get that on the record.” (My request
to a NewsHour spokesperson for a direct comment from Lehrer did not
yield any statement from him.)
When I asked whether a decision had been made, one way or the other,
about doing a correction on the NewsHour to set the factual record
straight, the last piece of stone in the damage-control wall moved
into place. I got the message: “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
stands behind the ‘Iraq: What Now?’ discussion segment from
Apr.7 and will not be making a correction.”
Journalists should scrutinize US government spin, not contribute to
it.
Here we have what some people believe to be the nation’s most
credible news program compounding a factual error by refusing to make
a correction.
First-rate journalists change history. But not this way.
Source: Common Dreams
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