Thanks, Alison, for the interview with Fisk which is most
interesting and often inarguable in its assessment of various
situations and in its sense of "this cozy, incestuous, dangerous relationship
between press and administration, between sources and access which
causes many of these problems." On the other hand, I sometimes
think he overreaches in his reading of the situation here, for
instance when he says "So what you have I think is a general
consensus in America, which I hope is breaking up, that to
challenge American foreign policy is in some way, not just
insensitive, but unpatriotic." I don't really think there is
a general consensus, but rather a great number of people who have
challenged and continue to challenge American foreign policy
in any number of ways, in a variety of modes, but with little
result in the sense of changing the administration's policy.
Part of what the media does here in "its gutlessness" is present
a sort of consenual face, by deciding upon coverage, omitting
various things, choosing the same old talking heads on the
various talk shows, and, which began before Sept. 11th or
Afghanistan and Iraq, of which an example was the coverage
of Bush in his car, surrounded by a phalanx of motorcycle
police, secret service agents, black limousines, in the triangular
form of an arrow pointed at the capitol proceeding to his
inaugeration while there was absolutely no coverage of the
several hundred thousands protestors at his dubious election
who were kept several streets back by police barricades and
away from the television cameras. In other words, the erasure
works both ways, by presenting only the administration's view
to the public, and by presenting a consenual face of the public.
Or when Fisk says " Especially foreign policy
in the Middle East which is still a taboo subject. You know in
America you can talk about Lesbians, Gays, and Blacks but not about
the relationship with Israel and the US Administration or
Congress," this seems to me to be somewhat nonsensical. Foreign
policy in the Middle East is not a taboo subject, it's on the air
all the time, but often with many other points of view obviated in
favor of views favorable to the administration, particularly
on television. However, there are other media, besides the internet,
where one can hear some of those non-consensual views, which
is why there is a movement in some parts of the government to
cut off funding for National Public Radio. And I don't know
what to think of his statement that "in America you can talk
about Lesbians, Gays, and Blacks but not about
the relationship with Israel and the US Administration. Well,
I assume he means in these various media outlets, where,
no, actually, you can't, except in very narrow terms, in other
words, some gay activist might be invited to talk about an
identified gay issue, just as a black activist might be
invited to talk about a particularly "black" issue, as opposed
to an issue that might be considered to be of importance to
any person, and that in and of itself creates a sort of
ghetto of conversation, isolating the gay or black person
from the realm of human concern, and also drawing attention
to the peculiarities of his or her more narrow concerns. For
instance, on some programs, it often seems to me that gay
or black activists, the more 'colorful' the better, are
invited on in order to implicitly ridicule their position and
to illustrate to that consensual face viewing the 'sorts' of
people who advocate that position. The idea, though,
that conversation about Gays, Lesbians and Blacks is somehow
free of taboo and restriction seems to me untenable. The same
constrictions apply to both those conversations and talking about
Israel, by what's covered and who's invited to allow the
expression of what implicitly or directly
supports the "consensual" view. Also, he says nothing about
Mexicans, which will soon be the largest minority in America,
and their utter absence from conversation, or any of the other
minorities here, but rather mentions those that are most
problematic to the American public. And I have to say that
there was at least a hint of prejudice in his remarks, the
implication of--well, they can talk about Gays, Lesbians
and Blacks, but not about Israel--as if to point up
the lack of the second by exagerrating the (implied unnecessary)
presence of the first. And I have to say, too, that this makes
me wonder about the emphasis on subjectivity in his interview,
for while subjectivity, the thinking and experience of the reporter,
might be part of the necessary truth of the report, I have
always thought that one of the strengths of good reporting
was the challenge of objectivity, of having the sense of
the truth of actuality as outside of oneself, even if
it may be in any absolute sense unobtainable. And I'm not
suggesting anything like lying occurs by virtue of
the emphasis on subjectivity, in Pilger or the better
reporting of Fisk, but only that to shift the desired
quality from objectivity to subjectivity, as the focus
of intent, encourages a sort of scattergun effect, which
you and Dominic note in Pilger's report, but which
I also see, in a more subtle version in this paragraph of
Fisk. I don't know, though, if I want to know so much
what the reporter thinks or feels, I mostly want to know
what has happened or is and I am more inclined to trust
a clearer eye/I glass.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 07/05/03 12:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: John Pilger on Afghanistan and Iraq
>
> At 9:15 PM +0100 4/7/03, Dominic Fox wrote:>I still think he's a rotten journalist
>peddling a particularly crass variety of spin - no better than any of the
>rightwing hacks doing the same for the other side.
