email from BBC (occupied) Iraq

Dear Gabriele

With reference to our earlier exchanges about Operation Swarmer and IRIN's report on the same : Following my message to them (which predated your message to me) IRIN conducted an extensive investigation into their report and have now withdrawn it, as they were not able to substantiate it. You can check this by going to their website. I don't imagine that you will be inclined to point this out on your own website, and I have no desire at all to embarrass IRIN, most of whose work is excellent.

For your information, the BBC in Baghdad does not operate either from a hotel or from the Green Zone.

If you have any further comments on my work, please address them to :

www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Best wishes

Jim Muir

***

Dear Jim,

Thank you for your email. Contrary to what you write, I have just posted it on my website.

About what you write regarding IRIN - “I have no desire at all to embarrass IRIN, most of whose work is excellent.” - I am sure IRIN won’t be embarrassed for one mistake you claim they made. After all, the BBC has made “mistakes” constantly and no embarrassment has ever come from your corporation.

Finally, when you write: “For your information, the BBC in Baghdad does not operate either from a hotel or from the Green Zone.”, what’s your point? Is the BBC able to work freely in Iraq, without having to count for its survival on the military might provided by the US and UK forces? Is that journalism?

Since you give me this chance, please could you explain why the BBC is calling those who fight against a foreign, military, brutal, immoral and illegal occupation of their own country “insurgents” and “terrorists” instead of using the only proper word fitting to them, Resistance?

Also, have you ever thought that by completely relying on this brutal and illegal occupation to do your job, according to international law you and your colleagues could be accused of actively aiding and abetting in war crimes and crimes against humanity?

Thank you and please note that this is NOT a personal attack.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

Dear Gabriele

I do not "claim" that IRIN made a mistake, they admit it.

My point re hotels is in answer to your snide remarks in earlier communcations about our staying in hotels and "BBC hotel journalism", as though we are somehow having a safe and comfortable time. I assure you we are having neither. Nor are we dependent for our security on foreign forces, except on the very rare occasions when we go on embeds. How safe that is, you can judge from the death of two CBS colleagues two weeks ago. Of course we cannot operate freely - there is a war going on, in which we are at definite risk from both sides. As I wrote to you before, we are well aware of the limitations, but still judge it better to be there than not. You may think you know better from where you are writing, but we believe that trying to report Iraq from London or wherever would not work. You accuse us of "actively aiding and abetting in war crimes and crimes against humanity" - do you think incidents such as Haditha would have been credibly reported had the media not been present in Iraq? It was only investigated by the US after the media had taken it up.

I don't think there is anything I can say that will convince you that we are sincerely trying to do our best to give an accurate picture of what is happening in Iraq, in difficult and dangerous conditions. So with regret, I don't wish to spend any more time on this apparently fruitless task.

Best wishes

Jim Muir

***

Dear Jim,

Thanks for your reply.

You make some very important points and your words “there is a war going on, in which we are at definite risk from both sides” are very interesting and full of consequences.

One point in particular I think deserves some more details. You write:

“do you think incidents such as Haditha would have been credibly reported had the media not been present in Iraq? It was only investigated by the US after the media had taken it up.”

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail (he spent lots of time reporting from Iraq, and he has never been embedded) recently wrote:

Al-Jazeera channel, with over 40 million viewers in the Arab world, is the largest broadcaster of news in the Middle East. It has been bearing the brunt of an ongoing violent US propaganda campaign. Their station headquarters in both Afghanistan and Baghdad were destroyed by US forces during the US invasions of both countries. In Baghdad, the attack on their office by a US warplane killed their correspondent Tareq Ayoub. Additionally, al-Jazeera reporters throughout Iraq have been systematically detained and intimidated before the broadcaster was banned outright from the country. These are somewhat contradictory actions for an occupying force ostensibly attempting to promote democracy and freedom in Iraq.

