Archive for January, 2007

« Older Entries

Islam Channel censors anti-war views?

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

Three weeks ago, The Agenda daily broadcast on the Islam Channel was mysteriously taken off air. This is the Islam Channel’s flagship programme, one of the few on British TV that gives a serious platform to anti-war views.

Presented by anti-war campaigner and leading journalist Yvonne Ridley, The Agenda has run for two years and was coming up to its 500th edition. It provides 4-and-a-half hours of live TV every week, repeated in the evening.

The Agenda has blanket coverage in the Muslim community among satellite TV owners, and a growing band of non-Muslims who found a serious broadcast which took a look at politics and current affairs at the grass roots. Last year audiences were estimated at 900,000+ in Europe alone, but the programme also went across Asia and the East. Its greatest followers are women at home during the day — those women have no political viewing because there’s no substitute.

And yet the programme has been taken off air with no explanation.

A spokesperson for the company told MWAW on January 31 that the Islam Channel is “in the process of restructuring its programming” and that this was “just a business decision” by the company. The spokesperson said it was “nothing to do with it [the programme] not being popular”.

If a programme is popular, it is usually a “good business decision” to maintain it. More importantly, there is a strong public interest case for the broadcast to continue.

FInally, if the channel is “restructuring” its programming, why was The Agenda taken off air BEFORE restructuring had been agreed?

People familiar with the Islam Channel say they fear this is a political decision, motivated by real or imaginary pressure from the authorities, or by hostilty to the programme’s critical approach.

Please contact the Channel now to register your support for the programme and for Yvonne Ridley. Yvonne is a stalwart of the anti-war movement. In 2003 she was sacked from Al-Jazeera because of her opposition to the war on Iraq, and because she set up NUJ branch at the channel.

Please contact the Islam Channel now:

mohamed.ali@islamchannel.tv

pr@islamchannel.tv

Tel. 0207 374 4511

Posted in Editorials, U.K., Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

US media down-plays anti-war march size

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Danny Schechter writes on the big demo in Washington on Jan 27: This past weekend’s anti-war march was big, say the organizers and I have no reason to doubt them. They made this claim:

“Washington, D.C. — In a massive showing of public opposition to the Iraq war, 500,000 people filled the streets around the Capitol today, completely surrounding the building. Participants converged on the National Mall from all over the country to voice their support for an end to the conflict in Iraq.

Three hundred buses rolled in early this morning, coming from more than 40 states and including at least 20 buses filled by New York City trade unions. United For Peace & Justice, the march coordinator, called this one of the the largest and most diverse demonstrations since the war began. According to UFPJ National Coordinator and veteran peace and justice leader Leslie Cagan, “This is a decisive moment in the history of this country and of our peace movement. In November, the people of this=nation voted for peace. We are here today, all ages, from all walks of life, to hold our elected officials to the mandate of the people.”

Add in protests in the rest of the country and it was even bigger.

But is that the picture most of America received? I didn’t see any report Saturday night on the front page of the Sunday NY Times online but, by the morning , the print edition of the Times wrote:

“Tens of thousands of protesters converged on the National Mall on Saturday to oppose President Bush’s plan for a troop increase in Iraq in what organizers hoped would be one of the largest shows of antiwar sentiment in the nation’s capital since the war began.”

The story was carried as headline at the bottom of the page, not exactly prominent positioning. No Photo. A story about tennis got bigger play. The story was actually placed on p 21 (although it said p 22 on page l.) The story itself by Ian Urbina was well done. And the Times had two other reporters on the scene. The picture caption said thousands, not tens of thouands and certainly not a half-million. Low down in the story, it reported a March claim of 400,000 and then an unnamed police source suggesting that there were less than 100,00. Bloomberg News reported 500,000, one of the few media outlets to do so.

This was not the coverage “organizers hoped” for. Actually the organizers said it WAS the largest show of force since the war began with 500,000 present. The Times only acknowledged “tens of thousands.” Does this matter? It doesn’t if the numbers game doesn’t matter. Years, ago the National Park Service which initially always underreported crowd sizes and then began having aerial photos taken that were analyzed by experts using grids, decided not to provide police estimates which were routinely reported. Perhaps that’s why the march did its own count.

