By Felix Cohen
Last night was the Media Workers Against The War event 'The Media & "The War on Terror"' event in London, and I went along to see what the excellent panel of speakers had to say. The event started well, with a discussion of how the mainstream media was involved in the war on terrorism on two fronts; firstly through the obvious propaganda against the war, but also secondly through selective coverage of what was happening at home; Islamophobic coverage of domestic events and misreporting of protests. So far, nothing too new, really, but it was great to discover the NUJ pressure inside the Daily Star that had caused it to remove it's 'Daily Fatwa' page.
Professor Justin Lewis then discussed his research; with perhaps the most salient point being the observation that, according to US Department of Defense statistics, global terrorism has been slowly decreasing since the mid '80's, while, of course, if one were to simply go by what the media has to say, it's been rising at a terrifying rate since 2001. Next up, Tim Llewelyn stated what was to become a trend this evening of criticising Auntie Beeb (the BBC). Of course, he says, they aren't pro-Israel, but so scared of being percieved as anti-semitic that their coverage has an inevitable slant. Tim Llewellyn has had, by the sound of things, a rocky relationship with the BBC, but this doesn't alter the core fact that, yes, they probably do give more time to Israel in the news. But isn't this always true of the aggressor?
Yasmin Alibhai Brown, fresh from polemic column writing at (surprise, surprise) The Independent, lauched into a well founded attack on the patriotism inherent in our national media; as soon as 'our boys' are fighting, not a bad word can be said about their reasons for being there. And of course, if we think it's bad in the UK, just wait till you see Fox & CNN! Of course, the media has opposed this war, or at least criticised it, more than any other war in her memory, but there is still what I like to think of as the 'Dresden effect'; the media won't report on what we are in doing in, for example, Fallujah, because we have to maintain a moral upper hand. Oh, and a very important question. Where are the Arab journalists at the BBC? (Apart from being head-hunted by Al-Jazeera, of course)
Sami Ramadani launched into the most polemic speech of the evening, deploring the way the Allies have behaved in Iraq, and casting aspersions like bird-seed. Passionate, angry and interesting, yes, but perhaps a touch too forceful for me to take what he says at face value. I will, however, be doing some research on some of the issues he raised, especially the real significance of the sectarian violence.
NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear rounded of the evening with some lovely oration. So lovely, in fact, that I glazed over most of the content for fear of getting sucked into soundbite territory; leave the rabble-rousing for the rabble, Jeremy, don't preach to the converted.
- Get in touch with Media Workers against the war at mwaw@btinternet.com.
