Richard Keeble | ukwatch.net

On the Importance of Peace Journalism

JamieSW — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:49:57 +0000

I have always been committed to peace journalism. In the early 1980s, for instance, I launched the group, Journalists Against Nuclear Extermination (JANE), to campaign for peace through the National Union of Journalists. And similar preoccupations have been ever-present in my journalism and academic writing and practice since then. My PhD (published as Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, The Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare by John Libbey in 1997) examined the press coverage of the 1991 Gulf conflict. But it was essentially a protest (in appropriate academic prose) at the unnecessary massacres inflicted on defenceless Iraqis by the US-led coalition – and the way the mainstream media hid the reality of that horror behind the myth of heroic, precise warfare.

For me, it has always been clear that some of the most important responsibilities of the journalist are to promote peace, dialogue and understanding; to confront militarism in all its forms – and the stereotypes and lies on which it is based. And yet, while the mainstream media are awash in debates over citizen journalism and the impact of the internet on traditional routines and professional values, little is heard beyond a select group of activist reporters and academics about peace journalism.

One of the most original contributions to the debate over its practical and theoretical aspects appears in Peace Journalism by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (Hawthorn Press, Stroud, 2005). Every journalist should be aware of it; every journalism education programme should include it in their reading lists. Most academic analysis of conflict reporting is quick to condemn. But this text is far more ambitious. It both highlights the media’s many failings and also offers convincing alternative strategies.

Lynch and McGoldrick, drawing on 30 years’ experience reporting for the BBC, ITV, Sky News, the London Independent and ABC Australia as well as teaching peace journalism at four universities, rightly call for a ‘journalistic revolution’. Drawing particularly on the peace research theories of Prof. Johan Galtung, they argue that most conflict coverage, thinking itself neutral and ‘objective’, is actually war journalism. It is violence and victory orientated, dehumanising the ‘enemy’, focusing on ‘our’ suffering, prioritising official sources and highlighting only the visible effects of violence (those killed and wounded and the material damage).

In contrast, peace journalism is solution-orientated, giving voice to the voiceless, humanising the ‘enemy’, exposing lies on all sides, highlighting peace initiatives and focusing on the invisible effects of violence (such as psychological trauma).

They then apply this theory to a series of case studies such as the murder of two-year-old James Bulger in February 1993, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the 2001 US attacks on Afghanistan, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the terrorist attacks on Casablanca, the US/UK invasion of Iraq 2003. Dotted throughout the text are comments from practising journalists and advice from the authors. For instance, to resist war propaganda they advise journalists to be on the look out for shifting war aims, to avoid repeating claims which have not been independently verified, to avoid demonising a person or group and to remind their audience of when war propaganda turned out to be misleading.

The authors are also not afraid to tackle complex theory head-on. For instance, in a chapter titled ‘Why is the news the way it is?’ they leap confidently into the deep waters of Saussurean linguistics and Derrida’s concepts of deconstruction, logocentricism and the ‘transcendental signifier’. Perhaps it was wise to leave such difficult territory towards the end of the text.

There are some serious limitations to the text. For instance, the authors focus almost entirely on the mainstream media and thus fail to acknowledge the contribution of campaigning, alternative media (such as those linked to radical left, feminist, environmental, human rights causes) to the promotion of peace journalism. For instance, Peace News (currently edited by Milan Rai and Emily Johns) is an outstanding publication worth highlighting. Its international coverage is particularly impressive (see www.peacenews.info). So too are websites such as medialens (media monitoring), Indymedia (grassroots anti-war, environmental campaigns), counterpunch (investigative journalism site run by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair) and Dahrjamailiraq (showcasing the work of an outstanding freelance reporter in Iraq).

Lynch and McGoldrick also fail to acknowledge the important theoretical work of Chris Atton and Tony Harcup which have highlighted the ways in which alternative writers challenge dominant ideologies, journalistic routines and organisational structures and, in effect, promote peace journalism. Moreover, Lynch and McGoldrick lavish too much praise on the London Independent which they argue ‘more than any other newspaper’ fulfils the criteria of peace journalism. While the excellence of much of its reporting of the 2003 Iraq invasion (particularly by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn) cannot be denied, critical research suggests that, in many respects, the newspaper reproduces many of the dominant news values of Fleet Street.

Ultimately, then, this text reminds us how crucial it is to look beyond the narrow confines of the mainstream media for inspirational models of peace journalism.

Links:

www.Dahrjamailiraq.com

The Massacre of Musa Qala

Tim Holmes — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:41:17 +0000

Take a look at Nick Cornish’s series of photographs in The Times Online of some of the 6,000 UK/American/Afghan forces engaged in the recent assault on the town of Musa Qala, in Helmand province. They show their massive firepower: lines of armoured vehicles; men in full military gear dragging away bare-footed Taliban captives in ragged civilian clothes. An unnamed Taliban is lying sprawled out dead in a field.

