Censorship Adds to Outrage Over Torture
By Martin Fishgold and David Swanson
OpEdNews.Com
U.S. soldiers and CIA contract professionals, with the knowledge and
encouragement of their superiors, committed war crimes against Iraqi
prisoners that are all too clear in the graphic images that Dan Rather and
CBS executives chose to suppress for two weeks at the request of the
Pentagon. There was no justification for this delay or for the
argument, as made by the reactionary columnist William Safire in the May
10th New York Times, that the delay was needed to save the lives of
American soldiers. If it weren't for Seymour Hersh and The New
Yorker's plans to publish the story, Rather might still be sitting on this
news, denying the public the knowledge we need to participate in our
democracy, and doing so simply because the Chairman of Bush's Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Richard Myers, asked him to.
Our government is currently in possession of additional photos, and our
journalists are not doing enough to demand that they be made public.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Congress that releasing them
would make things worse. But worse for whom? Surely not for
the vitality of our democracy in which people cannot make informed
decisions unless they themselves are informed.
U.S. media outlets engage in self-censorship frequently. We've seen
very little reporting on Halliburton's mistreatment of Indian workers in
Iraq, and next to nothing on the deaths of Iraqi civilians, for example.
Even reporting on the deaths of American soldiers is controversial.
But Dan Rather's willingness to be censored by the government, and the
lack of outrage from other media outlets, takes us to a new low.
The fact that CBS would delay an important story at the request of the
government speaks volumes about the shortcomings of our corporate media.
Even more telling is the general failure of other media outlets to report
on this outrageous behavior by CBS. Many U.S. newspapers have
reported that Myers told Congress he asked Rather for a two-week delay,
but have not reported the fact that Rather complied. Most readers
are likely to assume from these accounts that the delay was not granted.
And, of course, these same reports fail to mention that according to
Rather the request was simply for a delay, which was not originally set to
last two weeks, but which was cut short by another media outlet's
threatening to scoop CBS.
The media of our democracy has not only delayed our access to this news
but also spun it in the Pentagon's favor. "There are a lot more
photographs and videos that exist,'' Rumsfeld told Congress last week.
"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make
matters worse. That's just a fact.'' Rumsfeld is asking the media to
move torture of prisoners into the great realm of the acceptable but
tasteless. He is asking the media to assume along with him that he knows
better than the rest of us what should be kept from us for our own good.
Torture, if it were up to Rumsfeld, would be -- like civilian deaths in
war -- something the media should assume we're aware of but not have the
poor taste to actually inform us about. Our media seems far too
ready to comply.
This is how Rather openly announced his subservience to the Bush
Administration, concluding a segment on "60 Minutes II":
"Two weeks ago, we received an appeal from the Defense Department,
and eventually from the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast given the danger and
tension on the ground in Iraq. We decided to honor that request while
pressing for the Defense Department to add its perspective to the
incidents at Abu Ghraib Prison. This week, with the photos beginning to
circulate elsewhere and with other journalists about to publish their
versions of the story, the Defense Department agreed to cooperate in our
report."
On September 17, 2001, Rather told David Letterman: "George Bush is
the president. He makes the decisions....Wherever he wants me to line up,
just tell me where. And he'll make the call." Rather meant what
he said. He has lost the last shred of credibility as an independent
journalist and should simply be placed on the White House payroll.
Martin Fishgold is President of the International Labor Communications
Association (ILCA). David Swanson is Media Coordinator of the ILCA.
http://ILCAonline.org
In Solidarity,
David Swanson
Media Coordinator
International Labor Communications Association
http://ILCAonline.org
202-974-8037
dswanson@aflcio.org
Making the Labor Media a Force to Be Reckoned With Again