Middle east: The power of silence

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

By Gorill Husby and Guri Wiggen
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG10Ak01.html

OSLO - "If the reality in Iraq is one thing and the reporting of it remains
another, it is because much of the media want it that way," say two leading
journalists who have earned reputations for reporting the "other" side of
the Iraq story.

The level of self-censorship in the media has risen not just during the Iraq
war but also since September 11, says Robert Fisk from The Independent
newspaper published in Britain and John Pilger, Australian broadcaster and
film maker.

Pilger and Fisk both spoke to Inter Press Service on visits to Oslo
recently. Pilger was to receive the US$100,000 Sophie Prize for 30 years of
work to expose deception and war against humanity. Fisk gave a lecture at
Fritt Ord, a Norwegian media foundation.

"Propaganda is not found just in totalitarian states," Pilger said. "There
at least they know they are being lied to. We tend to assume it is the
truth. In the US, censorship is rampant."

Self-censorship, that is. This kind of self-censorship is an increasing
problem, and leads to one-dimensional coverage that journalists must learn
to transcend, Pilger added. "The most important soldiers in the Iraq war
were not the troops, but the journalists and the broadcasters," Pilger said.
"Lies were transformed into themes for public debate. The true reason was of
course - as we all now know - not to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and remove
their alleged weapons of mass destruction, but to achieve the real
Anglo-American aim; to capture an oil-rich country and to control the Middle
East."

Self-censorship is a particular problem because of the "myth of neutrality"
around Western media. "When you declare yourself neutral, everybody else
seems biased," Pilger said. "But as seen in the Iraq coverage and elsewhere,
journalists very often assume the culture of the media institution and all
its unwritten restrictions." But even the term self-censorship is not quite
right, Pilger says, "because many journalists are unaware that they are
censoring themselves".

Media organizations are now under tight control, Pilger said. Just five
corporations rule the broadcasters in the United States. In Australia,
Rupert Murdoch controls 70 percent of the media. "We live in an age of
information," he says. "Yet the media is not attacking the ruling system.
The media has never before been so controlled, and propaganda is all around.
Most of us don't even see it." The three main dangers facing the world, he
said, are silence, betrayal and power - and journalists can make silence
dangerous.

Fisk says that the story in Iraq most correspondents chose not to report was
the "bomb now, die later" policy through use of depleted uranium (DU). Since
the Gulf War of 1991 the number of cancer patients had risen, and "strange
vegetables" had begun to appear on the market. The distortions were most
likely to have been caused by use of DU, he said.

"I told my colleagues that this was an interesting story that should be
reported," Fisk said. "But most of them said, 'honestly Bob, we do not want
to write home about sick children'. An official American military document
states that DU dust can indeed be spread in battles and lead to serious
illness in humans, but this is not reported."

The public and civil society opposed the Iraq war because they understood
the hidden agenda, but "editors have a tendency to underestimate their
readership", he said. Readers are seen as ignorant or disinterested.
Self-censorship continues in Iraq after the war, and elsewhere, Fisk said.
"Many more people have died so far in the war against terrorism than on
September 11 2001," Fisk said. "That is the story of our time, and very few
are writing it."

Twenty thousand people have died just in the Afghanistan war, seven times
more than on September 11, Fisk said. This is just one example of the "great
power of silence that is threatening to dominate us all".

Coupled with self-censorship is the censorship being imposed on the Iraqi
media, Fisk said. This, too, is not being reported adequately in the United
States. The US administration has set up a committee for press censorship in
Iraq, which means the Iraqi press can publish anything to remind people
about the terror of Saddam, but is not allowed to write freely about current
events crucial to them and their future.

Pilger sees reason for optimism, though. "There is a movement of resistance
globally from the landless peoples movement in Brazil to the huge anti-war
movement," he said. "Nothing like this has ever happened before in my
lifetime." The superpower in Washington is being challenged by the other
superpower, he says; the superpower of public opinion.