Page 131 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

120 Benjamin Cole
inherent nationalism and bias in its reporting of the ‘war on terror’. The inability
of the US media to convince sceptical audiences in Asia of the justifiability of US
policies threatens to exacerbate existing anti-American sentiment across the
region, creating an environment which militant groups might be able to exploit.
If for no other reason than this, Malaysia and Indonesia are trying to distance their
counter-terrorism policies from the ‘war on terror’.
As a consequence of the lack of credibility of its own media, the US needs to
disseminate its counter-terrorism messages through the national media of each
country, but it has few levers to do this. In all of the states covered by this book,
US policies in the ‘war on terror’ are widely and routinely criticised. Nowhere is
this more apparent than in Malaysia, where the reporting of the conflicts in Iraq,
the occupied Palestinian territories and Chechnya is supportive of the fighters and
critical of the US. This undermines the core messages that the US is trying to get
across in its global media strategy, and in generating sympathy for the causes that
militants champion it has the potential to generate popular support for militant
groups and ideologies.
But despite this, the US shares common interests with regional governments in
wishing to see sub-state conflicts suppressed, which is why even Malaysia and
Indonesia have been partners for the US in hunting down al Qaeda. It is this com-
mon interest which is driving local media outputs to reflect US objectives in the
‘war on terror’ to a greater or lesser extent. In some states the mainstream media
defines indigenous conflicts within the context of the ‘war on terror’ by high-
lighting the links between al Qaeda and indigenous conflicts, which in turn cre-
ates implicit linkages between the reporting of these conflicts and generic
reporting of the ‘war on terror.’ This is sometimes a deliberate policy on the part
of governments in order to obtain international support for the repression of those
groups and communities. China was successful in getting the East Turkistan
Islamic Movement onto the State Department list of foreign terrorist organisa-
tions, despite it having only limited links to al Qaeda. While the Philippines
actively lobbied the EU to have the CPP-NPA designated as a terrorist organisa-
tion. The influence of the ‘war on terror’ is now so pervasive, that even Malaysia,
which does not link its indigenous conflicts with the ‘war’, is much less criticised
for using the Internal Security Act (ISA) after 9/11, despite persistent allegations
that it is being used to suppress legitimate political dissent.
In the freer media in the region, the origins of this failure, or deliberate bias,
are also a result of deficiencies in media practice. In particular, reporters often
fail to question and assess the material that they receive from official sources,
such as whether links between al Qaeda and indigenous groups are institutional
or at an individual level, and whether any links are strategic in nature or for purely
tactical purposes. A key issue that is frequently not picked up by the media is that
the majority of the groups in these states do not share al Qaeda’s pan-Islamic
ideology. This is particularly evident in the Philippines, where the Arroyo
government is trying to disentangle its policy towards the CPP-NPA and the
MILF from US policy in the ‘war on terror’, but under the influence of the AFP
and the US, the mainstream media is constantly highlighting MILF links with JI.