WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

Reflections on Iraq - The Mass Media and Mass Murder
by
David Edwards
Co-editor of Media Lens

The mainstream corporate media resembles a state-run propaganda system in that it consistently overlooks crimes and suffering for which domestic power and its allies bear moral responsibility, while pouring endless invective and outrage on the crimes of official enemies.
Consider the following comments from March 1999 - typical of many published in the 'liberal press - by The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland. The article was titled, 'The left needs to wake up to the real world. This war is a just one': 'How did it come to this ... ? Why is it the hard left - rather than the isolationist right - who have become the champions of moral indifference? For, make no mistake, that's what opposition to Nato's attempt to Clobba Slobba (as The Sun puts it) amounts to ... either the West could try to halt the greatest campaign of barbarism in Europe since 1945 - or it could do nothing.' (Freedland, The Guardian, March 26, 1999)

Recall that Freedland's passionate cry was in response to a conflict - widely, and absurdly, described as 'genocidal' at the time - in which some 3,000 people had been killed on all sides over the previous twelve months. How much more outraged, then, must Freedland and his fellow liberal commentators be now by the US/UK 'war on terror'? The University of New Hampshire has, after all, conservatively estimated that 5,000 Afghan civilians died as a direct result of the bombing that began on October 7 last year. Additionally, The Guardian estimates (May 20, 2002) that at least 20,000 civilians died as an indirect result of the effects of the threat and execution of bombing in halting aid supplies. In August the UN released a 'hunger assessment' which revealed that as winter approaches 6 million Afghans are once again at risk of starvation - more than were endangered this time last year.

But this is just the tip of the ice-berg of Western human rights atrocities. We know that 100,000 Iraqis died during the last Gulf War (less a war, than a massacre), and that some 1.5 million civilians have died as a result of Western sanctions - described is 'genocidal' by leading UN diplomats who ran the UN's 'oil for food' programme in Iraq. The CIA estimates that at least 10,000 more Iraqi civilians would die in a second Gulf War. Indirect casualties could be much higher - UNICEF has warned that by disrupting aid supplies to Iraq, a US/UK assault could lead to 'famine on a large scale'? Save the Children Fund has warned that war would 'lead to a humanitarian disaster for which the international community would bear a heavy responsibility'. If 3,000 deaths in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia stirred so much passion in 1999, what roars of protest must be erupting now throughout the media in regard to these many hundreds of thousands of deaths and many millions of victims of starvation - the moral responsibility, not of some foreign government, but of 'our' government? The answer, of course, is that there are almost none to be found in the mainstream. How many times have we heard reference made to the 5,000 dead of Halabja? How often has a Richard Perle, a James Rubin, or a Donald Rumsfeld reminded us that Saddam Hussein has 'used weapons of mass destruction against his own people'? And how many times in all the hours of TV news coverage and throughout the endless acres of newsprint, have we heard mention of the incomparably more numerous Iraqi and Afghan dead? How many mentions can we recall on BBC news or ITN in recent months?

While elementary considerations of moral responsibility suggest that we should focus far more intently on our governments' crimes - we elected them, after all - in the mainstream, no crimes merit 'less' discussion than our own.

When we at Media Lens have attempted to challenge journalists on this silence and obfuscation, we have been met by a level of irrationality and abuse that has been staggering. Referring to the prospect of another US assault on Iraq, Nick Cohen wrote in The Observer: 'I look forward to seeing how Noam Chomsky and John Pilger manage to oppose a war which would end the sanctions they claim have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of children who otherwise would have had happy, healthy lives in a prison state (don't fret, they'll get there).' ('Blair's just a Bush baby', The Observer, March 10, 2002) .
We contacted Cohen and pointed out that Chomsky and Pilger have 'claimed' nothing of the sort - they have reported findings of the United Nations and a range of leading human rights and aid agencies. Cohen responded as follows: 'Dear Serviles, I would have more respect for you if you showed the smallest awareness that a tyrant bore some responsibility for tyranny. I appreciate this is difficult for you, it involves coming to terms with complexity and horribly Eurocentric principles such as justice and universality, and truly I share your pain. But your for [sic] sake far more than mine, I'd like to know roughly how many deaths in Iraq are down to Saddam. If you admit that we're in double figures, or more, what should be done about it? Viva Joe Stalin.' (Nick Cohen, email to Media Lens, March 15, 2002)

Also in March, a Media Lens reader - an 83-year-old veteran of the Second World War, who served as an officer for seven years in XIV Tank Army - responded to our Media Alerts by writing a polite and cogent email challenging The Observer on its reporting of Iraq. On March 15, our reader received this response from Roger Alton, editor of The Observer: 'This is just not true ... it's Saddam who's killing all the bloody children, not sanctions. Sorry.'
In a BBC documentary and Observer article, John Sweeney described, 'Saddam's efforts to portray ... children as victims of Western sanctions, which he claims have cost hundreds of thousands of young lives.' ('How Saddam 'staged 'fake baby funerals', The Observer, June 23, 2002).
We again pointed out that Saddam's claims were an irrelevance - 'claims' that sanctions have resulted in the mass death of children originate with the UN and aid agencies. On June 24, Sweeney sent this response to Media Lens: 'I don't agree with torturing children. Get stuffed.'
The mass media is a kind of conjuring trick - the telegenic faces, smart suits, high-tech gadgetry, together with the trappings of privilege and power, all give the impression of sophistication, rationality and balance. The reality, however, is a media system that has evolved under ceaseless pressure from power and wealth to massively promote the goals of vested interests. Because these interests are often deeply cynical and irresponsible - subordinating people and planet to profit as a matter of course - the mass media must be deemed complicit in mass murder.

www.medialens.org

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION INDEX          INDEX