A critical but largely hidden casualty of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks is the public's shrinking access to information.
Tony Burman, the executive director at Canada's CBC News, noted: "It's
depressing to see the jingoism which is part of the spirit of the
US in influencing editorial decision-making."
As Danny Schechter (Free Speech TV and mediachannel.org) has reported:
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Major US television networks and the Voice
of America radio network complied with Bush administration requests
to edit or suppress statements opposing US military action.
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The Pentagon spent millions of taxpayers'
dollars purchasing civilian satellite images of Afghanistan,
in order to prevent their release to the Western media.
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The major networks released guidelines for
reporting on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, ordering that
news of civilian deaths must be "balanced" with reminders of
the 9-11 attacks. American troops stationed in Central Asia
to support the war are mostly off-limits to US reporters.
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The Bush administration recently hired an
ad executive to help "sell America" through a propaganda war
in Afghanistan. Her name is Charlotte Beers, "the most famous
woman in advertising and chair of J. Walter Thompson until her
contract expired last month." She will report directly to Colin
Powell as one of just six undersecretaries of state. The US
and Britain set up a Coalition of Information Center in Islamabad,
with similar centers in London and Washington to counter the
"untruths and lies."
American officials have been pressuring the authoritarian
government of Qatar to shut down the independent Arab television
network, Al-Jazeera, in order to silence its broadcasts. The network's
Kabul bureau was bombed by the American military. The Bush administra-tion
has already convinced American networks not to air Osama bin Laden's
statements on Al-Jazeera.
A Free US Media in Peril
Journalists all over the political map now appear
to be legitimate targets if they question the war.
In These Times photographer Jeremy Bigwood
was not admitted to the Photographers' Gallery on Capitol Hill.
Gatekeeper Mark Abraham denied Bigwood's press credentials because
one of his letters of reference was from In In These Times,
which according to Abraham was "too editorial."
Those reporters who expressed skepticism about
the White House assertion that Air Force One had been threatened
by terrorists found their phone called were no longer returned.
(See page 8 for more examples of media censorship.)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize how
soft the media has been on Bush. The conservatives have built a
powerful and well-financed machine that can dictate the tone of
the political discourse.
In the aftermath of 9-11, Americans need a leader;
we need to feel safe. So, Bush is no longer flying down to Texas
to avoid his responsibilities. (Harper's Index reported
that Bush spent "42% of his time as president at or en route to
vacation spots.") Now, Bush is minding the store with his various
photo opportunities, giving us that sense of safety, while John
Ashcroft finds ways to remove ever more of our country's civil liberties.
What We Are Not Told
In order to pump the machinery of war, this is
some of what the media won't tell Chicago readers:
Protests: Rallies against the war are happening
worldwide, from Italy to the Netherlands to Spain. An anti-war march
of 100,000 protesters in London on Nov. 18 was ignored by the American
media. There are anti-war rallies across the US, especially at college
campuses across the country.
Nuclear Power Plants: The danger of unprotected
nuclear power plants is a serious issue. The media have ignored
the long-term threat of nuclear waste for years, and even now they
are refusing to focus on the most vulnerable part of homeland security.
"In a decade of testing for mock land-based assaults,
the security provided by the nuclear industry failed to stop intruders
47% of the time," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen.
Bioweapons: Despite the anthrax scare,
the media isn't reporting about the Bush administration sabotaging
an international war against biological terrorism. On July 25, the
administration vetoed a protocol aimed at strengthening the Biological
Weapons Convention, putting at risk a key United Nations conference
on deadly biological weapons. The conference, which began in Geneva
on Nov. 19, was attended by 500 delegates representing up to 144
countries, but American foot-dragging could jeopardize moves to
bring in a tough new inspection and enforcement regime.
"The danger at Geneva is that there will be an
endless flow of recriminations against the United States for what
it did in July and August," warned Nicholas Sims of the London School
of Economics on the BBC's War Report.
