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June 07, 2003
This editorial in The Australian should be read as a joke. If it is not a joke then its revisionism with a macabre touch give the way The Australian supported the neo-con view that America's military force should use its power early and often to advance its own interests and values.
The editorial starts off well enough.
"WHERE are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It is a fair question – and one that this newspaper, in common with many people, both supporters and opponents of the war – would like answered. The Australian supported military action against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein because we believed he was a dangerous dictator, "addicted" as former UN chief arms inspector Richard Butler puts it, "to weapons of mass destruction......But given the vehemence with which the governments of the US and Britain assured us all of the horrors in Saddam's armoury, they must either produce evidence the weapons existed or explain why they cannot."
What has happened to the Howard Government? Did it not too assure The Australian? Or does The Australian mean to imply that the Howard Government was just a camp follower?
Is there not some revisionism here? The Australian acted as the media extension of the military machine through the war. They had no doubts then. Those who doubted were fools and idiots; anti-American appeasers who sided with an oppressive Iraqi regime.
They were acting to shape public opinion. Is there anything wrong with that? Consider the classic strategy propaganda for shaping public opinion so that it is favourable to war. The Government tells the public that they are under attack and then denounces the pacificist for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
Did not The Australian play its part in this campaign by stating that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was linked to a the imminent attack by international terrorists using (unspecificed) weapons of mass destruction.
It is a classic strategy because you can just write communits for terrorist. The Australian acted to help frighten the electorate, and then it supported the national security state's line that there was no need to worry because a small but strong government would protect them.
Very little questioning on behalf of democracy there in the name of liberal values. Now consider this paragraph from the The Australian's editorial:
"But democracies are based on trust, and the governments of Britain, the US and Australia must demonstrate they had good reason to believe the intelligence reports circulated before the war. It is not a question of explaining why weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found, but of showing us that the three governments had compelling reasons to reasonably fear they existed before the shooting started."
None of the quality press beat the war drum more than The Australian did. It was loud.It was part of the war party. None denigrated the opponents of war with Iraq more than The Australian. They were mean in their distortions. None failed in their job of questioning the Howard Government's spin more than The Australian. They dumped their responsibility to democracy overboard. None refused to engage with the arguments of the critics of the Bush Administration more than The Australian. Their charges of appeaser welded like a sledgehammer acted to undermine the trust of the public sphere.
And now The Australian talks about trust and democracy and it implies that it is acting a watchdog defending democracy. Should not The Australian be looking at its own actions, considering the way it undermined democracy through cultivating an atmosphere of hostility, fear and suspicion.
Update
Here is an article that addresses how difficult it is for media organizations to admit they are wrong and to correct their mistakes. Most of the Australian media organizations deny they have a problem or that they are accountable to the public.
And Alexander Cockburn writes:
"Intelligence services invariably succumb in the face of political bullying. But it didn't matter that the CIA and DIA were cowed by the wild men in Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, who said Iraq was still bristling with WMDs. Any enterprising news editor could have found (and some did) plenty of solid evidence to support the claim that Saddam had destroyed his WMDs, that he had no alliance with Al Qaeda."
But they didn't at The Australian. Instead they, to paraphrase Cockburn, "delightedly hyped shoddy journalism that played a far greater role in the [Canberra] propaganda blitz than the bullying of the CIA and DIA." And they will not be called to account, nor will they apologize to public opinion. The Australian remains one of the hounds of war.
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From an Editor's perspective, even if you felt the war was justified and still think that way, it's both safe and makes a more interesting story to now be asking where the weapons are.
Besides, it helps convince more readers that you're unbiassed.