2 men Jailed for leaking Memo between Bush and Blair.

Diogenes

Akrasia wrote:

Well, the U.S. have repeatedly attacked Al Jazeera. They shelled the Hotel palestine where they knew for a fact that it was being used as a headquarters for independent journalists and Al Jazeera. They bombed the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad and in Kabul. They have also imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters and are even keeping some of them at Guantanamo Bay and have banned the station from operating out of Iraq.

Theres a couple of points here, The Hotel Palestine incident is the same as the Baghdad office shelling. You're mentioning a single event, and trying to make it out to be two seperate incidents. It cannot be proven that the US government or military deliberated targeted Al Jazeera's office's in either incident. It's also worth pointing out As well as an Al Jazeera producer, a Reuturs correspodent, and a Spainish TV Cameraman were killed in the Hotel Palestine attack.

Journalists, and the Press have had a regretably high mortality rate, and both sides in these conflicts, have inflicted casualities among the media accidently, or on purpose, Daniel Perle, and Alan Johnson being two examples of this. A single Al Jazeera' cameraman Sami Al Hajj is still currently in Git bay, and is the only Al Jazeera personal to be sent to Guantanamo. He is the only journalist in the prison there, but not the only journalist to be detained by the US. Reuters have made several complaints about the arrest and detaining of their staff in Iraq. Finally it was the Iraqi administration, and not the US government who banned Al Jazeera from Iraq.

As pointed out I think Bush's attack on Al Jazeera is reprehenisble, but I think exaggerating the administrations "attacks" while ignoring how other media organisations have suffered at the hands of the US military, paints Al Jazeera as a being victimised more than it is.

jonny72

Judt wrote:

How would you feel if somebody leaked nuclear launch codes?

How would you feel if somebody recorded the Bush administrations private meetings for 2 weeks and then released them to the public...

Actually lets just take a look at a British leak..

For example..


A 22 March memo from Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said,

"But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up. U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military action, we have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

And so it happened..

Victor

Akrasia wrote:

The BBC have been appallingly biased in favour of the British war effort in Iraq (They do criticise American war policy, but they rarely if ever have anything critical to say about the British military activities in Iraq and whenever they are forced to criticise the British political foreign policy decisions, they almost always spin the story to suggest that the British are just victims, trapped in a circumstance that they didn't want to be a part of, as if they have no responsibility for anything that has happened.)

Exactly. In time of war, the BBC is an extension of the government propanganda machine. Nobody says any different.

Fratton Fred

Victor wrote:

Exactly. In time of war, the BBC is an extension of the government propanganda machine. Nobody says any different.

I think that's a bit unfair. I think that in time of war, the State owned news agency supports the country. Even the opposition parties throw their support to the war, as a sign of a united front.

When they are mobilising thousands of troops, no one wants to hear about the illegalities of it, all they want to know is that their sons and daughters are doing therir duty.

Judt

What media in any country doesn't get behind the war efforts?

Diogenes

Fratton Fred wrote:

I think that's a bit unfair. I think that in time of war, the State owned news agency supports the country. Even the opposition parties throw their support to the war, as a sign of a united front.

I'm sorry did I step into a time warp and suddenly its' 1939?

When they are mobilising thousands of troops, no one wants to hear about the illegalities of it, all they want to know is that their sons and daughters are doing therir duty.

Yeah, but er no. We need to know that our media is independent unbiased, and unfettered by government infulence, One can only look at the fury over the Kelly affair the government infulence over the BBC, and pressure exterted aganist them. A government owned media organisation should always strive to be impartial and above reproach when it comes to reporting on the government. A media organisation cannot just flick a switch and announce for the duration of the war it will be a jingoistic government mouthpiece, and then once the war is over, the media organisation switches to independent and impartial.

The difference between say RTE or the BBC from the Iranian news agency, is that for the decades since they were founded these two western news agencies, have used the fact they are in western democracies to strive to become independent (to a degree) from government infulence, and to report the actions of the government with honesty. Your suggestion FF is that media organisation throw away that independence and become jingoistic ra ra pom pom cheerleaders, makes a mockery of an independent press.

Liam Byrne

Fratton Fred wrote:

I think that's a bit unfair. I think that in time of war, the State owned news agency supports the country. Even the opposition parties throw their support to the war, as a sign of a united front.

Then they're wrong. If a war is wrong and illegal, then the idiots that started it should be exposed and thrown out of Government.

When they are mobilising thousands of troops, no one wants to hear about the illegalities of it, all they want to know is that their sons and daughters are doing therir duty.

Partially true; the troops are just following orders (and would probably be jailed if they, like the two leakers, stood up and said "no, this is wrong") so their families are entitled to know that they are relatively safe, or at least have sufficient resources to do their job. Unfortunately, no-one involved in the current fiasco seemed to know what the "job" was.

On the other hand, if my son or daughted died protecting their country, I'd be proud of them, but if they died pointlessly and for no reason than massaging the ego and pockets of Bush and his cohorts, I'd be disgusted and I'd be screaming out looking for answers as to why the authorities had wasted their life.

And therein is the problem; you can't switch cleanly and credibly between the two just because it suits the Government (or, in this case, a clueless foreign Government); as was pointed out, taking an impartial approach from day one is the only way that a responsible media organisation would act, sticking to facts, ignoring spin and lies, and seeking out the truth.

The BBC should not have fired their head guy because it's since made them look spineless, especially considering that he and David Kelly were dead right; unfortunately that description has been shortened, losing the word "right", for Kelly, thousands of U.S., U.K., and Iraqi troops, and thousands of innocent Iraqis - any responsible media organisation is perfectly entitled to ask why.......anything less is a failure of their obligations.

Victor

Fratton Fred wrote:

I think that's a bit unfair. I think that in time of war, the State owned news agency supports the country. Even the opposition parties throw their support to the war, as a sign of a united front.

This isn't just about taking sides in a 'football game'. The BBC operates a monitoring service on behalf of GCHQ and feeds propaganda out, both at home and through BBC World Service. How many DA notices does the Irish government issue?

As someone said about Bosnia. The Americans were spying on the Russians. The Russians were spying on the Americans. The French were spying on the Americans and the Russians. The Brits were spying on everyone.

When they are mobilising thousands of troops, no one wants to hear about the illegalities of it, all they want to know is that their sons and daughters are doing therir duty.

Neeeeeehhh........ :eek:

If my son or daughter were to be part of a war crime, I think I would want to know.

Akrasia

Judt wrote:

What media in any country doesn't get behind the war efforts?

Independent media.

Anyway, we are now in a permanent war 'on terror'. Should we now just accept a permanent state of media self censorship and bias, and if so, do we have any right to call ourselves democratic?