Censura

Na mesma altura que, em Portugal, agentes da polícia entram num jornal , o 24 Horas, gritando qualquer coisa como «ninguém mais toca no teclado, todos lá para fora» e saíem com o computador de um jornalista debaixo do braço, no caso do Envelope 9, a BBC censura as imagens dos soldados britânicos agredindo adolescentes iraquianos. Eis o comentário de um colega de mestrado que vive nos Emirados Árabes Unidos.


Today I sat in a hospital waiting room in the desert town of Al Ain (UAE) today waiting for an xray appointment. On the television Omani news played and I looked up to see about 6 British soldiers leading 3 or 4 Iraqi teenagers into a walled compound where they proceeded to beat them. At first one was headbutted by a soldier (wearing a helmet) then other soldiers laid in with sticks, boots, knees, fists etc on the teenagers with one kicked between the legs as he lay on the ground. The footage was unedited and seemed to go on for about two minutes. Around me I could hear Emiratis muttering disapproval. I wanted to sink into the seat with shame. This on top of the cartoons is enough to provoke strong anti-western hostility - just as bombing London tubes and busses provoked anti-Islamic hostility last summer.

I went back home and looked on the BBC website for the story. It was buried after reports of Jaafari being nominated Iraqi prime minister, Danes pulling out of Indonesia, a vote on the tiny island of Tokelau in the Pacific whether to remain part of New Zealand, plans to give Catalonia independence and ex-South African president on trial. Every story had a thumbnail picture, including one of Sir Ian McKellan camplaining about Hollywood gays being kept in the closet and voodoo head found in woman's baggage (updated: Sunday, 12 February 2006, 16:18 GMT). The 'abuse' video didn't merit a thumbnail. The two pictures were one library picture of a British soldier in the gulf and another of a woman reading the News of the World (probably one of the least respected newspapers in the UK) - see attachment. The BBC is not averse to using grabbed images - so why be coy in this case?

However, there was a link to the story on the first page. Here it is:

MoD to probe Iraq 'abuse' video

It's the quote marks that get me. After watching the unedited video that would be like saying: Twin Towers in aircraft 'attack'. Okay, the press have to be careful after the Mirror fiasco but I think this is an example where quote marks suggest the evidence is dubious, heresay, compromised in some way, rather than in front of your face, obviously not faked, clearly a brutal attack. I'm waiting to see how the video is presented on BBC World TV news now, but certainly BBC radio and Internet coverage has been 'low key' to say the least.

One thing is clear: the Americans became much, much more unpopular after Abu Graib pictures emerged showing US soldiers 'torturing' (post-Rumsfeld - what does that mean any more?) Iraqis. Perhaps the British government put pressure on the BBC to downplay the story so as not to turn Iraqis even further against the occupying troops. Unfortunately Iraqi will be watching Arabic channels, including the usually pro-western Omani channels and not BBC World. So it is the British public who are being subject to this self censorship. If the US networks had really exercised serious self-censorship in the 60s and 70s perhaps the US would still be bombing Hanoi - who knows.....

I'm always impressed by Euronews for their 'No Comment' section - no voice over, often lightly edited. Watching unedited footage has a power to convince that heavily edited and editorialised footage does not. I have never understood putting thirty seconds of the same footage on a loop again and again and again with commentary over it ( recently the BBC did this after the Hamas victory showing teenagers climbing the Fatah headquarters in protest/celebration). This was a maddening fact about the 9-11 coverage - it was like they only had 60 seconds of camera footage that kept going out for day after day. If editors are worried about short attention span they are going the wrong way about trying to maintain interest by constantly repeating the same images, until you want to throw something at the TV.

Okay I have just watched BBC World TV news and it is the headline. About ten seconds of footage of the beating appears after about a minute of contextualizing from first Tony Blair, then an army spokesperson. A BBC journalist does say that the timing of the release has infuriated the government and that it will make the job of the troops more difficult, but there is no ‘contextualizing’ from anyone opposed to the occupation. So we get ‘innoculated’ against the ‘allegations’ with a few seconds of footage (no headbut, no kick in the genitals) framed by government and army spokeperson.

No wonder Arabs are turning to Al Jazeera and other Arab channels.

David McQueen