Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said in a speech recently:
“Other newspaper groups have deeper pockets, which we sometimes envy. But I suspect that all my colleagues in editorial chairs have at some point turned an envious eye on the complete and utter freedom Guardian editors have, and have always had, thanks to its Trust ownership.”*
"Complete and utter freedom"?! Well, yes, if you like. If you manage to get to the editorial chair, then it's highly likely that you've already proved that you're not going to do anything too dangerous with that freedom.
(*Hugo Young Lecture, ‘What are newspapers for?’, Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian, Sheffield University, March 9h, 2005, The Inaugural Hugo Young Lecture and third University Centenary Lecture)
Wednesday, May 04, 2005, 18:58
"Enhanced impartiality": another media myth gets an airing
Tim Luckhurst is a former Today reporter/producer and was - very briefly, if I recall - editor of The Scotsman. He's a media pundit cropping up in all kinds of corners. In the Daily Mail yesterday he opined:
"Political Editor Andrew Marr has dismayed licence-payers with apologias for New Labour in general and Tony Blair in particular. His repeated insistence that the Prime Minister did not lie about the legal advice he was given on the Iraq War has taken political coverage to a new low.
"Such conscientious rewriting of history deserves a place in George Orwell's 1984, not on a national television station funded by the taxpayer."
(Tim Luckhurst, 'As John Humphrys announces his retirement . . . The giant the BBC hasn't got the guts to replace', Daily Mail, 3 May, 2005)
Nice touch to lean on George Orwell, a great hero of Marr's apparently. That will have stung - possibly.
Of course, Luckhurst does rather shoot himself in the foot when he goes on to describe Jeremy Paxman in the same article as: "the only other BBC presenter [along with John Humphrys] to have emerged from the election campaign with his reputation for impartiality enhanced."
That will be the great rottweiler who somehow couldn't manage to expose Blair's war crimes when interviewing a Prime Minister steeped in the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (and other unpeople in Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo, ...)
Saturday, 12 March 2005
Thursday, 10 March 2005
War criminals and the "right people" in Washington.
News reports today have announced that Ramush Haradinaj, the 36-year-old former prime minister of Kosovo, has been flown to The Hague to face charges of war crimes. Who is Ramush Haradinaj?
Described in some news reports as "flamboyant" and "colourful", Ramush Haradinaj was a commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army. He was then the head of the KLA's political successor, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo and he was elected prime minister last December.
His name frequently crops up in reports of murder, shootings and 'disappearances' in Kosovo. The Scotsman reported in 2000 that he was injured in a firefight in western Kosovo, the "savagely violent post-war province". Interestingly, he ended up in a US military hospital at Landstuhl in Germany.
"Haradinaj looked to be the sort of guy that we might see our way to backing," said one senior international official who spoke on condition of anonymity [of course!]. "After the launch of his party, he was due to go to Washington to meet up with the right people," said another western official. (Christian Jennings, 'Western-backed Kosovar Albanian politician shot', 11 July, 2000, The Scotsman)
The Observer described him in the same year as "the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war and the Nato bombing campaign that followed." He is "implicated in murder, drug-trafficking and war crimes."
British officials described him as "one of the few former commanders of the KLA who can deliver." (Nick Wood, US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally, 10 September, 2000, Observer )
One former British soldier, who served with the Kosovo Verification Mission described him as "a psychopath":
"He would beat his own men to maintain a kind of military discipline....Someone would pass him some information and he would disappear for two hours. The end result would be several bodies in a ditch." (Wood, ibid.)
While these 'disappearances' were taking place, Haradinaj maintained daily contact with American military personnel in the US. These links were then taken over by Nato at the beginning of the bombing campaign in Kosovo.
Tom Walker reported in the Sunday Times that Robin Cook, then foreign secretary, met with Haradinaj on a trip to Kosovo in April, 2001. Walker added:
"Diplomats in Pristina said Haradinaj entered politics last year at the behest of Britain and America, which wanted to see the KLA's support base split. 'He said it was too early for independence,' said a European official introduced to Haradinaj. 'He was coached to say what was needed.' Last April Haradinaj made a fundraising trip to Washington." (Walker, 'Cook held talks with war crime suspect', Sunday Times', 29 April, 2001)
The Foreign Office, ever 'pragmatic', saw no difficulty with any of this. It "insisted that Haradinaj had been reminded of his democratic responsibilities." Very reassuring. "There are periods in the cycle when you're moving to a democratic future from a violent past," said a spokesman. "There are no hard and fast rules on who you should talk to. Until indicted, they are straightforward politicians." Need we comment on this?
Jared Israel, in an eye-opening online article, explains more of the background to this US/UK-backed war crimes suspect. As Israel notes, The Times "prettifies the ugly fact that the U.S. and British governments coached Haradinaj and funded him, thereby thrusting him into politics, instead of jail, where he belonged." ( 'Which Terrorists Are Worse? Al-Qaeda? Or the KLA?', 12 December, 2001)
Today, the BBC news website neglects to mention any link between Haradinaj and western politicians (BBC news online, 'Kosovo ex-PM flies in for trial' , 9 March, 2005 )
And the BBC News at One politely described Ramush Haradinaj's appearance at The Hague on war crimes charges as
"embarrassing" to western politicians who had supported him in the past.
