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Recent
Stories
April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 2,
2003
The Whipping
Boy of the Pentagon
Peter Arnett Paid
a High Price for Being Truly Neutral
By ROBERT JENSEN
Peter Arnett has an overblown sense of his own
importance and lousy political judgment. That's been true ever
since he became a television "personality," and he's
hardly the only one with those traits.
But Arnett's pomposity and hubris are
not what got him fired by NBC and National Geographic this week
after giving a short interview to Iraqi state television. When
the controversy first emerged, NBC issued a statement of support,
which evaporated as soon as the political heat was turned up
and questions about Arnett's patriotism got tossed around. In
short: Arnett was canned because he took seriously the notion
that, even in war, journalists should be neutral.
The assertion of neutrality is central
to the credibility of U.S. journalists, who say, "Trust
us, we don't take sides." Whether one believes journalists
live up to that standard - or that it's possible at all - it
is the bedrock on which reporters build their claim to special
status.
Except, it seems, in time of war. In
those situations, many U.S. journalists do not hesitate to say
they are on the American side. They are quick to say that patriotism
won't stop them for reporting critically about the United States
and its war effort, and the degree to which they make good on
that varies widely.
But the point remains: One can't be neutral
and aligned with one side at the same time.
Taking journalistic neutrality seriously
doesn't mean a simplistic he said/she said balancing of claims.
It means subjecting the claims of all sides to the same critical
scrutiny. Arnett, more than most journalists covering this war
for American media, has a history of doing that. His willingness
to stay in Baghdad for CNN throughout the 1991 Gulf War, despite
enormous political flak, was courageous and added to the range
and quality of information that Americans received.
By going on Iraqi state television, which
clearly is a propaganda vehicle for the regime, Arnett opened
himself up to being used. That was a miscalculation. But it's
easy to understand why a journalist might want to speak to the
people of that nation, who have access to so little independent
information. If it were possible to guarantee that an appearance
wouldn't become propaganda, trying to reach the Iraqi people,
even in some limited way, could justify being interviewed.
But instead of reflexive denunciations
of Arnett's patriotism, we might look at some of his comments
and ask what we can learn not only about his mistakes but about
American journalism more generally.
A problem arises immediately, when Arnett
cites the "unfailing courtesy and cooperation" of the
Iraqi people and the Ministry of Information. It may be that
Iraqis in the ministry are courteous, but certainly Arnett knows
that no foreign reporter can travel in the country without an
Iraqi government minder, hardly a mark of cooperation. Arnett
likely was just being obliging. But his sin is one of degree;
obsequiousness is common for reporters currying favor with sources.
If such criticism of Arnett is appropriate,
we should also ask whether American journalists are overly deferential
to U.S. officials. Consider George W. Bush's March 6 news conference,
when journalists played along in a scripted television event
and asked such softball questions as "How is your faith
guiding you?" Journalists that night were about as critical
as Arnett was with the Iraqis.
Such performances leave the rest of the
world with the impression that American journalists - especially
those on television - are sycophants, and Arnett's firing only
reinforces that impression. That's why before the end of the
day he had a new job with the British tabloid The Mirror, which
described him as "the reporter sacked by American TV for
telling the truth about the war."
Arnett certainly hasn't cornered the
market on truth, and many U.S. reporters and photographers are
doing fine work under dangerous conditions.
But many other American journalists have
abandoned any pretense of neutrality and become de facto war
boosters. All over the world, viewers are seeing images of the
effects of the war on the Iraqi population that are largely absent
from U.S. television. We shouldn't mistake the limited critique
of strategy and tactics - should the United States have unleashed
a harsher attack from the beginning, and should the invasion
have waited until more troops were in place? - for a serious
challenge to the Bush administration's spin on the war.
Arnett has long been a whipping boy for
pro-war forces in the United States who want to send the message
that journalists attempting independent reporting will pay a
price. Arnett's judgment was poor in this incident, but that
shouldn't overshadow his contributions in the past. And the controversy
shouldn't be used to obscure the failures of U.S. journalism
in the present.
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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