People's Democracy

DURING the 1991 Gulf war, when the `allied’ forces were attacking Iraq, an American pilot, who was regularly bombing targets there, was asked to comment on how it all appeared to him. He is reported to have said, quite simply, "Oh, it was like Christmas". The pilot didn’t say anything he did not mean to say, or anything that was seen as being out of line. Why would it be, considering that the most prominent television network of the time, CNN, owed its meteoric rise to similar imagery. It was precisely these "Christmas lights" that were sold to viewers, all for the price of a plastic coated cable.

The extent to which CNN and other western channels have compromised journalistic ethics ten years after the Gulf war, has to be seen to be believed. Under the garb of protecting national interest, all basic journalistic codes are being violated. The first principle of being fair, or at least appearing to be so, has been simply forgotten. Last week an internal memo was issued to all CNN staffers suggesting that, "we must remain careful not to focus extensively on the casualties and hardships in Afghanistan that will inevitably be a part of this war, or to forget that it is the Taliban leadership that is responsible for the situation Afghanistan is now in." [Reuters news agency].

Shots of brilliantly lit up skies shown by American channels, bombs being dropped in the wastelands of Afghanistan were shown on the hour and every hour, for at least the first two weeks of the bombing. Worse still, the attempt at first to make it appear that there was absolutely no human cost to the war was completely disingenous.

It is a standard journalistic practice to try and get stories from surrounding areas, should access to the main story be denied for some reason. This is an accepted tenet of journalism which has been misused many a time, e.g., when the designer who stitches kurtas for the prime minsiter figures on page one of newspaper supplements. But all said and done, it is standard practice that `side-stories’ are thought up and done when access to the main scene of action is denied and is not possible.

So, when Kabul was out of bounds for the foreign press, why was the natural instinct, i.e., to do stories on the plight of Afghan refugees pouring out close to the border with Pakistan not followed? Why were eye-witness accounts not taken from those who had escaped the bombing and moved to safer areas? Were these stories not done because it didn’t strike these people, or were they told not to? Probably the latter, as the internal memo in CNN illustrates.

In a liberal, free world, perhaps there is a sudden realisation that the freedom of only those who matter needs to be protected or talked about. Fox, CNN, NBC, all these networks made their priorities very clear, when they toed the line dictated by national security advisor to the President Condoleeza Rice.

The US establishment was completely shaken by Osama Bin Laden’s videos, released by the now much feared Qatar-based television network, Al-Jazeera [meaning literally, the peninsula] and asked the various television networks, in the interest of the American nation, to desist from playing them. It appears that the image of a soft-spoken, calm-looking, bearded "saintly" figure, muttering barely audible death threats was understood by the Americans as a very powerful propaganda weapon, when contrasted with a three-piece suited, well-fed figure of a George Bush, making all kinds of threatening noises. Osama’s tapes were something they had to somehow get around. The networks agreed to abide by the dictate, and played Osama Bin Laden’s tapes in exactly the way the US government desired them to.

The American channels are now indistinguishable in their approach to how they have viewed this war. Any attempts to ask questions, even basic questions such as to what the direct evidence against Osama Bin Laden is, how people think it is to be handled, which weapons are to used and why, are dismissed as rhetorical or better still, anti-national. What is perhaps even more amazing is the way Indian channels are competing to establish their loyalties to the stars and stripes. A private hindi satellite channel which also runs a popular weekly, has set up a WAR ROOM, something even Ted Turner, and Rupert Murdoch haven’t thought of so far!

It seems unlikely that it will all change in the near future, even if the necessities of putting out a 24-hour feed is beginning to push some channels towards a more objective way of looking at the world. Most people seem to have understood how vital the media and television is for the furtherance of their cause. A cause that means protecting the "way of life " of barely ten percent of humanity. God bless America.