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The power of silence
By Gorill Husby and Guri Wiggen
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.
(Inter Press Service)
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