Dr. Serguei Popov, former head of Russian biological
warfare programs, raised the specter of genetically modified biological
weapons, resistant to conventional medicine: "The final purpose
of the [Russian] program was to create more dangerous biological
agents...engineered to be antibiotic resistant and even to overcome
the existing vaccine."
The US continues to view these threats coolly.
Kenneth Adleman, a presidential adviser on defense issues, said
the US was loathe to commit to a new convention because it was yet
to be convinced that stronger restrictions were the answer. Experts
are concerned that the Americans are opposing moves to toughen up
the treaty in order to protect its own biological defense program
and pharmaceutical industry.
Unanswered Questions
The Chicago media are failing to ask crucial questions
about unresolved issues:
- Millions of dollars were traded via put options
on United Airlines the day before the Sept. 11 attacks. Did someone
have advance knowledge of possible attacks? One source lists some
high-ranking CIA operatives and major banks as possibly connected.
Then, on Sept. 17, CBS's 60-Minutes revealed that President
Bush's close associates had suddenly, and inexplicably, sold all
their airline stock just days before the terrorist attacks. The
story was completely overlooked by mainstream newspapers thereafter.
- Are the Talibans the only terrorists? What about
the US-sponsored School of the Americas, where students learn
to become thugs and murderers? It has been called "the terrorist
training camp in our backyard." Shouldn't it be shut down if we
are in a war against terrorism?
- How many civilian casualties have there been
since the start of the bombing? How many US casualties? Are events
of the war going as smoothly as the media portrays? The BBC reported
that an operation by US special forces inside Afghanistan launched
in October went badly wrong. Are all casualties being reported?
- Are depleted uranium weapons being used again?
They were used during the Gulf War – with disastrous results
for civilians and our own military population. The cover-up of
the toxic effects of these weapons continues.
- Why isn't the media reporting on the extraordinarily
inflated military budget? One F-22 Fighter jet costs $200m, enough
for 20 new schools. If we give retroactive tax breaks to big corporations,
where will we get money to pay for housing, medical care, education,
and other human priorities?
- Why do we need the National Missile Defense
now? Were it in place in September, it would never have stopped
the terrorist attacks.
- On May 17, 2001, Secretary of state Colin Powell
announced a gift of $43 million in aid to Afghanistan as a reward
for its eradication of its opium crop this February – despite
the Taliban's well-known dreadful human rights violations and
brutality against women. That does not jibe with information reported
in the Wall Street Journal Europe ("Al Qaeda's Balkan
Links," Nov. 1, 2001):
Considering the Taliban's deep dependency on drug
trafficking, CMW must not only challenge Powell's reasoning, but
suggest that there is a hidden agenda which goes deeper than the
obvious. Could the $43 million be a bribe for greasing the hands
of the Taliban for their cooperation in laying oil pipelines?
- How many billions of dollars did US taxpayers
and the CIA give to Osama bin Laden and his allies to fight the
Russians in Afghanistan back in the 1980s?
- Which friends, relatives and campaign contributors
of George W. Bush will benefit from the oil and natural gas in
Central Asia? (See story on page 5.) Who will profit most from
the war in Afghanistan? Judicial Watch has urged Bush Sr. to resign
from the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm with
oil interests. Why won't the media look into this issue?
- Two French journalists wrote Bin Laden,
the Forbidden Truth, which was published in Paris Nov. 15.
The book states that the FBI's deputy director John O'Neill resigned
in July, 2001, to protest the obstruction of US Secret Service
investigations on terrorism. O'Neill told the authors "the main
obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate
interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it."
The authors affirm that the US "saw the Taliban
regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable
the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia...to the
Indian Ocean.'" Will the media investigate this?
These days, our reporters in the mass media dare
not investigate or disclose this information for fear of termination.
They would be classified as "unpatriotic."
Restricting information and manipulating reporters
have become institutionalized – a lesson the Pentagon began
learning in 1983, when we decided to invade the island of Grenada.
During the Persian Gulf War, the media's situation only got worse.
And now, the media blackout is nearly complete.
