From my perspective, the role of the mainstream media seems to be to limit the transmission of accurate and truthful information, thereby preventing citizens from acting on that information. For I think it is safe to say that, if the American people knew the whole story behind this planned aggression against Iraq, it would be stopped in its tracks. Corporate media are an integral part of the structure of the imperial enterprise, and consequently they have a vested interest in insuring that this enterprise remains viable. What this means, to put it bluntly, is that they cannot be trusted to put the interests of citizens first. For that reason, the information they provide should be viewed skeptically, to say the least. Thus, when Kevin Newman of Global Television invites us to tune in to his show so that we can be “enlightened,” you can be sure that “enlightened” is the last thing you'll become. As one commentator put it, “the more you watch, the less you know” (Danny Schechter, The More You Watch, The Less You Know, Seven Stories Press, 1999).

With respect to the Iraq crisis, is it not remarkable how successful mainstream media have been in making war inevitable? Have you heard any discussion about the prospect of a peaceful solution? For instance, while many countries and millions of people around the world are working tirelessly for a peaceful solution, today's Nanaimo Daily News has a huge story titled “After Saddam Is Gone, Who Will Rule Iraq?” And why doesn't CTV change its web page heading from “Target Iraq” to, say, “The Search for Peace”? One media critic has suggested that the Washington Post “editorial pages have become an outpost of the Defense Department – except that there is probably more dissent about the impending war in Iraq in the Pentagon than there is on the Post editorial pages” (Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, qtd. in Daniel Schechter, News Dissector, March 5/03, http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm). It's getting so bad I've heard that concerned citizens in the US are turning to European media outlets to find out what's going on in their own country. I remember the story of a Russian official during the period of glasnost. He had been touring the US to get a sense of its culture. In an interview at the end of his tour he remarked on the amazing uniformity in our media. The bemused host questioned him on this astonishing claim, and he replied that the US system was much more effective than that of the Soviet Union, because in his country there was one news organization and one TV network, and people generally were highly skeptical of anything emanating from them. In the US, however, he said that because of the so-called freedom of the press, people actually believe that they are getting the truth.

Consider as well how the reasons for war keep shifting, with little or no comment about these shifts in the media. So first it is disarmament; then, when it appears the inspections process is working, it shifts to violations of Security Council resolutions, then to connections with al Qaeda, then to regime change, and so on. The favorite tactic of media commentators in this regard is the “what-if” question: what if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and hands them over to al Qaeda? Along these lines Marcus Gee of The Globe and Mail last week went so far as to say that “an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons would arguably possess more destructive power than Hitler's armies ever did.” Quite true. But then Luxembourg would be more dangerous if it had nuclear weapons. And did anyone in the media notice that the “Orange Alert” for possible terrorist attacks disappeared from the radar after Chief UN Weapons Inspector Blix's report to the Security Council last week?

Mainstream media use various means to ensure complicity with government policy while appearing to be objective, unbiased, or even hostile to power. I would categorize some of these techniques as: sins of omission, half truths, and outright lies. Beginning with outright lies, we might remember the infamous case of the Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of incubators, widely reported in mainstream media after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and credited with contributing to a change in public opinion in favor of an invasion of Iraq. A few months later this was revealed to be an elaborate hoax concocted by the huge public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton. The revelation of the hoax did not receive nearly the extensive treatment in the media that the original story did. More recently, we have heard repeatedly in the media that Iraq threw out the UN inspectors in 1998, a completely false claim – in effect, a lie. They were withdrawn by order of the Chief UN Weapons Inspector at the time (Richard Butler), for fear of their safety because the US was preparing to bomb Iraq in Operation Desert Fox. Worse, many commentators who pronounce this false claim know very well that it is untrue, yet even when the error is pointed out to them they insist on repeating it. And by the way, this UN inspection team admitted that its inspectors were conducting espionage on behalf of the US – a charge that Iraq had repeatedly made throughout the process. How much discussion of this fact have you seen in mainstream media?

We also saw Colin Powell's presentation of evidence to the UN Security Council on February 5, in which he claimed that Iraq was connected to al Queda – a claim contradicted by his own intelligence agency, the CIA. The media, however, repeat Powell's claims while ignoring the evidence of the CIA. Powell also cited as part of his evidence a dossier provided to him by the British government, which he said provided “exquisite detail” of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. However, this dossier has since been proven to be a plagiarized document, produced by a graduate student from California. Would you say that this startling revelation was given the coverage it deserved, especially considering what Powell, in his presentation, was trying to persuade us to believe?

