wtf: media as a mouthpiece for the politics of terrorism

by Kelly Ramundo

WTF is up with the mainstream media? Well, a lot. So I’ll be more specific: WTF is up with the popular media serving as a pawn in the great game of partisan politics, particularly in regard to terrorism?

I have a lot of qualms with the media, the most flagrant — but not the most recent — concerning its actions in the United States after the September 11th bombings. While President Bush fast-tracked a rash of unconstitutional measures through Congress — most specifically the Patriot Act, which still allows suspects to be held indefinitely suspending the sacred writ of habeas corpus — the media stood by in full salute (ironically). While Congress approved a war originally based on WMD claims, even though Hans Blix, inspector and head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said there were none, (there were none) the media also stood by.

And one only has to fast forward a few years for proof that this same press that kowtowed to the President about Iraq and about our civil liberties deserves part of the blame for the array of messes we are now in: Iraq has gotten steadily worse since the day we arrived; there were no massively destructive weapons, and there was no Al Qaeda link. The justice department is in tatters, with many high-profile and experienced judges and lawyers having resigned or been forced out due to their disagreements with the White House; practices like wire-tapping, data-forfeiting and water-boarding still continue; places like Guantanamo have been the sites of abuse scandals that have brought about excruciating national shame.

The media has not played its part of truly investigating and objectively questioning some of the Administration’s more objectionable policies. They, like most of us, were swept up in the spirit of “us vs. them” patriotism that Bush and his lackeys promoted after the attacks. But, in a clear case of the egg coming before the chicken, the media failed in its real responsibility — to offer citizens a picture of what was really going on, unclouded by “patriot” goggles.

But, refreshing, or even worse (I still haven’t decided), is the fact that the media playing pocket politics in regard to terrorism is not new, nor is it limited to the United States.

Two and half years (to the day) after the United States was bombed, Spain also fell victim to its most horrendous civilian attack in history — also at the hands of Muslim extremists — and in part because then-President José Maria Aznar decided to support the U.S. in its extremely unpopular war in Iraq. But the fact was, although all evidence points and pointed to Al Qaeda, there are still some that are intent on painting another picture of the story. Unfortunately some members of the right wing popular party (PP) — who lost the elections held in Spain just three days after the bombings precisely because just hours after the attack, they were already trying to obfuscate the truth, blaming and inventing evidence to implicate ETA, the Basque separate terrorist group — are still sticking to this theory, even after their lies have been publically unfolded in a very high-profile trial.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo, who became a mouthpiece for the PP during this debate, has been the most flagrant propagator of these unfounded, unproven and politically fabricated theories, which found their way into their headlines over a few-years span. The two together have tried to paint an alternate political reality from what evidence actually showed and from what was legally concluded after a meticulous trial. On the day of the attacks, (knowing that an Islamic attack would have devastating consequences for the PP after a large majority of Spaniards opposed the Iraq invasion) the then-Secretary of State for the Interior ordered an urgent report on the relationship between Islamist and ETA terrorists in Spanish prisons. Where there were no veritable ties, the report’s authors were told to invent them. Even though prison employees found only six relevant conversations, and none having to do with the attacks, the PP passed the report to El Mundo, who latched onto it and started to spread the ETA- Al Qaeda link theory.

Later in 2004, when these links were disproven, El Mundo tried a new angle in their tireless crusade, citing jail conversations between prisoner Antonio Toro Castro and Emilio Suarez Trashorras, the ex-miner convicted for supplying the Madrid explosives to the Islamists. The paper ran a story that said Toro gave Suarez the number for ETA — another PP spin, another lie. The investigation found that the number given was of a woman, unrelated to ETA or terrorism, and that Toro never offered ETA explosives while in prisons. El Mundo, refusing to yield, claimed that even if the numbers weren’t used; they knew that inmates gave out certain pieces of paper with numbers for Islamists and for ETA members. Again, an unproven hypothesis created for political means was used to create doubt and discord in society.

When the jail link failed, El Mundo came back with more bogus claims saying that a timer used to detonate ETA explosives was found in the shop of one of the March 11 defendants. This time, the timer (which ETA also never used) turned out to be a washing machine part –the Islamist defendant repaired them for a living; the newspaper never retracted the claim.

Most flagrant, was their next tactic, which saw them try to plant an OJ-Simpson sized seed, that detonators and dynamite remains found in the Islamists’ parked van had been planted by someone after the attack. Strike 6? Police testified against this falsehood, sending another one down the toilet.

There were more, but it is exhausting. The point, I think has been made.

In a society where virtually everything faces the risk of becoming politicized, a free, unhindered media should be the people’s last line of defense against political, partisan interests, not the principal mouthpiece of the same.

Americans still live trapped within a media bubble, where only a few watered-down versions of politically-feasible stories are made available, while simultaneously entertaining the illusion of having infinite choices. As Roger Cohen argued in a recent editorial we need to face the new “core facts.” While the rest of the world is being exposed to a drastically different (and more realistic) picture of how the global panorama is changing thanks to the surprisingly balanced news coverage by Al Jazeera English — the Qatar-owned and based network (available readily to me in Spain) — only Americans in Toledo, Ohio and in Burlington, Vermont have the channel available to them through their cable providers. Other providers, weary of annoying our cowboy President & Co., have calculated the political price to be too high.

So, while the mainstream media continues to appease an administration which has ridiculously called Al Jazeera “a mouthpiece of Al Qaeda,” Americans will have to suffice themselves with Fox News, a fair and balanced mouthpiece we can all trust. But hey, until it is also ruled to be a danger to the freedoms and democratic principles on which our nation was founded, we still have the internet, don’t we?

tagged under:america, politics, spain