Cynthia Banas
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
October 21, 2003

I read with interest Journalists Battle over Media Coverage of Iraq War (The Gulf Today, 9/11/2003).

As a member of a US American Peace Team, I lived in Baghdad from October 28, 2002-April 26, 2003. I was there during the build-up phase of the war; the bombardment, the invasion, the looting; the “liberation” turned occupation.

As a US citizen and librarian, I am well aware that democracy can not survive in a society with a controlled press. The Pentagon controlled the news coverage by the use of “embedded” journalists such as Cleve Myrie, BBC correspondent who says, ” The US Army was feeding me and helping me in my task and still I have the freedom to be objective in reporting the war.” Surely, Mr. Myrie jests. The responsibility of professional journalists is to get the whole story to enable readers, viewers, and listeners to make informed, intelligent decisions

How is this possible when there was one point of view presented by US media with but a few rare exceptions?

The “embedded” journalists covered the military campaign alone. Don’t they understand there were other essential stories to be told?

For instance, during the build-up to the war peace teams came to Baghdad from many countries: Spain, Germany, Belgium, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States of America and Italy: all seeking negoiations rather than invasion. I challenge the USA and British media to go through their archives and see how many articles or TV segments or radio talk shows covered these peace efforts.

Legislators came frofm the Phillipines, Parliamentarians from the European Union Canadian Parliamentarians ; Korean Buddhist Monks; Physicians for Social Responsiblilty ; Doctors of the World; Canadian psychologists; Doctors without Borders. These people all came to speak out for negoiations , not invasion. All these people held press conferences which I attended. Journalists from the world- over were there. But USA jounalists found little time to attend these press conferences. Perhaps they were too busy covering the war.

I challenge the media to search its archives and pull out the coverage of the above listed visitors to Iraq who came to speak for peace. Practically, the whole world was asking for peace. Why wasn’t this fact reported by USA journalists?. 15 million people walked for peace one day in February, 2003.. How many sound- bites were allocated to this historic fact.?

And the sad part is that for the most part, journalists don’t even seem to understand they are being manipulated by the USA government. Janine Digiovani of the TIMES is right on the mark when she says her American colleagues buried the story of Jenin because it wasn’t considered a massacre. What has happened to critical questioning and thinking? Who declared Jenin was not a massacre?

And Peter Arnett being fired for telling the truth on Iraqi TV (Peter Zenger must be turning over in his grave.)

As far as the objectivity of the Arabic media, I am not fluent in Arabic and so I cannot judge but I am quite fluent in English and it is obvious that there was a one-sided government view of the war given on major TV, radio including National Public Radio in the USA; in the national press. Some of the commentators even played cheerleader for the Pentagon. Books can be written about the failure of the media. Perhaps if journalists had been professional, the war could have been avoided and the desputes settled by negoiations rather than by a shock and awe attack on another peole. And now we find out the the whole continuing tragedy is based on lies told to the American people with little if any crliticism from journalists.

When I retruned to the United States of America, I was inundated by requests to share my Iraqi experiences.US citizens are beginning to realize that lies and misinformation have been given to them. But as Shakespeare says “The Truth will out” and that is what is happening now and it does not bode well for the United States.

Millions of people and nations said no to this war. Too bad their voices were not heard.

As a librarian, I understand that library work is similar to that of our colleagues in the field of journalism.. We are both concerned with information. I have to say that in this war most USA journalists did not live up to their professional responsibility of informing USA citizens with all the information citizens need to make the right choices.

The tragedy is that if the media had assumed their professional responsility , the war may very well have been avoided.

Cynthia Banas