LONDON — With the exception of pressing
regional issues and breathless soccer analyses,
global media reportage these days is all
war, all the time.
But while such saturation coverage of the
conflict in Iraq wouldn't surprise most Americans,
the tone of these reports might.
Channel-surf from Britain's BBC to Germany's ZDF, or flip
through newspapers from Spain to Bangkok,
and one finds stories that tilt noticeably against
the war and in favor of besieged Iraqi
civilians.
Often, these are emotional first-person
accounts of visiting hospitals or bombed-out apartments,
accompanied by graphic photos of the dead
and dying that would never appear in U.S. outlets.
"Most Europeans do not support this war,
and so the coverage is simply a reflection of that,"
says Giuseppe Zaffuto, project director
at the European Journalism Center in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
"Besides, during the first Gulf War, journalists
here were left to stand around and watch (CNN's)
Peter Arnett in Baghdad," he says. "This
time, they're there. They feel compelled to not only explain
what's going on in terms of the war, but
also in terms of the victims of war." (Related item: Arnett
story galvanizes opinions over media's
war coverage.)
Zaffuto adds that in addition to being compelling
drama, European dispatches could be a bellwether
as the war grinds on: How the rest of the
world perceives the U.S.-led effort to remove Saddam
from power could affect everything from
tourism to commerce.
For now, it seems much of the world's media
still need to be convinced of Washington's position.
That's no surprise in the Middle East,
home of Qatari-based cable channel Al-Jazeera, which has
infuriated U.S. officials who consider
it little more than an Iraqi public relations machine. But even
in countries whose governments support
the United States, skepticism rules.
In Britain, the venerable state-run British
Broadcasting Corp. has been accused by politicians of
being too eager to present Baghdad's point
of view. Over in Spain, anyone approving of Prime
Minister Jose Maria Aznar's decision to
side with the United States and Britain in the coalition
would be hard-pressed to find similar sentiments
in the press.
"Despite being in this 'coalition of the
willing,' most Spanish TV and newspapers are notoriously
anti-American" on the issue of the war,
says Guillermo Nagore, 33, a graphic artist from Barcelona.
By way of example, he reads a headline from
the city's liberal daily, La Vanguardia:
"Iraq's resistance stalls the war." Hardly
the Pentagon's dream.
"Coverage here tends to blame the U.S. for
the conflict and focuses on the humanitarian
condition it's creating," says Nagore.
"I feel it's a bit slanted."
Political columnists and cartoonists have
spilled gallons of ink questioning and satirizing Bush and
Blair; one recent cartoon in a London tabloid
depicted Bush at the controls of a fighter jet with
Blair's head popping out of his bomber
jacket's pocket.
Of course, across much of highly politicized
Europe, a newspaper or TV station unabashedly will
tout the political line of its owners,
and customers line up accordingly.
In England, if you're liberal, you'll buy
The Daily Mirror; a staunch Tory, perhaps the populist tabloid
The Sun. In Italy, the top television stations
and newspapers are owned by the country's conservative
prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and
overall reflect his fervent support of the war.
But the view can change quickly for a few
thousand lire. The stridently liberal daily L'Unita last
weekend led with anti-war demonstrations,
while alerting readers to the "50 dead in another
bombing at a market in Baghdad." Another
story focused on the efforts of a U.S.-based Web site,
Patriots for Peace, to have Bush impeached.
Some media voices, in fact, charge that
U.S. media's view of the war is similarly and dangerously
monochromatic. Feeling much of the heat
is the ubiquitous CNN, some of whose correspondents
have been criticized for being more cheerleaders
than reporters.
"CNN's Walter Rodgers' style of reporting
resembles the live coverage of the Super Bowl," noted
an editorial in Germany's liberal Suddeutsche
Zeitung. "(It is) anecdotal, full of metaphors, enthusiastic
and bubbling with admiration for the overwhelming
technical advantages of the Abrams tank."
Journalists in Asia echo that complaint.
A Sunday Bangkok Post column scolded Thai television
stations for using U.S. feeds without "investigating
or challenging them." And a recent critique of
coverage in the English-language South
China Morning Post ran under the headline "U.S. television
networks losing the fight against biased
coverage."
Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, says these charges have some merit.
"Our coverage is a little worse than I expected.
(Reports from embedded journalists) are basically snippets
of enthusiastic travelogue and up-close
and personal stuff with the troops," says Gitlin. "There's been a
disappearance of political commentary.
We don't seem to want to know why others are angry."
Nowhere more so than in the Middle East,
where the media keep their allegiances front and center
with stern editorials and pictures of bloodied
Iraqi civilians. Jordan's Al-Dustour recently hailed Iraq's
"heroic" resilience in the face of coalition
attacks and questioned U.S. claims that thousands of Iraqi
soldiers were surrendering. The English-language
Jordan Times suggested that the United Nations be
called upon to craft "an honorable way
out of the mess (coalition forces) have put themselves in."
Some newspapers are particularly pointed
in the way they characterize the reason Western forces
are attacking Iraq. One recent front-page
cartoon depicted U.S. forces blazing a trail to Baghdad
in the shape of a dollar sign. But it wasn't
in a Middle Eastern paper; it appeared in France's top
daily, Le Monde.
While France and the United States have
long sparred over matters of taste and culture, French media
are quick to presume that the current rift
is far more serious. A lead story in Le Figaro matter-of-factly
warned French citizens to expect "economic
and political reprisals after the war."
South Africans also worry that Western resources
initially aimed for its shores are being diverted to
destroy and then rebuild Iraq. As a result,
most newspapers lead with stories that lament the deaths
of innocent Iraqis and praise the bravery
of South Africans who have traveled to Baghdad to serve
as "human shields."
Late last week, a front-page story in The
Star, one of the nation's largest dailies, quoted one human shield:
"We saw a little village, a farm burning,
those civilians died. They were just Bedouins, far from civilization,
and they were bombed."
The next day's front-page headline screamed,
"Bloodbath in the bazaar, fury as Baghdad residents see
headless and charred corpses." The story
began: "It was an outrage, an obscenity ..."
That report actually was written by British
journalist Robert Fisk, whose story first appeared in
London's The Independent, then was republished
around the world.Fisk's piece vividly detailed the
carnage after the bombing of a Baghdad
market. (U.S. military leaders have yet to confirm it was
a coalition weapon.)
Pro-Iraq PR? No, just a sign of journalistic
freedom, says Maggie Scammell, professor of media
and communications at the London School
of Economics.
"From the beginning, much of our press has
been consistent in being far from persuaded of the reasons,
need and strategy of this war," she says.
"They're simply voicing that."
And coming under attack for it. Labour Party
chairman John Reid accused the BBC of being
"a friend of Baghdad." BBC political editor
Andrew Marr shrugged it off, saying balanced
reporting shouldn't be confused for being
Saddam's mouthpiece.
Nevertheless, the incident caused enough
of a stir that Rageh Omaar, the BBC's reporter in Baghdad,
wrote a first-person rebuttal in the Sunday
Telegraph under the headline "I'm not a stooge of Iraq
— I'm just doing my job," citing the pressures
of reporting with Iraqi minders never far from view.
But rationales aside, his final sentence
is as clear as it is blunt: "In this important propaganda war,
the Iraqi authorities are enjoying considerable
success."
That's probably not what U.S. officials
want to hear, but increasingly it's the story much of the
world's media are telling.
Contributing: Ellen Hale in Jerusalem; Noelle Knox in Brussels;
Eric Lyman in Rome;
Sal Ruibal in Landstuhl, Germany; Rena Singer in Johannesburg