ROBERT FISK’S WORLD: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST IS BURIED BENEATH THE HEADLINES
Independent
Saturday, 31 October 2009
UK
News bureau chiefs in Cairo know who their local spies are but can’t
dismiss them
Amira Hass was spot on when she said last week that her lifetime
women’s award was an award for failure. The West Bank correspondent of
the Israeli paper Haaretz eloquently explained herself on al-Jazeera’s
English channel. She received an award for failure, she said, because
despite all the facts that she and her journalistic colleagues had
explained about Israeli occupation in Palestine, the world still
did not understand what occupation meant and still used words like
"terror" and "war on terror". Amira was absolutely correct. Most of
our Western press and television are as gutless as ever when they
have to participate in what Noam Chomsky described as "the manufacture
of consent".
Once government and editors and television management have decided
on the "story", you can be sure that an Israeli "wall" will become
a "security barrier" or a "fence", a pro-Western Arab dictator a
"strongman" and "occupied" Israeli territory will become "disputed";
the unjustly treated will thus become generically violent, brutality
softened and occupation legalised. Fred Halliday of the LSE is
coming out next June with a book called Shocked and Awed about the
artillery and minefields used in the battlefield of language. The
"War on Terror" – yes, let’s give this trash the capital letters
it deserves, as in "South Sea Bubble" – has given us "Gitmo" and
"extraordinary rendition" ("extraordinary" indeed!) and imported,
as Halliday observes, perversions of imported words such as "jihad".
But I think the problem goes further than this. It’s not just a White
House-State Department-Pentagon-CNN-Downing Street-Defence Ministry-BBC
military-political-journalistic complex. Our masters prefer us not
to tangle with the bad guys as well as good guys. Years ago, a Time
magazine reporter in Cairo packed his note-book with facts about the
routine Egyptian police torture of prisoners. But the US ambassador
in Cairo persuaded the bureau chief to hold off because he understood
that Mubarak was going to "crack down" on such abuses. Ho ho! Time
didn’t run the story and, of course, the abuses got worse.
Shortly afterwards, jail guards were forcing Egyptian prisoners to
rape each other.
And nothing has changed. The big Western news agencies which have
headquartered their Middle East offices in Cairo are as loath to touch
these stories today as they were more than a decade ago. It’s just
the same in that other friendly Muslim ally of ours, Turkey. But let’s
start in Cairo. When the "peace process" – remember that tacky phrase?
– was about to reach fruition almost 15 years ago, the big wire
agencies poured millions into new offices and staffs in Mubarak’s
gleaming capital of democracy. And what happened? As usual, the
Egyptian Mukhabarat security agencies inserted their own lads into
the bureaux – or blackmailed Egyptian reporting staff – to spy on
the journalistic output. All bureau chiefs in Cairo know who their
local spies are. But, of course, they can’t dismiss them.
Nor can they report the news that their "news" agency is supposed to
be telling us about. The mere hint of an anti-Mubarak story – I am
omitting from this the courageous coverage of the shameful behaviour
of the cops in mauling and beating female as well as male protesters
during the anti-Mubarak "Enough movement’s demonstrations – and the
Ministry of Information will be calling in the relevant bureau chief
for a chat. Even a formal Egyptian denial won’t do you much good.
There will be serious consequences if there is a repeat. Closing down
the bureau, perhaps, having wasted all those millions on installing
the office in the first place?
Which is why almost all Cairo-datelined coverage of police savagery in
Egypt contains only reports on London-issued protests from Amnesty or
Human Rights Watch, followed by the necessary Egyptian condemnation
of the human rights groups. In other words, the investment in such
Western news bureaux has now become more important than the news
for which the original investment was made. But let’s move to my old
favourite, Turkey.
Now we all know that the Armenian genocide of 1915 was a fact of
history, that one and a half million Armenian men, women and children
were raped, knifed, burned and shot to death by the Ottoman Turks. But
I was reminded of the historical depths of this first holocaust of
the last century when a friend of mine, Catherine Sheridan, gave me a
leather-bound book from her late husband Don’s library. It’s called
Syria, the Holy Land and Asia Minor by John Carne Esq, printed by
Fisher, Son and Co of Newgate Street, London, in 1836. And what did
Mr Carne Esq see at Antioch?
"Among those visited by the cruelties of the Greek revolution was
an Armenian lady of Constantinople, a young and handsome widow,
whose husband was recently murdered… dejection and sorrow were
stamped on her pale… features… the blow had been too sudden and
ruthless; her home, her husband, her love, to all of which her heart
clung intensely, were cruelly taken…" Her husband, of course, was
a victim of the Greek war of independence against the Ottoman Turks –
the same war during which Lord Byron died at Missolonghi in 1823. So
Armenians were being murdered almost a century before their genocide;
and indeed were slaughtered by the tens of thousands towards the end
of the 19th century, again before the genocide.
So how do our defenders of the Western press refer to the Armenian
genocide? Here is Reuters on 13 October this year, referring to
"hostility stemming from the First World War mass killings of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Armenia says it was genocide, a term
Turkey rejects". And here’s the Associated Press next day: "Armenia
and many historians say Ottoman Turks committed genocide against
Armenians early in the last century, a charge that Turkey denies."
Can you imagine the uproar if Reuters referred to the "mass killing"
of Jews by Germans with the words: "Jews say it was a genocide, a term
right-wing Germans and neo-Nazis reject." Or if AP were to report that
"Israel and many historians say German Nazis committed genocide against
Jews in the Second World War, a charge (sic) German right-wingers,
etc, deny". It would be an outrage. But no one, of course, is going
to close the Reuters or AP bureaux in Berlin. In Ankara and Istanbul
bureaux, however, it’s clearly another matter.
Well, I suppose those staff could always ask to be transferred to their
Cairo offices – where they can indulge in the same kind of sophistry.
No, Chomsky was wrong. It’s not about consent. It’s about the
manufacture of social, political and historical denial. The motto is
familiar and simple: always give in to the bully.