[Nettime-bold] Media Watch

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Prompted by the US mainstream electronic media failure to report the anti-
war protest from Times Square, New York, on October 7, I decided to 
start a Media-Watch project, kind of like what we have seen done by the 
dozen of Western NGO-s with Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian media 
during the wars of Yugoslav succession. There it was widely perceived 
that the state-owned mainstream electronic media were used by 
nationalist governments to manufacture the consent for war. In the 
words of Noam Chomsky, here in the U.S. the media are used in pretty 
much the same way right now.

On Monday, the second day of the air-strikes against Taliban positions 
in Afghanistan, I watched news from three major European sources to 
compare them to the major American TV networks. Here are my findings:

Deutsche Welle gave a lot of space to considerations about fate of the 
aid workers still held prisoners by Taliban in Afghanistan. They went all 
but unmentioned on American TV on Monday (they were mentioned on 
Tuesday). Deutsche Welle also noted that among the first casualties of 
the bombing were aid agencies vital for survival of Afghanistan civilians: 
UNICEF and UNHCR buildings were burned in Queta by protesters 
following the first day of bombing.

French TV went further, interviewing the doctor working with Medecins 
Sans Frontieres, who expressed doubts about the real value of air drops, 
calling them merely a useful propaganda tool. The anchor then went on 
to mock American networks for showing endless footage of nightly 
skies, supposedly, over Kabul, where not much could be seen, since 
they look, indeed, quite the same like nightly skies over Bagdad or over 
Belgrade. 

BBC, besides showing the disturbing footage from protests in Queta a 
day ahead from its American colleagues, has also shown the (even more 
disturbing) footage of burning Gaza strip, which American colleagues yet 
have to gain the courage to show. We haven’t yet seen what exactly did 
American/British attacks destroyed in Afghanistan - the satellite photos 
did show the targets, but they didn’t look to an average viewer as 
damaged as the UNICEF building in Queta did. The BBC reporting from 
Pakistan, Egypt and Gaza, while not explicitly saying so, gave an 
intelligent viewer the opportunity to imply that the main casualty of the 
American/British bombing so far was the stability in the Arab world.

It is also worth to note that buildings in Gaza were not set aflame by 
Israelis. They were set aflame by Palestinian protesters and by the PLO 
police that cracked down on them. In apparent violation of their own 
religious law that prohibits worshiping images, young Arab protesters in 
all places carried pictures of Osama Bin Laden, their new messiah. Yasser 
Arafat, on the other hand, wants to seize the opportunity - At what other 
time could anybody imagine Syria getting a seat at the UN Security 
Council? Over Shimon Peres dead body, maybe. - and get a more serious 
commitment of the US to the Palestinian State. Palestinians carrying 
pictures of Osama Bin Laden around are not exactly helpful in that 
process.

With each new day of bombing Afghanistan, one more Arab state is a 
step closer to civil war. The problem with Arab world is demographic and 
political. And it most certainly won’t be helped with war. Arab countries 
are full of young people. When half of the population is under 30, it is 
usually easier to imagine revolutions, protests and violent upheavals. 
When half of the population is under 20, some sort of change simply 
MUST happen. It is impossible to believe that the old order may survive. 
Particularly, if it is a corrupt, authoritarian order with no mandate of the 
people. Is there any democracy in the Arab world, except for Israel, 
which is not really an Arab state? No. Arab states are either former 
Soviet clients like Libya, Iraq and Syria - lead by Soviet style totalitarian 
regimes, or they are military dictatorships like Pakistan, Egypt or Algeria, 
or they are anachronistic feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, 
Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrein, Yemen, U.A.E. Iran is not an Arab 
state, but it is geographically a part of the Arab world (just like Israel is), 
and it is indeed the newest political regime in the region - but, while it 
does show some promise, it is still an autocratic theocracy, where the 
Council of Guardians - clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader - has a 
veto power over the democratically elected president and 
parliamentarians. 

