Where was the reality? Manipulation and misinformation in Iraq

Objectivity does not exist - it cannot exist… The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No sir: sometimes truth stays on one side only.
- Oriana Fallaci

"Let me say one other thing," Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence lectured, "the images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?" (Laughter.)

Rumsfeld was pouring scorn on the television media in the United States for focussing on the looting following the US capture of Baghdad. Previously he had spoken glowingly about the television footage of people welcoming American troops and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statues. This, apparently was not repetitive selective footage but the real picture of what was going on.

It now seems clear that the welcome and the footage of small cheering crowds were unrepresentative. The coverage which conveyed the fuller picture was that of an occupying force in a severely damaged country.

"Do you think that the words "anarchy" and "lawlessness" are ill-chosen," Rumsfeld was asked on April 11. "Absolutely," he replied. "… here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or ten headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot -- one thing after another. It's just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country!"

And yet take it away, some media did. Here a report of civilians shot at a road block; there another; here a killing by US troops of ten or more civilian demonstrators at Mosul.

If there were papers in the United States showing bias that made Mr Rumsfeld feel unhappy, there were those in Australia doing everything to redress the imbalance.

IRAQ THREATENS WORLD TERROR, The Australian bellowed on March 31 while on the same day the Sydney Daily Telegraph's front page pleaded on behalf of our servicemen's children PLEASE DON'T HATE OUR DADS.

Outlandish claims also got a fair run. Malcolm Farr, writing in the Daily Telegraph alleged that "There are few gatherings more violent than a so-called peace rally these days". Well all I can say is Farr mustn't go to many gatherings, see a pub late on Friday night; or watch rugby league or union matches.

Manipulative journalism was alive and well in Australia during the first military phase of the war with the Murdoch press leading the charge. Some 175 Murdoch media outlets worldwide were reported in the Guardian newspaper to be pro war, none was anti, a somewhat surprising statistic, given that in countries such as Australia and the UK the population was roughly divided on the issue.

The Murdoch papers' consistent line must surely put paid, once and for all, to the old chestnut that proprietors don't matter - it's the journalists who determine a publication's bias. Murdoch, of course, is not sitting down personally every night writing editorials or choosing the front-page headlines. Editors get some guidance occasionally from Mr Rumsfeld's or Mr Murdoch's public statements (Mr Murdoch said in mid February that he was completely behind Mr Bush and Mr Blair) but in general they don't need it. Mr Murdoch rests confident in the knowledge that the chosen editors will do their bit, selecting the right people and the right stories.

Why does the media coverage of this war matter? It matters because the media influences the way the whole community views issues. Not only the general public, but Bush, Blair and Howard. Is the issue still the elimination of weapons of mass destruction? Yes but only if the media continues to pursue it. No, if politicians are no longer pressed on the matter.

Will the war reduce the prospects of anti-western terrorism? The answer to this will partly be found in how Muslim and Arab people have been informed by their media about the war. Has their media painted a different picture to ours? For terrorism awareness reasons, if no other, it is essential that we know.

According to Middle East observers, Al Jazeera has became the most respected news station in the Arab world, frequently presenting views which offend Arab governments. In the first weeks of the invasion, Al-Jazeera was criticised by US representatives for being biased because it allegedly showed too much of the captives, the killed and injured. But was this bias? Or were the Australian and US media biased in showing so many rockets and bombs lighting the sky, tanks in action and jets screaming off the decks of aircraft carriers?

The US administration's efforts to prevent the airing of film footage of US POWs should have been seen for what it was -- not a concern over the Geneva convention (The US administration showed no concern when Iraqi captives were shown shackled on TV) but an attempt to stop the US media showing images which might have had the effect of making the US population less keen on the war.

Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayoub paid the ultimate price for his organisation offending the US. He was killed, and a cameraman injured, when two US missiles hit the Al Jazeera office, virtually destroying it on April 8. The BBC reported US military officials saying that the building was struck by mistake. But in November 2001 in Kabul, Afghanistan, American warplanes also mistakenly bombed the Al- Jazeera offices during the US-led campaign to oust the Taliban.

Not only has Al Jazeera offended the US administration but Saddam Hussein's regime also saw fit to expel its correspondents. Nevertheless, writing in defence of the US military's attack on Al Jazeera's Baghdad office Paddy McGuinness commented that if the attack was deliberate it was relevant whether Al Jazeera "could be considered an enemy propagandist, and therefore undeserving of non combat status".

