June 16, 2005

The Sun and the New York Post — tabloid newspapers belonging to the News Corporation — recently published photographs of Saddam Hussain going about his business in his prison cell in his underwear, triggering off a barrage of criticism from some media analysts.

These experts rightly questioned the wisdom of publishing the half-naked pictures, the sole aim of which was to heap scorn and humiliation on the former dictator of Iraq. The experts were of the view that the pictures didn’t have much news value.

Responding to the criticism, The Sun described the pictures as iconic and said no newspaper in the world could have resisted printing such pictures. In its rejoinder, it also implied that the pictures by portraying Saddam as just another imprisoned criminal would help quell the Iraqi insurgency.

The pictures reminded me of an editorial in The Sun, published a few months after the 9/11 attacks, which had lashed out at the British newspapers of the liberal left that opposed the war against the Taliban-led Afghan government on humanitarian grounds. If you remember, at that point in time Afghanistan was facing a severe drought.

The Blair and Bush administrations simply brushed aside these humanitarian considerations and proceeded to bomb Afghan cities with gay abandon. They, however, made it a point to drop a few hundred, or was it a few thousand, food parcels on the hundreds of thousands of civilians who were displaced as a result.

Anyway, the aforesaid editorial criticized The Guardian and The Independent for questioning government policy. It actually went to the extent of characterizing the two fine specimens of newspaper journalism as traitors.

What The Sun conveniently forgot, however, was that scrutinizing the goings on in the government circles was one of the very important functions of newspapers. It follows then that no newspaper in the world should be described as a traitor for merely trying to do its job.

This leads us to a crucial question: By publishing Saddam’s pictures in his undies, were The Sun and the New York Post doing a service to their publics and the world at large, which they claim to be serving wholeheartedly? I think not.

I say this because in my opinion the pictures had zero news value. After all, isn’t it common knowledge that Saddam has been imprisoned at an undisclosed location in Iraq? Isn’t it common knowledge also that men often wear underwear? So, what was the point in publishing the pictures, especially when they violated the Geneva Convention. This convention, as you already know, seeks to ensure humane treatment of all prisoners of war and expects the signatory countries to protect people under custody from public curiosity.

Well, there could be only one credible explanation for the leaking by the US troops, of the pictures. At the same time, their publication by The Sun and the New York Post could only be aimed at somehow breaking the back of Iraqi insurgency.

Whether or not the pictures would, in any way, help the Blair and Bush administrations achieve that goal, only time will tell. However, I, for one believe that the pictures, coupled with those coming out of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, would only strengthen the resolve of the Iraqi insurgents to carry on the fight. This is where the pictures would prove to be counter-productive, vis-à-vis the cause The Sun and the New York Post espouse.

You see, no people — be they Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians and North Koreans — want other people to tell them what to do. And, no country wants one of its own to be singled out and humiliated, no matter how controversial the person in question may be. This is largely why the sanctions on Iraq, Iran and North Korea failed.

In conclusion, let me put a simple question to you. Doesn’t the publication of the questionable pictures, and also the aforementioned editorial, indicate a blurring of boundaries between western journalism and western governments? We have always been taught that journalism is meant to be independent of government.

Have the western journalists chosen to forget that golden rule in the post-9/11 scenario? The question is important because if they have, it will be left to journalists belonging to the South, especially the Muslim World, to raise a voice whenever there are excesses or injustices in the ongoing war against terrorism.

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