Yesterday, the March claimed a half million—which, if true, IS “one of the largest shows of anti-war sentiment” (although I seem to remember the number of 750,000 used to quantify how many showed up in the big pre-war march of 2003). But the papers, seem to have followed the AP’s earlier in the day estimate of “tens of thousands.” True to form, the Washington Post online edition only reported “THOUSANDS.” The Huffington Post headline: “Why The Anti-War March Won’t Change Anything…”

Was this right on Or right off? I wasn’t there this time. My first anti-war march was in l965 so I have burned up my share of shoe or sneaker leather over the years as well as energy cheering some of the same speakers who turned up Saturday. I wasn’t feeling well enough to make the trip this time, but reported on it anyway.

I support marches as PART of a bigger strategy, not as THE strategy. And at least this time, many activists were planning to lobby Congress.

As readers know by now, I think its kind of important to get this message out to the people through the media, and not just the message that there’s opposition to the war but that there’s a movement opposing it. We need to show activism in action as a way for citizens to try to hold politicians accountable and participate in the process. Did that double message get through?

This approach requires a media strategy–and a challenge to the media— beyond sending out press releases and getting on Pacifica radio outlets.

It also requires a commitment to forging a stronger movement by ON GOING organizing and efforts to democratize and INVOLVE member groups and individuals in independent action outside of the Democratic Party. There needs to be some discipline too and a better presentation. Personally I think Dennis Kucinich has a strong message–but he shouldn’t be given time on the program just to hype his campaign. That shows no respect for the movement. We need some independent journalists to really analyze this movement’s strengths and weaknesses, a former peace movement organizer told me. In that sense the numbers issue is not necessarily the only issue even if it does deserve comment. Another criticism I heard was that indy media was not represented with no blogger speaking.

On Saturday morning, the United For Peace and Justice website announced “(Watch live on C-SPAN!) Wow, I thought, you could see the March and Rally LIVE on CSPAN. At l:30, I tuned in just before the march was slated to start, and sure enough several cameras were in the crowd. The only commentary I heard then was that there were “thousands” there. Sounded small. All we saw was a rapper on the stage and people milling around, No interviews. No explanation. I guess I missed it.

Soon, a notice appeared on screen that CSPAN would switch away from the March to cover Hillary Clinton’s first speech in Iowa. And so they did, off to East High School for a stump speech. I expected them to come back while the march was happening. They didn’t. Instead they rebroadcast last Friday’s coverage of a National Review Institute conference on conservatism. Was CSPAN that nervous, that they had to preemptively “balance” the anti-war march?

Instead of the ongoing march, we heard righter than right columnist Michelle Malkin complaining that the media didn’t show the “throngs” at a right to life march, but only a few counter demonstrators. (CNN showed the 15 counter demonstrators and, for balance, had an interview with a conservative critic—but also a song by the raging grannies and a sound bite or two from well-known speakers like Jane Fonda.) It was superficial at best.

CSPAN promised to show it later, but when I tuned in, CSPAN l was running a session from the Memphis Media Conference earlier this month at 9:30 PM. (Later, I received an email saying I was in it so I can’t criticize that, can I?)

I am sure the anti-war rally will be rebroadcast but the format with its endless parade of speakers and torrent of rhetoric is not exactly a media or audience turn on.

My point is that there was no real ‘live” coverage on the main CSPAN channel that I saw in a culture with news channels that can’t wait to go live. (When I worked at ABC, there was a term called SLR for Silly Live Remote referring to someone on freeway overpass “reporting live” on an ordinary rush hour where nothing was happening.) We have a media that will go “live” to the opening of an envelope. Just not to an anti-war march!

Coverage is more than just showing it; it is reporting on it, commenting on it, interviewing people there etc.

