Erasing memory

Serene Assir investigates the means and implications of the propaganda war fought by corporate media in Iraq

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The problem with international mass media coverage of Iraq ever since the build-up to the US-led invasion is not that all mention of it has been absent. On the contrary, seldom in recent memory has the focus on a particular country and the international scenario relating to it been so glaring and even, at times, overwhelming to an international public which is on the whole apolitical.

Instead, the problem -- which has persisted over the past three to four years -- relates to how coverage has avoided exposing the truth. Media representatives working in Iraq have published tens of thousands of stories, but very few have been able to bring anything out which has evident worth, accuracy or journalistic integrity.

One reason for the terrible gap between print and reality is that it is well nigh impossible to report honestly from Iraq. A highly-circulated interview with star reporter for The Independent, Robert Fisk, in which he described the current limit of his work in Iraq as "mouse journalism", sheds some light on the sheer mayhem of the situation; one which simply forbids good journalism from being carried out. To this day, much control over what is and what isn't reported internationally rests in the hands of US occupation forces. They continue to make their presence known not only by regular attacks and arbitrary military and political control, but also through control over the flow of information.

"While the occupation forces at least allowed for some kind of exchange of information during the first months of the war," Ibrahim Anwar of Arab Press Freedom Watch told Al-Ahram Weekly, "reporting ever since the fall of the old regime has become impossible. The only way journalists can move around Iraq is by accompanying the US or British military. Reporters continue to be essentially dependent on working from the inside of a tank. So that in itself -- whether or not they choose to accept this -- turns all embedded journalists into mouthpieces for the occupation forces. Any attempt to cross over to the other side and, say, balance their story out with information from the resistance would guarantee their arrest or even their death."

Dahr Jamail, who works as an independent Iraqi journalist, added that "working independently is not only very dangerous," as it exposes one to potential attack from any of the armed sides operating in Iraq today, "but it is also extremely difficult." He qualified access to information by non-embedded journalists as practically null. "Bear in mind that I have also been blacklisted by the US military in Iraq due to the critical nature of my work on the occupation. Thus, even if I wanted to become embedded at this point, I would not be able to."

"Those who are not embedded and work for one of the media outlets operated by Iraqi militias," Anwar added, "face the same problem as that faced by those working on the American side. As a journalist in Iraq today, you simply cannot balance your story by analysing the position of more than one side without facing risks of extreme proportions."

A Reporters Without Borders report, which qualifies the Iraq war as "the most deadly war for the media since Vietnam", and describes Iraq as "the world's most dangerous place for journalists", states that 74 journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion was launched in March 2003. Incessant reports of hostage taking, arrest, torture and assassination of journalists in Iraq cannot but indicate that they have become something akin to bargaining chips in a conflict of such overwhelming brutality.

But downright terror is not the only obstacle to the emergence of truth. "We have a media system that is now concentrated in a few hands and is easily intimidated by such pro- administration organs as Fox News, right- wing talk radio, and an army of bloggers well-schooled in attack politics," said Danny Schechter, former CNN and ABC producer and current documentary filmmaker and media freedom activist.

It is no accident of fate that veracity has simply stopped coming out of Iraq -- it is by virtue of a clear, formulated policy that recognises the potential of free media to change minds. "It's not about 'media failure'," independent filmmaker and freelance writer Gabriele Zamparini told the Weekly, "but, to the contrary, it's about 'media success'. The mainstream media are part of the power structure and their role is propaganda. It's always been like this, from the very beginning of the idea of professional journalism."

Even if a given reporter has news to communicate there is no guarantee that it will actually be transmitted, due to political constraints. "Although we have to give credit to the Western press for exposing the Abu Ghraib scandal," Anwar told the Weekly, "Iraqi reporters know of dozens of other similar, and perhaps worse scandals which are simply not exposed. Either they are afraid to talk, or they are compromised by their position vis-à- vis one or the other of the armed factions or armies operating in Iraq."

And while the occupation forces fiercely stand by their refusal to recognise their direct or indirect accountability for the deaths of scores of journalists, the ravaging of Iraq continues, while the world at large knows little of what is happening beyond what the armies are telling us.

"Journalists are not targets per se," Schechter said, "but many officers and soldiers who are committing war crimes do not want those crimes reported." What such a statement reveals about the undercurrent of the situation in Iraq today is alarming. And yet the US and the UK continue in their efforts to lull the public.

"The problem is the here and now," Anwar said. "The media plays such an integral role" in the "shaping of public opinion" that so long as the distortions prevail, so will the relative apathy towards the situation in Iraq. Needless to say, such an outcome is precisely what the US and the UK want.

The most critical point here is that only while the situation worsens and becomes more unfathomably violent will truly independent reporters allow the proximity of death to consume them in such a way as to prevent them from working. Seen in this light, perhaps the journalistic crisis we are facing today speaks more than words ever could about the ravaging of Iraq.