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NY Times apology feels hollow
By Megan Boler
May 31— The New York Times has publicly acknowledged errors
in its reporting on Iraq. Less an apology and more an attempt to cover
journalistic humiliation, the editors confess: “Looking back, we
wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence
emerged — or failed to emerge.”
While one wants to celebrate the historically momentous occasion of
the “newspaper of record” admitting its lack of rigor and
careful scrutiny of sources, for many this “apology” feels
empty and hollow. Too little, too late. Too many people dead. Too many
hungry. Too many orphans and too many mass graves. Too much ink wasted
and airtime purchased to ensure the Bush administration’s horrific
and never justified invasion of Iraq.
Belated apologies carry a unique dissatisfaction that is semi-paralyzing
and functions to silence further those to whom the apology is overdue.
If one isn’t grateful, one is bitter and resentful. Yet forgiveness
seems impossible.
It is not unlike the classic gendered story: The secretary of the CEO
suggests a good idea at a meeting and no one responds. A few moments
later, a man in the meeting suggests the same thing and everyone applauds
his great idea. Thousands of us have had the brilliant idea that the
NY Times, among other news sources, was failing its journalistic responsibility,
but now the editors get to claim this lauded notion.
For those of us who have questioned the coverage all along, who are
part of that unpatriotic “minority” who questioned the invasion
of Iraq and even Afghanistan, who read international and independent
news, we are left with the haunting sense of living in a twilight zone.
A twilight zone, because we have been calling and writing letters not
just to the Times but to NPR (National Public Radio), FOX and CNN since
Sept. 11 to demand that a greater diversity of sources and experts be
allowed to speak. Even without FAIR’s (Fairness & Accuracy
in Reporting) latest survey that shows that 64 per cent of NPR’s
sources are “elite” — conservative and Republican spokespersons
of the administration and corporations — we have demanded that
media examine their systematic misinformation.
The NY Times and dozens of other media underreported the millions of
anti-war protesters in the US and internationally who took to the streets
month after month to oppose this invasion. In fact, NPR and the NY Times
corrected their numbers on the count of war protesters in 2002. Meanwhile,
they did correctly report President George W. Bush stating that he doesn’t
attend to these protesters because that would be like basing “public
policy on a focus group.”
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Newsweek ran a story questioning WMD.
A veteran CBC reporter recently confessed to a public audience his deep
concern that reporters have adopted a herd mentality, unquestioningly
following the easy story. He confessed that reporters ignored Newsweek
and instead fed the public Colin Powell’s photo op with the small
vial “proving” that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
The “easy” story means parroting White House briefings and
feeding those as objective news. Even international newspapers generally
critical of US foreign policy are guilty of spoon-feeding live feed
from the Pentagon when they elect to run AP and other mass media stories.
At the HotDocs film festival in Toronto last month, there were three
excellent documentaries regarding the unseen aspects of war reporting.
These films included The Control Room (Jehane Noujaim) on Al Jazeera;
War Feels Like War (Esteban Uyarra) on unilateral reporters’ experience
in Iraq; and Michael MacLear’s Vietnam: Ghosts of War that details
how little the media and the military alike know about the actual justifications
of war.
Where is the wool coming from, and exactly whose eyes is it being pulled
over? To blame reporters for poor reporting is misleading. More important
is to identify the less visible editorial and production — and
even stockholders’— influence on when, how and what gets reported.
The NY Times admission cannot help but smell like last-minute political
jockeying to distance itself from an increasingly unpopular Bush administration.
Meanwhile, though one might like to celebrate the NY Times admission
of error as a positive historical turning point in the management of
media institutions, it is almost impossible to swallow this “apology”
and not sniff something rotten. What really tipped the balance, and
will we ever know? How can one not suspect that the prison abuse scandal,
the call for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired, and Bush’s plummeting
public favor aren’t reason for the Times to jockey into a new political
liaison? To gain face and realign with new elite sources come the next
presidency — corruption and cowardice with a different but gaunter
face.
What goes on behind the media’s closed doors, where the media embed
with the highest military officials, which newspapers are in whose pockets
— these are the stories apparently not “sensational”
enough for our public eyes to see.
