News Coverage of Iraq. How Fair Is Your Deal?

Krieg in den Trummern des Rechts [War among the ruins of law]
[picture of fearful-looking soldier]
Das Feuer, die Angst - Tagebuch aus Bagdad [The fire, the fear - Bagdad diary]

La guerre imprevue du Pentagon [The war the Pentagon didn't foresee]
[sarcastic cartoon]

Bush sous le feu de la critique [Bush under the fire of criticisms]
[picture of coffin of US soldier]

Day the war came home
[picture of coffin of British soldier]

Iraqi suicide bomber kills four as Saddam threatens war in UK
[picture of coffin British soldier]

Under fire: the architects of war. Growing resentment of British 'liberators'

War tacticsa split is denied by US
[picture of US soldier - his helmet says: "Kill 'em all"]

Rumsfeld onder vuur [Rumsfeld under fire]

Opmars vertraagd, strijd gaat door [Advances slowed down, struggle continues]

Harde kritiek op stretegie Rumsfeld [Harsh criticism of Rumsfeld strategies]

nimh
All those papers reflect the attitudes of the Europeans

BAGHDAD SHAKEN BY BOMBS (Fox)
Pentagon: Some Iraqi elite forces cut in half (CNN)
U.S. Hits Republican Guard (ABC News)

MoD tactics 'are putting unembedded journalists' lives at risk'

British journalists covering the war in Iraq said yesterday their lives were being put at risk because the Ministry of Defence has decided to hinder correspondents who are not attached to its units. [..]

"My job is to make your lives as difficult as possible. You will get no help whatsoever," a senior army spokesman allegedly told one group of journalists. [..] While individual officers in combat zones in southern Iraq have continued this tradition, they admit they are under orders to deny assistance to non-pool or "unilateral" journalists. [..]

It seems that Washington and London are not keen for their actions to be scrutinised by journalists outside their control and whose reports are not subject to censorship by "media minders". The behaviour of officers is, according to a number of senior correspondents, putting lives at risk. [..]

And, to speak to Au's understanding of those European news items as anti-American or 'showing in worst light'...that isn't my perception of those items at all. They are critical, but mildly so

There's little news on CNN... unless of course, you want to know how the Dow Index is doing or what the latest developments are in cases involving missing white children. As for war coverage, CNN merely gives us the bells and whistles; nifty graphics, Hollywood editing techniques and a blockbuster score to pre-empt the real groundbreaking news: the commercials. CNN anchors spend much of their airtime congratulating themselves for being able to deliver such a polished product in the time that it takes to slap together a quarter-pounder. Unfettered by the nutritional requirements of content, CNN brings it to you shiny-wrapped and steaming off the wire.

Like its fast food counterparts, American news relies on the statistical improbability of the consumer ever actually opening the bun to reveal the reconstituted offal inside. News Inc. has become the forum for generals, commanders and CEOs to deliver a nonstop monologue of praise for themselves and the institutions that bask in the reflected glory of the shining tin on their chests. News viewers are seldom expected to digest the glut of information beamed at them with the intensity of a pixellated shock and awe campaign. We remember the headlines but more often than not, forget what's beneath the bold print. The sonorously indifferent lull of General-speak sets the mood for a collective amnesia; not much different from the starch-induced slumber that comes with consuming too many empty calories. How many of us even remember what took place a few days ago yet somehow have it etched in distant memory as "breaking news?"

Just days ago, it was reported (falsely, as it turns out) that allied forces had unearthed what Hans Blix and his UN team were unable to find: weapons of mass destruction.... Again, breaking news became just more breaking wind from the Pentagon when CNN (along with several other American news agencies) failed to verify reports of a Scud missile cruising into Kuwait from Baghdad. Under the guidelines the UN laid out to disarm Iraq after the first Gulf War, Soviet-made Scud missiles with their long-range capabilities were strictly verboten. If such reports were true then Washington had what it needed to say, "see, told you so" to former allies in Europe.... intelligence sources later discredited these reports, so yet another smoking gun became just one more steaming pile of manure on the information super-grapevine reported as fact and unchecked before leading the news.

If CNN represents the Golden Arches of television broadcasting, then the FOX News channel is its dirtier Burger Barn rival, throwing guns and girls into its primetime mix of hard-broiled infotainment. As self-appointed custodians of fear, Fox anchors use their newsroom as a bully pulpit to browbeat their viewers into believing that fair and balanced reporting means twelve hours of liberal-bashing followed by twelve hours of bashing liberals. CNN plays the more cautious role of guardian to their corporate masters' interests; the chickenhawk politics of the Saab-driving country club set; a declining demographic of Canadian grandmothers who call into Larry King's show and are careful not to offend the visiting generals on the set.

CNN brings the war to us with anchors recycled from the kaffee-klatch programs that are the mainstay of their ratings. The silkily glib Paula Zahn does her battlefront lounge act from her Manhattan studio alongside her embedded colleagues who wave at her by satellite link from Kuwait. For Zahn's viewers, war coverage is a blonde-led prayer breakfast with assorted colonels and the relatives of enlisted men and women who looked shocked and awed to be in the presence of someone almost as famous as Jerry Springer.

Like the McFood that CNN emulates in its McNews format, the finished product resembles no more than trace evidence of the slaughterhouse's mechanized momentum of bloodletting. "All The War Without The Gore," seems to be CNN's dubious moral stance to the $75 billion and counting X-rated version of the Iraqi Horror Picture Show they've packaged to look a National Geographic special. If you want to see the true face of this invasion the only option is the foreign press, whose news teams unsparingly transmit images of the real war - the ravaged and grimacing corpses who even in death, know something that CNN viewers never will.

"Bush is an occupier and terrorist. He thought he was playing a video game," said George Elnaber, 36, a Arab Christian and the owner of a supermarket in Amman. "We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now," he said, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"Mr. Bush has lost us. We are gone. Enough. That's the end," said Diaa Rashwan, head of the comparative politics unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "If America starts winning tomorrow, there will be suicide bombing that will start in America the next day. It is a whole new level now."