Maybe we should start asking ourselves why in the Arab world there is 
not a single state by the people and for the people. And whether does 
the quest for the cheap oil has anything to do with floating corrupt 
autocratic states way past their expiration date. In which case it would be 
expected that oppressed population there hates those who aid and abate 
the regime that oppresses them. And are we really prepared to live like 
Israelis just in order to keep the oil prices low, as they are just to keep on 
with their settlement policy? Is there a third way? Again, I had to browse 
foreign press to catch a glimpse of such an angle. Time, Newsweek, 
People, USA Today, US News & World Report, they were all 
preoccupied counting the missiles and airplanes their trustees possess 
to dig deeper for the causes. So, I had to turn to the British The 
Economist and particularly to the Canada’s Maclean’s with its essay 
Season Of Change by Arthur Kent that carefully tackled that issue: this 
is not about winning the war and capturing Bin Laden - this is about 
winning young Arab world over to “our” side, to the values of freedom, 
democracy and peace.

But, while the US government espoused that rhetoric from the beginning, 
it did in the end resort to the old fashioned air-war doctrine, and it did 
impose the control over media reporting unseen of in a democratic state. 
President Bush even wanted to cut the Congress out of the loop - on the 
pretext of the leakage of sensitive information - something that even 
ancient Roman Emperors would think twice before saying (less they 
wanted to be found with a poisoned dagger in their chest on the next 
morning). This is not how this war may be won. Osama Bin Laden 
showed himself healthy, calm and belligerent on TV immediately after the 
first day of attacks, simply repeating his old call on all Muslims around 
the world to kill Americans wherever they can. And it works. For every 
cruise missile fired in the abandoned training camp tent in Afghanistan, 
there seems to be another young Arab willing to sacrifice his life doing 
Al Qaeda’s bidding. 

So far (if we take all recent ‘accidents’ to be connected to Al Qaeda) the 
network focused on: a) destroying international aid facilities related to 
Afghanistan - which shows precisely how a war against Afghanistan is 
misguided: Osama doesn’t give a damn for Afghan civilians, they may all 
starve, freeze to death in brutal Afghan winter, bleed to death in 
hemorrhagic fever or burn to death in American napalm for all does he 
care; b) raising the general fears in developed world - by random and 
colossal destruction of property, sudden cases of rare contagious 
diseases, bus hijacking, etc., and; c) raising in particular the fear of 
traveling by airplane - more than a half of all recent ‘accidents’ were air 
travel related (including the Cessna that rammed the passenger airplane 
on the Milan airport).

Of the developed world the countries that depend most on the air-travel 
are the English speaking former “white” colonies of British Empire, that, 
together with its old master, today form the vaguely defined cultural 
empire that ‘guides’ rather than rules the world. With the exception of 
Japan, all other industrialized, developed nations are today connected by 
roads or railroads (including the U.K. after the tunnel was built). The 
U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, unlike the U.K. and Japan, are 
also dependent on air-travel not only to reach other countries but also 
for domestic travel - due to the large distances and poorly developed 
railroad network. The air travel became not only preferred perk but also 
an inevitable part of life of a Western business professional. If business 
people remain scared to fly - as they currently are - not only the airlines 
will suffer: with the lack of personal contact the business in general will 
become slower and less ebullient. This was well known to terrorist 
groups in 1970s. 

Europe responded with high security on airports (what we see now in the 
U.S.) and by building a high-speed rail network as an alternative 
(although the train can also be hijacked and run into another train, which 
at that speeds is not much less deadly). Al Qaeda did not come up with a 
new idea, here. They just perfected an old one: by using suicide pilots 
that crash planes, they eliminated the need for firearms and explosives, 
which can be detected by the modern airport security. I am also not sure 
whether the U.S. intelligence even considered a remote possibility that 
other, perhaps even non-Arab, states might have an interest in dragging 
the U.S. into this kind of war - despite their unequivocal support that 
they publicly express now. 

