Media Held Guilty of Deception
Dahr Jamail - 14 Feb 2005
A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media
guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting
of Iraq.
The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative
seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq made its
pronouncement Sunday after a three- day meeting. The tribunal heard
testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists,
and
member of the European Parliament Michele Santoro.
The Rome session of the WTI followed others in Brussels, London,
Mumbai, New
York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon. The Rome
meeting
focused on the media role.
The informal panel of WTI judges accused the United States and
the British
governments of impeding journalists in performing their task, and
intentionally producing lies and misinformation.
The panel accused western corporate media of filtering and suppressing
information, and of marginalising and endangering independent journalists.
More journalists were killed in a 14-month period in Iraq than in
the entire
Vietnam war.
The tribunal said mainstream media reportage on Iraq also violated
article
six of the Nuremberg Tribunal (set up to try Nazi crimes) which
states:
"Leaders, organisers, instigators and accomplices participating
in the
formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit
any of the
foregoing crimes (crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against
humanity) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons
in execution
of such a plan."
The panel that heard testimonies included Francois Houtart, director
of the
Tricontinental Centre in Belgium that has backed several peoples
movements
in Latin America, and Dr. Samir Amin, director of the Third World
Forum in
Dakar, Senegal. Dr. Haleh Afshar, who teaches politics and women's
studies
at the University of York in Britain, and Italian author and newspaper
editor Ernesto Pallotta witnessed the proceedings.
"This is not simply an exercise to denounce the mainstream
media for their
bias and incompetence," said Dr. Tony Alessandrini, a human
rights activist
who has published several articles on the U.S. colonisation of Iraq.
"These
denunciations have been going on for months. Here in Rome, we must
go
further.."
Alessandrini, who helped organised the WTI added, "What we
are being asked
to consider is not simply media bias, but rather the active complicity
of
media in crimes that have been committed and are being committed
on a daily
basis against the people in Iraq."
Several experts gave strong testimony. Dr. Peter Philips, director
of
'Project Censured' at Sonoma State University in California where
he teaches
media censorship provided taped testimony. He said that at no time
since the
1930s has the United States been so close to "institutionalised
totalitarianism", and added, "U.S. society has become
the least informed,
best entertained society in the world."
The WTI Rome session also heard testimony from Dr. David Miller
from
Scotland, author of 'Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion
in the
Attack on Iraq'. "This is about condemning journalistic complicity
of war
crimes," said Dr. Miller, who is also co-editor of Spinwatch,
a group that
monitors public relations and propaganda.
Miller said the Pentagon "does not recognise the concept of
independent
journalists, because they are providers of unfriendly information",
and that
mainstream media in the United States and in Britain was "complicit
in
furthering the selling of the invasion, and ongoing occupation.
All studies
conducted on mainstream media show dominance by government policies,
and
wartime coverage of TV news in the UK was generally sympathetic
to the
government's case.."
Fernando Suarez, who lost his son Jesus during the invasion of
Iraq when he
is said to have stepped on an illegal U.S. cluster bomb, also testified
at
the tribunal.
Suarez testified that he was first told by the Pentagon that his
son died
from a gunshot to the head, then that he died in an accident, and
then that
he had died in 'friendly fire'.
On inspecting his son's body Suarez said he discovered that his
son had died
from stepping on a cluster bomb.
"I never had the truth from them," Suarez added. "I
found the truth, and the
truth was very simple. On March 26 the Army dropped 20,000 cluster
bombs in
Iraq, but only about 20 percent exploded. The other 80 percent are
in the
cities and the schools and acting like mines."
Suarez said: "Bush sent my son because he said Iraq had illegal
weapons, and
my son died from an illegal American weapon, and nobody has spoken
about
this. The media will not talk about the illegal American weapons."
Several witnesses testified about media disinformation over the
siege of
Fallujah. They were presented copies of the award winning documentary
'Weapons of Mass Deception' by journalist and film-maker Danny Schechter,
who is also executive editor of Mediachannel.org, an online media
issues
network.
Alessandrini said evidence of active complicity of the mainstream
media in
wrongs committed against the people of Iraq, and the wrongs of deception
and
incitement, was now overwhelming.
"We work from the understanding that history will recall the
crimes
committed against the people of Iraq by the U.S.," he said.
"It is our
responsibility to record these crimes in order to ensure these crimes
are
never again repeated.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27429
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