Journalism
sourced to unnamed officials whose job in these circumstances is to manipulate
the news has a history. Pick any one of `our` recent wars or slaughters and
write down the `intelligence` and `diplomatic` lies that emerged later. The
list is long.
Take
George Bush Senior`s attacks on Panama and Somalia just over 10 years ago. Both
were promoted as Wild West pursuits of bad guys, General Noriega in Panama and
General Aidid in Somalia.
`Sources`
were quoted as saying that few civilians had been killed. In fact, more than
2,000 civilians were killed by American helicopter gunships in the shanties of
Panama City and, according to a CIA estimate, between 7,000 and 10,000 were
killed in Somalia in what the Pentagon called `Operation Restore Hope`. This was
not reported.
In
1998, President Clinton destroyed a harmless pharmaceutical factory in Sudan
with cruise missiles. `Intelligence sources` were widely quoted in the American
and British media as being `beyond doubt` that this was where Osama bin Laden`s
organisation was making nerve gas. Clinton`s attack killed hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of innocent people.
There
is said to be a UN report on how many were killed and which is suppressed under
pressure from Washington. The sum of the dead from all these attacks is several
times that of the number killed in America on 11 September.
Regardless
of an admirable strain of dissent in the Guardian and Independent, the
overriding impression given by television and the press is that of a familiar
rush to war. There is the same old footage of ships and planes against the
sunrise, the same old `experts`, the same old Boy`s Own maps, the same old
instant `evidence`, the same old military jargon used by reporters (`surgical
strikes` and `assets` are favourites), the same old warm-up stories about SAS
derring-do, the same old demonising of nations and cultures, the same old
nonsense about anti-Americanism (now in the realm of self-parody, with
criticism of American policy described as `racist`) and the same old `approval
rating` polls drawn from a public denied credible information from independent
sources, not to mention the perspective that Washington is using the 11
September disaster to accelerate American control over much of humanity, with
immediate dangers for all of us.
Surely,
journalists must ask themselves: is it not possible to break away from the
pack? And do the media courses turning out the next generation examine and
analyse such institutional failure (honourable exceptions aside) to keep the
record straight? Are media students warned that true journalists must be
sceptical of all authority, and that their job is to push back screens and lift
rocks, especially at a time like this?
It
seems that the mantra `giving the public what it wants`, meaning giving the public
no choice, has bred those who believe cynicism of the public, not their
masters, ordains them as journalists. Long ago, John Milton put it succinctly:
`They who put out the people`s eyes, reproach them of their blindness.`
Nothing
justified the murder of innocent people in America, and nothing justifies the
murder of innocent people anywhere else. That is the unassailable truth in this
surreal time. Those who contribute to the current propaganda that says there is
no other way but war might reflect that they, too, are likely to end up with
blood on their hands.
About the writer:
John Pilger, the Australian-born war correspondent, film-maker and playwright,
has won numerous awards in journalism and broadcasting.