WAS NEWSWEEK MUZZLED?

America has always been self-righteous. But once you see the U.S. on the high horse of morality you can be sure it is covering up immoralities.

WAS NEWSWEEK MUZZLED?
by Uli Schmetzer



America has always been self-righteous. But once you see the U.S. on the high horse of morality you can be sure it is covering up immoralities. Again this is the case in the ongoing campaign to muzzle the media with a hysterical scare campaign about violations of media ethics. The campaign, which seems to bag one well-known scribbler a day, comes at a time the media should be super-active weeding out liars and unethical practices in high places. In the latest scare maneuver Newsweek, the rightwing-ish U.S. weekly, retracted its published story that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay detention center had flushed Korans down the toilet to humiliate Moslem inmates. This posed the question: Did the magazine retract the story because it was not true or because the Administration demanded a retraction? The retraction followed a number of deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan where crowds had rioted, inflamed by the Newsweek report about the abuse of their holy book.

The Newsweek story was no world scoop. In fact it may have been plagiarized from a number of international media reports and an International Red Cross complaint to the Pentagon. All the reports about the abuse of the Koran quoted Moslem terrorist suspects released after interrogation by the Americans or interviewed during detention. More puzzling, the Newsweek story, quoting an unidentified official source, was not challenged by Washington until the riots exploded in Afghanistan.

And why would the story not be true? After all we live in an era when American interrogators abuse inmates, as they did at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad or hold them for years incommunicado at Guatanamo. We live at a time when one U.S. soldier is exonerated for shooting dead an unarmed and wounded Moslem - in front of a camera. Who then could seriously doubt the same type of U.S. Army-trained individual would stop at using the Koran to plague people?

Conclusion: More then likely the Newsweek story is true.

Now to the more serious repercussion: Does this mean our mass media has reached the point where governments dictate what is truth, what are lies, what must be retracted and what must not be published? Have we reached the point when governments decide a certain news item is unpatriotic, bad for the country�s image or counterproductive to its war efforts? Have we reached the point when the media muzzles itself, intimidated by ever more codes of conduct, more ethics more dos-and-don�ts, almost daily charges, persecution and the firing of those media �rogues� who, in some way or other, violated minor codes? Are we now facing a future in which the media acts as a blatant propagandist for the System, is no longer willing to question our leaders, expose their sins or the abuses of the System?

And what are these media codes. Not surprisingly they are elaborated and issued by the same editors who point their self-righteous finger at minor media errors while showing the most cowardly reluctance every day in pursuing the government and the establishment for their far more brutal and lethal errors.

What are ethics, after all?

People create ethics to impose their own moral standards, standards rarely unselfish but designed to benefit the ethic-makers, their corporation, their institution or their government. Ethical codes are not passed down by some divine message but by our own species. Each of us has the right to follow our own code of ethics, since we must assume each of us has a sense of right and wrong though this sense may be in conflict with those who take it upon themselves to issue our ethics. No one, neither editors nor politicians nor philosophers nor company managers or generals can impose their set of ethics on us if they conflict with our own moral sense of right and wrong. Modern philosophers have argued that by accepting unchallenged our ethical codes we are in fact accepting the status quo. Had more Germans challenged Hitler�s ethics and orders we could have avoided the holocaust. Had more journalists protested against editors and publishers always ready to crucify underlings for peccadilli but afraid to extend their moral crusades into the top echelons (and their own ranks) we might have more responsible politicians, less misinformation and a more egalitarian society.

Let�s take an example of how ethics in the media work for the ethic-makers.

No one has been charged, fired or pilloried for printing the stories of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Certainly not the writers and certainly not the editors and publishers across the U.S. who allowed their publications and networks to air and print the unsubstantiated New York Times series based on �anonymous� sources. These seemingly erudite reports were exactly what the Bush Administration needed to convince the American public that the country must go to war against Saddam Hussein.

Yet one could argue that these reports are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the destruction of a nation, civil war and an increase in terrorism. On the other hand changing the name on a quote or changing the name of a person to protect their privacy harmed no one but was considered a breach of ethics so serious it terminated the careers and livelihood of scores of journalists, including myself.

While these editors and publishers chased after reporters who had violated their set of ethics in some way not one of them asked for the impeachment of a President who had started a war under false pretenses or a Secretary of Defense who had told a pack of fabricated lies.

Today the media barons and our academic moralists, most of them safely embedded and beneficiaries of the establishment, are falling over each other to condemn and demand the sacking of journalists. All this takes away the limelight from the real issues, the real culprits, the erring leaders and their minions. While editors and publishers are wringing their hands academics split hairs over minor rights and wrongs, �wisely� leaving the major rights and wrongs for future generations to ponder.

The media has become a joke when editors suspend reporters for going to a concert critical of the Iraq War, when news organizations appoint inquisitors to hunt for renegade reporters and when a minor violation of the dos and don�ts can lead to dismissal and erase decades of honest work.

In fact there are so many dos and don�ts now on the list of ethics only a mass media person with suicidal career tendencies or a rare dose of idealism would try and expose any of the many flaws in our pseudo-democratic society.

ends
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