Western Media Toeing Official Line

The media moghuls from the West who had often lectured us, the scribes of the developing world, on the ethics of journalism have allowed themselves to become an arm of the establishment - willingly, even enthusiastically - before and during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "Facts are sacred, comment is free", we were reminded of this basic axiom of the journalism class. Objectivity transcends patriotic considerations was another piece of sermon.

The leading representatives of this tribe, especially the two major television networks, were quick to adopt the vocabulary of the propaganda organs of the U.S. and the U.K. Once the two Governments had decided to embark on the cause of war, it was understandable for them to go all out to achieve the desired ends. There had to be no sanctity about the means. Psychological warfare was, by now, a recognised practice and, as such, there was nothing surprising about the official agencies working to perfection in its execution. In this case, they began with the coining of suitable expressions to describe themselves and their role. Here are a few samples. The invading troops were called the "coalition force"; obviously, to convey the impression that it comprises contingents from a good number of countries and has a broad support-base, of the type with which the world community was familiar in the 1991 Gulf war. Actually, as is known, there were just two countries - one of them, of course, the most powerful in the world, - which chose to act unilaterally, against the wishes of the vast majority of the U.N. Security Council members. "Allies" is another honorific that is liberally used to cover the ugly reality, along with "Operation Iraqi Freedom", "liberation" mission. The Western media readily adopted these expressions, both in the coverage of the war and commentaries. As a result, the dividing line between the official version and the accounts of the non-official media was completely obliterated.

The media seemed eager to propagate the official presentation of the course of military operations, which, at times, was at variance with the reality. The television news channels, in particular, lapped up the official calculations, based on expectations of surrender by large sections of the Iraqi forces, of welcome to the advancing columns by cheering crowds, the incapacity of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, to lead the people because of injuries caused during air raids on Baghdad, with some suggesting that the injuries proved fatal. After a while, it became difficult to sustain the myths. The operations slowed down because of resistance by the Iraqi side - "by the troops, by the Baath Party cadres, who had to protect their vested interests, by tribal chiefs, bribed by the regime, and by the civilians, who felt intimidated by the ruling cliques". This led the "coalition" - and, at its instance, by the media - to tone down the predictions of a walkover, to modify the earlier estimates of a quick end to the operations. Slowly but surely, they came out with a realistic assessment of the situation.

The people of the U.S. and the U.K. were shocked to find that the operations had not gone on as smoothly as they were led to believe, that heavy price was paid for the advance in the southern part of Iraq, which was the scene of heavy fighting days after it was supposed to have been secured. The high-ups in Washington sought to prepare the people for the hard reality - "we are closer to the beginning rather than the end of the war", according to one of them. The fact of the casualties and the "allied" prisoners could not be concealed.

Leading newspapers in the U.S. were divided on the publication of pictures of prisoners of war, though the television network provided fleeting images available from al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite network. "The question - publish or not to publish - sparked", the Washington Post noted, "an impassionate debate as news executives wrestled with issues of propriety, privacy and how graphic war coverage should be".

The paper quoted the Los Angeles Times Editor - from among those who chose against reticence - as saying: "It's a war and we are supposed to cover the whole thing, not just part of it." On the other hand, the executive editor of the Washington Post said: "We are relatively conservative... about pictures of dead people of any kind, or people under duress of any kind."

The monopoly enjoyed by the Western electronic media in the coverage of wars, first noticed during the 1991 conflict, was breached by al-Jazeera. It showed pictures of the American prisoners being interrogated by the Iraqis, their captors. It also carried footage of dead soldiers. Had a rival satellite not come out with this footage, the fact of the American troops captured by the Iraqi side, perhaps, would not have come to light or would have been made known later in a sanitised way or well after the "victory".

The presence of a competitor in the Arab world led the "free" media of the West to make a virtue of compulsion - and share inconvenient details with viewers and readers.