He used not to be. But (cautiously) I agree with you Dominic, I don't
think Pilger's tendency to enter a scattergun polemic helps. That
doesn't mean that he's lying, though. But Mark has summed up the
situation in Iraq pretty well, I think. Are you seriously saying that
the US forces are really there to help the Iraqi people?
Fisk, who has written many angry articles from Iraq, some seething
with impotent rage, totally defends the right, even the necessity,
for a journalist to permit his or her subjectivity in a report
(subjectivity is not telling falsehoods, btw: he means that the
jousnalist has the duty to report what he sees - what troubled me
about Pilger's report what that it was rather slippery in claiming
that he had seen something when it seemed that he could not have been
there - a common jounralistic device, btw, described to hilarious
effect in Waugh's "Scoop"). Fisk absolutely follows in the traditions
of Martha Gellhorn and other famous war correspondents. And (see
article below) he is incredibly critical of the US media for its
gutlessness in the name of "objectivity", which is a common criticism
among journalists outside the US.
Fisk says: "You have to have some sense of morality, and passion and
anger. You know when I am at the scene for example the slaughter of
Hamer in 1982, where the Syrian army crushed the people of Hamer, up
to 20,000 dead, destroyed their mosques in the old city. I managed to
get in there, and my piece if you read it now, drips with anger at
the way in which this massive armed force run by the then president's
brother was erasing a city and its history and its people. If you
read my account of the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by the
Israelis allies in 1982 as Israeli soldiers watched, the same thing
happens. We should not be employed to be automaton to effectively
just be a voice for spokesman. We should be out there telling it how
it is, how journalism used to be. "
At 8:54 PM +0100 4/7/03, Dominic Fox wrote:
>Assuming they are not utterly deranged by grief, and are capable of
>reasonable reflection, I would expect them to care about the difference
>between an attack carried out by people who believed that they were
>butchering a wedding party, and intended to do so, and an attack carried
out
>by people who believed they were killing enemy combatants (who they
believed
>had been shooting at them), and intended to do so. I would expect them to
be
>furious nevertheless, but such considerations must surely make a
difference
>with regard to what they believed themselves to be furious *about*.
It's still being shot at by an occupying force. If Leicester was
released from the tyranny of Blair by, say, the French, and by
accident French soldiers shot up your family, I seriously doubt
whether you'd worry too much about whether they thought your family
was enemy combatants. Your family, your children, were still killed
by invaders, by foreign soldiers, whom you would feel were badly
intentioned for being there in the first place. Is it an accident
when a cluster bomb blows up a baby? Somebody dropped it there. More
profoundly, if your family was shot at a wedding party by jumpy
soldiers, it is more likely such a mistake might happen because those
soldiers do not speak your language, are not interested in your
culture, and possibly think that all the british are violent and
brutal.
And the response would not just be fury, it would be grief.
What was that saying about the road to hell being paved with good
intentions? Good intentions are not enough. Not that I am sure on the
part of the US administration that they were ever there.
Covering The Middle East
An Interview With Robert Fisk
by Robert Fisk
May 30, 2003
Print-Friendly Version
Email This Article To A Friend
INTERVIEWS
Pacifica
Over the course of a quarter century covering the Middle East can
you describe the kinds of press restrictions you have been operating
under at different times?
