Q6: How have we been served by the media? - Question from Lyn Macpherson

How has Australia been served by its media and how they have covered these issues?

Tony Abbott; Tanya Plibersek; Peter Macdonald; Lyn Macpherson

Donna Mulhearn: I can talk for half an hour on this, because what I witnessed in Iraq and the reality that I experienced there was not reflected in the media in Australia. And, I sadly only realised this to the degree that it’s true when I arrived back home, when I was really surprised. If anyone is interested in this topic, I encourage you to attend the Sydney Social Forum next Sunday at 11:30. I’ll be doing a workshop, presenting my stories and images from Iraq, which will illustrate what I’m going to talk about in the next two minutes.

As I said, what you saw didn’t reflect the reality. I have one piece of advice for you guys, and you probably know it already: question everything. Question everything that you see in the media, especially if it comes form the corporate mainstream media, and it seems like the broadcast media were particularly guilty. I’m really concerned that an image that was played over and over again, that our government used to legitimise the war on Iraq, was a set-up – was a manipulated media stunt. Now, when I got home, I didn’t realise that this wasn’t reported that way in Australia.

I’m talking about the US Marines pulling down the statue in the square. I know that area very well, because I spent a lot of time [there]. Our office was nearby, and it’s an area that’s always very busy, bustling, full of people, even during the war it was the one place that probably there was more crowds congregated than any other place. When CNN – I was in Jordan at that time – when CNN was reporting mass jubilation on the streets of Baghdad, I thought, hello, this sounds interesting, flicked, looked at their ima ges and saw [al-] Firdos Square, and it was empty, and I thought: where is everybody? And yet it was reported as mass jubilation. And then, to try and get a bit of reality or a different perspective, I flicked, ‘cos thankfully, because I was in Jordan I could flick to Al-Jazeera and BBC World, and there I saw very different images. The CNN closed in tight on that shot of people throwing ropes over that statue. Those people were trucked in from Saddam City, most of them had come from the United States with Chalabi – they brought about 4,000 former, US former Iraqis with them, and there were a few hundred there who brought in this group and said go an pull the statue down. [photos of this] The media were notified beforehand, so talk about spontaneous jubilation, they were told to be there, it was like a press conference, and eye-witnesses there, including Neville Watson, a great man from Perth, who was in Iraq during the war, he watched it all unfold. And his comments are very interesting, if you ever hear his point of view, it’s very enlightening, the fact that he watched this unfold as a very carefully stage-managed event. Yet the major US corporate networks did not perceive this, or did not want to perceive it, did not report the reality of the situation. Al-Jazeera and BBC were showing the rest of the Square, which was empty, which was very unusual, because it was usually full, and so …

I remember seeing the image of a group of Iraqi women who were screaming and crying as if they were at a funeral, with the loud expressive mourning, and a female journalist asked them: “why are you mourning, why are you crying? Look at that over there”. And they said: “well, look at that over there, I’ve lost my husband, and so we have no business, and my children are injured, and we still have no power at home, and I don’t know what to do. What is my future now,” they said, “it’s uncertainty.” And the fear and the pain in their faces just came through in their words and their images, and back to CNN: “mass jubilation in Baghdad.” I was like – it was so devastating I was just throwing things at the TV, and screaming. I was so concerned about there’s such blatant manipulation.

Anyway, that’s just one example. There’s another example I wan to give on the war – and I have about ten, but just one other – is “precision bombing”. Like, they thought they deserved a medal, because they hit the target they were supposed to hit. Like, great, congratulations were in order, and weren’t our media commentators in a frenzy because they’d hit the right building. But, precision bombing, let me tell you about it. It’s like your own personal earthquake, you know, even if the bomb is within five to ten kilometres around you, say if the gunshot your head, your ears feel like they’re going to explode, we had bleeding from our ears because of the noise of the bombs, the windows shattered, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’d have a piece of glass through your face. This is precision bombing, just the impact of it, the kids who were physically ill because of shock, the mothers who lost their unborn babies, so many people killed, maimed, injured for life, and these are injuries that are going to stay with them together. That’s the story of precision bombing. It’s not a pretty one, that yet our media commentators rarely questioned.

