Page 25 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

14 Toby Miller
Rights 2003; Human Rights Watch 2003a; Independent 2003; MotherJones.com
2003; Shafer 2003). When Saddam Hussein was captured, the hypocrisy defied
description, as one journalist after another lined up to display their memory
loss, mendacity and ignorance as they celebrated his humiliation by the US
(Naureckas 2004).
The government also sought to destabilize alternative views, in ways that were
endorsed by the nationalism of domestic journalism. Al Jazeera may work assid-
uously to expose Arab audiences to official Israeli points of view from a secular
perspective, and to focus on US suffering and reactions to September 11, but the
US State Department disrupted it via pressure on Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamid bin
Khalifa al-Thaniof (el-Nawawy and Gher 2003; Hafez 2001; International
Federation of Journalists 2001: 20), and the channel’s Washington correspondent
was ‘detained’ en route to a US-Russia summit in November 2001 (Miladi 2003:
159). The network was assaulted by US munitions in Afghanistan in 2001 (where
it was the sole broadcast news outlet in Kabul) and Iraq in 2003, and subject to
Rumsfeld’s extraordinary remark that it was ‘Iraqi propaganda’ and regular slan-
der by the Bush Administration as ‘All Osama All the Time’ (quoted in Getlin and
Jensen 2003; Rampton and Strauber 2003: 186). This anti-democratic violence
matched similarly tyrannical outbursts against it by the authoritarian governments
of Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait (Jasperson and El-Kikhia
2003: 130). Then it was denied access by its US-based internet provider and had
to switch servers to France (Association for Progressive Communications 2003;
Fine 2003).
Throughout the US occupation of Iraq, al Jazeera’s workers were subject to
violent assaults by US soldiers, culminating in murders (Parenti 2004; Eide 2004:
280). The attack on the network’s Kabul operations was justified by Rear Admiral
Craig Quigley, the US Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs,
who claimed that al Qaeda interests were being aided by activities going on there.
Al Jazeera denied the charge. Quigley’s proof was that al Jazeera was using a
satellite uplink and was in contact with Taliban officials – pretty normal activities
for a news service of any competence (FAIR 2003f; Gowing 2003: 234) but ren-
dered abnormal through the work of agencies like Fox News, whose operatives
described the Taliban as ‘rats’, ‘terror goons’, and ‘psycho Arabs’during the 2001
conflict (quoted in Thussu 2003: 127). The 2003 US assault on al Jazeera was
condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International
as a violation of international humanitarian law, and that Committee, Reporters
Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists, and the International
Press Institute all condemned US bombing of Iraqi state television (Lobe 2003).
Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange expelled al Jazeera during the inva-
sion of Iraq, following US Governmental criticisms of it for televising prisoners
of war and Arab criticisms of the attack. The official explanation was that for
‘security reasons’, the number of broadcasters allowed at the Exchange had to be
limited to those offering ‘responsible business coverage’. The NASDAQ
exchange refused to grant al Jazeera press credentials at the same time, for the
same reason (Agovino 2003; FAIR 2003c; Reuters 2003). Index on Censorship