IRAQ: Media Held Guilty of Deception

[aikido15]

Dahr Jamail

ROME, Feb 14 (IPS) - A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq.

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq made its pronouncement Sunday after a three- day meeting. The tribunal heard testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists, and member of the European Parliament Michele Santoro.

The Rome session of the WTI followed others in Brussels, London, Mumbai, New York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon. The Rome meeting focused on the media role.

The informal panel of WTI judges accused the United States and the British governments of impeding journalists in performing their task, and intentionally producing lies and misinformation.


http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27429

[Redstone]

1. Held guilty by a "people's tribunal..."

Well, THAT will put the Western Media in their place, won't it?

Sorry if it offends anyone, but when I hear terms like "people's tribunal," I get this vision of endless bloviated harangues from well-meaning but utterly powerless underemployed academic types, much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It would be nice if this sort of pronouncement actually changed or affected anything at all, but it won't.

Redstone

[Sterling]

2. Damn straight. When this is all over they have a lot of explaining to do.

[bvar22]

3. This is a little more than...

"bloviated harangues from well-meaning but utterly powerless underemployed academic types"

This is one facet of the World beginning to speak out in a Common Unified Voice against the War Crimes of Agressive War and Unjust Occupation being commited by the NeoCons and Tony Blair.

This is much larger (International) and better organized than a campus shit session.

[SpiralHawk]

4. The Naming of the Beast

If you don't name a problem first, you cannot begin to devise a solution.

[bvar22]

5. Agreed.

This is a SMART first move.

Step 1) Discredit the USA Media coverage (rightly so) as propaganda and PR tools of the Occupiers.

Step 2) Coordinated International exposure of the War Crimes with references to the principles established at Nuremberg.

Step 3) When bush* and Blair respond with all the good things we are doing to free the poor Iraqi people, respond with "SEE STEP 1".

[Igel]

8. Well, considering that the forum has met in a number of

places, and oBviously haS had a Phenomenal efFect on How the wAr iS being Run, I find PosteR #1 to havE Made a faIrly vAlid obserVation.

Not a conclusion, mind you. Nor a belief.

[LinuxInsurgent]

6. much of the historical criticism

that influenced the 1960's Vietnam Peace movement, and other similar world movements started as non-governmental, "peoples" movements...whose force could not be contained, and which ultimately became THE official policy of governments and THE official interpretation of history.

Take a look at the efforts of South African anti-apartheid activists...their Truth Commissions came to be as a result of people's demands. Take a look at the efforts in Chile to indict Pinochet...largely because of the efforts of the Wives of the Disappeared..and so on.

On the contrary...I think the tide has turned against the world imperialists...the moral high ground is ours...the war of information is being won every day (no one believes the American pronouncements anymore OUTSIDE of the American borders...and inside the American borders, 49% are already in our camp...recently polls finally showed that most Americans view the war as a mistake). That is evidence to me that the war of information and establishing history is not being won by the Bush administration, but by people against the war...

Bush's power, even within his party, is starting to split at the seams, as other Republicans refuse to go with his policies and begin to openly question him.

On the contrary...I think these tribunals do much to establish THE truth and THE history that will later become official in our textbooks...our continued protest and actions will assure that future textbooks do not write of the Iraq War in glorious terms (the ones Bush wanted), but rather as a time of turmoil and division...in which the war will be viewed as a mistake...future generations will come to the conclusion that the war rationales were totally false...without the disadvantage of having to live in our hyper-polical climate. In a cool environment...cool minds come to rational conclusions...based on rational evidence presented. The Bush War fails to meet the rational basis for legitimacy...and as such it will be remembered.

Patience friends...the tide is turning...

[genieroze]

7. intentionally producing lies and misinformation? Do ya think? eom

[mmonk]

9. I'm sure all our major news networks will carry it.

[ldf]

10. didn't i see video

of rumsfeld blantantly saying "we will lie to the american people anytime we feel it necessary".

that video clip should have been run on a loop during the last campaign.

[leesa]

11. Good. Let's name some names. Goebbels would be proud of the US

mainstream media. Hopefully MOST of them meet the same fate.