2

Papers, Sticks and Stones

‘Manufacturing Consent’, the brilliant documentary on Noam Chomsky and his critique of corporate media, recites New York Times' coverage of Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor; detailing how a putrid hand on the news tap helped the creation of a “version of truth” that reached far and wide. In a memorable scene, Mr. Karl E. Meyer, then an editorial writer at Times says: ‘You know, there's a saying about legislation that legislation is like making sausage, that the less you know about how it's done, the better for your appetite. The same is true of this [media] business.’

Perhaps not too surprisingly, a proof of his assertion found itself in a journalist none other than Times’ own. As depicted in the book “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them” by Amy Goodman and David Goodman [1], Judith Miller of Times proved us the progress Times had made and how right Mr. Meyer was about the issue of appetite. The authors give a detailed account of the Times’ pre-attack and war-time coverage on Iraq and its alleged of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As opposed to the “selective reporting” of the East Timor case, Times reporter Judith Miller ran a mission of imaginative journalism to “create the truth”, thereby backing the US government’s case about the existence of WMD in Iraq’s possession. For their efforts, she and her colleagues received a Pulitzer award for ‘Explanatory Reporting’ (!) in 2002 (smile at it if you can) [2]. The arduous investigations by American forces in Iraq could do nothing but prove what UN inspectors had said before the US attack: there are no WMD in Iraq, at least not in Iraqis’ hands. Nevertheless, with her reporting based on shadowy and paid-for resources, Miller repeatedly attested their existence when the public interest on the case was at its peak. Doing so, she also indirectly helped Bush to a second term in the White House (one of the claimed virtues of Bush during the election campaign was his experience as a ‘wartime president’). It is undoubtedly yesterday’s joke to liken Bush to Hitler, yet we still have to remember that the effort of Miller and co. is surely a capable administration of the Goebbels' technique (i.e. repetition of false information until it is deemed as truth). One of her chief resources, Ahmad Chalabi, has since fallen from grace by counterfeiting charges and Miller, together with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, is currently being tried in court for allegedly having leaked a CIA agent’s name, and both are facing jail time for refusing to disclose their sources to the court [3,4].

As we all know, the progress of Iraq invasion and the sight of contractors buzzing around in their flak jackets and guns and armored vehicles made Iraqis understand that the whole affair was not about their freedom, after all. As they did, Iraq became a dangerous place for all foreigners, including journalists. Hence, the majority of news resources were reduced to the embedded journalists, like Kevin Sites, whose case exemplifies their deformation. Last November, one of the bigger “stories” from Iraq was the killing of a wounded and unarmed Iraqi by an American soldier in Falluja. Having taken place in a mosque, this killing attracted more attention among the very many deaths in that city during that period. Kevin Sites, who taped the killing, later posted a note on his personal website, declaring his disappointment over the strife and accusations (of being an anti-war activist) for making the incident known to public. This open letter to the marines with whom he had been embedded, contains an apologetic tone that is hard to miss [5].There he explains his efforts to verify and to clear it with the US army officials and the lengths he and his channel went to behave “responsibly” about the affair. However easy it could be to understand and sympathize with Mr. Sites, the whole saga is an example of journalism’s impairment. There was a reason for his presence in that mosque. His task as a journalist is to collect news for the public, an effort for which he should not feel compelled to explain himself agonizingly. May be Mr. Sites is less infuriating compared to the likes of Miller or the journalists cheering at the US victory after Iraq attack, yet he is no less harmful. This month, US army announced that the soldier’s doing in the incident was "consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict", rendering further legal action unnecessary [6].

Despite the embedded journalists holding the majority, there have been others, most famously the controversial al-Jazeera TV; and they have received their share of violence in Iraq. At the early days of the fights over Baghdad, a US air missile hit the al-Jazeera bureau, killing a journalist. On the very same day, a US tank shot at the Palestine Hotel, where 200 journalists were lodging and working. US Forces claimed that they retaliated to rockets and rifle fire from snipers located at the hotel. Funny enough, all the attack ceased after that single shot at the building. Robert Fisk, a British journalist, was driving nearby claims to have heard nothing [7]. That round shot from the tank not only silenced that alleged gunfire, but also ripped the Reuter’s office apart, killing two cameramen and wounding four “un-embedded” journalists, conjuring up what Mr. Bush said in 2001: 'You are either with us or against us [in the war against terrorism]' [8].