Photographs in the press before the attacks on the “strategically significant town” showed rag-tag Taliban forces crammed in battered old trucks desperately clutching their small firearms. Against them, poised to attack, stood the full might of the most powerful nation on the globe: armoured vehicles, infantry, artillery and logistics backed up by “dozens of attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft”, as the Daily Telegraph reported.

How many Taliban “forces” were there defending the town? We will never know. According to the British military spokesman, Lt Col. Richard Eaton, just 200. other reports suggested 2,000. Whatever the figure, this was no “battle”. According to the headline in the Observer of 9 December 2007, “Fierce battles rages for Taliban stronghold”. Yet when the firepower of one side so overwhelms that of the other (missing the crucial cover from the air bombardment) is this not better described as a massacre, a form of hi-tech barbarism?

How many casualties did the Taliban suffer? Again, we will never know. Significantly Nick Meo reported in The Times of 11 December, after the Taliban had allegedly fled the town on motorcycles: “Fears were growing that there had been heavy civilian casualties.” Certainly, buried in all the reports was the news that 2007 had proved “the deadliest” in Afghanistan since the US invasion in 2001 with more than 6,200 people estimated to have been killed. All we know, then, is that the many many dead Afghans will remain uncounted, unnamed.

So amidst the din of warfare coverage, the silences and omissions for me are always the most significant, the most troubling.

Horror is mentioned in the coverage but the focus is on the Taliban. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, alleged that an unnamed 15-year-old boy had been burned to death on a stove and the town had to be seized from the Taliban to halt such atrocities. “Taliban horror had to end” is the headline in the Mirror of 11 December 2007. There is no such outrage over “our” atrocities.

In contrast to the silence surrounding the dead Afghans, British casualties are named and celebrated. Sergeant Lee Johnson, of the 2nd Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, died on 7 December. His commanding officer describes him as “a huge personality and supreme soldier”.

And in the face of the unspeakable horrors, the military mumble the absurdities of massacrespeak. According to Lt Col Eaton, quoted in the Guardian of 10 December 2007: “It is like a game of chess and we are moving the right pieces into the right places so they are where we want them to be when we need them.”

In this way the hi-tech barbarism of the assault on Musa Qala is domesticated and trivialised, reduced to the level of a game of chess in a strange jangle of words.

‘Worst humanitarian crisis in the world’ largely missing from the UK media

JamieSW — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 07:56:06 +0000

The British mainstream media’s coverage of Africa has recently been focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the controversial decision by PM Gordon Brown not to attend the European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon in protest at the presence there of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. Yet the continent’s biggest humanitarian disaster has gone largely ignored.

In Somalia, according to the United Nations, more than one million people have been displaced from their homes and put on the edge of starvation by the fighting between the occupying Ethiopian troops and the local, largely Islamic resistance movement. The UN describes Somalia as its “worst humanitarian crisis in 16 years”.

The Indian journal, Frontline, in its current issue, quotes the head of UN operations in Somalia, Eric Laroche, as saying that if such a crisis engulfed Darfur “there would be a big fuss”. Somalia, he said, had been a “forgotten emergency for years”. To add to the country’s woes, over the last year it has faced drought, floods and a locust infestation.

Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the leaders of the EU and Africa at the Lisbon summit to act to end the atrocities in Somalia where Ethiopian troops were engaged in the indiscriminate and deliberate bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods.

Appalling war crimes

HRW said both sides were responsible for appalling war crimes. But it stressed the Somali government had repeatedly harassed humanitarian organisations trying to help the displaced population. Former warlord Mohamed Dheere, the mayor of Modagishu, detained the head of the UN’s World Food Programme for five days in October causing food distribution to 75,000 people to be temporarily suspended.

Somalia’s most recent tragedy began on 25 December 2006 when Ethiopian troops, with the support of the US air force and navy, entered the capital, Mogadishu, and installed a puppet Transitional Federal Government. An Islamist militia calling themselves the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) had seized power in June 2006, ousting the warlords and bringing a much welcomed period of relative peace to the country.

According to Ahmadou Ould-Abdallah, the UN’s top official in Somalia, (quoted in the Frontline report) the short period in which the Islamists were in control in Somalia was the country’s “golden era”. But the US, claiming the SICC were harbouring radical Islamists, resolved to remove them from power. Satellite pictures of the Islamic fighters provided by the US proved vital to the Ethiopian troops in the December 2006 battles.

The country is particularly dangerous for journalists. Eight have already been killed this year. Human Rights Watch reports that the Transitional Government has closed down newspapers and three independent radio stations.
The conflict has also spread to eastern Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State, known as the Ogaden, where a rebel movement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, has been stepping up its attacks on Ethiopian troops. Both sides are blamed for indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

Chad human rights abuses missed by the media

While calling for EU-AU action on Somalia, HRW also focused on another African crisis which has been ignored by the UK media. Following one of the most remarkable human rights campaigns in recent years, Chad’s former dictator, Hissène Habré, now faces charges of crimes against humanity.

