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New York Times rewrites Fallujah history
Nov. 16 — In three recent reports about the
military invasion of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the New York Times
has misreported the facts about the Apr. 2004 invasion of the city and
the toll it took on Iraqi civilians. On Nov. 8, the Times reported:
“In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when
popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed
by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the
US to withdraw. US commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but
it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had
been killed.”
The next day, the Times made the same point, reporting that the US “had
to withdraw during a previous fight for the city in April after unconfirmed
reports of heavy civilian casualties sparked outrage among both Sunni
and Shiite Iraqis.” And on Nov. 15, the Times noted that the current
operation “redressed a disastrous assault on Fallujah last April
that was called off when unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties
drove the political cost too high.”
It’s unclear why the Times considers those civilian deaths “unconfirmed.”
While there is some debate over precise figures, this wording leaves
the impression that nothing can be reasonably known about deaths in
Fallujah.
The head of Fallujah’s hospital, Dr. Rafie al-Issawi, has consistently
maintained that more than 600 people were killed in the initial US siege
of Fallujah in Apr. 2004, a figure that rose to more than 800 as the
siege was lifted and people pinned down by the fighting were able to
register their families’ deaths (Knight-Ridder, 5/9/04). More than
300 of the dead, according to al-Issawi, were women and children.
The Iraqi Health Ministry in Baghdad, part of the US-installed government,
gave a lower figure of about 271 killed, with 52 of the dead being women
and children. On Oct. 26, the independent British-based group Iraq Body
Count reported that the civilian death toll in Fallujah in April was
about 600, based on their extensive evaluation of the numbers reported
by local hospital officials and the Health Ministry, as well as mainstream
media accounts.
Other journalistic investigations depict the reality of widespread civilian
death in Fallujah: An Associated Press tally of the dead in Iraq (4/30/04)
discovered that in Fallujah “two football fields were turned into
cemeteries, with hundreds of freshly dug graves, marked with wooden
planks scrawled with names — some with names of women, some marked
specifically as children. At one of the fields, an AP reporter was told
by volunteer gravediggers on Apr. 11 that more than 300 people had been
buried there.”
A Reuters report (4/13/04) quoted researchers from Human Rights Watch
calling for an investigation based on reports they received from residents
fleeing the violence in Fallujah. Even the lower estimates provided
by the Health Ministry debunk the Times’ repeated assertion that
reports of “large civilian casualties” are “unconfirmed”
— unless the paper wants to maintain that 52 women and children
killed in an attempt to “liberate” their city are inconsequential.
But the Times should know from its own reporting that the higher casualty
figures are much more realistic.
On Oct.19, the Times reported: “There are no agreed figures for
civilian deaths in Iraq over all since the war began in early 2003,
but the best estimates, by private groups and independent news organizations,
place the figure in the 10,000 to 15,000 range.” It would seem
obvious, then, that the bombing of a large civilian population in Iraq
in what the Times called “the most intense aerial bombardment in
Iraq since major combat ended” (4/30/04) would produce significant
civilian casualties.
Since substantial numbers of civilians did in fact die in Fallujah in
April, even if the exact number cannot be pinned down, readers might
wonder if the Times’ policy is that things that cannot be confirmed
with numerical precision are essentially “unconfirmed.” But
this would be a double standard on the part of the Times; in its Nov.
8 report, the paper noted: “The number of insurgents in the city
is estimated at 3,000, although some guerrillas, terrorist fighters
and their leaders escaped the city before the attack. US military officials
estimated that of a usual population of 300,000, 70 percent to 90 percent
of civilians had fled.”
Surely there is no way to determine exactly how many insurgents are
in Fallujah, or how many civilians have fled. To be consistent, shouldn’t
the Times be reporting that accounts of civilians leaving the city are
“unconfirmed?”
In its Nov. 8 report, the Times matter-of-factly noted that US forces
targeted a Fallujah hospital early in the campaign “because the
American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy
casualties.” The Times added: “This time around, the American
military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching
what has been one of the insurgents’ most potent weapons.”
If part of that “information war” means convincing the US
citizens that civilians are not victims of the Fallujah invasion, the
Times has signed up on the side of the Pentagon.
Source: FAIR
A voluntary tic in media coverage of
Iraq
By Norman Solomon
Nov. 18 — When misleading buzzwords become part of the
media landscape, they slant news coverage and skew public perceptions.
That’s the story with the phrase “Iraqi forces” —
now in routine use by US media outlets, including the country’s
most influential newspapers.
The New York Times and the Washington Post have been leading the way
in news stories that apply the indigenous “Iraqi forces” label
to Iraqi fighters who are pro-US-occupation ... but not to Iraqi fighters
who are anti-US-occupation.
Some recent examples:
“And US and Iraqi forces continue to fight in Samarra...”
(Washington Post, Nov. 15).
“Pitched battles erupted between insurgents and American and Iraqi
forces on Sunday in the northern city of Mosul. ... It took five hours
for the American and Iraqi forces to kill or chase away the insurgents.”
(NY Times, Nov. 15).
“Eight days ago, US and Iraqi forces barreled through a defensive
mud wall” around Fallujah. (Washington Post, Nov. 16).
“In Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, insurgents kept up attacks
on American and Iraqi forces...” (NY Times, Nov. 17).
Day after day, US media outlets can only bring themselves to confer
the term “Iraqi forces” on the Iraqi combatants allied with
the US — not on the Iraqi combatants opposing the US.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported on Nov. 16, there’s stronger
evidence than ever that the occupiers are battling “a home-grown
uprising dominated by Iraqis, not foreign fighters.” According
to the newspaper: “Of the more than 1,000 men between the ages
of 15 and 55 who were captured in intense fighting in the center of
the insurgency over the last week, just 15 are confirmed foreign fighters,
Gen. George W. Casey, the top US ground commander in Iraq, said Monday.”
The LA Times dispatch stated that “despite an intense focus on
the network of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi by US and Iraqi
officials, who have insisted that most Iraqis support the country’s
interim government, American commanders said their best estimates of
the proportion of foreigners among their enemies is [sic] about five
percent.”
When reporting on a war that pits Iraqis against Iraqis on a daily basis,
news accounts could refer to “US-allied Iraqi forces” or “Iraqi
government forces” — to distinguish them from the insurgent
Iraqi forces that are on the other side. From the standpoint of journalism,
which ought to strive for clarity and precision, that should be a no-brainer.
But the Bush administration — striving to promote the attitude
that only US-allied Iraqis are actual Iraqis worthy of the name —
is eager to blur exactly what good reporting should clarify. And major
US media outlets are helpfully providing a journalistic fog around a
central fact: The US government is at war with many people it claims
to be liberating.
If you’d like to urge evenhanded reporting on Iraq, you might want
to send some email to journalists charged with responding to readers’
criticisms. At the Washington Post, letters go to ombudsman Michael
Getler (ombudsman@ washpost.com); at the NY Times, the public editor
is Daniel Okrent (public @nytimes.com).
Unfortunately, the US media’s highly selective use of the phrase
“Iraqi forces” is symptomatic of the way that news coverage
almost reflexively defers to Washington’s terminology, assumptions
and frames of reference.
Attacks on US troops occupying Iraq are often matter-of-factly reported
to be the work of “terrorists.” Along the way, US media outlets
— unlike news coverage in much of the rest of the world —
are apt to downplay eyewitness accounts of the civilian death toll from
US military assaults. In this country, such accounts are frequently
ignored or discounted as “unconfirmed.”
And since midway through this year, news stories have often flatly reported
that Iraq has acquired “sovereignty.” It’s true that
the US-selected interim prime minister Ayad Allawi took office at the
end of June, but that hardly changes the reality that he essentially
serves at the pleasure of his sponsor and protector, the US government.
Journalists should clearly distinguish between White House pretenses
and accurate reporting.
Source: FAIR
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