The collaboration between mass media and war-campaigners is pushing most news-consumers to choose between misinformation and no-information; and more gravely, leading peoples to countenance the exercise of force, which in turn feeds its retaliation. We have to recall that there have always been and will always be disagreements between countries; and that the level of our civilization is to be judged by the finesse we deal with them. Yet, now that Bolton is on his way to trash UN organization and Wolfowitz bound for some financial arm-twisting at World Bank to bring everybody in line for neo-con version of freedom, the world will soon run out of its options to settle things peacefully. Should that time come, it’s not totally impossible to assume that a politician would turn to his idle nuclear weapons as the only option left against the might of US. Alfred Einstein once said: ‘World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones’ [9]. How would be the journalism after nuclear warfare? Paintings on the walls of caves? The Chauvet Cave Times, perhaps?

References:

1.http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/26/1610213

2. http://www.pulitzer.org/

3.http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1281353,00.html

4. http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2307/Plame_Leak_Reporters_Lose_Appeal_Could_Face_Jail

5.http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1357275,00.html

6.http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=635756&host=3&dir=75

7.http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles217.htm

8. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/.
9. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein

1

The German-African couple in the laundry saloon. The sneer on the middle aged woman’s face that reveals the alcoholic in her. Her emptily aggressive eyes, pockmarked skin and the tense rhythm of her high-heeled feet. The middle-aged and calm handsomeness of her African boyfriend. The boy in the saloon with Dirty Harry sunglasses, thin sideburns down his cheeks; his laboriously prepared hip-look in his trendy jacket; his coffee in a paper cup, which he sips delicately in a chill-out bar flair, while sitting on a chair next to washing machines and dryers in a dimly-lit salon, in the middle class neighbourhood of the town. The thin, nervous man folding his two dozen or more, gleaming, snow-white socks in meticulous attention on pages of newspaper. The paper intensifying the bleach of the socks. The aggressive glances he throws at people glancing at him.

The hospital-like muteness of the German city I’m living. The city space where only the justified sounds can be heard. The people roaming it. The fellow passengers on the tram. The old woman with stress stricken hands and a distant, lonely face. The boys opposite to her, wearing back-from-80s sports shoes with straps of raw blues and reds; their wide and kitschy belt-buckles and the strips of blondish hair-dyes. The girls who all try to look like the last pop diva. The clothes worn without any self-inquiries. Hairstyles chosen by looking through the mirror. The zeitgeist of the adolescent trauma wrapped up in pinks and the solarium tans and fat bellies in low-waist pants. The migrant workers in the morning on the way to their lowly paid jobs. Sleep-sickness and something more in the eyes (is it the future or the past?). The short young boy who did the wrong drills in the gym and ended up looking like the cartoon character (the one that was crunched into a wide widget by virtue of a concrete block). That boy displaying his aggressive karate moves on the peroxide-blond Britney Spears-look-alike middle class girl of 14. The kicks he simulated on her. Her tolerance for them. The hoards of middle class girls on their Friday-night-out fun, talking unfeasibly loud, as if to convince themselves of the escapade they are living. Their 15 year old faces and their absurdly adult makeup’s.

The fellow city dwellers who talk aloud to themselves on the trains, in the budget-supermarkets, on the streets. The loneliness of elderly. The unceasing inner quarrels of the lost. Counting numbers, comparing prices, settling scores with those that haunt them. Or simply talking to themselves because nobody listens to them like their own selves do.

Trying to fit in something impossible. A city. A routine. An imperative. The fact that life is slipping through our hands every moment, being spent on things we hardly care for. Looking for and not finding the excitement and meaning in our days while those unbelievably inconsistent sights and meanings crowding our sight. Everything in a silent cohesion when nothing really fits. The urgency and certainty with which people move around. The certainty with which people believe in their perceived personal meanings. The certainty with which people cling to their gods, habits, values and possessions. City, the manmade totality of concrete, flesh, metal and glass. City looking like a mirror, showing the impossibility of it all and the inevitability of religions, dogmas and the violence.

All we choose to see is architecture and commerce, while humans are instinctively and properly left unnoticed. Yet we still move around in cities, seeking someone-s and something-s to console us, when what confronts us is the shades of the insanity we may end up in. Faces, hands, feet, actions hinting at our probable tomorrows. Being afraid of them. Sensing the ease we adapt to all this and being more afraid for it. A whispering comprehension of our walk-on part on somebody else’s documentary and knowing that there is no foreshadowing, the insanity is present and the insanity already resides in the observer.

The sum of our lurking insanities. Could this be a definition of ‘the urban?