I flipped to Fox. If there was coverage I missed it. They were spinning a statement by John Kerry to the effect that world public opinion does not support the US war. This was being presented as “anti-American.” What do you expect from Faux News?

CNN did have a report with a journalist who had been at the march discussing it, saying there were “tens of thousands,” not a half million. He was in the studio, not on the Mall, with an anchor who patronizingly referred to protesters as “the kind of people we’ve seen before.” The march was treated as ho-hummer with the only interest expressed about whether active duty soldiers were marching. The CNN man said he heard about there were but didn’t see them.

It was then time for a standup from the White House lawn with a reporter discussing how the White House would respond to Congressional criticism of the war, as if the marchers didn’t exist. And then there was a replay of a soundbyte from President Bush under a graphic banner that said, can you believe, “THE SOUNDS OF DISSENT.”

AP reported “tens of thousands” not half a million.

Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Andrea Hsu of NPR turned tens of thousands into: “Thousands of protesters gathered Saturday on the Mall in Washington, D.C.” Thousands!

NPR reported January 27: “While some citizens have protested against the Iraq war ever since the invasion of March 2003, the movement has failed to mobilize large numbers of people in public spaces. Has that changed now that a majority of Americans oppose the war?”

For some reason, there seemed to be more movie stars speaking than usual. What signal does that send? Of course CNN ran image of Jane Fonda now and in North Vietnam in l973. There was a photo of Sean Penn marching.

Headline in a newspaper in Komo Washington: “Middle America meets celebrity glitter in anti-war march.”

Some outlets, but mostly on the West coast noted that there were protests there too: “WASHINGTON — Anti-war protesters from around the country converged on Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities today, …”

Don’t the anti-war organizers see this as a problem? Don’t they think they should try to do something about it and take it as a challenge, and protest this ritualistic treatment? Shouldn’t they make the media coverage a issue? Are they only listening to themselves?

I was on Air America in LA on Saturday afternoon and host Bree Walker, a feisty former TV anchor agreed. But the anti-war movement continues to pay lipservice to this problem, perhaps for fear of “alienating” the press. Give me a break! Back in 2003, the Washington Posts own omsbudsman Michael Getler indicted his own newspaper for “downplaying protests.” He now works for Public Television.

This coverage is deplorable but worse: the anti-war movement had not made it an issue. With more than half the country opposing the war, the movement is still being under reported and marginalized! And, naively, not doing anything about it.

We still need a march on the media. Anyone with me?

Posted in Abroad | 2 Comments »

Rules for reporting Islam

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Based on detailed study of how the UK media report Islam and the war on terror, Media Workers Against the War has compiled the following set of rules, which we believe should hang on toilet doors throughout medialand:

Rule 1. We have to examine and question Islam so we can understand what’s wrong with it. This is called “investigative reporting”.

Rule 2. If you are unsure what Islam is, highlight whatever looks unfamiliar and odd. This is called “objective reporting”.

Rule 3. If you say someone is a Muslim, this is generally an adequate description of what they are like as a person, i.e. irrational, backward, and slightly unbalanced. This is called “revealing the Islamic mind” or “Islamic personality”.

Rule 4. If some bleach, nail-varnish or castor beans are found on a Muslim, these are deadly bomb-making materials so make sure this is headline news. If the stash is found on a white person it is not worth reporting. This is called “being topical”.

Rule 5. The media are not interested in whether a criminal is black or white as this could be against the Race Relations Act. However if he/she is a Muslim then make sure this is the headline story. This is called “working within the law”.

Rule 6. While Islam clearly has nothing to do with race, Muslims are to blame for stoking up racial tension because they insist on being different from the rest of us. To illustrate the point, if someone says some Asians are involved in violence, make sure you look for a Muslim angle. This is called “setting the news agenda”.

Rule 7. If a woman wears a hejab or niqab, she is making a statement about her rejection of Western liberal values and her submission to Muslim men. She is most likely an extremist and may use her clothes to conceal bombs or escaped terrorists. Media campaigns against the veil are known as “defending women’s rights”.

