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GOOGLE TO AID CHINESE GOV'T IN CENSORSHIP OF INTERNET The premier internet search engine Google has launched a new Chinese service, under the domain Google.cn, which it will voluntarily censor in keeping with the mandates of Chinese authorities. The announcement came earlier this week, as the Davos trade talks opened and on the same day as China's government announced it was ordering the closing of a weekly newspaper known for publishing articles on topics the Chinese Communist party's propaganda office had banned or which included criticism of government policy. [Full Story] CHINA PLANS "SMOKELESS WAR" AGAINST PRESS, DISSIDENTS In a high-level Communist party meeting, China's president Hu Jintao has reportedly called for an intensive crackdown on media liberties. While China's government has sought to project an image of a more market-oriented, open system, it continues to forbid basic press freedoms and still persecutes journalists at an alarming rate. [Full Story]
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REPORT ON MOUNTING CENSORSHIP, DENIAL OF FILMS TO U.S. AUDIENCE SUGGESTS NEWS MEDIA NOW TREAT FACT ITSELF AS INHERENTLY BIASED 9 October 2006
The foundation of a free society is a press with the freedom to criticize instruments of power and influence and to reveal wrongdoing as it actually takes place. War is not a sufficient reason to institute a system of broad censorship criteria or to rein in the news media, as if they posed a direct threat to the wellbeing of the nation. But increasingly, it appears that American news media are intolerant of facts as such, waiting for members of the government themselves to come forward with complaints. The film 'Iraq for Sale', a documentary by director Robert Greenwald, "tells a depressingly familiar tale of corporate corruption and war-profiteering in Iraq", according to the Guardian newspaper. Greenwald has made a career speaking out against corruption, and war profiteering is simply the ugliest face of a problem that seems at times too widespread to even begin to address in the normal news media. Greenwald's films have won awards and acclaim but have had a significantly difficult time getting distribution in the United States, where he has taken on criminal or unscrupulous behavior by Fox News, Wal-Mart, Enron and disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay, as well as manipulation and fraud in relation to the 2000 election. The problem with Greenwald's films is that they tackle a specific group of interests, and the facts they relay to the viewing public are all-too-inconvenient for those interests. In this case, Greenwald shows a system of corrupt management of contracts for military and reconstruction projects in Iraq, apparent theft of huge sums, running into the billions of dollars, and what appears to be a system set up precisely to facilitate this kind of behavior. It is controversial only because there has been no full and transparent official investigation of the allegations; the evidence presented is all available through major news media, and Greenwald's work has been to gather the information in one document, which in this case happens to be a film. The result has been that, lacking an official allegation of widespread corruption, there appears to be little interest in major distribution across the US, even though recent years have shown a clear trend toward commercial viability of critical documentaries. So, Greenwald gets shut out. In principle, it is not important that we know how or why. What can be said by those who have seen his work is that it is an effort to convey fact, as such, and then to frame those facts within the larger story of endemic corruption. This does not mean they are films with a political slant, nor does it mean the United States should become a country where only a slant toward the official story should be considered objective. The conservative movement has been creeping toward an overwhelming hold on the official media story in American politics, using talk radio, vicious attack ads, often irrelevant in nearly every way to the individual they attack, and disinformation in the national news media, to alter the public discourse. There is still an unresolved accusation that evangelist Pat Robertson used conflict diamonds trafficked to terrorist organizations to help fund his media empire, known first of all for its fundraising, as well as for prayer vigils calling for the death of Supreme Court justices, commentaries fomenting racial paranoia and claims the 9/11 attacks were divine punishment for a degenerate society. The effect of this intense distortion on US news media has been a departure from the core work of locating and relaying the truth. As the Guardian puts it, this campaign against objectivity "won the war against reality a long time ago in the United States — and reality may no longer be in any condition to stage a comeback". The US has a long and fabled tradition of modern journalism, creating many of the standards used the world over for measuring integrity and objectivity. It has the First Amendment to the Constitution, which empowers the press to challenge government at the highest levels at any time and on any issue, without any sort of official interference permitted, according to the choices of the editors and the reporters, regardless of how inconvenient it may be for those in power. It is, then, urgent that the American people be able to see reporting that is acclaimed not for its political value, but for the weight of its reporting, and the truths it brings to light. A lack of access to such reporting, whether that trend is intentional or not, creates a distortion of lived experience and a common perception that there is more truth in the words of those in power than in the words of those who actually study the meaning of their acts. That sort of situation erodes the very ability of a democracy to function. In November 2004, CNN viewers were treated to a colorful, spliced array of video from the 'Battle for Falluja', where in place of desperate screams, human agony and rapid automatic fire into private homes, viewers heard military theme music, designed to give the idea of a produced re-enactment of World War II heroism. It marked an incredible departure from CNN's traditional self-styled image of fact-gathering, and instant relay of vital, even when shocking, "real-time" information. The screen was blanketed with colorful, even glitzy graphics, shimmering three-dimensional letters, a visual feast promised, in a sense, and the footage edited to show American soldiers behaving responsibly and heroically, as if that were the whole truth. This, despite Fallujah being one of the most confusing, brutal and bloody conflicts of the war. CNN brought the battle right to viewers' living rooms, but refrained from showing bodies torn apart, children on stretchers, or landmarks bombarded. The effort to control the image of the war was evident, whatever the motive. Also evident is the fact that the Pentagon's increasingly well-known and well-established system of censoring reports on the war would have no problems showing what CNN produced for that landmark report. CNN rejected in that purported documentary footage the very concept of objective reporting, and