Fisk:
You know I think we mischaracterize it with the word restrictions. In
most cases journalists turn up on assignments on major stories,
certainly in the case of the American Media, with a clear idea of
what limits there are and what constraints there are. This of course
particularly applies in the Arab/Israeli dispute. Where the concern
that a criticism of Israel, however soft and remote will elicit an
overemotional response and the reporter will be accused of being an
anti-Semite or a racist, has produced a situation in which
journalists, American journalists covering the middle east question,
particularly new arrivals, are so sensitive and so careful of the way
they report things, always putting the word alleged or reported
around anything which might impugn the integrity of an Israeli army
officer or Ariel Sharon the prime minister, their reporting is almost
unintelligible. I want to know what the reporter thinks, not what
Israelis or Palestinians say. I know that. So in a sense, once a
major story breaks in the region, the restrictions are very much, the
front line runs very much through the mind of a reporter I am afraid
to say.
If you take the case of the 1991 gulf war, any journalist who
remotely tried to question, I mean American, I questioned it, the
British press questioned it, but anyone who questioned the motives of
that war was immediately accused of being a Saddam lover, a man who
was obviously for terrorism, who hated America , etc... Even worse
was the reaction of September 11. I was actually crossing the
Atlantic on 9/11 of course the plane turned around when the US closed
its airspace. And from the satellite phone on my seat in the plane, I
was on deadline, I realize this was a Middle East story, it must be
Arabs, we didn't even know that then. And I wrote an 800 word story
that said "so it has come to this. The lies of the Balfour
declaration, the promises that we made, the lies, British to the
Arabs, all the deceit of the decades, all the one sided peace
process, all the suffering of the children of Iraq", I thought, and I
said "seems to have produced this international crime against
humanity" , which is what it was. And the most extraordinary response
to this, emails saying I was in league with the devil that I had a
pact with Bin Laden. A Harvard professor went on Irish radio saying I
was an evil dangerous liar, that to be anti American, and whatever
that is, I suppose I was being accused of it was the same as being
anti-Semitic. In other words to be opposed to Mr. Bush you become a
Jew hater, a Nazi, a racist. An extraordinary attempt, even if you
were British to stop you from asking why.
American journalist for example could ask who and how they did it.
That was acceptable. It was alright to say they were Saudi Arabians,
they were Arabs. Those were the countries they came from. But to
then ask what was wrong with the countries they came from was
absolutely forbidden, it was a no no, it was a taboo question.Not for
us, we kept pushing it through the British press. But in America it
was unpatriotic to ask that question because it meant you were giving
credit to terrorists
And so, By and large journalists don't need restrictions they
restrict themselves, in this country I am sorry to say.
Pacifica :
Do you recognize a goal of objectivity; do you see a distinction
between writing commentary and what a reporter thinks, and reporting
facts?
Fisk:
I think we are dealing here with a problem in American journalism
school, which thank god we brits don't go through. We do politics and
history and other subjects at University. I think that the foreign
correspondent is the nerve ending of a newspaper. My paper sends a
correspondent to live abroad to tell us what happens there, not to
tell us what two sides are saying, I can read that on the wire.