It is examples like this, multiplied countless of times every year, that bury uncomfortable truths out of sight.
Described in some news reports as "flamboyant" and "colourful", Ramush Haradinaj was a commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army. He was then the head of the KLA's political successor, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo and he was elected prime minister last December.
His name frequently crops up in reports of murder, shootings and 'disappearances' in Kosovo. The Scotsman reported in 2000 that he was injured in a firefight in western Kosovo, the "savagely violent post-war province". Interestingly, he ended up in a US military hospital at Landstuhl in Germany.
"Haradinaj looked to be the sort of guy that we might see our way to backing," said one senior international official who spoke on condition of anonymity [of course!]. "After the launch of his party, he was due to go to Washington to meet up with the right people," said another western official. (Christian Jennings, 'Western-backed Kosovar Albanian politician shot', 11 July, 2000, The Scotsman)
The Observer described him in the same year as "the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war and the Nato bombing campaign that followed." He is "implicated in murder, drug-trafficking and war crimes."
British officials described him as "one of the few former commanders of the KLA who can deliver." (Nick Wood, US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally, 10 September, 2000, Observer )
One former British soldier, who served with the Kosovo Verification Mission described him as "a psychopath":
"He would beat his own men to maintain a kind of military discipline....Someone would pass him some information and he would disappear for two hours. The end result would be several bodies in a ditch." (Wood, ibid.)
While these 'disappearances' were taking place, Haradinaj maintained daily contact with American military personnel in the US. These links were then taken over by Nato at the beginning of the bombing campaign in Kosovo.
Tom Walker reported in the Sunday Times that Robin Cook, then foreign secretary, met with Haradinaj on a trip to Kosovo in April, 2001. Walker added:
"Diplomats in Pristina said Haradinaj entered politics last year at the behest of Britain and America, which wanted to see the KLA's support base split. 'He said it was too early for independence,' said a European official introduced to Haradinaj. 'He was coached to say what was needed.' Last April Haradinaj made a fundraising trip to Washington." (Walker, 'Cook held talks with war crime suspect', Sunday Times', 29 April, 2001)
The Foreign Office, ever 'pragmatic', saw no difficulty with any of this. It "insisted that Haradinaj had been reminded of his democratic responsibilities." Very reassuring. "There are periods in the cycle when you're moving to a democratic future from a violent past," said a spokesman. "There are no hard and fast rules on who you should talk to. Until indicted, they are straightforward politicians." Need we comment on this?
Jared Israel, in an eye-opening online article, explains more of the background to this US/UK-backed war crimes suspect. As Israel notes, The Times "prettifies the ugly fact that the U.S. and British governments coached Haradinaj and funded him, thereby thrusting him into politics, instead of jail, where he belonged." ( 'Which Terrorists Are Worse? Al-Qaeda? Or the KLA?', 12 December, 2001)
Today, the BBC news website neglects to mention any link between Haradinaj and western politicians (BBC news online, 'Kosovo ex-PM flies in for trial' , 9 March, 2005 )
And the BBC News at One politely described Ramush Haradinaj's appearance at The Hague on war crimes charges as
"embarrassing" to western politicians who had supported him in the past.
It is examples like this, multiplied countless of times every year, that bury uncomfortable truths out of sight.
Monday, 7 March 2005
Cryptic gestures in the face of global climate catastrophe
A comment piece in today's Independent by the environment editor Michael McCarthy reads very much like a response to those who have emailed him recently following his despairing article in The Tablet (see media alert "Is the Earth Really Finished?", 1 March, 2005).
McCarthy writes, in rather vague terms, of the need for a global Manhattan Project: not a new idea, and reminiscent of Al Gore's call for a global Marshall Plan in his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance". And no mention of the powerful profit-led interests that would obstruct such a move with every fibre of their being. But, yes, it will likely take something of that worldwide magnitude and commitment to turn things around (just don't expect world leaders to hand it to us on a plate).
And still no mention of the proposal of contraction and convergence, which is the logical and equitable global framework for achieving the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (www.gci.org.uk). Why is McCarthy trying so hard to avoid mentioning it?
The article is a classic case of what David Edwards calls cryptic gesturing in the direction of the truth.
McCarthy writes, in rather vague terms, of the need for a global Manhattan Project: not a new idea, and reminiscent of Al Gore's call for a global Marshall Plan in his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance". And no mention of the powerful profit-led interests that would obstruct such a move with every fibre of their being. But, yes, it will likely take something of that worldwide magnitude and commitment to turn things around (just don't expect world leaders to hand it to us on a plate).
And still no mention of the proposal of contraction and convergence, which is the logical and equitable global framework for achieving the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (www.gci.org.uk). Why is McCarthy trying so hard to avoid mentioning it?
The article is a classic case of what David Edwards calls cryptic gesturing in the direction of the truth.
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