On November 19, 2005, the day of the Haditha Massacre, al-Jazeera had long since been banned from operating in Iraq. The station forced to conduct its war reporting from a desk in Doha, Qatar, was doing so via telephone. Two Iraqis worked diligently to cover the US occupation of Iraq through a loose network of contacts within Iraq. Defying the US-imposed extreme challenges, al-Jazeera, by dint of its responsible reporting, had the entire Haditha scoop as soon as it occurred, which they shared with Western and other media outlets, while the latter were content to participate in delaying the story nearly four months by regurgitating unverified military releases.

Two days after the massacre, DahrJamailiraq.com was the only free place on the Internet that carried al-Jazeera's report translated into English (it could be viewed at MidEastWire.com for a fee).

The anchorperson for al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, interviewed journalist Walid Khalid in Bahgdad. Khalid's report, translated by MidEastWire.com, was as follows:
Yesterday evening, an explosive charge went off under a US Marines vehicle in the al-Subhani area, destroying it completely. Half an hour later, the US reaction was violent. US aircraft bombarded four houses near the scene of the incident, causing the immediate death of five Iraqis. Afterward, the US troops stormed three adjacent houses where three families were living near the scene of the explosion. Medical sources and eyewitnesses close to these families affirmed that the US troops, along with the Iraqi Army, executed 21 persons; that is, three families, including nine children and boys, seven women, and three elderly people. (...)

It wasn't until four months after the event that the Western corporate media started to straighten out the story. On March 19, 2006, it was Time Magazine that "broke" the Haditha story in a piece titled "Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha." The primary sources for this piece were a video shot by an Iraqi journalism student produced the day after the massacre and interviews conducted with witnesses. Another glaring evidence of how a few simple interviews with Iraqis and some readily available photographs and video can drastically correct the glaring errors in the Western media's representations of the occupation. (...)

But the Haditha Massacre is far from being the only story that the Western corporate media has delayed covering. On May 4, 2004, journalist Dahr Jamail, one of the authors of this piece, wrote "Telltale Signs of Torture Lead Family to Demand Answers." The story, published by the NewStandard, was about a 57-year-old Iraqi named Sadiq Zoman, who was detained at his residence in Kirkuk on July 21, 2003, when US troops raided the Zoman family home in search of weapons and, apparently, to arrest Zoman. Over a month later, on August 23, soldiers dropped Zoman off, comatose, at the main hospital in Tikrit. His body bore telltale signs of torture: point burns on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet and genitals and whip marks across his back.

Jamail originally wrote the story in January 2004 and shared the information with over 100 newspapers in the US for them to report on. The story was conveniently ignored by the US corporate media until it was forced to run other torture photos from Abu Ghraib after journalist Seymour Hersh threatened to scoop 60 Minutes II by running his piece about torture in the New Yorker, in late April 2004.

Another example of this delayed "reporting" involved the report on the use of white phosphorous by the US military against civilians in Fallujah during the November 2004 assault on the city. Jamail originally reported a story titled "Unusual Weapons Used in Fallujah" with Inter Press Service. US corporate media ignored the story until the Independent in the UK ran his reporting about the atrocity. Even after this, aside from a few token editorials that mentioned this war crime, most major news outlets continued in their silence. This despite the fact that the Pentagon admitted to the use of these weapons, and residents of Fallujah like Abu Sabah had long since told a reporter, "They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud, then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of soke behind them." He also described pieces of these bombs that exploded into large fires that burnt the skin when water was thrown on the burns.

There are countless other stories which the US corporate media has deliberately delayed from their reportage and which may never reach the wide US audience that they deserve. It is necessary to ask, when will the corporate media report on stories such as the following: (...)

Please, take the time to read what independent journalist Dahr Jamail wrote in Propaganda and Haditha, By Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger, t r u t h o u t, Friday 09 June 2006. He writes about the same Iraq and the same war you, the BBC and the other state-corporate media do.

Why then is there so much difference?

Best regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

To know more about this story, click here