Over and over again for example, when I am in Jerusalem or Damascus ,
or Cairo , I talk to my American Colleagues. Who are just like me,
same jobs much better salaries of course, but the same role. And what
they tell me is fascinating. They really have a deep insight many of
them, into what's happening in the region, but when I read their
reports its not there. Everything they have to tell me of interest
has been erased. when they want to put forth a point of view, they
ring up some guy in America who has very little knowledge usually in
one of the places I call the tink thanks, the think tanks, the
Brookings institute, the Rand corporation, and this guy blathers on
for two paragraphs of bland prose, and this is put in as opinion. But
I want to know what the reporter thinks, if you send a reporter to a
region, if you send him there because you think he is intelligent,
fair, decent reporter; you don't have to ask him to give 50% of every
paragraph to each side. I mean if you follow the rules that a
journalist seems to have to follow in the Middle East , what do you
do say if you cover the slave ship and the slavery campaign? Do you
give the same amount of time to the slaves and the slave ship
captain? Or what if you are covering the Second World War, do you
give the same amount of time to prisoners and an SS guard? NO. You
have to have some sense of morality, and passion and anger. You know
when I am at the scene for example the slaughter of Hamer in 1982,
where the Syrian army crushed the people of Hamer, up to 20,000 dead,
destroyed their mosques in the old city. I managed to get in there,
and my piece if you read it now, drips with anger at the way in which
this massive armed force run by the then president's brother was
erasing a city and its history and its people. If you read my account
of the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by the Israelis allies
in 1982 as Israeli soldiers watched, the same thing happens. We
should not be employed to be automaton to effectively just be a voice
for spokesman. We should be out there telling it how it is, how
journalism used to be.
Pacifica :
But if a sense of passion, morality, anger leads to a journalist like
yourself being considered Pro Palestinian
Fisk:
I'm not considered pro Palestinian
Pacifica
But do you ever hear that characterization and does it undermine your
credibility?
Fisk
Absolutely not. Of course Israelis who don't like to see their
misbehavior narrated into the paper will say you're pro Palestinian,
pro terrorist. Of course they do. And I have many times written about
Arab misbehavior and immorality and immediately I am accused of being
a mossad agent. Indeed I appeared at a conference in Boston called
the right of return conference. In which I criticized the corruption
of Arab American groups, in which I criticize their total
disassociation from the actual the dirt and filth of the refugee
camps and emails soon began to go around from various Arab students
around the united states saying I had been judaized, this apparently
based on the idea that I give a lecture once a year in Madison
Wisconsin organized by a Jewish family, and that I was a member of
Mossad. And you get it from both sides, and you have to take it. But
if you see, you want to be an uncontroversial journalist, and I am
not a controversial journalist, I am a correspondent for a mainstream
newspaper and I do my job. but if you are going to be frightened by
people who are going to use this cheap language, if you are going to
write so carefully not to offend anyone, then you are going to
produce the path that appears in the American media now.
Pacifica
Governments tell us that they are protecting journalists by creating
closed military areas, by restricting journalist access to battle
zones, do you accept that?
Fisk:
Well that is what the soviets said when they labeled cities closed
military areas in the Soviet Union . Look: during the Israeli
occupation of Lebanon I learned very quickly that whenever the
Israeli army declared an area a closed military area it meant they
were doing something which was meant to be hidden, and everytime they
did that I got into the town to see what they had been doing and
invariably there had been extra judicial executions, torture, or
prisoners taken away and not being seen again, like what has happened
here. Exactly the same happens in the west bank. The moment they
declared Bethlehem a closed military area, I am talking about the
first of the reoccupation of the west bank by Sharon 's soldiers, I
went straight into Bethelehm, and I did the same in Ramallah. Our job
as journalists when we here the words closed military areas is to go
straight in because that is where the story is. It has nothing to do
with our protection. Indeed in the case of the Israelis they have
shot so many journalists and wounded so many journalists the last
thing I think they are interested in is the protection of journalists.
Pacifica :
Have you ever written a story and looked back, and felt you
jeopardized civilians or soldiers or anyone by reason of your story
Fisk:
No. I will give you a very practical example. And that is geography.
