What also bothers me is how, as always, the media play along with the government’s war…
" FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
ACTION ALERT:
Media Should Follow Up on Civilian Deaths:
Journalist’s evidence that U.S. bombed market ignored by U.S. press
April 4, 2003
In two separate incidents last week, dozens of Iraqis were killed by what
eyewitness survivors claim were U.S. airstrikes. U.S. officials, however,
offered a range of denials and evasions about what may have caused the
explosions. Despite evidence uncovered by one British newspaper about the
second (and more deadly) of the incidents, however, most U.S. media
outlets have allowed the story to end with the official denials.
On March 28, in an open-air market in the Shuala section of Baghdad, over
60 people were reportedly killed in what seemed to be a missile attack–
the Los Angeles Times (3/29/03), for example, reported matter-of-factly
that “a missile slammed into a crowded market area.” But as with an
earlier explosion on March 26, the New York Times’ John F. Burns reported
(3/29/03) that “it was impossible to determine the cause,” adding that “a
Central Command spokesman in Qatar said Friday night that the United
States could not tell what caused the bombing on Friday.” Burns suggested
that these incidents “threaten to become yet another major problem for the
Bush administration.”
The PR angle was also highlighted on the CBS Evening News after the
earlier explosion (3/26/03), with anchor Dan Rather noting that “scenes of
civilian carnage in Baghdad, however they happened and whoever caused
them, today quickly became part of a propaganda war, the very thing U.S.
military planners have tried to avoid.” (Of course, the extensive
preparations the Pentagon made for communicating to the press before the
war indicate that it was not hoping to “avoid” a propaganda war-- but to
win one.)
While one might hope that reporters would be interested in uncovering the
cause of more than 60 civilian deaths, U.S. media have so far made little
effort to investigate the Shuala incident. One British reporter on the
scene, however, found evidence that appears to shed light on the origin of
the devastation.
On March 30, Robert Fisk reported in the London Independent that what
appeared to be a missile fragment was found on the scene of the
explosion-- and that it bore a visible serial number, which Fisk
published. In a follow-up report on April 2, the Independent’s Cahal
Milmo reported that the serial number could be traced back to the Raytheon
Corporation, and that the weapon was “thought to be either a HARM
anti-radar missile or a Paveway laser-guided bomb.” The Independent
continues: “The American military has confirmed that a navy EA-6B
‘Prowler’ jet, based on the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, was in action over the
Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one HARM missile to protect two
American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery.”
Some media accounts have pointed to the relatively small crater created by
the explosion at Shuala as an indication that a U.S. cruise missile was
not responsible. But cruise missiles are not the only weapons being
launched from U.S. planes in Iraq. The Independent reported that,
according to experts, “the damage caused at Shuala was consistent with
that of Paveway or, more probably, a HARM weapon,” which are smaller than
cruise missiles.
So far, according to a search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. news
outlet has picked up this new information; instead, reporters have
continued to relay U.S. officials’ denials of any knowledge about the
Shuala blast. The New York Times’ Burns (4/4/03) questioned why the
Iraqis have not been able to explain the incident: “Often, as in Shuala,
officials have delayed taking reporters to the site for hours, and have
met with evasions the inquiries about the unusually small crater at the
marketplace, and the fact that most victims appeared to have died from
shrapnel wounds and not from the kind of blast associated with high-energy
bombs and missiles.”
On NPR’s Talk of the Nation (4/2/03), the question of civilian casualties
was discussed by host Neal Conan with guests Michael O’Hanlon of the
Brookings Institution and retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. In response
to a caller’s question, Conan explained that U.S. military officials still
could not find any evidence that the first bombing was caused by a U.S.
weapon.
O’Hanlon then explained that an investigation into these cases would
involve answering three questions: verifying where you were shooting, and
tracking “how many of the bombs or cruise missiles that you fired reached
their proper targets”; looking for bomb fragments; and, finally, judging
the size of the crater left by the explosion, “whether it’s consistent
with the size of the explosive charge that was on the warhead in question,
possibly even the shape of the crater and things like that.”
Interestingly, the report in the Independent provides what could be
answers to all of those questions. But Conan summed up the matter this
way: “There were other attacks, though, and as so far, the investigations
by the U.S. military… are not complete, and again, as Michael O’Hanlon
knows, it may be some time, if ever, before we actually know what happened
there.”
NPR’s listeners might have been interested to know that more information
was available-- even though it wasn’t part of an investigation by the U.S.
military.
ACTION: Encourage NPR’s Talk of the Nation and the New York Times to
continue to investigate what caused the March 28 explosion in Baghdad that
killed dozens of Iraqi civilians. You might suggest that they interview
reporters from the Independent who have pursued the story.
CONTACT:
NPR
Talk of the Nation
mailto:totn@npr.org
If you’re a regular listener to the show, you might try calling in live to
Talk of the Nation at 800-989 8255.
New York Times
mailto:nytnews@nytimes.com
To read the Independent’s account, go to:
news.independent.co.uk/world/mid … ory=393066
----------
Please support FAIR by subscribing to our bimonthly magazine, Extra! For more information, go to: fair.org/extra/subscribe.html . Or call 1-800-847-3993.
FAIR SHIRTS: Get your “Don’t Trust the Corporate Media” shirt today at FAIR’s online store:
merchantamerica.com/fair/
FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit fair.org/counterspin/stations.html .
FAIR’s INTERNSHIP PROGRAM: FAIR accepts internship applications for its New York office on a rolling basis. For more information, see: fair.org/internships.html
Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org .
You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: fair.org . Our subscriber list is kept confidential.
FAIR
(212) 633-6700
fair.org/
E-mail: fair@fair.org"