The media and the warmongers

The Journalist, October 2002

POPULAR SUPPORT for wars in foreign lands is not a natural phenomenon. It has to be carefully constructed, sometimes over decades, sometimes in a matter of weeks, but always with the assistance of the media. And when powerful forces committed to making war get to work, journalists come under pressure.

From the battleship Maine (US-Spanish war of 1898) to the Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam war), from bayoneted Belgians (World War One) to Kuwaiti babies ejected from incubators (Gulf War), there is a long and depressing history of fabricated pretexts for war, and of journalists collaborating with them, wittingly or unwittingly. There is also a long history of journalists challenging and exposing the claims of war-makers. In recent weeks, we’ve seen both traditions on display in the British media.

The treatment of September’s report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies is a case in point. For some sections of the media, including much of BBC TV, this was the long-promised smoking gun, the proof that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and had to be dealt with. The Evening Standard headline read: “Saddam A-Bomb ‘Within Months’”.

But as journalists elsewhere made clear, the report actually said that Iraq could not construct and deploy nuclear weapons for years to come without “substantial” outside assistance – a statement that could apply to any other regime. “Saddam no threat to UK or US” would have been a headline far more justified by the actual content of the report.

Earlier this year a spate of stories attempted to implicate the Iraqi regime in the atrocities of 11 September. Those stories have now been discredited (as the CIA admits). It would behove the editors and journalists involved to acknowledge as much to their readers. At times like these, journalists have a duty not to regurgitate the claims made by “intelligence sources”, indeed to look at them with the greatest suspicion.
They also have a duty to be wary about spreading fear – an emotion that is always the opinion-former of choice for those who would wage war. Uncorroborated reports of terrorist threats and underground cells are often given a prominence out of all proportion to their real significance. As journalists know, these reports do not come out of nowhere. They are part of an effort to convince us that we are in deadly peril and that therefore military action is necessary.

Speculation about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction has been rife, but there has been little analysis of a matter that is a good deal less speculative: the human cost of invading and occupying Iraq. There are precedents here and plenty of hard information from which to extract realistic estimates – of civilian deaths, of combat casualties on both sides, of the damage to environment and infrastructure and the implications for disease, infant mortality, economic development, etc.

Before anyone backs a war, surely the consequences of it for the people on the receiving end must be fully understood and taken into account. Of course, government officials are going to be considerably less helpful in compiling this data than in supplying innuendo about the putative enemy’s unfathomable villainy.

The assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai in Kandahar appeared in much of the British media as a bolt from the blue – though it was not a shock to those who have followed reports available in the south Asian media, from NGOs and human rights groups. Last autumn, our leaders pledged that they would not once again turn away from an Afghanistan wrecked by years of superpower interference; but their attention wandered, the promised flow of aid for reconstruction slowed to a trickle and the media’s interest ebbed.

Despite some admirable individual efforts, there has still not been a sustained attempt by the British media to ascertain the real extent of the damage wrought by US and British military action in Afghanistan. Nor a serious investigation into security and human rights across the country – information that ought to be made available before our government seeks to deport more Afghan refugees, or attempts another violently coerced “regime change” elsewhere.

The issues of war and peace are not the preserve of generals, politicians, academic experts, chat show panellists, or columnists. Indeed, previous human experience suggests that the run-up to war is precisely not the time to hand over debate, no less decision-making, to this minute fraction of the population. Journalists should remember that for the 99 per cent of the population without ready access to the media, protest politics – not least mass demonstrations – are the only mechanism for taking part in democratic debate, the only hope of influencing a decision that has a bearing on all their futures.

Last year’s anti-war demonstrations were large and diverse, and they helped set the stage for the gradual shift in public opinion regarding the “war on terror”, and in particular the current popular opposition to a war against Iraq. Yet they were scarcely covered by the mainstream media. In contrast, the antics of a tiny handful of jihadi zealots – unrepresentative of either the Muslim community or the broad swathe of anti-war opinion – are splashed without inhibition across newspapers and TV screens.

Journalists should not see themselves as gatekeepers, guarding legitimate public discussion from the intrusions of the anonymous unwashed, but as democratic facilitators.

The anti-war demonstration on 28 September, supported by the NUJ, ten other national trades unions, and an extraordinary array of religious, political and cultural organisations, promises to be one of the largest in many years, and takes place at a crucial juncture, on the eve of Labour party conference. It will be an event of serious political and social significance, and merits coverage appropriate in both scale and tone. Many of those planning to come to the demonstration have expressed doubts about whether the British media is willing or able to give them a fair hearing, or even to acknowledge their existence.

By proving them wrong, by eschewing caricatures and sensationalist trivia, by representing the anti-war movement in its true scale and diversity – and by reporting its case accurately – journalists can perform a vital democratic task, even though those who want to go to war without due cause and without due regard to the devastation that will follow will not thank them for it.