By Ben Norton
If you read the headlines of
major corporate media outlets, you’d think hundreds of Iraqi civilians
coincidentally died in the same location that just so happened to be hit by a
US airstrike.
A March 17 US attack in the
city of Mosul resulted in a massacre of civilians. The monitoring group Airwars
estimated
that between 130 and 230 Iraqis were killed in the incident. Iraqi media
reported similar figures.
Civilian victims of the US-led
bombing campaign to oust ISIS from the major northern Iraqi city, which has
been terrorized by the extremist group for three years, have received little
media coverage.
The Washington Post (3/28/17) noted, nevertheless, that the recent airstrike
“was potentially one of the worst US-led civilian bombings in 25 years.”
Yet just a few days before
the Post published this stark fact, leading news networks went out of
their way to craft some of the most euphemistic headlines imaginable.
ABC News (3/25/17) took the cake, giving its report the disjointed
title “US Reviewing Airstrike That Corresponds to Site Where 200 Iraqi
Civilians Allegedly Died.” (This story was also syndicated by Yahoo News—3/25/17.)
Note that the Iraqis simply died;
they weren’t killed. The airstrike was a mere temporal and geographic
coincidence.
Chicago Tribune (3/25/17)
The Los Angeles Times (3/25/17) used similarly obfuscatory language, with the
headline “US Acknowledges Airstrike in Mosul, Where More Than 200 Iraqi
Civilians Died.” This article, which was republished by the Chicago Tribune (3/25/17), made it sound like 200 Iraqis have been killed in
all of Mosul.
The day before, however, the LA
Times (3/24/17) had printed another report that provided much
more context: “More Than 200 Civilians Killed in Suspected US Airstrike in
Iraq.”
In a slight improvement, the
Washington Post (3/25/17) at least used the word “killed”—or, rather,
“Allegedly Killed”—for its story: “US Military Acknowledges Strike on Mosul
Site Where More Than 100 Were Allegedly Killed.”
But it was not just American
outlets that used such watered-down language. France 24 (3/25/17) wrote,
underwhelmingly, “US-Led Coalition Confirms Strike on Mosul Site Where
Civilians Died.”
Headlines are the most
important part of news articles; they greatly influence what the public thinks
about political issues. In fact, studies show that most Americans don’t read beyond
headlines.
These latest whitewashed
titles are remarkably reminiscent of those composed to cover (up) a previous
high-profile US massacre of civilians: the October 2015 US bombing of a Doctors
Without Borders–operated hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan (FAIR.org, 10/5/17). The New York Times published a masterpiece
of propaganda with the headline “US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital.”
Ambiguous language, heavy use of the passive voice and awkward wording
abounded.
Some ostensible news outlets
even contradicted themselves in reporting on the recent Mosul attack.
Right-wing website the Daily Caller (3/27/17) published an article misleadingly headlined “Iraq:
ISIS, Not US, Responsible For Killing 200 Civilians.” Author Saagar
Enjeti tried to exculpate the US for the atrocity, instead blaming ISIS. Yet in
his piece, Enjeti was compelled to acknowledge that the details were murky, and
that an Iraqi officer had said “the blast was caused by an airstrike called on
ISIS snipers on the roof of a building.”
Later, when the commander of
the US-led task force fighting ISIS tepidly admitted,
“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties [in
Mosul],” slightly more direct reports slowly came trickling out. But even after
the dust settled and the facts became clearer, media continued to downplay
their severity.
New York Times (3/29/17)
In one of the more
eyebrow-raising headlines, the New York Times ran a story on the front page on March 29 with the paltry headline “US
Concedes It Played a Role in Iraqi Deaths.” (It appeared online on March 28 with the “US ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul
Deaths, Commander Says.”)
What was that role, exactly?
Well, carrying out the airstrike that killed them. But let’s not split hairs.
While major corporate media
largely echoed the US government line, independent left-wing news outlets, on
the other hand, were immediately much more straightforward in their reporting.
“With 200+ Iraqi Civilians Feared Dead, Carnage Surging Under Trump,” wrote Common
Dreams (3/26/17), for instance.