Source: Toronto Star
Israel attacks BBC ‘tricks’
in taping Vanunu
By Donald Macintyre
Jerusalem, May 30— The Israeli authorities’ frequently
tense relationship with the BBC will take a turn for the worse this
week when they complain about the methods used to broadcast a taped
interview with nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.
The Foreign Ministry is expected to seek a meeting with the BBC’s
Middle East bureau chief, Andrew Steele, to discuss the circumstances
in which the tape of the interview was smuggled out of the country despite
demands that all copies be handed over to the Israeli censor.
Peter Hounam, the journalist who first broke the story in 1986 of Vanunu’s
revelations of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and who has been
making a documentary on him for the BBC, was ordered to leave the country
last week after being held for 24 hours by Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence
agency.
Shin Bet conspicuously failed to find all the tapes, despite their interrogation
of Hounam and the separate detentions of two members of the team from
the Magnetic North independent production company, Chris Mitchell and
a freelance editor, Sadi Haeri.
The interview was carried out on behalf of the team and The Sunday Times
by Yael Lotan, an Israeli supporter of Vanunu, who was released last
month from jail after serving an 18-year sentence. The restrictions
attached to Vanunu’s release expressly preclude him from meeting
foreigners without prior permission. The BBC repeatedly trailed the
interview, conducted eight days ago, on its news bulletins yesterday.
A senior government source in Jerusalem said there could be “repercussions”
for relations between the BBC and the Israeli government. The source
added that the government wanted to express its “disappointment”
that the BBC had appeared prepared to “trick” Israel by bypassing
restrictions, including those on Vanunu after his release.
In his interview Vanunu appears to say nothing new of relevance to Israel’s
present security. He strongly denies that he betrayed the country and
says that he exposed Israel’s nuclear secrets because he wanted
to prevent the second holocaust that might occur as a result of a nuclear
war.
He also reveals that “Cindy,” the Mossad agent who lured him
from London to Rome where he was seized, had kissed him throughout the
car journey from Rome’s airport to distract him from the trap he
was falling into. He says he had suspected she might be a Mossad agent
but that she appeared not to know what he was talking about when he
challenged her. He adds: “I’m not interested in living in
Israel. I want to start my new life in the United States or Europe.”
Shin Bet, which says that Vanunu breached his restrictions by meeting
Hounam, is still deciding whether to take action against him.
Source: Independent (UK)
Washington urges media freedom –
but not for Al-Jazeera
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, May 26 (IPS) — When the US State Department
shyly released a human rights report two weeks ago amidst an international
outcry over US soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners, it slipped
in some tough talk on media freedom — against the practice, not
for it as would be expected.
Lorne Craner, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Human Rights,
told reporters that Arab TV network Al-Jazeera was inciting violence
against US troops in occupied Iraq.
“Al-Jazeera, from what I understand from CPA [the US Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq] and others, is quite different in what
they do. They go a lot further than New Yorker Magazine or CBS. And
that’s my point. We are extremely tolerant, we have been for
over 200 years in this country, of criticism, but incitement of violence
is something else.”
The accusations from Craner, the man whose job includes promoting
media freedom worldwide, were the last in a series of high-level US
moves to muzzle the TV network, which has so far managed to outpace
many US news sources in covering the US-led attack and occupation
of Iraq, starting more than one year ago.
Although Al-Jazeera, which started broadcasting in 1996, irked both
the US media and the Bush administration even before Washington invaded
Iraq as the first step in its plan to remake the Middle East on a
“democratic” model, the attacks turned vicious after the
channel aired live coverage of civilian casualties of the US military’s
heavy bombardment of the town of Fallujah in April.
Al-Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Mansour was apparently the only reporter
in the city when US forces were enforcing a crippling siege.
According to medics in Fallujah, the US offensive claimed the lives
of at least 700 Iraqis, mostly women and children, and left up to
1,500 others injured.
The senior US military spokesman, Mark Kimmitt, suggested that Iraqis
who saw civilian deaths on Al-Jazeera, “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.”
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went further. “I can definitively
say that what Al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.”
“But you know what our forces do,” he added, “They
don’t go around killing hundreds of civilians. That’s just
outrageous nonsense! It’s disgraceful what that station is doing.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell, the outwardly dovish face of the
administration, went further when earlier this month formally demanded
that visiting Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin
Jabr al-Thani tighten the screws on the 24-hour network, which is
based in his country.
