[ASsman]

Thursday, November 18th, 2004
The Failure of the Corporate Media's Coverage in Iraq



As the situation in Iraq continues to grow more bloody by the day, we hear an address by Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani discussing the corporate media's coverage of Iraq and the U.S. assault on Fallujah. [includes rush transcript]
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As the situation in Iraq continues to grow more bloody by the day, the unelected interim government of Iyad Allawi continues its crackdown on the Iraqi media. Last week, Allawi's government threatened media organizations that do not report on the Iraqi governments spin on the siege of Falluja, saying reporters must differentiate between, "innocent citizens of Fallujah who are not targeted by the military operations and between the terrorist groups who infiltrated the city and took its people hostage under the pretext of resistance and jihad."
But these instructions to journalists appear to be contradicted by the US military's own statistics. Earlier this week, the military said that of the roughly 1,000 prisoners taken in Fallujah, only 15 are believed to be foreigners.

The Iraqi government also warned journalists not to add patriotic descriptions to members of the Iraqi resistance. Journalists were told to underscore that "these military operations did not come about until all peaceful means were attempted." It is unclear what will happen to news organizations that break the new guidelines. Meanwhile, stark differences continue in how the embedded correspondents report on the siege of Fallujah and how Arab media are covering the US offensive. While most reports on US networks focus on what they call the house to house fighting in Fallujah, Arab media are showing images of bodies piled on the streets, dead children and corpses covered by flies, decomposing. One of the few unembedded correspondents in the city-an Arab reporter from the BBC- has described a stench in areas of Fallujah from the dead bodies.

Earlier this week at a forum here in New York on The New York Times coverage of US foreign policy, Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University addressed the situation in Fallujah. Mamdani is the author of "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror." Here is Professor Mahmood Mamdani.


Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. He is also the Director of the Institute of African Studies at SIPA. He is the author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror.