Rakesh makes a very important point re the CNN coverage of 'cheering' Palestinians. It does not matter when the images were taken - it is how they are used to create a message that matters. >I would hope that this list could do more than become obsessed with >inconsequential rumors like this. It would not matter if the footage had been >created out of whole cloth. It was terrible judgement to replay that loop over >and over. No one was asked a question, only the dancing was shown; we don't >know exactly what was being celebrated or what the celebrators understood >about the carnage; and the majority of those who celebrated seemed to be under >13 years of age. No diversity of opinion was sought in the immediate aftermath >of the bombing, though PLO leaders were quoted later. There are several well documented histories by award winning journalists on the very long and grim history of collusion between the media and politicians in preparing nations for war (and the successful prosecution of war through the news media). Of these I recommend Phillip Knightly's 'The First Casualty' (although it's a bit dated now, ending as it does with the US propaganda war on the Sandinistas). For a shorter and more contemporary read, I strongly recommend John Pilger's 'Hidden Agendas' especially the chapter on 'The Media Age', from which I take the following summary of his discussion of the links between intelligence agencies and the news media (I attach a Pdf copy of the whole chapter, hoping someone will read it): ……The 'largesse' came from, among others, the commissars who ran the Information Research Department in the Foreign Office (IRD), a secret political warfare agency, which in the 1950s and 1960s 'ran' dozens of Fleet Street journalists.21 The IRD used 'white' (true), 'grey' (partially true) and 'black' (false) propaganda, planting forged official documents, smear stories and outright fabrications in the media. In the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false, in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour of the British were suppressed. Thus the bloodshed in Malaya was and still is misrepresented as a 'model' of counter-insurgency; the anti-imperial uprising in Kenya was and still is distorted as a Mau Mau terror campaign against whites; and the struggle for basic human rights in the north of Ireland became and remains a noble defence of order and stability against IRA terror (see pages 514-19). The common denominator of British political and military terror was deemed non-existent: a brilliant illusion that brought 'disinformation' to the language. The most enduring success for the IRD and its 'contacts' in the media was in misrepresenting the Soviet Union as a threat and the source of a global conspiracy. This gave legitimacy to the nuclear arms race initiated by the United States, thanks largely to the fictional 'missile gap' of the Kennedy era, a triumph of disinformation, and to nuclear provocations such as the siting in Western Europe of 'first strike' nuclear weapons. Had war broken out with the Soviet Union, those propagandist journalists absolved by The Times of any moral equivalence with Stalinism would have shared the responsibility. In 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian disclosed the existence of some 500 prominent Britons who were paid by the CIA through the corrupt and now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International in London. They included ninety journalists and broadcasters, many in 'senior positions'. Journalists who worked directly for the intelli-gence services are not uncommon. One prominent journalist and author has served British and American intelligence in a parallel career shortly after graduating from Oxford. This is surprising only because it has been so effectively suppressed. For forty years, from an office in Bush House in London, home of the BBC World Service, a brigadier passed on the names of applicants for editorial jobs in the BBC to MI5 for 'vetting'. Journalists with a reputation for indepen-dence were refused BBC posts because they were not con-sidered 'safe'. The Observer exposed the secret process in 1985, 22 and senior management are still vetted by MI5. In any case, it was quite unnecessary. Many senior journalists and broadcasters are proud that they are 'safe' and willing to be influenced, at times flattered by the state, without any formalised intrigue or material favours. For them, it seems perfectly natural to receive the state's 'hospitality', 'contacts' and 'access' - and, most important, its blessing. For example, a number of influential journalists in the BBC and the press belong, like those Cabinet members of the Blair Government already mentioned (see pages 95-97), to the 'Successor Generation' network. This is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, set up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long record of supporting right-wing causes. Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge it, the source of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan during the Cold War for 'successor generations' on both sides of the Atlantic to 'work together in the future on defence and security matters'. Washington was then deeply anxious about opposition to nuclear weapons, specifically the stationing of Cruise missiles in Britain. Today the aims of the network are broader. They are, according to David Willetts, the former director of studies at the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies, to 'help reinforce Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do, or will occupy positions of influence'. The British Ambassador to Washington, Sir John Kerr, was more direct. In a speech to Successor Generation members in 1997, he said the BAP's 'powerful combination of eminent Fellows and close Atlantic links threatened to put the embassy out of a job'. Indeed, the Successor Generation 'was clearly a threat to the very existence of diplomats'!23 An American BAP organiser described the BAP network as committed to 'grooming leaders' while promoting 'the leading global role that [Britain and the US] continue to play'.24 Not surprisingly, the BAP has had little publicity in the mainstream media. An instrument of the 'leading global role' is, of course, NATO. Reporting from the NATO summit in Madrid in 1997, Ian Black of the Guardian noted that, although critics at the conference had described the organisation's expansion into Eastern Europe as 'an error of historic proportions' that would 'encourage a £22 billion arms race and undercut democracy in Russia, strikingly, there has been little public debate about this'.25 Here again it should be emphasised that there is no suggestion of a conspiracy, rather a shared world view based largely, though not exclusively, on class. 