arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Hoe prominent komt een gebeurtenis in het nieuws ? of hoe hard is ze weggestopt ? De plaats die ze in de kranten krijgt (of niet krijgt)is volgens de Amerikaanse groep FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - zei : fair.org) een eerste factor die bepaalt of de verslaggeving de realiteit benadert of verdraait. De betoging "Geen Oorlog" van 17 november haalt alvast enkele voorpagina's.
Le Soir zet een foto van jonge pro-Palestijnse betogers op de 1, met een verwijzing naar het artikel op pagina 7 (waarbij opnieuw een Free Palestine-foto). De Morgen begint heel klein onderaan op de 1 en vervolgt met tekst en een Free Palestine-foto op pagina 8. Gazet van Antwerpen brengt enkel luttele informatie op de voorpagina : een foto van betogers met een poster van Bush ("Wanted for Murder") en 18 regels tekst.
Het Laatste Nieuws ademt het we-hebben-dat-al-gehad-syndroom van nieuwsredacties. Vorige week bracht deze krant relevantee informatie (een artikel met opinies over de stelling : we moeten het verzet tegen Israel en de USA bewapenen). Nu maakt HLN zich er op pagina 2 van af met nauwelijks 6 regels of 25 woorden (!) in een artikel waarin ook over betogingen van jagers en zorgverstrekkers wordt bericht. Van minimalisering gesproken. In La Capitale dezelfde kleinerende aanpak : een kleine foto van een Bush-cloon met welgeteld drie regels tekst. Van alle kranten besteedt La Derniere Heure de meeste redactionele ruimte aan de betoging, twee halve kolommen en een Free Palestine-foto op pagina 3. De Standaard zet de betoging op pagina 2 met een Palestina-en-Bush-foto en een minimum aan tekst. La Libre Belgique tenslotte bant de betoging helemaal naar pagina 8 (en speurt dan nog hoofdzakelijk naar koppen van bekende politici).

http://www.Fair.org " zijn niet de enige "media-watchers". Ook http://www.medialens.org volgt de Britse pers op de voet, en kijk hoe ze de grote betoging in Londen van 28/9 behandelen. Dat is analoog aan de berichtgeving in de Belgische kranten. His Masters Voice? Waarschijnlijk wel. Mondiale media-training? Een complot? Ik denk het wel. Er zijn te veel gelijkenissein tussen de berichtgevingen in Engeland, de VS, recent nog in Firenze. En de toon in die artikels is steeds gelijkaardig. Hieronder enkele uittreksels.

"Now compare the earlier adulation - the political equivalent of adolescent girls screaming at their favourite boy band - to the treatment given by The Guardian's sister paper, The Observer, to the recent massive anti-war march in London, the greatest anti-war march in a generation. Euan Ferguson writes:

"It was back to the old days, too, in terms of types. All the oldies and goodies were there. The Socialist Workers' Party, leafleting outside Temple Tube station by 11 am. ('In this edition: Noam Chomsky in Socialist Worker!'). CND, and ex-Services CND. The Scottish Socialist Party.
'Scarborough Against War and Globalisation', which has a lovely ring of optimism to it, recalling the famous Irish provincial leader column in 1939: 'Let Herr Hitler be warned, the eyes of the Skibereen Eagle are upon him.' Many, many Muslim groups, and most containing women and children, although some uneasy thoughts pass through your mind when you see a line of pretty
six-year-old black-clad Muslim toddlers walking ahead of the megaphone chanting 'George Bush, we know you/Daddy was a killer too,' and singing about Sharon and Hitler." (Ferguson, 'A big day out in Leftistan', The Observer, September 29, 2002)

If we chose to, we could label the march a remarkable display of responsibility, altruism, generosity, compassion and courage in the face of a seemingly relentless march to war by a White House administration packed with arms and oil industry executives. Instead Ferguson's tone – with references to a 'day out' (suggesting a casual excursion of some kind), intimations of grandiose self-importance, absurdity and futility - "'Let Herr Hitler be warned, the eyes of the Skibereen Eagle are upon him" – and mentions of six-year-old toddlers chanting mindlessly - was filled with mockery.