It is very easy to do a color piece. "As we walked up the hill I saw
a tank on my right" I always go through my copy saying have I
identified that hill because if I have I am giving a Palestinian, or
an Israeli, Or a Hezbollah a chance to get that tank. Of course they
about it anyway, they know more about the military location than we
do. But I am going to make sure we are not even open to the
accusation. If, by reporting for example the massacre of Sabra and
Shatila we are accused of being anti Semitic because we make people
dislike Israel , well I am sorry that is an argument I want to be
involved in. Because my job is to report what I have seen. And of
course when a country, Syria at Hamer, for example, Israel at the
time of Sabra and Shatila, Iraq at Halabja, when a nation uses its
armed forces and behaves in a despicable way that amounts to a war
crime well it may be that our reporting makes people angry at the
country, well tough luck, that country shouldn't have committed those
war crimes.
Pacifica
There was great controversy in America when the entire tape of an
Osama bin laden broadcast was edited for the American availability
but was broadcast in full on Al-Jazeera. What is the role of the
internet, of access to Al-Jazeera and other news sources on
Americans and people around the world getting a complete picture of
what is going on?
Fisk
Well, we haven't fully understood yet the implications of the
internet. Once the internet allowed Americans to tap into English
language newspapers abroad, not just the Independent but the
Guardian, the Financial times, the French press if they read French,
or El Pais which is very good or is very good in Spain , suddenly a
new depth was given to them. They were not reading in the English
press what they were reading in the New York Times. I could tell
immediately, at the moment at almost a thousand letters a week I am
getting almost 50% from America . Now that is an indictment of the
American media for start. I should be getting 20% from America and
80% from the United kingdom, But in fact more than half is coming
from America, and many of them complain about what they refer to as
one did of the lobotomized coverage in the American Press. Now what
is the effect of this? I think that more and more Americans are
saying, "hold on, why can't we read this in our newspapers why can't
we watch this on our television" Yet again and again, even despite
the fact, I don't think the American media realize the extent to
which ordinary American citizens are looking at foreign publications,
in itself an appalling reflection on the worth or lack of it in the
American Media. Continually, still American reporters hedge their
bets. I was reading an article which was referring to Sabra and
Shatila which the Kahan Commission of Israel said that Ariel Sharon
was personally responsible, page 93 I think it was. And the article
in the Associate Press refereed to him "allegedly facilitating the
militias that went into the camp". A total cop out. He was personally
responsible. He sent the militias into the camp, where 1, 700
Palestinians were murdered. So I think what's happening with the
internet, there is a profound change coming among Americans
interested in the region, or who have an intellectual interest in the
Middle East . As for all the other Americans who are not interested
in the Middle East I don't know. But certainly the internet is
profoundly changing, not fast enough, but profoundly changing the way
Americans look at regions that are not properly covered by their
newspapers and television.
Pacifica
We call our program Clear and present danger. What from your
perspective is the clear and present danger to free press in the
United States ?
Fisk
I will sum it up very briefly. The relationship of the press and
television to government is incestuous. The state department
correspondents, the white house correspondents, the pentagon
correspondents, have set a narrative where instead of telling us what
they think is happening or what they know is happening, they tell us
what they are told by the spokesman. They have become sub spokesman.
Spokesman for the great institutions of state. When an American
correspondent visits the Middle East they turn up in Beirut ,Damascus
or Cairo and where do they go? The first visit is to the American
Embassy for a briefing with the ambassador, the economic advisor, the
defense attaché and no doubt the CIA spook. Then they go and see an
Arab Minister of information who almost never knows any information
about anything ever. Then they write a story. Now it's not always
that bad, but that is the main theme which is followed. So what you
have I think is a general consensus in America, which I hope is
breaking up, that to challenge American foreign policy is in some
way, not just insensitive, but unpatriotic. Especially foreign policy
in the Middle East which is still a taboo subject. You know in
America you can talk about Lesbians, Gays, and Blacks but not about
the relationship with Israel and the US Administration or congress.
So I think it is this cozy, incestuous, dangerous relationship
between press and administration, between sources and access which
causes many of these problems.
This interview was originally broadcast on Friday May 23 on Pacifica
Radio's Peace Watch.
--
Alison Croggon
Blog
http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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