Republican News · Thursday 8 August 2002

'Monitoring the powerful'

Robert Fisk speaks at the West Belfast Festival

BY LAURA FRIEL

While not condoning the attacks in which thousands of American civilians died, Robert Fisk has highlighted aspects of Western, principally American, foreign policy as important aspects of understanding why September 11 had taken place

"At best, journalists sit at the edge of history as vulcanologists might clamber to the lip of a smoking crater, trying to see over the rim, craning their necks to peer over the crumbling edge through the smoke and ash at what happens within.

"Governments make sure it stays that way. I suspect that is what journalism is about-or at least what it should be about: watching and witnessing history and then, despite the dangers and constraints and our human imperfections, recording it as honestly as we can."

This is Robert Fisk writing in 'Pity the Nation', a record of his time in Beirut as a foreign correspondent for the London Times. More recently, as Middle East correspondent for Britain's Independent newspaper, Fisk has been among the handful of journalists vilified and demonised in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

In St Mary's college on the Falls Road, over five hundred people flocked to hear Fisk explain that 'why?' is the key question for journalism and the one most likely to provoke antagonism from those in whose interest it is to hide the truth.

By restricting journalism to the 'what', 'when' and 'where', Fisk suggests, our understanding is curtailed and our choices vulnerable to manipulation. Fisk recalls a colleague's definition of a journalist's role as "monitoring the powerful".

Robert Fisk holds more journalism awards, including a recent award from Amnesty International, than any other foreign correspondent. On September 11, at the time of the Twin Towers attack, Fisk had been flying over the Atlantic and had telephoned his report through to the Independent while still in mid air.

In this and subsequent articles, while not condoning attacks in which thousands of American civilians died, Fisk highlighted aspects of Western, principally American, foreign policy as important aspects of understanding why September 11 had taken place.

He reminded us of the imposition of sanctions against Iraq, which have resulted in the deaths of millions of Iraqi children, of American support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing tragic consequences.

But to do so had incited the wrath of the mainstream America media. Fisk was decried as a supporter of 'hate' and 'evil', even a 'cohort of Bin Laden'. When it came to September 11, as Fisk pointed out, you can "ask who did it but for heaven's sake don't ask why".

Fisk was dismissed as a 'liar' and it was suggested that to criticise America was to be anti-American, and to criticise American support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, was not only anti-American but the same as being anti-Semitic. Fisk was accused of being a 'Jew hater' and a 'Nazi'.

Last December, Fisk was attacked and beaten by a group of Afghan refugees near the Pakistan-Afghan border. For those who had lost relatives in the US bombing of Afghanistan, Fisk recognised that he represented the face of those who had destroyed their loved ones.

"Those who beat me were innocent of any crime other than being the victim of the world," Fisk told the audience.

After the incident, Fisk described how carefully he tried to ensure that details of the attack, the 'when' and the 'where', were not used without the 'why'. But despite Fisk's best efforts, the story was reported within the parameters of the prevailing discourse that seeks to dehumanise and marginalize the experience of Afghans and Arabs.

The notion of an angry Afghan 'mob' suited the American press, except where their hatred of Fisk momentarily eclipsed the imperative. "A self loathing multi-culturist gets his due," ran the Wall Street Journal.

But the vilification of a western journalist who refuses to toe the propaganda line is nothing compared to the vilification of entire communities and nations. Fisk described how the media manipulates the truth to suit a particular political agenda.

Fisk pointed out that at one time Bin Laden had been 'a good guy', when he had been fighting in the interests of the West against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Laden, and many others, had been trained and armed by America. In those days, Afghan guerrillas had been freedom fighters, not 'terrorists'.

Recalling an interview with a Russian officer at the time, Fisk said the soldier had said it was the Soviet Union's international duty to punish terrorists. Words that now echo those of the present day USA.

In 1997, Fisk had travelled to a remote mountain camp to meet Bin Laden, a camp known to the USA because they had built it. At the time, Fisk had been struck by Bin Laden's isolation; he had been eager to read the news in a couple of old papers Fisk had been carrying.

Bin Laden had called for an end to American interference in Saudi Arabia, an end to Israeli occupation in Palestine and an end to sanctions against Iraq. To many Arabs, even those appalled by the attacks in New York and Washington, Bin Laden doesn't sound insane, said Fisk.

Highlighting the hypocrisy behind so much media coverage of events in the Middle East, Fisk pointed out that in contrast to those deemed responsible for September 11, those responsible for the murder of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Chatila in 1992 were never called 'terrorists'.

The assassination of Palestinians by Israeli death squads are 'targeted killings' and Palestinian land illegally occupied by Israeli colonialists is now referred to as 'disputed land' and illegal Israeli settlements are now Jewish 'neighbourhoods'.

The manipulation of words transforms history; a Palestinian who attacks a 'Jewish neighbourhood' can only be a madman or a terrorist. But the news is manipulated in other, even more subtle, ways. Palestinian civilians are often reported as killed in 'crossfire' or even a 'hail of bullets'.

The first suggests the killing is accidental and the second removes responsibility for the killing away from the killer. Bullets kill Palestinians, not the Israeli soldiers who fire them. Yet it would be unthinkable to suggest that the plane plunging into the Twin Towers, rather than the hijacker piloting the plane, was responsible for the deaths of September 11.

On 19 February, Newsweek had carried the front-page banner headline 'Terrorism goes global'. Accompanying the headline was a picture of a Palestinian carrying a weapon, his face covered by a red and white keffiyeh. The visual message was clear, but as Fisk pointed out, it was also a lie. The photograph had nothing to do with the headline; it had been taken at a funeral and man in the image was a mourner. The bereaved attending a funeral had been transformed into the 'enemy of the world'.