Little Media Attention
Given the extreme brutality of
ISIS, a genocidal Salafi jihadist group that has slaughtered civilians from
religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq and Syria, it is perhaps
understandable that much of the media attention is on its crimes.
But the atrocities committed
by the forces fighting it cannot be ignored. Such an approach is a recipe for
disaster, as the so-called Islamic State has demonstrated a tendency to exploit
Western atrocities for propaganda and recruitment.
Little ink has been spilled in
the US media for those victims, nonetheless. According to the monitoring group
Airwars, as many as 1,000 civilians were killed by US-led coalition actions in
Iraq and Syria just in the month of March (Democracy Now!, 3/27/17).
Many more civilians have been
killed in the past two years (Intercept, 8/3/15), yet their deaths have received little attention by
major corporate news networks, even when they may help fuel the very extremist
group whose monstrousness was used to justify them.
In fact, the US dropped more than 12,000 bombs on Iraq (and another
12,000 on Syria) in 2016 alone, with little media scrutiny.
There was no real public
discussion, let alone political debate, about whether or not US bombing ISIS
would be a good idea, not to mention whether or not Western airstrikes can
actually defeat a guerilla extremist group like ISIS (Extra!, 11/14).
After all, it was the illegal US-led invasion and subsequent decade-long
military occupation of Iraq, in addition to intervention in the war in Syria,
that led
to the rise of the hyper-sectarian Islamic State in the first place.
To its credit, the Washington
Post (3/24/17) published another article, amid the widespread
media whitewashing of the Mosul airstrike, titled “Airstrike Monitoring Group
Overwhelmed by Claims of US-Caused Civilian Casualties.” The newspaper acknowledged:
In the last week, three mass
casualty incidents have been attributed to US-led forces in Iraq and Syria,
making March one of the most lethal months for civilians in the the
two-year-old war against the Islamic State.
Defenders of corporate media
might argue that news outlets had to craft carefully worded headlines as the US
government was still investigating the attack. But again, this simply reflects
media’s deference to power. If the government says something, there are
countless journalists waiting in line to obediently echo it. Corporate media
have a long, tried-and-true history of acting as stenographers to power.
The Art of Euphemism and
Inconstant Skepticism
A quick look at other
instances in which media employ this kind of euphemistic language is
instructive. These whitewashing tools are reserved almost exclusively for
reports on the crimes of those in power.
Police frequently benefit from
this linguistic sleight-of-hand. When cops shoot and kill unarmed civilians,
the deaths are referred to as “officer-involved shootings” (FAIR, 7/11/16).
A crutch is made out of the
passive voice. Cops don’t fire their guns and shoot people; their guns are
magically “discharged,” as if of their own accord.
“Alleged” is ubiquitous and
abused: Police “allegedly” shot someone, media insist, even when there is video
of the cops shooting them.
Headlines about atrocities
committed by official enemies tend to be more straightforward (Guardian, 3/15/16).
These tricks are employed even
more frequently, and egregiously, in reports on atrocities committed by the US
and its allies. And while media outlets invariably give the US the benefit of
the doubt, Western enemies are not afforded the same luxury.
In Syria, for instance, civilian
casualty estimates after airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and
Russia are reported exclusively based on the accounts of rebels and
“activists,” some of whom have received extensive support from foreign
countries committed to overthrowing the Syrian government (AP, 11/29/15, 4/28/16, 11/19/16; Reuters, 1/11/16;
CNN, 9/26/16).
The incredulity exhibited in
the reports on the US attack in Mosul starkly contrasts with the dogmatic
certitude reflected in the incessant barrage of thinly sourced stories on Syria,
Russia,
North
Korea, Iran,
Cuba, Venezuela, China and beyond.
This is how US media operate:
Staunch skepticism is reserved for reports on the crimes of the US and its
allies, whereas rumors and myths are reported as facts when they shine
negatively on government enemies.
Ben Norton is a journalist and
writer based in New York City. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.
No comments:
Post a Comment