It is hardly a secret that it has been a while since Americans had to watch 
their “boys” dying at evening news. Yet, CNN was bringing carnage to 
the American dinner table often from another parts of the world: Bosnia, 
Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, East Timor, Rwanda, Congo, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, 
Chechnya, Kashmiri, Algeria, Spain (ETA), Britain (IRA), etc. The 
perception is that the American viewer must have acquired the blaze 
feeling that Roman public once had watching, after a good meal, the 
gladiator fights in the Colosseum. This feeling, if it had existed, was 
brutally and severely shattered by the September 11 events. And the 
polls (although I am not sure how much could we believe them) are 
strongly suggesting that Americans are now ready and prepared to 
watch their soldiers die in a war that would eventually destroy Al Qaeda. 

Well, the public in other countries is more than prepared - in some places 
the public is relieved - to watch American ‘boys’ die in war. Even more 
perversely, they can’t wait to see how well will American public cope 
with the sight. For example, although we saw the genuinely touchy 
candle-lit vigil for the victims of September 11 attacks, in downtown 
Zagreb (capital of Croatia), on Friday, September 14, we were spared from 
hearing how the minute of silence was broken by the group of football 
hooligan youth shouting: “Vukovar, Vukovar....” The city was leveled by 
the Yugoslav army, while Croatia was under the Western imposed arms 
embargo, unable to defend it. This is definitively a part of the reason why 
we don’t see anything interesting on the major U.S. news networks: the 
authorities don’t think American public would cope well with the sight, 
and the public support for the campaign might wane, so the media are 
obviously restricted in what they can show, i.e. the media, indeed, 
became manufacturers of the consent for war, just as Chomsky said, with 
the story of Dick Cheney “at the secret location” rivaling ‘the best’ of 
what we used to hear about ailing Soviet and Chinese leaders in the days 
of cold war.
  
Therefore, I was shocked, when, yesterday (Tuesday, October 9), at 
around 8:30 pm I’ve heard this lyrics on the K-Rock, a commercial, 
alternative-rock radio station in New York: “War is not the answer. We 
should not escalate.” I was stretching, and it took at least two repetitions 
of that lyrics to sink into me that it was the first time since September 11 
that I’ve heard a song with anti-war lyrics on the American radio station. 
As I thought - “what’s going on?” - the song went into the chorus part, 
singing: “what’s going on?” It was hilarious. Someone called to have 
that song played. And for a while the D.J. deliberated publicly should 
they or should they not play that particular song. Then they played it. It 
was a tribute to Marvin Gaye by Papa-Roach. For some reason (?), the 
D.J. couldn’t play the entire song up until the end - the repetitions of the 
‘war is not the answer’ were blocked out of the song - but, cleverly, with 
playing Nirvana’s ‘Lythium’ over it - “I am so happy...” - the most potent 
sedative available on the American market. Upon the end of this, the D.J. 
announced how he received an amazing number of phone calls, and he 
didn’t want to discuss them - he just exclaimed “who are these people?” - 
and played a jingle “Freedom” before proceeding to the next song. 

The jingle ‘Freedom’ is K-Rocks sales pitch for free tickets for concerts - 
it ends like this: “...in some countries the freedom is not possible, but we 
live in America and we have the freedom to chose.” Thanks, dude. If you 
lived in Serbia, you’d be considered for the U.S. based Committee to 
Protect Journalists 
‘Freedom of Press Award’ - but we shall at least hope that you would be able to 
keep your job in America after this. Of course, earlier in the day, K-Rock did 
exactly what Croatia’ Radio 101 did during the war in Croatia: engage in some 
OBL-bashing, like encouraging listeners to go to certain Yahoo forum 
and ‘kick some ass’ of alleged Islamic fundamentalist supporters there. 
Later in the evening I watched an intelligent show with Charlie Rose on 
channel 13 and I’ve heard Lennon’s “Imagine” played on 90.7 FM. I 
think the real battle is here, not in Afghanistan. Also, a couple of days 
ago I’ve listened to opinions of hip-hop artists, and they were strikingly 
outspoken. That’s good, because if the freedom is lost here, then the 
ultimate results of bombing Afghanistan will be quite irrelevant.

Ivo Skoric

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