Page 233 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Catapult the Media 223

of Iraqi resistance fighters as a means of getting Iraq back on track, Glantz in-
stead predicts that such actions will "make the Iraqi people angry and make
more people join the re~istance."'~
The anti-war reporting of unilaterals on the ground leaves little question
over the scope of Iraq's infrastructure and security deterioration. By publishing
his blog online and reporting for Independent-Left publications such as Z Maga-
zine, Dahr Jamail became one of the most well known journalists reporting out
of Iraq on the country's deteriorating security and living conditions. Jamail's
online dispatches provide a more thorough understanding of the problems con-
fronting over twenty-five million Iraqis living under "brutal, chaotic lawlessness
caused by the American occupation."25 Jamail blames the American mass media
in part for these conditions, for what he views as the "whitewashing [of] the
degrading situation" in cities like Falluja: as the town "begins to resemble a
concentration camp; the death toll of innocent Iraqis continues to escalate. . . the
American troops continue their aggressive operations-and all that comes
through here in this still peaceful-seeming land are flickering images of car-
bomb carnage."26
Reporting from Falluja, American journalist Rahul Mahajan made similar
assessments of the devastation of the November 2004 U.S. attack. Mahajan was
one of the few unilateral journalists to confirm reports of U.S. snipers targeting
ambulance drivers in the city during the American siege that was launched on
November 8 2004. Mahajan's recount of these assassinations is disturbing, as he
reported firsthand an ambulance, "with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the
windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they
would have hit the driver's chest. Another ambulance again with a single, neat
bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying
of fire. These were deliberate shots to kill people in driving the ambulance^."^^
Strict limitations on reporters' access to Falluja have prohibited critical reporting
(such as that of Mahajan) of the American attack.28
The anti-war editorializing of Progressive-Left activists, writers, and jour-
nalists in the U.S. complements the critical views of many American unilateral
reporters in Iraq. Even before the invasion of Iraq, the anti-war leanings in Pro-
gressive-Left media were apparent. Writing for the Nation, David Cortright por-
trayed the invasion of Iraq as "illegal," "unjust," and "completely unneces-
while
sa~y,"~~ Howard Zinn, writing for the Progressive magazine, classified the
conflict as "a war that is not a war but a massacre. . . mayhem caused by the
most powerful military machine on Earth raining thousands of bombs on a fifth-
rate military power already reduced to poverty by two wars and ten years of eco-
nomic sanction^."^^ In Z Magazine, labor activist David Bacon assailed the
American occupation for exacerbating Iraq's economic and labor problems:
"Every day, the economic policies of the occupying authorities create more hun-
ger among Iraq's working people, transforming them into a pool of low-wage,
semi-employed labor, desperate for jobs at almost any price."3'
In the realm of independent television media, Amy Goodman has pioneered
an increasingly popular form of adversarial reporting and investigative journal-
ism on programs such as Democracy Now! on the Free Speech Television net-