Moving to half truths (or half lies, if you prefer), the most frequent one employed by the media is the assertion that Saddam Hussein “gassed his own people.” Leaving aside the problematic assumption that Mr Hussein considers the Kurds his “own people,” we notice that the media always forget to say that Mr Hussein killed these people with material assistance from the US and Britain, and that there was hardly a whimper of concern in the west at the time. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam Hussein in 1983, as Ronald Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East, promising Iraq that full diplomatic relations would be restored between their two countries. This visit took place one month after intelligence reports on Iraq's use of chemical weapons were put into the hands of the then Secretary of State, George Shultz. There is no discussion of this today, even when Secretary Rumsfeld raises the issue of Iraq's use of chemical weapons – a perfect opening for a question regarding this meeting.

Another half truth is perpetrated whenever we hear talk about Iraqi violations of Security Council resolutions. Never mentioned are the US allies, such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Israel, which have violated far more resolutions than Iraq. Israel has violated over 40 resolutions to date, yet is one of the largest recipients of US aid. Of note, too, is the fact that the US itself cannot violate Security Council resolutions directed at it – it simply vetoes them, and has done so many times.

Finally there are what I call “sins of omission” – what the media don't say about any given issue. Again, the question of the resolutions provides a good example of this sin. The main resolution respecting Iraq is 687, to which Colin Powell referred in his notorious presentation of evidence; however, what he didn't mention was Article 14 of this resolution, which calls for “steps toward the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction” – meaning, of course, Israel's 200-plus nuclear warheads. Another obvious sin of omission is the ongoing bombing of Iraq since 1991; in many respects the war has not stopped since 1991 as Iraq has been subjected to constant bombardment from the US and Britain – hundreds of airstrikes with hundreds of casualties and enormous damage to infrastructure. This sustained attack is rarely discussed in mainstream media; nor is any consideration given to the fact that this bombing, along with years of inspections, disarming, and punishing sanctions, makes Iraq immeasurably weaker than it was before the first Gulf War, and certainly no more a threat to the US than, well, Luxembourg.

Or how about the document which claimed that Iraq tried to buy uranium; this found its way into the report to the Security Council by Mohammed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In his report Mr ElBaradei said that these documents were “not authentic.” That's diplomatic speech meaning they were forgeries. Where is the coverage of this astonishing admission? Are there no investigative journalists today who can appreciate the significance of this forgery, and the importance of tracing its origin? Imagine, if you will, that in Iraq's Weapons Declaration of last December it was revealed that a crucial document was a forgery. Would the US or any of its allies have insisted on an investigation? What kind of treatment could we have expected from CNN and FOX? Would the bombing have begun immediately?

Perhaps the best example of a “sin of omission” is the revelation on March 2 in the London Observer that US intelligence has been conducting an extensive spying campaign against UN Security Council delegations, in an effort to win votes for a new resolution. This is incredibly embarrassing, and potentially fatal to the US efforts for international cooperation – or at least it would be if anyone knew about it. You may recall Daniel Ellsberg, the ex-Marine and military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. These documents revealed the US government's secret plans and decisions for Vietnam, and are credited for helping to turn the American public against the war. Well, Mr Ellsberg said this week that this “spying on the UN is potentially more significant than the Pentagon Papers, because it comes before a war has begun and it shows a desperate Bush administration” (Mark Benjamin, UPI, March 11/03, http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20030311-024340-7995r). However, don't run out for a copy of the New York Times to see how the story is unfolding. In fact, it has hardly been covered at all in North America. The few stories we can find appeared almost ten days after the news broke in the Observer. Beyond these minimal responses, the story has either been ignored or dismissed as “business as usual.” Again, can you for one second believe that, if Germany or France bugged the phones and tracked the emails of Security Council delegations, this would be passed off as “business as usual”? Or imagine if it was discovered that Iraq was spying on the Security Council – can you see the headlines, can you hear the howls of outrage on the talk shows! Would the bombing begin immediately?

So if we know less about these stories than we do about the possible capture of Osama bin Laden's sons, or the evil of Saddam Hussein, or the devotion of George Bush to prayer, or Michael Jackson's parenting skills, I hope my remarks provide some indication of why that is. In these critical times, we need more – much, much, more – from our mainstream media. As American media analyst Lydia Sargent suggests, it is high time that media stop pretending that “peace and justice are weird, idiosyncratic concepts that they can't quite grasp.” And we should demand that they start including “peace and justice programming, prepared by the peace and justice movement, in their daily reports.” In short, perhaps it is time for us to “Press the Press, and remind them that “the news should keep us informed, not in line' (ZNet, February 24/03, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=3117).

Thank you.

Ross Mackay