'The British class system', wrote Anthony Sampson, 'has always been like an onion, revealing yet more layers.' 26 The mutuality of class and aspiration is assured, unspoken, and the warm embrace of power memorable. For some, this is a noble connection which, although having nothing to do with journalism, has everything to do with the preservation of things. They are the guardians of the faith. Guardians are often candid and proud. In his auto-biography, News from the Front, the ITN correspondent and newscaster Sandy Gall boasted of his high government and MI6 contacts and the work he did for them. 'I received a call from a friend in British Intelligence,' he wrote, 'telling me that the Foreign Secretary remained particularly concerned about Afghanistan and was anxious to keep the war "in front of the British public"; how could this be done? Would I talk to someone from his office and give him, and Lord Carrington, the benefit of my advice? Feeling flattered, I agreed . . .' Gall made Afghanistan his speciality. In the 1980s, he went on a number of trips with the mojahedin, the guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupiers. On the eve of one of these assignments, which began in Pakistan, he went to see the Pakistani dictator, General Zia, who clearly regarded Gall as an important ally. Both MI6 and the CIA were backing Zia as the ruler of a 'frontline' state in this important Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. As they strolled through his garden, the General, one of the world's nastiest fundamentalist tyrants, asked Gall if there was anything he wanted. ' "Yes," [Gall] said, "would it be possible to have some SAM 7s with us?" Zia laughed. "SAM 7s? I don't see why not. But why?" ' "We're likely to come under attack by Mi24 gunships, I suppose, and it would make some spectacular pictures if one of them were to be shot down." 'Zia laughed again, seeing the point. "I'll see to it," he promised. "You'll get your SAMs." ' Gall got his missile, which, he wrote, 'we fired', but it malfunctioned. Back in London, he was invited to lunch by the head of MI6. 'It was very informal,' wrote Gall, 'the cook was off, so we had cold meat and salad, with plenty of wine.' Britain's leading spymaster wanted information about Afghanistan from Gall who, once again, was 'flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms of first-hand knowledge'. Moreover, the man from ITN determined 'not to prise any information out of him in return', even though 'this is not normally how a journalist's mind works'. The reason for this journalistic reticence was that 'avuncularly charming' as the head of MI6 might be, 'he was far too experienced to let slip anything he did not wish to'.27 In 1992, an internal committee of the Central Intelligence Agency reported that the CIA now had excellent links with the media. 'We have relationships with reporters', it said, '[that] have helped us turn some intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories. Some responses to the media can be handled in a one-shot phone call. Others, such as the BBC's six-part series, draw heavily on [CIA] sources.' 28 The BBC series in question, C I A, was written by John Ranelagh, formerly of the Conservative Party's Research Department and a speech writer for Margaret Thatcher. In 'drawing heavily' on the CIA's 'sources', Ranelagh's fil m s allowed the notorious organisation to 'correct allegations' about its role in the overthrow of numerous governments and in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Ranelagh wrote that '[of the] sub-jects which US intelligence was expected to address . . . none was more momentous than the growth of international terror-ism, a subject of major concern to the Reagan administration'.2 9 Nowhere in his films did Ranelagh identify the CIA itself as arguably the most powerful instrument of international terrorism, notably under the Reagan administration. The record on this is, of course, voluminous. In Reagan's first term alone, wrote the CIA historian William Blum, 'CIA-led, trained and funded Contra terrorists murdered 8,000 Nicaraguan civilians.' 30 In 1994, the United States invaded Haiti. Bill Neely of ITN described the invaded country as 'festering in America's backyard' and crying out to be 'saved'. The BBC reported that the Pentagon had 'brought democracy' to Haiti. A BBC correspondent added the rider that 'the days of America as Mr Nice Guy are over'.31 On neither of these primary channels of news was there reference to Mr Nice Guy's murderous interventions in Haiti since 1849 which, as the American historian Hans Schmidt noted, 'have consistently suppressed local democratic institutions and denied elementary political liberties'. Currently, Mr Nice Guy's plan for Haiti, wrote another American historian, Amy Wilentz, 'achieves two strategic US goals - one, a restructured and dependent agriculture that exports to US markets and is open to American exploitation, and the other, a displaced rural population that not only can be employed in offshore US industries in the towns, but is more susceptible to army control'.32 British governments have generally supported American terror in the region. Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, said that Britain 'absolutely endorsed' US objectives in Central America. According to The Times, these objectives were to 'maintain and strengthen the forces of democracy in an area threatened with a communist takeover'. Examining the serious British press, Mark Curtis surveyed 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua during the early Reagan and Thatcher years of 1981-3. He found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista Government in favour of the falsehood of the 'threat of a communist takeover'. 