Rule 8. To be considered “moderate”, Muslims must apologise for their faith and declare their support for the war on terror. But they can slip back into extremism at any moment. It is our job in the media to constantly warn about this danger. This is called “performing a public service”.

Rule 9. To emphasise point (8), make sure you prominently report the views of Muslims who praise the 9/11 attacks. This is called “balanced reporting”.

Rule 10. If Arabs resist Israel, or oppose the USA and Britain in Iraq, it is because of their sectarian, religious convictions, not for any political, civil or social reasons. As for the Afghans, anyone resisting us is clearly a Taliban and therefore basically a fascist.

Rule 11. Fundamentalism equals Islam equals everything-we-must-now-fight-against, as we did with communism during the Cold War or Nazism during World War II. In this battle, anything goes. This is called “defending our values”.

Rule 12. Islam is an archaic religion with archaic practices that do not exist in Christianity. We are advanced, normal, rational, sane, sensible, good, right. They are backward, abnormal, strange, fanatical, bad, wrong.

Rule 13. If you don’t agree with these rules, you are a dangerous extremist and an apologist for terrorism.

If you would like to add to or comment on these rules, please post a comment below.

Posted in Editorials, U.K. | 3 Comments »

Who hijacked my religion?!

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

Superb 7-min clip on Islam in the media. By Ummah Films

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

“Trial of Tony Blair” failed to do him justice

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

Billed as a piece of “groundbreaking, biting satire”, Alistair Beaton’s latest take on Westminster folly was probably bound to disappoint (Channel 4, January 18). While the construction of a post-Blair era world, framing the events leading to his final downfall – in this case being sent to face a tribunal at the Hague – is indeed an intriguing idea, a crawling pace and lacklustre dialogue meant the Trial of Tony Blair lacked teeth.

Nevertheless, efforts to hold our politicians to account and keep their terrible abuses of power in the public conscience are to be applauded, and the story raises important issues.

The central theme follows Blair’s delusional, helter-skelter downward spiral from PM, and self-appointed world statesman, to meek obscurity, his legacy (an illegal and immoral war) haunting him throughout his grubby demise.

And grubby it is. Rather than repenting, Blair is inconvenienced by vivid apparitions from a distant, bloody war. These merely distract him from his vital purposes – setting up the Blair Foundation, dictating his memoirs, nurturing his “legacy”…

Unfortunately, this is also ultimately where the screenplay falters, stumbling between drama and farce. Thus, harrowing visions of wounded and dead Iraqis are set against Robert Lindsay’s almost amicably oafish Blair and a production line of obvious Westminster-club gags.

Obsessed with potential sales of his forthcoming autobiography My Legacy (which even his publisher ultimately shuns), Blair becomes increasingly isolated, misjudging warnings delivered by his aides, wife, former allies and enemies alike. And so he blunders through a series of Christmas Carol-esque warnings, his moment of epiphany arriving too late — on his final motorcade to Heathrow airport, this time in the back of a police van on the instruction of an extradition order.

It is a perhaps suitably low-key ending. Whether intentionally or not, however, it leaves us hollow and unsettled at the whole sorry mess. Maybe our Tony is the scapegoat, a product of the party machine and the vagaries of the political system Beaton sets out to send up – apparently to provide a plausible backdrop to events, the legal process requires the incumbent PM (a disgruntled and resentful Gordon Brown) to dob him in.

While it is true that cabinet colleagues, advisors, and political colluders — not to mention the pitifully cowed mainstream media — are all in some way culpable, this seems to drastically underplay Blair’s increasingly tyrannical ways. Specifically, such treatment fails to do justice to Blair’s zealous desire to use military means to pursue his new world order, as he explained in a recent speech in characteristically duplicitous tones.

Far from being a lesson learned, it seems the misguided forays into Afghanistan and Iraq are to be repeated again and again in our name, and it is more important than ever to organise effectively to oppose such misleading arguments and hold our leaders to account.

