Misreporting the Uprising in Iraq: How Media Misses the Story
By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel.org
NEW YORK, April 7, 2004 -- It's the oldest story in the world: what goes up, comes down. All the bluster, PR, "positive" press, bullying, distortion, deception, and military tough-guyism cannot keep a flawed policy afloat. The invasion of Iraq, sold as the "liberation of the Iraqi people," was always a movie with a bad script, flawed characters, and no third act.
Despite all the Bremer ballast served up about how only a handful of Saddam-worshipping, al-Sadr-loving, Al-Qaeda-following fanatics stand in the way of a US-imposed democratic paradise, the reality on the ground suggests otherwise. A Sunni-Shia opposition movement is emerging, and gathering steam.
The body count climbs with every passing hour. As of April 7, more than 30 US soldiers have been killed and 24 wounded. At least 160 Iraqis are dead reportedly.
For the most part, the US media, even while reporting on the deterioration of the situation in Iraq, continues to mimic the government's desired media message. That view puts all the blame for the violence largely onto the actions of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has been described as an unrepresentative, mentally unbalanced mullah bent on violence. He is depicted as a hot head, an outlaw and a terrorist. This demonization rarely has been backed up with documentation or detailed analysis.
Behind the details of the various fire fights and clashes, behind the coverage of a US missile that struck a mosque or even the barbaric images of American military contractors or mercenaries killed and hung on a bridge is a context that most of our media has missed.
Most US media has not had access to the battlefield. There was only one embedded reporter, Tony Perry from The Los Angeles Times present in Falluja?. Some network reporters have acknowledged that "it is not safe" to leave their offices. Reports on Iraq are now coming out of Pentagon press offices.
Rahul Mahajan, author of several books on Iraq, says: "We're being told a convenient and self-serving [story about] a few barbaric 'isolated extremists' from the 'Saddamist stronghold' of Falluja who killed four contractors."
"The truth is rather different," Mahajan told me. "Falluja, although heavily Sunni Arab, was hardly in Saddam's pocket. Its imams got into trouble for refusing to obey his orders to praise him personally during prayers." According to the author, Falluja became a hotbed of resistance on April 28, 2003, when U.S. troops opened fire on a group of 100 to 200 peaceful protesters. Fifteen protesters were killed.
"They claimed they were returning gunfire, but Human Rights Watch investigated and found that the bullet holes in the area were inconsistent with that story -- and, furthermore, every Iraqi witness maintained that the crowd was unarmed. Two days later, another three protesters were killed," reported Mahajan.
So, looked at from a middle-eastern perspective, this uprising was seen in defensive terms, not offensive. It was triggered by US military actions, which were perceived by Iraqis as acts of war against them.
Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force Colonel and teacher at the National War College, shared this view on events in Falluja with me:
"We have to remember that this was not spontaneous. We started it. It began when the CPA decided to exert a degree of greater control. Moves were made against Moqtada al-Sadr, then into Falluja. With al-Sadr, the sequence was first his newspaper, then the arrest of a deputy."
The significant conclusion, however, has to be that we did not have control of the country, Gardiner said. This type of perspective is all too often missing in media coverage.
"We are seeing fighting of a new character. In Ramadi, it was an attack of around 100 against a Marine position. That's new. In Falluja, we've seen the bad guys fight to hold defensive positions. That's new."
Colonel Gardiner is not optimistic about the odds for coalition forces to cope with this new style of combat:
"We have to keep in mind that the military and political leadership in the United States have been terrible at assessing the situation in Iraq, going back to when the plan for the invasion was put together. I've not heard any good assessment of what's going on now."
If the reporting on the US military campaign is fundamentally flawed, its meaning is often obscured, wrote Robert Fisk of The Independent in London:
"The grim truth, however, is that the occupying powers are now facing insurrection of various strengths in almost every big city in Iraq. Yet they are still not confronting that truth," writes Fisk.
For the past nine nights, Fisk reports, the main US base close to Baghdad airport -- and the area around the terminals -- has come under mortar fire. "But the occupying powers have kept this secret."
They would prefer to tell us that the US occupation is working, that democracy is right around the corner.
Dahr Jamail, who writes for the website Electronic Iraq, blames US media coverage for reinforcing a government propaganda view that distorts what is going on. "[T]here is a horrendous disparity between what is really occurring on the ground and what the Western corporate media chooses to report," he wrote last week.
Jamail recently spent nine weeks in Iraq working as a freelance independent journalist. In many of his dispatches he tells of Western media either mis-reporting or not reporting stories as they arose.
"The signs were glaring -- from the parking lot full of parked white SUV's in the middle of the day, supposedly used by the CNN and Fox news crews, to the absence of ABC, NBC, or CBS media crews at any of the sites of the news stories I was covering. Even stories that were on the front pages stateside are regularly being covered from the press room and not the field"
But now, reality is fast intruding on the military and the media. The 'we-are-winning-the-war-for democracy' news frame is no longer credible.
As the Tet Offensive negatively affected perceptions of a US victory in Vietnam, this uprising in Iraq is having the same effect around the world.
Confidence in the US mission is being shattered with every firefight and civilian and GI casualty.
The American people have been watching all of this in horror from afar, but not being told what's really going on. As the casualties continue to climb, the truth may be harder to miss.
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