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Invasion of Iraq: CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?
Posted on Thursday, April 15 @ 20:51:12 UTC
Topic: Victim
|
 www.fair.org
As the casualties mount in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah,
Qatar-based Al Jazeera has been one of the only news networks broadcasting
from the inside, relaying images of destruction and civilian victims--
including women and children. But when CNN anchor Daryn Kagan interviewed
the network's editor-in-chief, Ahmed Al-Sheik, on Monday (4/12/04)-- a
rare opportunity to get independent information about events in Fallujah--
she used the occasion to badger Al-Sheik about whether the civilian deaths
were really "the story" in Fallujah.
Al Jazeera has recently come under sharp criticism from U.S. officials,
who claim the Iraqi casualties are 95 percent "military-age males" (AP,
4/12/04). "We have reason to believe that several news organizations do
not engage in truthful reporting," CPA spokesman Dan Senor said (Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, 4/14/04). "In fact it is no reporting." Senior
military spokesman Mark Kimmitt had a suggestion for Iraqis who saw
civilian deaths on Al Jazeera (New York Times, 4/12/04): "Change the
channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations
that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are
not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies."
Acting as the substitute anchor on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, Kagan began
the interview by asking Al-Sheik to respond to those accusations, citing
U.S. officials "saying the pictures and the reporting that Al Jazeera put
on the air only adds to the sense of frustration and anger and adds to the
problems in Iraq, rather than helping to solve them." After Al-Sheik
defended Al Jazeera's work as "accurate" and the images as representative
of "what takes place on the ground," Kagan pressed on:
"Isn't the story, though, bigger than just the simple numbers, with all
due respect to the Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives-- the story
bigger than just the numbers of people who were killed or the fact that
they might have been killed by the U.S. military, that the insurgents, the
people trying to cause problems within Fallujah, are mixing in among the
civilians, making it actually possibly that even more civilians would be
killed, that the story is what the Iraqi insurgents are doing, in addition
to what is the response from the U.S. military?"
CNN's argument that a bigger story than civilian deaths is "what the Iraqi
insurgents are doing" to provoke a U.S. "response" is startling.
Especially in light of official U.S. denials of civilian deaths, video
footage of women and children killed by the U.S. military is evidence that
needs to be seen.
And Al Jazeera is not alone in reporting a reality very different from the
one U.S. officials describe. Authorities have been able to keep a tight
rein on the information flow from Fallujah, with only one small television
network pool in the city that "travels and operates" under the watch of
the Marines (Television Week, 4/12/04). (It's noteworthy that the U.S.
has reportedly demanded, as a condition for lifting the siege of Fallujah,
that Al Jazeera cameras be removed from the city-- IslamOnline.net,
4/9/04.)
But independent journalists reporting from Fallujah have described a scene
consistent with the one broadcast by Al Jazeera. Rahul Mahajan, a U.S.
journalist in Fallujah, estimated that of the 600 Iraqis killed in
Fallujah, 200 were women and 100 young children, with many of the adult
male casualties also non-combatants. He reported witnessing "a young
woman, 18 years old, shot in the head" and "a young boy with massive
internal bleeding" at a clinic (CommonDreams.org, 4/12/04). Mahajan
recounted that during the "cease-fire," "Americans were attacking with
heavy artillery but primarily with snipers"-- with ambulances among the
targets. The sniper activity was also reported by U.S. journalist Dahr
Jamail (NewStandardNews.net, 4/11/04): "Fallujah residents say Marines are
opening fire randomly on unarmed civilians and have attacked clearly
marked ambulances."
When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being
killed by U.S. forces, CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera's footage to
see if it corroborates those accounts-- not badgering Al Jazeera's editor
about why he doesn't suppress that footage.
ACTION: Please tell CNN that there is no bigger story in Fallujah than the
deaths of civilians. Ask the network to report the reality of the siege--
including eyewitness accounts and video footage shot by non-embedded
journalists-- before dismissing civilian victims as the responsibility of
the resistance.
CONTACT:
CNN
Wolf Blitzer Reports
mailto:wolf@cnn.com
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