it is not a stretch to say that the theme music, which actually played while shots were being fired on screen, was a real insult to the soldiers themselves, who live and suffer the horrors of war first-hand. CNN's online reporting, however, is more formal and more objective. For instance, in reporting on the level of success or strategy, CNN reported "American forces have pounded Falluja for months in an attempt to root out insurgents. U.S. warplanes, including AC-130 gunships, bombarded targets in recent days to weaken insurgent positions". Their online gallery of scenes from the field also includes an image captioned as "U.S. Army doctors in Baghdad work to stabilize a 4-year-old with shrapnel injuries evacuated from Falluja", during the same period where the suspiciously over-produced battle footage was running on TV. And, in the first days of the most intense combat in Fallujah, CNN did report that an "Iraqi official" deserted US forces after being given access to the battle strategy, but the report is dampened by military assertions that being a Kurd, he likely deserted in order to return home, having no known ties to the city or its insurgent leaders.  Politkovskaya: a crisis situation
In Russia, on Saturday, the 54th birthday of Vladimir Putin, the nation's increasingly authoritarian president and former spy director, the most acclaimed investigative journalist in the country, and Putin's most vocal critic, was shot dead inside an elevator in the building where she lived. Anna Politkovskaya had just announced two days earlier that she was planning to reveal in an article, due to print on Sunday, proof that Chechen PM and Putin protegé Ramzan Kadyrov was involved in a kidnap and torture case. Kadyrov is controversial and has long been considered responsible for abuses in Chechnya, and had just turned 30, the age required to be appointed as Chechen president. The Scotsman reports Politkovskaya "has repeatedly accused [Kadyrov] of running the province like a gangster fiefdom with systematic abuses ignored by Moscow in return for him keeping Islamic fighters on the back foot." The same report also suggests she had enemies throughout the "Russian security apparatus", having to flea to Austria in 2001, after learning that "a police commander she had written about was planning to assassinate her". In 2004, on her way to cover the tragedy in Beslan, where hundreds of civilians died, she was drugged, putting her into a coma; she woke up later in a hospital, and eventually recovered. Mr. Putin's Russia has never been entirely safe for journalists, but attacks and killings are mounting. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya is only the most high-profile and flagrant example of a contract killing to silence a prominent and critical voice. The result is that supporters, including journalists, human rights activists and ordinary citizens are reportedly massing in Pushkin Square, organizing a vigil and holding up signs calling for the prosecution of any official involved, accusing the Kremlin of undermining democracy and "destroying the press". Politkovskaya had written in her recent book that Vladimir Putin, who has filled his government with current and former KGB operatives (an estimated 12 times as many as in the 1980s Soviet Union), has turned Russia's fledgling democracy into a dictatorship. The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that "Politkovskaya was the 12th journalist to die in a contract-style killing since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, said the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists". The newspaper for which she worked, Novaya Gazeta, is mounting its own investigation, and one of its chief investors has offered a $1.25 million reward for her killers' capture. Poltikovskaya was known for her depth of investigation and for providing evidence of the abuses and corruption she reported. As such, the official state investigation, according to police, will also focus on her "professional activities", presumably meaning it would examine targets of her reporting as possible suspects. Her reports were dangerous precisely because they were well-documented and pointed to the facts that demonstrate the accusation. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the staging of a rally outside the Russian embassy in Paris, where RSF is based, condemning the journalist's murder. A statement from the press freedom organization said "Her condemnation of state terror in Chechnya and her unwavering commitment to press freedom made her a beacon of independent journalism in Russia". Anna Politkovskaya's death is a sign of the precarious position of serious journalists in many parts of the world, and part of a disturbing trend in recent years in which violence against journalists has steadily risen on a global scale. The Iraq war has seen a disturbingly high number of journalists seriously injured or killed, even while in their hotel rooms and/or fired upon by coalition forces. In the Philippines, the kidnap and disappearance of local journalists in remote areas has escalated amid a trend apparently tied to politicians seeking to silence corruption allegations. On 3 October, just 4 days before Ms. Politkovskaya was killed, Reporters Without Borders expressed "concern about the health of Permsky Obozrevatel photographer Vladimir Korolyov, who was arrested on 13 September just after being treated for a heart attack, and was questioned without his lawyer being present. The charge against him was 'illegally gathering and publishing information about the local police.'" Ultimately, any society must make a deliberate choice as to whether it supports the freedom of the press that reveals and records the truth of what is lived in that country. A free society requires that the press have this freedom, for the sake of a free market of ideas and for the sake of the liberty of the individual to protect the human sphere from the arbitrary rule of the state. [s]
CBS NEWS REPORT DISTORTS POLL RESULTS, SAYS BUSH "LIKELY NOT" OBLIGED TO FOLLOW LAW In a report from the White House regarding the president's response to criticism from the public, from Congress and from legal and national security experts that his warrantless wiretaps are illegal, CBS White House correspondent John Roberts falsely cites a recent poll to claim Bush has broad support from the public for warrantless wiretaps. [Full Story] MILITARY COUP PRESENTED AS GOOD CITIZENSHIP When President Hugo Chavez was forced from power and sequestered by a faction of the Venezuelan military, The New York Times reported the matter as a decision by the President to resign. The "resignation" was welcomed as a sign that democracy was moving forward in Venezuela, and that its economy would no longer be threatened by a crouching dictator-in-wait. The fact that an elected official who had reportedly voluntarily turned over power was in the armed custody of coup leaders went unreported. In an editorial, they lauded the immediate military appointment of an oil chief, a political arch-rival, to replace Chavez, saying the president had "handed power to a respected business leader." [Full Story] |
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The problem as such
The Fallujah story
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