What’s behind this media orchestra?
A CAREFUL study of the coverage of the Black Tuesday incidents and its aftermath by the western media reveals a clear and astonishing departure from its usual handling of such events.
Wide-ranging investigative reporting, searching questioning on lapses on the part of government agencies or functionaries and independent assessments of the whole episode have been the characteristic pattern of western, particularly American, media reporting of such occurrences. Surprisingly, the media coverage of the September 11 tragedy was lacking in all those elements. The reason was that they were acting under some preconceived notions which they wanted to prevail.
One of the two main areas in which the media would have raised searching questions under any other circumstances, was the complete failure of the intelligence agencies in forewarning what was to come on that fateful day. The other such area was an apparent absence of surveillance and security measures at the largest office building in the US which is also the nerve centre of its defence operations, the Pentagon, and also at one of the tallest structures in New York city, the World Trade Centre.
There are two main intelligence agencies working under the US government — the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Both of them have multi-billion dollar budgets and a large network consisting of spies, collaborators and informants. These agencies are armed with the most modern and sophisticated equipment.
The CIA was formed in 1947 during the Truman administration for gathering a wide variety of information considered necessary to safeguard the national security of the US.
It operates world-wide, outside the United States. It also works, whenever there is a need for it, in association with the intelligence agencies, the armed forces and the governments of other countries. It has been involved in many covert operations around the world and in toppling popular governments in several Third World countries.
Established in 1908, the FBI has been responsible for intelligence and law enforcement work mainly inside the US. It employs thousands of agents and other personnel and also runs an academy for the training of its employees and a laboratory for scientific investigation. The responsibilities of the FBI consist of gathering intelligence on, and investigating, various types of crimes, including domestic terrorism.
According to what little has been given out by the FBI about the 19 hijackers, they were probably Arabs hailing from various countries in the Middle East. All of them had spent some time in the United States before committing those ghastly acts of terrorism.
During their stay there, they had received training for flying passenger planes in American institutes and had also made other preparations which were spread over a period of about a year.
The question arises as to how it was that neither the CIA nor the FBI could get any inkling of their activities or plans. According to the US administration and its allies, Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda group were behind this action. It is, therefore, logical to believe that these people must have remained in contact with the members of that group before and after arriving in the US. But Osama and his group have been for years under the most careful watch of not only the US intelligence agencies but also, because of their Middle East connection, under the vigilant eyes of their Israeli counterpart and associate, the Mossad. Was this massive failure of three of the world’s best equipped intelligence networks not worth discussing and probing by the media?
The Pentagon is generally described as the most protected building in the US. And it has to be because of the nature of work performed there. Strategic points all over the world are usually equipped with a surveillance system which gives a warning of any advancing intruder and also a retaliation mechanism that comes into operation in no time and which prevents or, at least, resists the intruder from causing any damage to the structures and installations. High-rise structures like the WTC towers, too, have such systems.
As reported by the media, the north tower of the WTC was hit by a plane at 8.45 a.m., the south tower at 9.03 a.m. and the Pentagon at 9.35 a.m. Thus, there was an interval of 50 minutes between the first strike and the crash into the Pentagon.
The camera crew and the team of commentators of the CNN and Fox News were able to take their positions well in time to show live the attack on the second tower which came only 18 minutes after the one on the first. But those holding the supreme responsibility of protecting some of the most supposedly secured buildings in the US capital were, apparently, in deep slumber even after a lapse of 50 minutes.
Such an enormous lapse would have let loose a great media uproar even in a Third World country and would have also caused quite a few heads to roll. But not a word of criticism or of censure has been uttered so far by the otherwise extremely vigilant American and British media. Isn’t it surprising?
The media description of the 19 persons believed to be the hijackers involved in the Sept 11 tragedy, was very sketchy. Yet it was enough to make one conclude, as did Newsweek in its issue of September 24, that they did not appear to be poor and desperate, were comfortably blended into American culture, at least one had a family and school-going children, and another could ‘violate Quran’s ban on alcohol.’
This description is very different from the picture that one usually has in mind of a religious fanatic set on a suicidal mission. One would believe him to be a recluse and a mysterious person with puritanical habits. This divergence in what was given out officially and the common perception should have led the media to use its own initiative and resources to dig out more about the men concerned.
They had been doing that in the past. It was because of the investigations carried out by two sceptical journalists from The Washington Post that what Nixon had tried to hide with regard to Watergate was uncovered. In the Monica Lewinsky case, too, the media had scrambled to obtain narratives about the principal characters from every one — valets to friends of the school days.
Here, in the case of the alleged hijackers, the issues were far grave than the moral weaknesses of erring presidents. These people were stated to have been involved in incidents that had shaken the world and were likely to affect the future course of mankind. Yet the media people did not feel the need to look deeper into each case but quietly accepted what was dished out to them by the FBI.
Why did the American media, as also the rest of the western media, behave in this unusual fashion on this occasion? It can thus safely concluded that this was so because the media had been acting under certain preconceived perceptions.
The first of these was that Osama was responsible for these acts of terrorism. Within an hour of these gruesome happenings, a BBC commentator named Osama directly and the CNN followed the lead a bit later.
Obviously, they could not have had access to any solid evidence in such a short time. (Incidentally, any such evidence is still not available, at least, to the public). Thus, it was mere speculation and that too of a very transparent kind in view of the example of the Oklahoma killings for which ‘Islamic terrorists’ had been blamed at first but later investigations had revealed that it was the work of a Christina American.
The other predetermined notion was that the Muslims — individuals and governments — has been involved in the terrorism and this was an opportunity to teach them a lesson. That was why there was no attempt to advise President Bush not to rush with hasty decisions when he made the rather imperious demand from Muslim states that ‘either you are with us or against us’ and wanted a quick response from them to his call for action against bin Laden, his Al Qaeda outfit and those aiding or harbouring them.
This also explains why the usual investigative reporting was conspicuous by its absence. The media was not prepared to risk any exercise that carried even a remote possibility of uncovering facts that might have contradicted the theory already adopted by them.
They did not raise the issue of the failure of the intelligence agencies and the absence or inefficiency of the security arrangements because that could have distracted attention from what had already been accepted as gospel truth.
Trouble with coalitions
COALITIONS can become ends in themselves, particularly if the goal is constant and publicly expressed consensus from a “broad-based” coalition.
George Kennan, historian and diplomat, once said that in negotiations, as the number of participants increases arithmetically, the difficulty of reaching agreements increases exponentially. In coalitions, the more numerous the participants, the more they act sluggishly and become hostage to the most reluctant members. —George F. Will, commenting in The Washington Post.