After saying that, I’d just like to support the media who did a good job. We really need to turn to independent media now more than ever. I encourage you as the story in Iraq unfolds, to seek out the independent media and the websites. So, a few very good ones: you need to log on, and find the great reporters, like the Robert Fisks, etc, and stick with them. Question everything, and find people you can trust and follow their stories, because some of them are very, very good. I felt the reporting of Paul McGeogh, from the Sydney Morning Herald, was very good – he really tried to go out of his way to visit the Iraqi people, in the hospitals and in ordinary houses, as well as report the military news of the day, so I believe he did a good job. And SBS as well, and we also have some great commentators, who are really up against so many right-wing commentaries at the moment: you know, the Margo Kingstons and all the rest, who I think are fantastic, and we really need to support them with letters to the editor, and ringing up talkback radio, etc.

When I go back to Iraq, when I was there I sent out e-mails and stories on my e-mail list, which was able to give people a first-hand view of what was happening in the war. I’m going to do that again when I return, so if you’re interested in getting reports from the streets of Iraq, pass some pieces of paper around and write your e-mail addresses on them, and I’ll put you on my list, my pilgrim list. You’ll also hear about everything else I’m doing, but you might be interested in my observations on the politics of Iraq and the situation there.

I really feel the media has a lot to answer for. I was really disappointed with the coverage of our mainstream newspapers, like the Daily Telegraph, who were reporting: we’ve won the war, etc – I don’t believe we’ve won, or anyone has won anything, and I believe that’s an insult to the Iraqi people. I could go on for a long time, but … (Applause)

Tony Abbott: Look, I’m not going to engage in an orgy of media bashing, because I think the media are a mixed bag, and I think that the Australian media did its best, sometimes better than other times, to report the facts as it saw them, the facts in Iraq and around Iraq, the facts in Australia and other countries. The media allowed a riot of opinion to be heard. I think that it’s often said that we get the media we deserve, and I think the media reflected, the media reflected the changing emotions and the changing opinions of the Australian people on the war in Iraq as the thing developed. So, look, I think they did their job. Inevitably some people did their job better than others, inevitably some people, different readers and consumers agreed with more than others. I don’t think the media was any better or worse on this than it is on so many of the other great issues which it has to report.

Tanya Plibersek: Well, I thought it was interesting to see Richard Alston’s claims about ABC bias pretty thoroughly debunked. My one criticism of the ABC coverage of the war with Iraq was this practice that seems to be common to a number of media organisations now of embedding journalists with US soldiers. I understand that it is pretty hard to get around on your own as a journalist in a war zone, but I think that the – what happens to your objectivity when your life depends on the lives of the people that you’re sharing a truck with. It must, it must have an effect, and that’s something that I think we need to watch very carefully. I’m sure it provides better pictures for TV, but I don’t know what it does for objectivity. In saying that I should say that I’m not making any comments about Geoff Thompson and his excellent reporting.

There are so many examples, Donna’s example of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in the square, you really had to look very hard in the Australian media to see the stories of that being a set-up. I think it did come up on Lateline, but it certainly was not common, and there are a number of examples like that. The British, sorry, the US soldiers, the US Army PR unit, getting soldiers to write letters home talking about how welcoming the children were, how happy they were, and all the letters were exactly the same: “thank you for liberating us, mister.” The PR spin, I mean, was extraordinary, and the US Army spends a lot of resources doing it. It’s fascinating that if you look at every Murdoch publication around the world, I don’t think a single one of them editorialised or opposed the war. They were all completely, I believe, uncritical in their reporting of the war. You could say they were, well, at best uncritical, at worst you could say they were campaigning for the war, and that’s aterrific reminder of why we need a diverse press in Australia. I wouldn’t want someone who’s editorial influence to support the war in Iraq owning a couple of television stations in the same city as well.

But the alternative voices are there, and Donna mentioned a couple of them: Robert Fisk was one. I reckon that this is the greatest gift that the Internet has given us, you actually can look up the Guardian online, you can look up the New York Review of Books, you can look up Arabic English language newspapers, you can get some of that information from a variety of sources and make your own judgements from it. I also listen to News Radio in Australia, because they replay a lot of international news, not just the BBC World Service, but other English language world services, international news and I think that you get at least some diversity of opinion from that. There was a terrific show on yesterday about what’s happening in hospitals in Iraq, and how desperately, desperately undersupplied they still are, they are just doing the barest sort of patch-up work on people and they have only the barest sort of supplies, they’ve got, you know, analgesics and that’s about it, they don’t have anything to treat any more complicated wounds.