Installed as head of state in Chad following a CIA-backed coup in 1982, Habré was responsible for appalling human rights abuses before being ousted in another coup in 1990. In a rare instance of coverage, on May 21st 1992 the Guardian carried four short paragraphs reporting how 40,000 people were estimated to have died in detention or been executed during the tyranny of Habré. A justice ministry report concluded that he had committed genocide against the Chadian people.

Habré’s victims first looked to Belgium where its historic “universal human rights” 1993 law allowed victims to file complaints in the country for atrocities committed abroad. Following threats from the United States in June 2003 that Belgium risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters, the law was repealed. Yet a new law, adopted in August 2003, allowed for the continuation of the case against Habré – much to the delight of human rights campaigners.

Now Senegal, where Habré lives in exile, has finally responded to an appeal by the African Union (AU) to try the former Chadian dictator. The AU has mandated Senegal to prosecute Habré “on behalf of Africa” while President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has asked the EU and AU for technical and financial support to carry out the trial. The EU has, in principle, agreed to this request and the AU has named an envoy to the case.
Last week, HRW said Habré’s case provided a unique opportunity for AU-EU co-operation. But HRW’s important plea over Chad was largely ignored by the UK media.

The Ethical Journalist

Alex Doherty — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:57:36 +0000

Tony Harcup (2006) The Ethical Journalist, London: Sage. 224 pages. ISBN 9781412918978. £19.99 paperback.

According to Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of the Sun in the 1980s, ‘ethics is a place to the east of London where men wear white socks.’ Indeed, many mainstream journalists in Britain are extremely cynical about ethics. The reasons are obvious. The demands of the deadline and ‘getting the story’ dominate: ethical concerns are secondary, if they are ever considered at all.

Media operations are hierarchically organised with power to those (usually white men) at the top: those lower down the pecking order often see themselves as impotent (and largely dispensable) cogs in a much larger machine. Moreover, the media seem too committed to entrenched mythologies and work routines, too prone to crude sensationalising and stereotyping; too closely tied to dominant institutions and the rigours of surviving in a market-led economy.

Andrew Marr sums up the cynical view in My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (2004) when he argues that the phrase ‘responsible journalism’ should be shunned: ‘Responsible to whom? The state? Never. To “the people”? But which people, and of what views? To the readers? It is vanity to think you know them. Responsible, then to some general belief in truth and accuracy? Well that would be nice.’

Tony Harcup is not having any of this. Senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Sheffield, he is an outspoken campaigner for ethical journalism. Near the start of this lively, original and brave text he sets out his ethos:

‘Whether we recognise it or not, ethics are involved in every story we follow up or ignore; every interview we request; every conversation with a confidential source; every quote we use, leave out or tidy up; every bit of context we squeeze in, simplify or exclude … For the ethical journalist, it is not enough to have a bulging contacts book or a good nose for news; being an ethical journalist also means asking questions about our own practice.’

According to Harcup Journalism matters because it lies at the heart of the democratic process and he acknowledges that journalism can often fail to live up to its self-proclaimed watchdog role, however he is at pains to stress:

‘there are reporters out there every day doing their best to monitor the powerful and to ask the awkward questions. In the press galleries and corridors of our parliament buildings – as in many of our courts and council chambers – there are journalists taking notes and looking for stories.’

Harcup has little time for abstract theorising about ethics. Thus, there is no space here for Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Moore, Rawls, McIntyre and Co. Rather, he looks to a radical political tradition that incorporates figures such as John Milton, author of the celebrated plea for press freedom, Areopagitica, John Lilburne, leader of the radical Levellers whose writings aimed to ‘undeceive the people’, Tom Paine, whose journalism inspired both the American and French revolutions, and Martha Gellhorn who, after being praised for her coverage of the Vietnam war, said: ‘All I did was report from the ground up, not the other way round.’

Harcup has written extensively on the alternative press. So in his chapter examining news values, it is not surprising he draws on this research to highlight the perspectives of journals such as the Liverpool Free Press (which saw news as ‘useful information’) and Leeds Other Paper (for whom a good story was one which ‘reinforced the ability of the mass of the people to do things for themselves and decreased their reliance on others’). Other chapters explore journalists’ relations with their sources, the reporting of crime and media regulation.

In ‘Standing up for Standards’, he looks at the ways in which journalists, individually or in groups, have promoted higher standards. For instance, in late 2003 and early 2004, journalists on the Express protested to the Press Complaints Commission over the pressures they faced from their proprietor to write anti-Gypsy stories. Elsewhere he celebrates George Seldes, who walked out on the Chicago Tribune in protest at the suppression of a story; and Kathy Weitz, who quit as features writer on the Sun in March 2003 because of its gung-ho coverage of the Iraq war. And he highlights the bravery of the Ukrainian journalists who took collective action against censorship before and during the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004.