'It would take considerable intellectual acrobatics', he wrote, 'to designate Sandinista successes in alleviating poverty - remarkable by any standard - as unworthy of much comment by any objective indicators. This might particularly be the case when compared to the appalling conditions elsewhere in the region - surely well known to every reporter who had ever visited the area . . . The absence of significant press comment on the Sandinista achievements was even more remarkable in view of the sheer number of articles that appeared on the subject of Nicaragua in these years. One might reasonably conclude - and this is supported by the evidence - that reporting was conditioned by a different set of priorities, one that conformed to an ideological framework in which the facts about real development successes were ignored in favour of the stream of disinformation emanating from Washington and London.' 33 While rejecting any notion of a conspiracy theory, Curtis found in the work of leading journalists and academics a slavish, if at times unconscious devotion to the myths that perpetrated the old Cold War, which have extended to the new Cold War. At times ideological support becomes parody. Professor Lawrence Freedman of King's College, London, who was called upon frequently by the BBC and the press as an 'expert', wrote in a major study of the Gulf War (with Efraim Karsh) that 'there seems little doubt that [President] Bush was influenced most of all by the need to uphold the principle of non-aggression'. He called Bush a 'crusader' for 'the cause of international norms of decency'.34 Soon after taking office, this crusader for non-aggression and decency attacked Panama, killing at least 2,000 civilians, more than the number estimated to have been killed by the Chinese army in Tiananmen Square. He then attacked Iraq, killing at least 200,000 people, the majority of them civilians. He then invaded Somalia, killing, according to CIA estimates, between 7,000 and 10,000 people. And Bush was a president who, like Richard Nixon, was frequently lauded in the British media for his expertise in foreign affairs.35 In the glory days following Mr Nice Guy's victory in the 1991 Gulf War, Peter Snow interviewed the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, for the BBC's Newsnight. Snow began by asking, 'Do you now regard the United States as the world's policeman?' The General, softly lit from behind, his ribbons marching down his chest, smiled sagely. 'Sir,' he replied, 'what we provide is a presence, a stabilising influence. You see, we have power that people tend to trust. [However] I would not say we have seen the end of wars, or the end of history.' Snow then had some suggestions to make. What about putting American troops into Yugoslavia to 'sort out the situation'? And, 'Look, is it not practicable to conduct air strikes?' After all, Margaret Thatcher had said it was. 'I'm second to no man', replied the General, 'in my respect, indeed in my love for Margaret Thatcher. But, sir, I'm always nervous about proposals that say all you have to do is go bomb some folks and they will be deterred from action you don't like.' Snow nodded his agreement. 'Thank you so much, General,' he said.36 In 1997, the BBC showed the last of its acclaimed People's Century series, which expertly marshalled archive film and interviews with witnesses to and participants in the closing century's stirring and apocalyptic events. A recurring technique was the merging of government propaganda film, from Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States, with documentary footage, all of it accompanied by a narration. After a while, it became difficult to tell one from the other. The overall effect was quite unlike the propaganda of the CIA series. This was finely honed, at times subliminal and, above all, dependent on political airbrushing. In the pivotal episode, Brave New World, about the origins of the Cold War, Stalin's crimes were played against the West's post-war heroics, as in the Berlin air-lift. This was 'balanced' by the absurdities and cruelties of American anti-communist paranoia in the 1950s. However, there was barely a hint of the massive post-war planning in the United States aimed at controlling and exploiting millions of people and their resources: a hegemony greater than the world had ever seen, dominating markets and trade, from food to oil; a Pax Americana under which, as the great American imperial planner George Kennan put it, the United States had 'a moral right to intervene' anywhere in the world - and did so relentlessly, subverting and destroying governments which dared to demonstrate independence, from Italy to Iran, Chile to Indonesia.37 In helping to bring the Indonesian tyrant Suharto to power, American imperial power ensured the deaths of more than half a million 'communists'. In Indo-China, the same fundamentalism oversaw at least five million dead and millions more dispossessed, their lands ruined and poisoned. Then known as the 'free world', the American empire rules today with ever-changing euphemisms. Perhaps its most brilliant, if unsung, victory has been in the field of media management, as the omission of its rapacity from People's Century demonstrated. Guardians of the faith, the clerics of the established order, are most commonly found in the 'lobby system'. This is periodically attacked as a 'cosy club', even 'pernicious', but it never changes. 'Lobby correspondents' have their own rules, 'officers' and disciplinary procedures. Their 'privileges' include access to government statements before they are made public and to private briefings by ministerial press secretaries or senior Civil Servants, or even ministers themselves. At the time of writing, the BBC employs thirteen national and nineteen regional political correspondents, all of them based at London's Millbank, close to Parliament and the other 'centres of power' covered by Robin Oakley and his team. On a clear day you can see the MPs queuing up to dispense their mostly predictable views. According to a former BBC reporter, Steve Richards, now the political editor of the New Statesman, some MPs go straight to Millbank in the morning, rather than to the House of Commons, 'in the hope that someone will interview them'.38 In an average week 'lobby' journalists churn out some 300 reports: most of them are on the same theme, adhering to the agenda put out by the two main political parties, which are themselves virtually the same. The truth that the British people are now denied the semblance of a democratic choice is not reported. The message from the Millbank echo chamber is quite 503 GUARDI ANS OF THE FAI TH 0199 pp443-546 14/6/00 9:04 pm Page 503
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