MEDIA ALERT: A MENACE TO US ALL - MAX HASTINGS AND IRAN
When the big fish of British journalism enter the much bigger pond of the American prestige press, they understand that success requires a willingness to massage elite American prejudices.
This kow-towing to claptrap is received all the more warmly because it represents an independent, second opinion from beyond America's shores, thus confirming everything that is understood to be true about the world. This "truth" revolves around two key intellectual propositions. First, "we" are the good guys. Second, "they" are the bad guys.
Masters of the art include Niall Ferguson, Michael Ignatieff (Canadian-born but formerly a British media star), and of course Christopher Hitchens - keen supporter of US-UK war crimes, notably in Iraq.
Thus, also, in a recent New York Times article, Max Hastings - former editor of the Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard - works hard to push all the right anti-Iranian buttons.
Almost exactly echoing US-UK media commentary on Iraq in 2002-2003, Hastings gives the nod to the "people in Washington" who describe Iran as "one of the most reckless and erratic regimes in the world", a country run by the "wild men of Tehran", headed by "the Holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad".
With Iraq ablaze, Hastings is happy to repeat the kind of incendiary propaganda that set the fire:
"Iran represents a menace to the security of us all, not to mention what it must be like to live under that reprehensible regime." (Hastings, 'Iran, the vicious victim,' The New York Times, March 30, 2007; nytimes.com
Journalists have been demonising other countries in this way for so long, it seems they cannot stop. Always it is the 1930s, always Hitler is plotting our destruction, always we need to recoil in fear, disgust and horror. Is this the real world? Or is this journalism as pathology?
Objectivity and neutrality are not serious concerns. As discussed, the realities of career progression demand that journalists side with "us" against "them". Thus Hastings observes of the latest "them", Iran:
"The game they play with considerable skill is to project themselves at once as assertive Islamic crusaders, and also as victims of imperialism."
This recalls reporter James Mates' comments on ITN when he observed that Saddam Hussein was again "playing his favourite role of defender of the Arab people". (Mates, ITN, 10 O'Clock News, February 16, 1998)
No news reporter would ever describe George Bush or Tony Blair as "playing his favourite role of defender of the free world". And so the comment is an example of propaganda bias - we are being trained to feel contempt for the official enemy, to distrust their motives and sneer at their claimed values.
As for the idea that the Iranians are portraying themselves as "victims of imperialism" as a kind of "game", we need only recall how Amnesty International described the regime brought to power in Iran by the US-UK military coup of 1953. This was a state, Amnesty reported, that had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" which was "beyond belief". It was a society in which "the entire population was subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror". (Martin Ennals, Secretary General of Amnesty International, cited in Matchbox, Autumn 1976) The motive behind US-UK violence was, very simply, control of Iranian oil.
None of this exists for Western journalists, for whom Iranian history began with the 1979 hostage crisis. A more complete chronology of events can be found here: krysstal.com |