McGuinness also thought the attack on the well known journalists refuge, the Palestine Hotel, could be justified because a cameraman went against US military instructions and filmed from a balcony. McGuinness thought the shoulder held camera could look "very like an anti tank grenade launcher" In saying this McGuinness made up a new excuse for the tank crew who say themselves that they were responding to gunfire from the building. This claim was refuted by journalist on the spot who said they heard no such gunfire.

In one broadcast an embedded journalist stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and unself-consciously remarked "And may we wish them all a safe return." No thought here of Iraqi safety from the bombs and rockets of the attacking warplane. Where was the editorial intervention to eliminate bias here?

For every rocket fired there was an end result. A "full" report would include the destruction, the killing and the injured. But it is impossible to capture all end results. Nevertheless, Australian televisions showed a strong bias towards footage of the war games, as opposed to footage of the casualties. More than 5,000 people have died in this war; many thousands have been injured; families have been ruined; irreplaceable artifacts have been stolen; infrastructure - hospitals, schools and bridges - damaged or destroyed; businesses and homes left in ruins. Some 14 journalists - both from the east and west -died reporting the war. But no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered. And yet overall the war was reported as if it were a success.

In the lead-up to the military campaign and during the campaign itself the predominant topic in current affairs programs was military tactics. The ABC 7.30 Report had daily discussion with three experts who provided little or no valuable insights. These analysts speculated in program after program about the number of days it required to take Baghdad, or that the Iraqis would use chemical weapons once the US troops crossed some imaginary line around the city. So too did the SBS military expert.

But the Iraqi forces did not use chemical weapons. The speculation promulgated by the commentators can now be seen clearly for what it was - the trotting out of US propaganda, dressed up as independent analysis. (One might speculate that when threatened with the destruction of his regime, and the near certain death of his family, Saddam Hussein would have been prepared to use these weapons if he had had them.) So much for the military analysts critical "analysis"!

Other US feeds led to speculation that Saddam Hussein had been killed on the first day of the war, providing us with a host of discussion on whether videos of Saddam Hussein depicted the real Hussein, or a stand-in. There were also mythical US fed stories that an entire Iraqi division of 8,000 soldiers had surrendered during the first few days of the war, and a series of premature claims that Basra or Umm Qasr or other towns had been taken. Journalists of course have to report such claims but they should have been reported clearly as "claims".

No-one (except perhaps the Iraqi Information Minister) doubted that there would be a US military victory. But valuable time was wasted discussing this prospect, time which could have been better used discussing the important issues:- how long will the occupation last? What cost, both in terms of lives and resources? Can the various tribal groups achieve a workable democracy? What of Turkey's reaction?

The sooner the population understands that the "victors" will face a long war of occupation, the better. Past IRA operations in Northern Ireland demonstrate that it only takes a tiny armed and committed minority to wreak havoc over years. Iraq has more than a sufficient share of the population sympathetic to an anti-Western position, and they have enough arms to run an endless guerrilla campaign.

During the invasion, Prime Minister John Howard repeatedly justified Australia's involvement on the grounds that we had to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. He was not pressed to provide evidence of the existence of such weapons, despite statements before the invasion by Chief UN inspector Hans Blix's that progress was being made in disarmament, and statements from chief nuclear weapons inspector, Dr ElBaradei, that he had found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program. "Where's the evidence Prime Minister?" should have been the repeated question to Mr Howard. "Why not adopt the French/German plan, given that progress is being made?" might have been another.

At least John Howard faced question. In the US, the media and the population suffered repeated orchestrated media grabs. How often did President Bush face a sustained session of critical questions? How, in a supposed democracy, could a leader taking a country into war, be allowed to get away with so little direct questioning?

It is often said that the media should be "balanced" - as if there were only two positions and it was only a matter of finding the fulcrum. But there are many points of view, and an overwhelming volume of information. Journalists, editors, news editors and producers have choices. One "balance" could be to devote as much news time to the results -- the casualties of the war, the killed and injured -- as to the military front.

In the end, all we can hope for is the reporting of facts (as opposed to the speculation we saw so much of); the questioning of claims; and the provision of as many perspectives as possible. The International Federation of Journalists and the Federation of Arab Journalists has called for a new media order that reflects the highest standards of pluralism, press freedom and editorial independence. This is as good a summary of objectives as we are likely to get.