The following is from a web log by Danny Schechter, who refers to himself as "news dissector, executive editor of MediaChannel.org", quoting a certain Bill Rigby from Fountain Hills, Arizona (4 November 2003):
For anyone who has studied the various resistance movements in Europe during WW2, the current situation in Iraq offers amazing similarities.
The resistance fighters are labeled variously "terrorists" and "criminals" - "bandit" will probably appear sooner or later. The civilian population suffers for the resistance insofar as many innocent victims are killed and injured in the repression and seeking out of the "terrorists."
As in France and other occupied countries in WW2, there are Iraqi "collaborators" who received the ire of the resistance. A further parallel comes from the Bush "New World Order" as first enunciated by Bush I that sounds ominously similar to the Hitlerian "New World Order."
Perhaps the next measure will be the taking of hostages and shooting them "pour encourager les autres."
What is the solution? Bush must admit the problem is beyond US capabilities to solve short of wiping Iraq and Iraqis off the face of the earth (a solution apparently favored to some extent by Tom DeLay whose historical senses seems to extend to the week before last). At this point, he should ask the Security Council to propose a solution. It is the only way out of the morass he got the nation into. Unfortunately, Bush is a small mind in an arrogant personality and the likelihood is virtually zero. (Incidentally, I too missed the daily reports...)
Not "terrorists" or "criminals" but "resistance fighters". Astute but not too difficult an observation to make.
NOT ONCE since the intifada started in occupied Palestine has an American journalist made a similar observation! Come now: convince me that every American journalist has been unaware of the similarity.
What have journalists been afraid of? Certainly not the now-retired Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's recent claim about "Jews ruling the world"! What, then, explains the blindness of professional journalists to a "resistance movement" in Palestine when they can see one perfectly clearly in Iraq? Could it be that they're secretly afraid of some conspiracy to silence them even though it doesn't exist?
Schecter's MediaChannel claims to be "a media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide. As the media watch the world, we watch the media." In an FAQ, Media Channel says that it "offers a platform for provocative voices often unavailable through the mainstream media". That suggests to me that they haven't got a political bias and that they're aiming for journalistic integrity.
How, I wondered could they miss the reports from the Arab media that have referred to Palestinian resistance? Which Arab media have they included in their "hundreds of national and international affiliated sites"?
"Does MediaChannel have a political agenda?" they ask. Their answer: "No. MediaChannel is home for a wide variety of international perspectives. There is no unanimity of opinion among the Affiliated Sites, though many tend to agree on two broad positions: support for freedom of expression and the belief that media consumers are better served by a diverse array of media outlets than by a few."
I'm meant to believe that MediaChannel not only represents fair and even-handed reporting, but that they are exemplars for the field of journalism. I wondered what Arab media sources they were drawing from? They have a list of "a global Internet community of 1,067 organizations focused on media issues."
One of their lists features "affiliated sites" based in countries. When I looked at the list, I found that, in the Middle East, the only country represented is Israel! Israel has four sites. They have one site in Egypt, but that's in Africa. Nothing from Arabia! No Palestinian media sources. Not a single media site from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen or Iran!
I'm going to resist the temptation to accuse Schecter and his MediaChannel of bias, but it would be interesting to see how he reconciles his stated journalistic objectives for MediaChannel with the nitty gritty of his practical application. In short, either the objectives are a load of hogwash or Schecter should be included in Victor Ostrovsky's** next book on deception. Perhaps both.
*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see http://www.writerfreelance.com and http://www.pballes.com.
**Victor Ostrovsky, former Mossad agent and author of two books revealing the deceptions practised by Israel's intelligence agency Mossad - By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception. For more information from these two books, click here.
© Paul J. Balles