The constant references to old-style Socialism - the "old days", "the oldies and goodies", "Leftistan", and the Socialist Workers' Party, are also revealing. A favoured device for dismissing dissent is to describe it as tiresome and old-fashioned, as 'that old nonsense', when in fact dissident voices are almost totally excluded from the mainstream. Compare Ferguson's talk of "Leftistan" with this observation by Chomsky, published in 1979: "It is necessary to destroy hope, idealism, solidarity, and concern for the poor and oppressed, to replace these dangerous feelings by self-centred egoism, a pervasive cynicism that holds that all change is for the worse, so that one should simply accept the state capitalist order with its inherent inequities and oppression as the best that can be achieved. In fact, a great international propaganda campaign is underway to convince people -particularly young people - that this not only is what they should
feel but that it is what they do feel, and that if somehow they do not adopt this set of values then they are strange relics of a terrible era that has fortunately passed away." (Chomsky. Quoted in C.P. Otero, ed., Radical Priorities, Black Rose Books, 1981)

The hundreds of thousands of marchers in London were indeed presented by The Observer as "strange relics" from some old and weird mythical state, "Leftistan". Writing in The Guardian, Hugo Young has similarly described Chomsky's ideas as being "rooted in the past". The Times, too, has written of John Pilger:

"His angry, I-want-some-answers-please documentary style, like his haircut, is a hangover from the 1970s; and like much of the Seventies, he is enjoying a small retro revival." (Joe Joseph, The Times, March 7, 2000)
The process of idolising "more moderate" establishment leaders while denigrating "die hard anti-war protestors", as the BBC's Ian Watson recently compared them (On The Record, BBC1, September 29, 2002) is assisted by mutually supportive deception and omission on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) write:
"Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to protest military action against Iraq, rallying in what the London Independent called "one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation" (9/29/02). Yet neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times saw fit to run a full article about the protests, instead burying passing mentions of the story in articles about other subjects." (FAIR: Action Alert: 'Fox Hunting Trumps Peace Activism at Washington Post & New York Times', September 30, 2002: http://www.fair.org)

On Newsnight, BBC Washington correspondent, Tom Carver, said of resistance in the United States:
"The sixties peaceniks would have hung their heads in shame. This is the extent of public outrage in America today - a few protestors vastly outnumbered by the police. Opinion polls suggest that most people support military action - the truth is that most people have little idea what might be done in their name." (Newsnight, BBC2, October 2, 2002).

The people challenging utterly ruthless power are pathetic and ludicrous; leaders - no matter what they do or how many they kill - are glorious.
For drumming this lethal message into our heads media commissars are rewarded with lavish salaries, status and privilege. Their gratification comes at a high price, one that is paid in the blood of innocents - as we may be once again about to witness."

"Last Saturday (28 September, 2002), up to 400,000 people took to the streets of London to protest the current US-UK stance towards Iraq: the twelve years of devastating sanctions, the little-reported ongoing bombing and the impending threat of a massive attack. The Observer (29 September, 2002), supposedly a left-liberal newspaper, devoted several pages to an old affair between two Tory politicians (as did most newspapers) and to an obsequious interview with Tony Blair, while giving a quarter of a page to trivialising the greatest peace demonstration this country has known for decades (Euan Ferguson, 'A big day out in Leftistan', The Observer, 29 September 2002).

The BBC reported that 'tens of thousands of people' had taken part in the march, grossly underestimating the numbers involved, though quoting both police estimates (150,000 people) and those of the organisers (400,000 people). (BBC news online, 28 September, 2002; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2285861.stm). A BBC news online report 'The View from the March' was a superficial account of the march, and of the views of those on the march, and finished with a banal observation: 'I just want to get to work," says a man grumpily battling against the flow of the march.' [Ryan Dilley, 28 September, 2002; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2280386.stm].

No wonder there is considerable public scepticism of 'news values' and a turning away from mainstream discussion of politics. According to Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news: 'There is a new political divide: no longer "left" and "right"; it's now "us and them", with "them" being politicians, the establishment and the broadcasters and media.' Sambrook is concerned at the prospect of losing large chunks of his audience: 'Some 40 per cent of the audience feel they are outside looking in, offered few real choices.'"