Friday 4 July 2003

Pilger & Fisk on Iraq Coverage

The Real Danger Lies Within

If the reality in Iraq is one thing and the reporting of it remains another, it is because much of the media wants it that way, say two leading journalists who have been 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 9/11, says Robert Fisk from The Independent newspaper published in Britain and John Pilger, Australian broadcaster and film-maker.

Pilger and Fisk both spoke to IPS on visits to Oslo. Pilger came to receive the $100,000 Sophie Prize for 30 years of work to expose deception and war against humanity. Fisk came to give a lecture at Fritt Ord, a Norwegian media foundation.

click here to visit his website "Propaganda is not found just in totalitarian states," Pilger says. "There at least they know they are being lied to. We tend to assume it is the truth. In the U.S., 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 says.

"The most important soldiers in the Iraq war were not the troops, but the journalists and the broadcasters," Pilger says. "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 says. "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 says. 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 says, are silence, betrayal and power--and journalists can make silence dangerous.

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