Powell said in statements after meeting al-Thani in Washington that
relations between the two countries were being harmed by Al-Jazeera’s
coverage.
The channel has also taken some heat on the ground. On May 21, Rashid
Hamid Wali, assistant cameraman and fixer for Al-Jazeera, was killed
by gunfire in the Iraqi city of Karbala, the last in a string of journalists
who have been killed in Iraq.
On several occasions, the channel’s correspondents have also
been banned from government offices and news conferences in Iraq.
Media analysts here say that Washington’s attack on Al-Jazeera,
under the pretext of fighting the promotion of violence, has negative
implications both for media freedom and for US political strategy.
“To say that running false stories if they could inflame the
conflict is grounds for ending the media outlets’ right to report
is to say that no major US media outlet should be allowed to report
anymore,” said Jim Naureckas, editor of media watch dog magazine
Extra.
The New York Times, for example, ran a story quoting Iraqi defectors
saying the country possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was
one of many articles published by the US media that inflamed the conflict,
he added.
Washington also risks losing more of its credibility over its attack
on the Arab TV network.
“Officials in Washington keep saying they want to encourage democratization
in the Middle East, but the Bush administration’s moves to throttle
Al-Jazeera certainly indicate otherwise,” said Norman Solomon,
executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
Others see the US attack as emblematic of its political and military
woes in the region.
“The US is losing the war in Iraq and is increasingly isolated
politically in the Arab world, so what’s its response? Blame
the media. The US media wouldn’t accept such an argument from
Bush the candidate, so why accept it from Bush the commander in chief?”
said Reese Erlich, a foreign correspondent who has covered the Middle
East extensively for 20 years.
The best way to control Al-Jazeera and other media outlets that defy
Washington’s control is to stop atrocities on the ground, analysts
say.
“There are ways that the US government could legitimately reduce
the negative coverage it gets on Al-Jazeera. For instance, if President
Bush wants Al-Jazeera to stop airing grisly footage of dead Iraqi
civilians, as commander in chief he could order US troops to stop
killing them,” Erlich said.
Details emerge on stint by Chalabi’s
niece at NY Times
New York, New York, June 1— During the five
months that Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi’s niece, Sarah Khalil,
worked for The New York Times in 2003, the reporter who hired her,
Patrick Tyler, published nine pieces that mentioned her now-disgraced
uncle, according to an article published today by The New Yorker.
During this time, she also personally helped Chalabi get across the
border from Kuwait into southern Iraq.
The Times fired Khalil on May 20, 2003, when word of her employment
reached New York.
According to the article by Jane Mayer, “two months before the
invasion began, the chief correspondent for the Times, Patrick E.
Tyler, who was in charge of overseeing the paper’s war coverage,
hired Chalabi’s niece, Sarah Khalil, to be the paper’s office
manager in Kuwait. Chalabi had long been a source for Tyler. Chalabi’s
daughter Tamara, who was in Kuwait at the time, told me that Khalil
helped her father’s efforts while she was working for the Times.
“In early April 2003, Chalabi was stranded in the desert shortly
after US forces airlifted him and several hundred followers into southern
Iraq, leaving them without adequate water, food, or transportation.
Once again, the assistance of the US military had backfired. Chalabi
used a satellite phone to call Khalil for help. According to Tamara,
Khalil commandeered money from INC [Iraqi National Congress] funds
and rounded up a convoy of SUVs, which she herself led across the
border into Iraq.”
Tyler told Mayer he did not know about Khalil helping her uncle get
into southern Iraq. He said that Khalil had a background in journalism,
and that Chalabi hadn’t been a factor in the war when he hired
her — something of a stretch, given that fellow reporter Judith
Miller has identified him as the prime source for her biggest scoops.
“We were covering a war, not Chalabi,” Tyler told Mayer.
When asked by Mayer about Khalil’s rescue of Chalabi, William
Schmidt, an associate managing editor of the Times, said, “The
Times is not aware of any such story, or whether it happened. If so,
it was out of bounds.”
Source: Editor & Publisher
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