By Caroline

Posted in Editorials, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

“Undercover Mosque”: Channel 4 are the real racists

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

The media must be so grateful to Jade Goody. Thanks to her and Big Brother they have a scapegoat for the racism that they themselves have made respectable. The same newspapers that fill their pages with hate for asylum-seekers, immigrants and multiculturalism suddenly declare themselves anti-racists.

Not for one second have the print and broadcast media relented in their barrage of racism against Muslims. The latest example is Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary “Undercover Mosque”, broadcast on January 15. The documentary is a textbook example of Islamophobic reporting. It has set the right-wing blogosphere on fire; clips from the programme on YouTube have gone straight into the top ten.

The message of “Undercover Mosque” is that, however “moderate” Muslims claim to be, it is the fundamentalists who are really pulling the strings, using the cover of moderation to preach racism, bigotry and holy war. Shafiq ur-Rehman, president of the UK Islamic Mission, has written a powerful response to the makers of “Undercover Mosque”, which deserves a wide audience. In fact the programme was so biased that the judge at the trial of the July 21 bomb plot defendants told the jury: “If any of you saw or heard it, or if you read review of it in the newspapers, please ignore it completely. It’s a very good example of why you should close your mind completely to the media and concentrate on what is said in this courtroom.”

“Undercover Mosque” is part of an established genre, which includes John Ware’s Panorama programmes and Richard Watson’s reports for Newsnight and File on 4. Its technique is childishly simple. First, use a hidden camera — that way the viewer thinks they are being told something important that Muslims would otherwise want to keep secret. Much of “Undercover Mosque” could have been filmed as interviews, but the hidden camera is much sexier. In fact the reporter repeatedly shows video cameras set up to record the speeches that he is so daringly filming himself. So much for the need to go “undercover”.

Second, use a sound-track that sounds like something from Mission Impossible. This helps get the viewer excited about something that isn’t really very exciting. As the Press Gazette commented: “The irritating background music, which cranked into gear whenever a preacher used the word kaffir or kuffr, gave the feel of a cheap Fox News report.”

Shots of boring buildings and people also look much more threatening if you frame them in a fuzzy black circle. The programme’s allegations about links to extremists in Pakistan were illustrated with chanting Pakistani crowds — q.e.d., obviously. The programme repeatedly showed women in the niqab, while presenting no evidence that those women had anything to do with the preachers’ calls to “hit girls if they don’t wear the hijab” (and not, incidentally, the niqab). The Press Gazette, once more: “Patronising in the extreme, the decision to make dramatic cuts to footage of women in hijabs and burkhas whenever ignorant mullahs spouted off about male supremacy, was bewildering. Does Dispatches think the majority of viewers equate the hijab with the subjugation of women?”
As if to prove the point, the programme repeatedly interviewed Irfan al-Alawi, blanking out his face on the basis that he feared violence from Muslim extremists as a result of his views. However, al-Alawi featured in a recent broadcast by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (watch the video here). As Martin Sullivan has pointed out, this just goes to illustrate the dishonest scaremongering tactics employed by Dispatches.

So “Undercover Mosque” certainly worked hard to sex up its material. But as for the material itself, it boiled down to a few nasty, right-wing preachers saying nasty, right-wing things. From that the programme jumped to the conclusion that “moderate” mosques are actually hotbeds of fundamentalism, and that the extremists plan to wage a holy war and take power in Britain.

Two obvious questions follow from these assertions. First, how representative are these preachers of Muslim activity in Britain? Responding to the programme, the Muslim Council of Britain’s Inayat Bunglawala points out that the programme visited just four out of the UK’s 1,200 mosques, and used just two DVDs to smear London’s largest Islamic centre.

And secondly, what was the audience reaction to what the preachers had said? There was not a single interview with young Muslims at the mosques in question. The programme’s producers placed their interpretation on the speeches, but how had Muslims themselves understood them? How did they understand the accusations that the West lies or the exhortations for Muslims not to join the police or the army, or that Muslims should hate unbelievers?

