Month: April 2003

“The thoughts of wealth and glory that arise first are like poison ivy: they harm merely by a touch, enchanting and paralysing the mind.” (Leaves of the Heaven Tree, 11th Century) Hell, The System Works →

In a recent Media Alert (Why Even Talk About It? Part 1, April 4, 2003) we reported that the BBC’s leading current affairs programme, Newsnight, had devoted 45 seconds to the killing of 62 Iraqi →

Iraq is quickly sliding down the order of news stories on our TVs and front pages – the fate of the Iraqi people is already largely veiled in silence. While the media focus switches to →

“The fact is that they are deceitful with no wish to deceive, not like Machiavellians, but with no consciousness of their deceit, and usually with the naiive assurance that they are doing something excellent and →

“This war is un-American”, writes Jonathan Freedland of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Guardian. America, after all, “still sees itself as the instinctive friend of all who struggle to kick out a foreign occupier – →

Man Plus It’s Cartoon Time on ITN’s Evening News. From a computer-generated street in Baghdad, a radiating signal from US ‘special forces’ attracts a cartoon Rockwell B-1B ‘Lancer’ bomber circling “on-call”, like a doctor, overhead. →

Journalists Reveal Their True Colours On April 9, a US tank recovery vehicle tightened a metal rope and a statue of Saddam Hussein came crashing down in central Baghdad. The event was celebrated by “dozens” →

MEDIA LENS MEDIA ALERT   09th April 2003 Media Lens Alert:  The priorities are clear, the perspective of power unthinkingly adopted. And so mainstream news headlines declaim that “coalition forces have penetrated deep into the →

Exchange With George Entwistle, Editor, BBC’s Newsnight In researching our latest New Statesman article (April 7, 2003), David Edwards interviewed George Entwistle (March 31, 2003), editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight. Part →

The Al-Shula Bombing And An Exchange With The BBCs Newsnight Editor “Isn’t it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we’ve seen, is the only potential world policeman?” →