Harcup draws on interviews with practising journalists as well as a vast array of other sources: for instance, all the major recent titles on media ethics (such as Allan, Atton, de Burgh, Franklin, Frost, Jempson, Petley, Lloyd, Pilger and Sanders) are acknowledged. If anything the text is over-densely referenced. Moreover, this is unashamedly a textbook – with each chapter ending with a ‘further reading’ section. The appendices carry a useful series of ethical codes and guidelines. But this is a short book: a future edition might consider referring simply to the websites for these codes and devote the saved forty pages to more important copy.

It’s also very Anglo-centric, as Harcup acknowledges at the start. References to foreign journalists and controversies are dotted about the text. But given their urgency, it’s strange that issues such as global warming, environmental pollution, and the coverage of US/UK militarism are largely ignored. Even references to basic issues such as objectivity/subjectivity, propaganda and professionalism are missing from the index.

Privacy is covered briefly but there is no reference to the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 nor to the secret state and the growing links between Fleet Street journalists and the intelligence services. The Freedom of Information Act and citizen journalism receive only a passing mention; the implications of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are ignored.

Even the Blair government’s many anti-terror Acts have serious implications for the media, though they are ignored here. For instance, under the Terrorism Act 2000 it is an offence if a journalist finds out that someone has been funding terrorism and does not inform the police immediately. Journalists could also face five years in gaol if they have information that could secure the apprehension of someone involved in terrorism and they do not give it to the police ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’.

The ethnic minority press is marginalised in Harcup’s text while the internet as a source for journalistic research and the many ethical issues involved are downplayed.

These critical points should not detract from the overall success of the text: it should certainly help convince all students that ethics need not be boring but lie at the heart of the journalist’s job.

Media Silence on Chad

jeppe — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:09:57 +0000

One of the most remarkable human rights campaigns of recent years has gone largely unreported in the British mainstream media. During the 1980s Hissène Habré, installed as head of state in Chad following a CIA-backed coup in 1982, had presided over ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘torture’ in his country before being ousted in another coup in 1990. In a rare instance of coverage, on May 21st 1992 The Guardian carried four short paragraphs reporting how 40,000 people were estimated to have died in detention or been executed during the tyranny of Habré. A justice ministry report concluded that Habré had committed genocide against the Chadian people.

Now Senegal, where Habré lives in exile, has finally responded to an appeal by the African Union to try the former Chadian dictator. He is accused of 40,000 political killings and 200,000 cases of torture during his eight-year rule. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch claimed Habré was responsible for thousands of cases of political killings, torture, ‘disappearances’ and arbitrary detention. Moreover, the regime produced 80,000 orphans and more than 30,000 widows.

Since 1990 a range of human rights groups have sought to have Habré charged with crimes against humanity. For instance, six years ago, in a case inspired by the one against Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, several human rights organisations, led by Human Rights Watch, filed a suit against Habré in Senegal. They argued that he could be tried anywhere for crimes against humanity and that former heads of state were not immune. However, on March 21st 2001, the Senegal Court of Cassation threw out the case. And so human rights campaigners turned their attention to Belgium where one of the victims of Habré‘s torture lived.

Following threats from the United States in June 2003 that Belgium risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters, a 1993 historic law, which allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad, was repealed. Yet a new law, adopted in August 2003, made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habré – much to the delight of human rights campaigners. Now the Senegal intervention appears to have finally brought Habré to court.

These were extraordinary events but all of them hidden behind a virtual wall of silence in the mainstream media in Britain. Yet also hidden is the massive, secret war which has been waged by the United States and Britain from bases in Chad against Libya. British involvement in a 1996 plot to assassinate the Libyan leader, Colonel Mu’ammar Gadafi, as alleged by the maverick M15 officer David Shayler, was reported as an isolated event. Yet it is best seen as part of a wide-ranging and long-standing strategy (now abandoned) of the US and UK secret states to remove Gadafi.

Grabbing power by ousting King Idris in a 1969 coup, Gadafi (who, intriguingly, had followed a military training course in England in 1966) soon became the target of covert operations by the French, Americans, Israelis and British.

Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of M16, records how in 1971 a British plan to invade the country, release political prisoners and restore the monarchy ended in an embarrassing flop. Nine years later, the head of the French secret service, Alain de Gaigneronde de Marolles, resigned after a French-led plan ended in disaster when a rebellion by Libyan troops in Tobruk was quickly suppressed.

Then, in 1982, away from the glare of the media, Habré, with the backing of the CIA and French troops, overthrew the Chadian government of Goukouni Wedeye. Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame), in his semi-official history of the CIA, reveals that the Chad covert operation was the first undertaken by the new CIA chief William Casey and that, throughout the decade, Libya ranked as high as the Soviet Union as the bête noir of the White House. A report from Amnesty International, ‘Chad: The Habré Legacy’, records massive military and financial support for the dictator by the US Congress. It adds: ‘None of the documents presented to Congress and consulted by AI covering the period 1984 to 1989 make any reference to human rights violations’.

US official records indicate that funds for the Chad-based covert war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, gave $7 million to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). However, a plan to assassinate Gadafi and seize power on May 8th 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gadafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan.

Frustrated in its covert attempts to topple Gadafi, the US government’s strategy suddenly shifted. For eleven minutes in the early morning of April 14th 1986, thirty US air force and navy bombers struck Tripoli and Benghazi in a raid code-named El Dorado Canyon.

The US/UK mainstream media were ecstatic. Yet the main purpose of the raid was to kill the Libyan president – dubbed a ‘mad dog’ by Reagan. In the event, the first bomb to drop on Tripoli hit Gadafi’s home killing Hana, his adopted daughter aged 15 months – while his eight other children and wife Safiya were all hospitalised, some with serious injuries. The president escaped.

Reports of US military action against Libya disappeared from the media after the 1986 assault. But away from the glare of publicity, the CIA launched its most extensive effort yet to spark an anti-Gadafi coup. A secret army was recruited from among the many Libyans captured in border battles with Chad during the 1980s. And as concerns grew in M16 that Gadafi was aiming to develop chemical weapons, Britain funded various opposition groups in Libya.

Then in 1990, with the crisis in the Gulf developing, French troops helped oust Habré in a secret operation and install Idriss Déby as the new President of Chad. The French government had tired of Habré‘s genocidal policies while George Bush senior’s administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for co-operation in its attack on Iraq. Yet, even under Déby, abuses of civil rights by government forces have continued.

Recently, relations between the US, UK and Libya have thawed, with Gadafi pledging support for the ‘war against terrorism’ and agreeing to pay compensation to the victims of the 1988 Flight 103 Lockerbie bombing, for which a Libyan intelligence agent was jailed. But significantly, at his trial in November 2003, David Shayler was denied the right (under the European Convention of Human Rights) to speak out about the 1996 anti-Gadafi plot. Since it is obvious there are a lot of shady secrets from the years of the dirty war to conceal, such a decision by the court must have come as a relief to the government.

US troops are currently arriving in several African countries, including Chad, as the Pentagon warns that the region runs the risk of becoming an al-Qaida recruiting ground. Moreover, oil reserves in North and West Africa are drawing increasing attention from the US. West Africa supplies the US with 15 per cent of its oil while the US National Intelligence Council has projected the figure will grow to 25 per cent by 2015. The 650-mile, £2.8 billion oil pipeline between Chad and Cameroon, finished in 2002, amounted to Africa’s largest ever development project. Yet it was criticised for damaging the interests of the poor, the people it was supposed to help.

World Bank officials admitted the Chad government had spent the first £10 million of the monies it received from the consortium on arms for its security forces rather than on the educational and development projects for which they were intended. And yet in Britain these extraordinary events are greeted largely with silence.

British Propaganda in Ireland

Alex Doherty — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:08:54 +0000

__The Origins and Organisation of British Propaganda in Ireland 1920
Brian P Murphy; Aubane Historical Society and Spinwatch; ISBN 1 903497 24 8; pp 90. £4__

In August 1920, Basil Clarke arrived in Dublin as director of government publicity with the specific task of countering Sinn Fein propaganda. As Brian Murphy shows in this concise, fascinating and important study, Clarke was ideally suited to his new job. A highly experienced and widely travelled journalist with the Manchester Guardian and Lord Northcliffes Daily Mail, Clarke ended the 1914-18 war as special correspondent for Reuters and the Press Association at the GHQ of the British army in France. In his reporting Clarke admitted that he broke laws and orders innumerable with no remorse; not the slightest. In 1918 he became director of special intelligence branch of the Ministry of Reconstruction and in 1920 (just before moving to his Dublin post) director of public information at the Ministry of Health.

Working alongside Clarke was Captain H.B.C. Pollard, press officer of the Police Authoritys information section. Another experienced journalist with many years service at the Daily Express, he had been staff officer in the intelligence section of the War Office from 1916-18. Murphy highlights Pollards outrageously racist views of the Irish people. In his 1922 book, The Secret Societies of Ireland: Their Rise and Progress, Pollard wrote on the IRA: there is nothing fine about a group of moral decadents leading a superstitious minority into an epidemic of murder and violent crime; yet this is what has happened of recent years in Ireland, it is what has happened time and time again in the past, and it will happen again in the future; for the Irish problem is a problem of the Irish race, and it is rooted in the racial characteristics of the people themselves.

In addition, Major Cecil John Charles Street, director of the Irish Office in London, was engaged in many aspects of propaganda work, in particular building up cosy contacts with Fleet Street editors. All three (Clarke, Pollard and Street) worked closely with Basil Thomson, head of Special Branch in London

Drawing on a wide range of sources — including Colonial Office files in the National Archives, Kew, reports of the mainstream and Republican press, memoirs and histories — Murphy argues convincingly that the activities of these British propagandists in 1920 marked a significant (though, to date, largely ignored) moment in the development of the national security state apparatus.