Stepping outside the mosque, those young people would encounter a world in which Western leaders are pathological liars who have sent troops to slaughter Iraqis and Aghanis in an imperialist war for oil and power. They would encounter constant racism and hate at school, at work, in housing, policing, health, and in the streets, blighting their lives and hobbling their futures. And Channel 4 expects Muslims not to hate that racism in response, but to shut up and integrate? As Malcolm X put it: “And this devil has the arrogance and the gall to think we, his victims, should love him!”

Racism isn’t just Jade Goody’s foul mouth. It’s a system of power that filters throughout society. It’s that racism that fuels many Muslims’ anger — and it’s the right-wing Muslims who try to cash in.

Islamophobic programmes like “Undercover Mosque” put the blame for racism on its victims. Shame on its producers.

By Dave Crouch

Posted in Editorials, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Islamophobia: The new racism

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

Media Workers Against the War invites you to a pubic meetin with speakers: Gary Younge (columnist for the Guardian), Urmee Mazhar (journalist for Bangla TV), Louise Christian (lawyer for Guantanamo detainees), Craig Murray (former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan), Chris Nineham (Stop the War Coalition)

Monday January 22, 7.30pm
Bloomsbury Central Church Hall, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2, venue details: www.bloomsbury.org.uk

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Spain hunts US soldiers who shot journalist

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

The International Federation of Journalists reports: The IFJ today welcomed the decision by a Spanish Judge to issue arrest warrants for three US soldiers accused over the killing of Spanish TV cameraman José Couso.

Couso died when a US tank fired a shell at Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk was also killed and three other Reuters employees were seriously injured. On the same day Al Jazeera journalist Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a separate US attack on the network’s Baghdad bureau, raising questions of deliberate targeting of media.

The IFJ has called for independent investigations of these deaths and some 16 other deaths of media staff during the conflict at the hands of US troops.

Spain’s Supreme Court reopened the Couso case in December. As well as issuing the international arrest warrants the judge asked prosecutors to determine whether the soldiers’ assets in the United States could be frozen against any future compensation claims, according to recent press reports.

“This case, like that of ITN journalists Terry Lloyd who was killed by US soldiers just outside Basra at the start of the war, opens up the question of accountability over the killing of journalists,” said White. “We hope that the US will co-operate in trying to ensure that justice is delivered in all of these incidents.”

At least 178 journalists and media staff have been killed in Iraq since the start of the invasion in 2003. At least seven journalists and media workers have been found dead since January 1, according to reports. If the attacks continue at this pace, 134 journalists could be killed in 2007. That would be almost twice the tally of 69 killed in 2006.

“This alarming trend is threatening the complete destruction of journalism in Iraq,” said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White. “The human tragedy is shocking but this also underscores the general insecurity and lack of real democracy in the country. Journalists are being killed at a shocking rate with almost total impunity.”

The IFJ says that the chaos enveloping Iraq is overwhelming media professionals and is now preventing them to operate freely. Under a newly passed United Nations Security Council resolution on the safety of journalists, the killers of these journalists could be prosecuted as war crimes.

“International law is in place to bring the killers in these terrible crimes to justice,” White said. “It is now up to the Iraqi government to investigate and find the people responsible so that they can be brought to trial.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Iraqi Media Under Growing Siege

