-Caveat Lector- washingtonpost.com
War News Filtered Through Nations' Politics Reporting Is Extensive, but Nature of Coverage Largely Depends on Stance of Governments By Glenn Frankel and Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, March 23, 2003; Page A32 LONDON, March 22 -- British journalists are blanketing television, radio and newspapers back home with extensive, round-the-clock coverage of the war, while the Arab news media are focusing almost exclusively on the view from inside Iraq and on antiwar demonstrations around the world. And Chinese viewers are getting perhaps their least-censored access ever to war reports. As the American- and British-led invasion of Iraq unfolds, what people see and read around the world still largely depends on where they live and on the stance their governments have taken. Many editorials have been relentlessly critical of the United States. But there is better access to and more information about this war than during any recent conflict. The BBC has mounted one of its most ambitious broadcast operations, with some 200 journalists and technicians deployed in Iraq and 12 nearby countries, including three correspondents and crew members in Baghdad. It is operating seven satellite dishes and broadcasting coverage 24 hours a day on television, radio and the Internet. The network's 10 p.m. news program Thursday drew 7.6 million viewers, its largest news audience since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a spokeswoman. Britain's Sky News and ITN have also dispatched news crews to the region. Three members of an ITN crew were reported missing outside the southern Iraqi city of Basra after fighting broke out there. British newspapers have also produced blanket coverage. The tabloids generally have fallen in behind the government and its armed forces. The Sun, in a 3 a.m. "war edition" this morning, called Friday night's bombardment of Baghdad "hypnotic and horrifying," but laid the blame for any civilian casualties "squarely on the shoulders of the wicked dictator," Saddam Hussein. One exception has been the antiwar Daily Mirror, which headlined Friday night's attack "Shocking and Awful." The Mirror has tried to straddle the line, supporting British forces while attacking the government. "Troops are heroes, the war's insane," read one headline. France, which opposes the war, has no troops in the field. But the story of the war has taken up more than half the space allotted to news coverage in papers, and the bulk of time on television as well. Most of the newspaper coverage has been straight reporting -- although there are signs of an antiwar or anti-American perspective. Friday's edition of the left-of-center Le Monde carried the large lead headline, "The American war has begun." The Arab news media generally succumbed today to feelings of frustration and overall gloom as U.S.-led troops surged further into Iraq. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite network that has attracted a huge following in the Arab world, broadcast dramatic images tonight of casualties it said were caused by the attack on Basra. It offered interviews with the first Iraqi casualties at a Baghdad hospital. Al-Jazeera also reported widely on the violent demonstration Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, in which two people were killed. And it broadcast a special report detailing ties between senior members of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies. Most Arab news outlets continued to blame the United States for the fighting and called for a quick end to the bombing. "It is not enough for them to see some Arab territories bleeding, our airspace and waters turned into passages of death," wrote al-Thawrah, one of Syria's main papers. "They want to add our bodies to these, to complete their portrait, which they have been preparing for decades." There were fears that the invasion could set off ethnic turmoil between Arabs and Kurds, and worries that U.S. and British forces would be emboldened to conquer other Arab nations. Several editorials called the war in Iraq "American imperialism." "Even if the Iraqis hate Saddam they cannot love those who light fires in their airspace and destroy their positions," wrote the paper al-Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. A minority blamed Hussein for causing the war. "In very simple words, Saddam Hussein is solely responsible for everything that's happening in Iraq and he must weather the misery of his people," Ossama Agag wrote in an op-ed column in Akhbar al-Yawm, an Egyptian paper. In predominately Muslim Indonesia, television journalists have been reporting energetically on casualties, chronologies of attacks and official statements from both sides. An editorial in the Jakarta Post, an English-language daily, laid blame on both President Bush and Hussein. In Mexico, where polls show the overwhelming majority against the war, newspapers are steadily criticizing U.S. "aggression." The enormous banner headline in Reforma newspaper was: "The U.S. Strikes Without Mercy." Friday's papers devoted a great deal of coverage to antiwar demonstrators around the world. Bush was called "the grave digger of world peace." One editorial cartoon depicted Bush sitting on top of a world in the shape of a bomb, with a match in his hand. News of the war was mixed with special apprehension in Australia, which had sent 2,000 military personnel to the Iraqi theater. News executives in Australia chafed at the comparative secrecy surrounding the Australian troops, which have not followed the U.S. lead in "embedding" large numbers of reporters. Some private Japanese networks returned to their fare of soap operas and game shows Friday. But the public NHK broadcast network kept up nearly continuous coverage of the war, with straightforward commentary from military analysts armed with the pointers and maps that are a staple of Japanese TV. China's Foreign Ministry ordered all Chinese journalists to leave Baghdad a day before the war began. Nonetheless, the state-run Central Television ran live footage from CNN of the first cracks of antiaircraft fire from Baghdad. Two CCTV channels have cut into regular programming to air speeches by Bush and Hussein, and to report other key developments. The Chinese media have generally been free from the anti-American screeds that characterized China's reporting of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the U.S.-led NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. Still, hopes among Chinese journalists that China's media outlets would dispatch up to 100 war correspondents to the region have gone up in smoke. One weekly publication, 21st Century World Herald, had planned a special daily edition for each day the war lasted. But the paper ran afoul of Beijing's censors for printing an interview calling for political reform earlier this month. Chinese authorities closed the paper on March 13, the day the paper's war correspondent, Michael An, arrived in Baghdad. An is now on his way back to Beijing. Wax reported from Cairo. Correspondents Mary Jordan in Mexico City, Robert J. McCartney in Paris, Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, John Pomfret in Beijing and Doug Struck in Tokyo contributed to this report. � 2003 The Washington Post Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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