Through a daily news sheet titled Summaries of Official Reports and Outrages and the police journal, the Weekly Summary, which began publication in August 1920, the mainstream British press was fed disinformation, lies and distortions which highlighted the alleged success of the Crown Forces and portrayed the IRA as a murder gang. Moreover, Murphy shows that by shaping and refining the news in the British interest, Clarke not only produced a propaganda message for his time but also provided a historical narrative for all time.

In impressive detail, Murphy, a member of the Benedictine Community at Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick, examines a series of critical events such as the execution of Kevin Barry after a failed attack on a British military lorry in Dublin and the ambush of British forces by the IRA at Kilmichael on 28 November 1920. And he shows how the official line was swallowed wholesale by the mainstream press — though vigorously challenged by the Republican press such as the Irish Bulletin.

For instance, after the shooting in Dublin Castle of the IRA fighters Dick McKee, Peader Clancy and Connor Clune, Clarkes official account asserted (falsely) that the three men had been shot while trying to escape. It was this account which appeared in the mainstream press, with The Timess headline on 24 November proclaiming Desperate fight in guard room murder gang members. In addition Clarke published fake photographs to show that an escape had been attempted by the prisoners.

In an extremely useful foreword, Professor David Miller argues that the 1920 Dublin milieu produced the public relations industry in Britain. Clarke, for instance, left government service in the early 1920s and established one of the first PR agencies, Editorial Services. And between 1929 and 1931 he worked as PR official for the Conservative Party. Pollard, on the other hand, played a significant role in bringing General Franco back to Spain in 1936 to launch his murderous coup against democratic Spain.

Miller also draws parallels between the torture techniques used on IRA captives and on Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. For instance, Tom Hales and Patrick Harte were viciously attacked, kicked, punched, hit with revolver butts and tortured with pincers. In addition, they were threatened in a mock execution and made to hold the Union Jack while photographs were taken of them.

As Miller concludes: One of Murphys most extraordinary revelations is that the techniques, which shocked the world in Abu Ghraib, have a history longer than perhaps anyone outside the military and their political masters has suspected.

For copies of the book contact jacklaneaubane@hotmail.com or wwws.spinwatch.org

Orwell - Journalist and Proto-Blogger

eddie — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:33:55 +0000

Orwell scholarship has tended to focus on his novels,
essays and works of reportage such as Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia.
In many respects this reflects the overall problematic position of journalism
within academe and the dominant culture. Reportage has achieved some literary
respectability, being perceived as ‘literary journalism’. But otherwise,
in comparison with the novel and the literary essay (often associated
with ‘high art’), straight journalism (news and feature/column writing)
is too often perceived as ephemeral, dashed off at speed for money, unreflective
and with no lasting value. As a result ‘journalistic’ in academe is usually
a term of abuse meaning superficial, sensational and rhetorical.

Paradoxically, Orwell shared this same prejudice. Throughout
his career he constantly downgraded his own writing as mere journalism
or pamphleteering and looked up to Literature with a Capital ‘L’, which
he thought of as a higher form. In his celebrated, Why I write of 1946,
he confessed: ‘In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely
descriptive books and might have remained almost unaware of my political
loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer’.
In other words, reluctantly he took up journalism as a way of confronting
the crucial political dilemmas of his age.

But take a look at his As I Please columns, which he
bashed out while literary editor of Tribune, the left-wing weekly, between
November 1943 and April 4th 1947 (with an interlude between February 1945
and November 1946 when he was on a war reporting assignment for the Observer
and Manchester Evening News and then engaged on other projects). I’ve
read all eighty columns (that’s roughly 100,000 words – the equivalent
of a PhD) and enjoyed every single one of them. Journalism is often dismissed
as a superficial, transient genre: these columns though written sixty
years ago, are full of riches that can be relished still today.

After his unhappy two years as talks producer at the
BBC, where he was increasingly annoyed by the censorship and bureaucracy,
Orwell clearly loved the new freedoms at Tribune, all the more so because
it was a journal with which he could totally identify. In one of his As
I Please columns on January 31st 1947, he wrote: ‘It is the only existing
weekly paper that makes a genuine effort to be both progressive and humane
– that is, to combine a radical Socialist policy with a respect for freedom
of speech and a civilised attitude towards literature and the arts’.

Yet again there is no academic study of the whole eighty
columns. Journalism it seems is worth a passing comment but it rarely
receives the attention it deserves in academe. So what makes these columns
so great?

In a chapter in a book I edited last year, entitled,
Print Journalism: A Critical Introduction, Tim Holmes identifies five
categories in a practical taxonomy of comment: community building, commercial
advantage, elite reinforcement of preferred message, oppositional viewpoint
and unofficial extension of predominant ideology. Most writers fulfil
one of these categories. In a way, Orwell managed to achieve all of them
in his columns. He promoted socialism and yet challenged some of its central
shibboleths. For instance, on January 21st 1944 he wrote in praise of
the Woolworth rose. The following week a reader accused Orwell of bourgeois
nostalgia. Michael Foot later wrote that Bevan ‘was the only editor who,
in those days before Orwell’s reputation was sure, would have given him
complete freedom to offend all readers and lash all hypocrisies, including
Socialist hypocrisies’.

And as for extending the predominant ideology, Orwell
often spoke approvingly of Marx’s theories. On February 25th 1944, for
instance, discussing Chesterton’s comment ‘There are no new ideas’ in
his introduction to Hard Times, he writes: ‘Where your treasure is there
will be your heart. But before Marx developed it what force had that saying?
Who had paid attention to it? Who had inferred from it – what it certainly
implies – that laws, religions, and moral codes are all a superstructure
built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the
Gospel, who uttered the text but it was Marx who brought it to life’.

Let’s look at Holmes’ first category, community building,
in more detail. Orwell stressed in his famous essay Why I Write, published
in the totally obscure journal Gangrel in the summer of 1946: ‘Every line
of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly
or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as
I understand it’.

Whilst Orwell’s pronouncements often tended to be part
of a process of myth making and thus have always to be viewed critically,
Orwell’s As I please column demonstrates his enormous commitment to building
up the community of the Left. Not only did he promote Socialist arguments.
One of the most extraordinary and surprising elements is his constant
inter-action with his readers. In many ways, Orwell was a proto-blogger,
responding to letters sent to him directly or sent to Tribune, inviting
letters, asking readers to answer queries or to point him towards a book,
pamphlet or quotation he’s looking for, running a competition for a short
story or giving them a brain teaser to answer.

Not only did Orwell respond to letters but also as Peter
Davison’s Collected Works show his columns often provoked many letters,
both critical and supportive, from readers. For instance, following his
criticisms of newspapers carrying pictures of French Nazi collaborators
on September 8th 1944 a reader wrote: ‘How much longer must your readers
be affronted by the quite patently pro-Fascist, neo-Jesuit posturing of
George Orwell. He writes in the wrong periodical’.

According to Stephen Glover, founding editor of The
Independent and currently media commentator on the same paper, the columnist’s
skill is ‘in writing about matters of which one is ignorant’. Orwell,
on the other hand, demonstrates the opposite gliding confidently over
a vast range of subjects: shifting tone – from the polemical, the subversively
witty, the campaigning, the poetic, the belligerent, the socially compassionate,
the intellectually discursive, the analytical, to the personally intimate
and revealing. One moment he is generalising provocatively; the next he
is examining in precise details the front page of a newspaper or the advertisements
in a women’s fashion magazine.

Here’s an overview of his subjects:

Views on writers and writing (86)

Critiques of the mainstream press (14)

War effort (12)

Language (10)

Personal reminiscence and experiences (10)

Media censorship/promotion of free speech (9)

BBC (8)

Idiosyncratic likes and dislikes (9)

Post war reconstruction (8)

Racism/anti-racism/anti-Semitism (7)

Love of nature (5)

Critiques of left-wing press (5)

Socialism (4) and critiques of socialism (5)

Ruling classes (5)

Social issues (5)

Social observations (4)

Handling of collaborators (3)

Promotion of Tribune competition (3)

Capitalism/anti-capitalism/imperialism (3)

Critique of foreign media (2)

Critiques of pessimists (2)

Nationalism (2)

Women’s issues (2)

Training of journalists (2)

Architecture (1)

National anthem (1)

Nature of history (1)

Problems of geography (1)

Definition of fascism (1)

Globalisation (1)

British intelligentsia (1)

Plight of the writer (1)

Jingoistic ballad (1)

Costs of books (1)

The poor (1)

Superstition (1)

Law of libel (1)

Keith Waterhouse, the eminent Mirror columnist, advised:
‘Every columnist needs a good half-dozen hobbyhorses. But do not ride
them to death’. Well Orwell’s hobbyhorse was clearly literature and the
range of his reading is staggering, particularly given that at the same
time he was writing the column he was acting as literary editor of Tribune,
contributing regular columns to the American-based Partisan Review and
reviewing for the Observer. His reading is so eclectic: pamphlets, novels,
journals, philosophy, newspapers, a book of cartoons, biographies and
autobiographies, literary criticism, history, memoirs, children’s stories,
a preface to play. Seemingly everything from Chronological Tablets, exhibiting
every remarkable occurrence from the creation of the world down to the
present time (printed by J.D. Dewick of Aldersgate Street in 1801 which
pronounced the creation of the world as happening in September 4004 BC)
to Old Moore’s Almanac.