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily write: BAGHDAD – The U.S. administration continues to tout Iraq as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, but press freedom in Iraq has plummeted since the beginning of the occupation.
Repression of free speech in Iraq was extreme already under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The 2002 press freedom index of the watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq a dismal130th. The 2006 index pushes Iraq down to 154th position in a total of 168 listed countries, though still ahead of Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, China and Iran. North Korea is at the bottom of the table.
The index ranks countries by how they treat their media, looking at the number of journalists who were murdered, threatened, had to flee or were jailed by the state.
The end of Saddam’s dictatorship had for a while brought hope of greater press freedom. More than 200 new newspapers and a dozen television channels opened. The hope did not last even weeks.
“We were overwhelmed by the change that accompanied what we thought was the liberation of our country,” journalist Said Ali who had earlier been arrested many times for criticising Saddam’s regime told IPS. “I was arrested then for criticising low-ranking officials, and that was why I did not stay in jail long. The change of system in 2003 brought me hope of a better situation, but it proved false.”
First, journalists began to face the danger of getting shot in the streets by nervous U.S. soldiers. Many journalists were killed in such firing. Later they began to face exile, arrest and bans on reporting after they began to expose abuses against Iraqi civilians. Journalists were targeted also for reporting the growing resistance to the occupation.
Order 65 of the “100 Orders” penned by former U.S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer established a communications and media commission. Under the order passed Mar. 20, 2004 the commission had complete control over licensing and regulating telecommunications, broadcasting, information services and all other media establishments.
On Jun. 28, 2004 when the United States supposedly handed power to a “sovereign” interim government, Bremer simply passed on the authority to U.S.-installed interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, who had longstanding ties with the CIA and the British intelligence service MI6. These orders have since been incorporated into the Iraqi constitution.
Within days of the “handover” of power to the interim Iraqi government, security forces raided and shut down the Baghdad office of al-Jazeera Arabic satellite channel. The network was banned from reporting out of Iraq initially for a month, but the ban was then extended “indefinitely”, and remains in place today. In November 2004 the Iraqi government announced that any al-Jazeera journalist found reporting in Iraq would be detained.
Others were picked on too. “My friend Sophie-Anne Lamouf, a French journalist who was covering Fallujah events from her hotel in Baghdad was exiled,” an Iraqi journalist told IPS. “I could not believe going back to the dark ages was possible, but it is true.”
Other journalists say resistance groups and criminal gangs are the biggest threat today. Another threat to media workers has been abduction either for ransom or to draw international attention to the kidnappers’ cause.
“The worst thing that happens to a journalist in Iraq is the fighters’ opinion that some of us are CIA spies,” Iraqi journalist Maki al-Nazzal told IPS. “This would definitely lead to thorough investigations and sometimes has led to death.”
During the siege of Fallujah in April 2004, 12 foreign journalists reported freely and left safely. But the situation changed soon afterwards. Under truce negotiations during that siege, U.S. forces asked leaders of the city to expel al-Jazeera journalists as part of a cease-fire agreement.
In September this year, the Iraqi government shut down the Baghdad bureau of al-Jazeera’s competitor al-Arabiya. And on Jan. 1 this year, the Baghdad office of al-Sharqiya satellite channel which broadcasts from Dubai was ordered closed by the Iraqi government on grounds of “inciting sectarianism” following the Dec. 30 execution of Saddam Hussein. A news reader had appeared wearing black mourning clothes.
All non-Iraqi journalists now base themselves in well-protected hotels. For fear of resistance fighters, criminal gangs, the U.S. military or death squads, most never leave the hotels. When they do, they go “embedded” with the U.S. military.
According to the U.S. based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 92 journalists and 37 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since the occupation began in March 2003. Reporters Without Borders says at least 94 journalists and 45 media assistants have been killed since then.
Among the dead was IPS journalist Alaa Hassan who was shot and killed by armed men as he drove to work Jun. 28 this year.
Reporters Without Borders added that Iraq was one of the world’s worst marketplaces for hostages, with at least 38 journalists kidnapped in three years.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 14 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military. Many Arab media organisations say that number is far higher.
Death squads are now another growing threat to the media. The al-Shaabiya satellite channel bureau was attacked by death squads last year. The company chairman and many members of the staff were killed.

Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East for several years.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Shoot the messenger: Blair blames media for anti-war mood

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

This is how the Independent reported Blair’s frightening speech on Jan12:

Tony Blair has turned the blame for his disastrous military campaigns in the Middle East on anti-war dissidents and the media. Warning it would take the West another 20 years to defeat Islamic terrorism, the Prime Minister used a wide-ranging “swansong” lecture on defence to denounce critics and the media who have been a thorn in his side since the invasion of Iraq.