I think that, just in closing, so, you know, as people have pointed out, it’s a mixed bag. The one thing that I thought is a more general thing, that has started to worry me about the Australian media is that the only sort of fundamentalists in town are Islamic fundamentalists. I actually do believe that there are Islamic fundamentalists who are bigots and who are violent, who, you know, set out to be destructive. But I remember a spate of abortion clinic bombings done in the United States by Christian fundamentalists. I know that Jewish fundamentalists killed Yitzak Rabin, because he was, you know, too accommodating to the Palestinians. There are Hindu fundamentalists that set fire to mosques in India, and set fire to Christian missionaries. Fundamentalism is not anything confined to any religion, and Donna was saying earlier how lovely a lot of the Arabic community are in Australia, that’s absolutely true. And I think that it, you know it seems like such an obvious thing to say, but I think it’s worth repeating again and again, that fundamentalism is not confined to any religion, and - that’s it. (Applause).

Peter Macdonald: The previous speakers have pointed out that the media didn’t serve us well, and I’m not going to deal with that particular argument, as I entirely agree. I also believe that the media generally doesn’t serve us well. Just a comment on the way the media deals with Arab-Islamic matters, I spent six months in Iran in 1999, as the medical coordinator with MSF, and I learnt to respect and come to love the Iranian people a great deal. Now that’s certainly not reflected in the media we see in the western world. These issues and these events should prompt us to ask why is it that the media doesn’t serve us well, and the reality is, however, that the media tends to reflect some of our worst features, and the worst features and behaviour in the communities in which we live. And particularly those aspects of our community where we have chauvinistic, male-dominated, aggressive paradigm that many people live within. Most people seem to like contests, they like winners, they like aggression, that sort of stereotype, and media picks all that up, and also those aspects of people such as intolerance and racism. And the media beats all that up, tends to reflect it, and then this is what’s produced in our media. So that’s the diet that we’re constantly fed, and nothing changed when it came to this particular war. And that’s the thing that sells TV ad space, and it’s the thing that sells newspapers.

That doesn’t take into account another aspect of media, and that’s media ownership, and that’s not something we’ve particularly made reference to, but there are clearly political interests that would prevail amongst media owners, and that’s another reason why we’ve got to move very cautiously on the whole question of cross-media ownership and the dominance of sectoral ownership in the media. (Applause) If it was a real pure world, I would expect the media in Australia to be offering us an apology for the way that they dealt with the issues surrounding the Iraq war. I mean, we’ve had it tonight, but the sort of media gung-ho, all-the-way-with-LBJ type of reports that we saw, and now we’ve have it listed tonight. All the lies and all the untruths that were told. So we’ve been betrayed by the media, and in my view, of course, as you would understand, I believe we’ve been betrayed by the government.

We have some exceptions, and I want to put in a good word here for the ABC, for example. (Applause) It’s been a target, it’s been a target, of this government for some time. It was a significant issue, if you remember, in the 2001 election, because of its honesty. I think that Tanya mentioned something like was it, 39 examples that were quoted by Richard Alston where the ABC had overstepped the mark. As far as I was concerned, I wish that had been 139 examples, because that’s what we want from our media. So I would say, just as a little commercial, let’s save the ABC. (Applause)

Lyn Macpherson: This is a really, really complex issue. I just wanted to speak to the panel members, you know, some of you brought up some really important points, like Donna, you know, talking about the objective reporting and the media being used as a marketing tool rather than reporting the suffering, which is really, really important – we’re not seeing that so we’re not feeling it. And then Tanya talking about the Internet as important avenue for research and Peter talking about media ownership. I mean, these are all really, really big issues, and I feel that it’s such a complex issue and one that really needs to be discussed at length. So it probably will be one we discuss at the next forum.

But I just want to make a couple of points, and I live in a democracy in Australia, I’m proud to be an Australian, most of the time, but the media have a responsibility to reflect the views of all people, in a democracy, in a true democracy. They also are expected to provide an unbiased independent representation of facts and events and views. However, many Australians feel that our media, particularly mainstream media, have presented one-sided, politically fuelled versions of events and circumstances surrounding them. And many of us feel misled and betrayed by our media, who often seem to create views rather than report them. Those of us who have politically unpopular views are not being well represented and the public are ill-informed in developing and sustaining educated views and opinions.

Now, there is a description, this media, this type of system of biased politically-focused reporting is called propaganda, and those of us that are concerned about truth and democracy would be concerned about propaganda. (Applause)

Closing remarks

© NSPD 2003. Last modified 22/10/03.