The writers he comments on in detail are Chesterton,
Dickens, Joyce, Anatole France, Jack London, Samuel Butler, Leonard Merrick,
Sir Osbert Sitwell, Gide, George and Weedon Grossmith (of Diary of a Nobody
fame) and Edgar Wallace. Notice all are male. Christopher Hitchens is
one among a large band of critics who highlight Orwell’s sexism. He comments:
‘Moreover, in neither his fiction nor his journalism is the word “feminist”
ever used except with, or as, a sneer. He included it in his famous taxonomy
of weird and ludicrous beliefs, along with the fruit juice drinkers, escaped
Quakers, sandal wearers and other cranks in the Road to Wigan Pier’. Yet
Orwell never ceases to surprise in his column.

For instance, on November 8th 1946 he examines an American
women’s magazine sent to him, and he goes on to deconstruct its representation
of beauty: ‘One striking thing when one looks at these pictures is the
over bred, exhausted, even decadent style of beauty that now seems to
be striven after. Nearly all of these women are immensely elongated’.
But Orwell doesn’t simply stay with what’s presented; he highlights what’s
missing:

‘A fairly discreet search through the magazine reveals
two discreet allusions to grey hair but if there is anywhere a direct
mention of fatness or middle age I have not found it. Birth and death
are not mentioned either: not is work except that a few recipes for breakfast
dishes are given. The male sex enters directly or indirectly into perhaps
one advertisement in twenty and photographs of dogs and kittens appear
here and there. On only two pictures out of about three hundred, is a
child represented’.

Orwell is often linked with pessimism and defeat and
gloom. But in these columns it’s his playfulness, optimism and lightness
of spirit that so impresses. He even spends time railing at the ‘pessimists’
such as Petain, Chesterton, Beachcomber and Huxley for their ‘refusal
to believe that human society can be fundamentally improved’.

He appears to be a man at the peak of his powers,
playing with the genre, switching from subject matter and tone so effortlessly;
humour is always around the corner. For instance, on January 7th 1944,
he writes: ‘Looking through the photographs in the New Years Honours List
I am struck (as usual) by the quite exceptional ugliness and vulgarity
of the faces displayed there. It seems to be almost the rule that the
kind of person who earns the right to call himself Lord Percy de Falcontowers
should look at best like an overfed publican and at worst a tax-collector
with a duodenal ulcer’.

Orwell’s writing is always bursting with original
ideas and yet never obscured by tedious abstraction and endless referencing.
Indeed, it could be argued that Orwell’s greatness is largely due to his
having never endured a university education.

Hacks and Spooks

Alex Doherty — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 13:32:56 +0000

Hacks And Spooks – Close Encounters Of A Strange Kind

And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference organised by the city’s Student Peace Movement. And what a great event it turns out to be! Lots of excellent speakers – including author and peace activist, Milan Rai, Alan Simpson MP, Dr Meryl Aldridge, of Nottingham University, and a representative of Notts Indymedia. And there’s lots of excellent, lively and constructive discussions.

I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services:

While it might be difficult to identify precisely the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as “intelligence”, “security”, “Whitehall” or “Home Office” sources) on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.

As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented: “Most tabloid newspapers – or even newspapers in general – are playthings of MI5.” Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of “one of Britain’s most distinguished journals” as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.

In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. As “satellites” of the secret state, their list included “agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career”.

Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.

A brief history

Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer — probably as a cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them. Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service’s unit liasing with the French resistance.

The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body — which even Orwell aided by sending them a list of “crypto-communists”. Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it “ran” dozens of Fleet Street journalists and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.

According to John Pilger 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 intelligence agencies was hidden. And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today

In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate’s Church Committee and the House of Representatives’ Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists. And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll. David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: “We have somebody in every office in Fleet Street”

Leaker King

And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming “embarrassing publications”. Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, “was a longstanding agent of ours” who “made it clear he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction”. Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet Street journalists. Wright comments: “No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot” King was also closely involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten

Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper. David Walker, the Mirror’s foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Maxwell and Mossad

According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners’ strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the 1970s MI5’s F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success. In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6 were equally as strong.

Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks were fascinating. For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: “Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse during the Cold War.”

The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked to lunch by the head of MI6. “It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms of first-hand knowledge.”

And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain. Lawson strongly denied the allegations.

Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from “dodgy security services”. She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission: “We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not being used.” (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)

Growing power of secret state

Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US. But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into the heart of Blair’s ruling clique so these links are even more significant.

Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats. According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by the Rockingham cell within the MoD. A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.

Similarly the disinformation about Iraq’s WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists. Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: “Saddam Hussein has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of the United Nations inspectors.” The source of these “revelations” was said to be “intelligence picked up from within Iraq”. Early in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group, the Iraqi National Congress.

Sexed up – and missed out

During the controversy that erupted following the end of the “war” and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government (in collusion with the intelligence services) had “sexed up” a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq. The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition? But those facts will be forever secret. Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists’ links with the intelligence services was ignored by the inquiry.

Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times’ dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.

Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a “calculated set-up” devised to foster the propaganda case for war. “In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam’s regime.” And he concluded: “The information fog is thicker than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures, especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor.”

Let’s not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Richard Keeble’s publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.

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