He also dismissed those – including many defence chiefs – who claimed the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had fuelled insurgents and terrorism.

The Prime Minister rejected as “ludicrous” the notion that removing two dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq and replacing them with a UN-backed process to democracy had made Britain a greater target for international terrorism.

However, Mr Blair’s speech last night provoked widespread criticism from MPs and military chiefs.

Speaking to an invited audience of military commanders and academics on board a warship in Plymouth, the Prime Minister disclosed his fears that the West no longer had the stomach for sustained military campaigns. He also appeared to blame the media for the global outrage provoked by the war in Iraq.

“[Islamic terrorists] have realised two things: the power of terrorism to cause chaos, hinder and displace political progress especially through suicide missions; and the reluctance of Western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures.

“They now know that if a suicide bomber kills 100 completely innocent people in Baghdad, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of Iraqis who voted for a non-sectarian government, then the image presented to a Western public is as likely to be, more likely to be, one of a failed Western policy, not another outrage against democracy.”

Acknowledging the public backlash against the Iraq war, Mr Blair said: “Public opinion will be divided, feel that the cost is too great, the campaign too long, and be unnerved by the absence of ‘victory’ in the normal way they would reckon it.”

But the Prime Minister added: “They will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy, often quite sympathetically treated by their own media, to the effect that it’s really all ‘our’, that is the West’s fault. That, in turn, impacts on the feelings of our armed forces. They want public opinion not just behind them but behind their mission.”

He warned that the terrorists had learnt how to use the media to undermine public opinion. He cited a website, called LiveLeak, showing “gruesome images” of the “reality of war” as the kind of propaganda weapon that was being used by international terrorism.

The Prime Minister’s targets also appeared to include military chiefs, such as the former head of the army, General Sir Mike Jackson, who have criticised the Government for failing to look after the soldiers.

“The military and especially their families will feel they are being asked to take on a task of a different magnitude and nature. Any grievances, any issues to do with military life, will be more raw, more sensitive, more prone to cause resentment,” he said.

Mr Blair seemed desperate to provide a lasting justification of his support for the US in the “war on terror”. The Prime Minister had wanted to use his lecture to start a debate on the future of Britain and its military strength, on “tough” and “soft” defence. Some countries had retreated to peacekeeping while Britain maintained a force to fight wars. “We must do both,” he said.

Seeking to stiffen the resolve of the West, he said: “Terrorism cannot be defeated by military means alone but it can’t be defeated without it.” He added: “The parody of people in my position is of leaders who, gung-ho, launch their nations into ill-advised adventures without a thought for the consequences. The reality is we are those charged with making decisions in this new and highly uncertain world; trying, as best we can, to make the right decision. That’s not to say we do so but that is our motivation.”

Mr Blair was accused of “delusional ramblings” by John McDonnell, leader of the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs. Alan Simpson, a leading Labour anti-war MP said: “Tony Blair is whingeing about the hundreds of thousands of people like me who opposed the war on Iraq. He totally fails to realise that soldiers and their families blame him for the reckless way he launched an illegal war with no coherent exit strategy.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who also opposed the war, said: “The Prime Minister does not seem to have learnt the lessons of Iraq. Without United Nations authority the military action was illegal and severely damaged Britain’s reputation. This will be the Prime Minister’s legacy.”

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, former head of defence intelligence and deputy chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said: “This is politics, not morality. The only reason Mr Blair is saying this now is because he cannot airbrush Iraq out of the news. He is talking about renewing the covenant with the armed forces because they are the ones

having to bear the fallout from his mistakes.”

His attack on the media was “particularly rich coming from a party which made a such a fetish out of spin,” added Sir John.

The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: “This is yet another episode of ‘Ten Wasted Years’, by Tony Blair. His legacy will be an overstretched army, navy and air force.

“Our servicemen and women want to know what Tony Blair is going to do about the failure to deliver armoured vehicles to protect troops from roadside bombs in Iraq. They want to know when they will have enough helicopters in Afghanistan and when the Hercules transport fleet will get proper protection.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries