MEDIA ALERT
The BBC's Political Editor Responds
October 13, 2001
Our media alert, "New Chairman Confirms the BBC as a Mouthpiece
for Establishment Views" (October 3, 2001), provoked a response from the
BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr. This is Mr Marr's response (October 7, 2001) followed by the reply from
Media Lens:
Dear David Cromwell
thank you. It is very easy, an old game, to caricature someone's views
with brutally selective quotation. I was concerned enough about what you
said I had said to go back and look up the article in which you allege I
said the Serbs were beasts, etc.
Well, surprise, surprise, I didn't say that - as you must know
perfectly well. And the 'like an alien race' comment was in the context
of describing the division that has occured between the post- war
consciousness of nuclear-protected Western society and others, for whom the
old raw excitements and sacrifices of war remain - like the Serbs in Kosovo
AND, I said, the KLA. I was attacking a policy of bombing civilians and
poisoning water supplies from '15,000 feet', rather than threatening to push
out Milosevic with the more dangerous option of ground troops. (As, you fail
to note, then happened, leading to the Serb withdrawal and Milosevic's fall,
neither of them, I assume events that you welcome.)
But I don't really know why I am bothering to say all this. You must
have read the original. You must therefore know what a deliberate and
cynical distortion of the original article you have published. I'm
afraid I think it is just pernicious and anti-journalistic. I note that
you advertise an organisation called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting so I
guess at least you have a sense of humour. But I don't think I will bother
with 'medialens' next time, if you don't mind.
Andrew Marr
Reply to Andrew Marr from Media Lens:
October 13, 2001
Dear Andrew Marr,
Thank you for your prompt response to our media alert of October 3.
We appreciate you responding to our serious concerns. Our intention is
to promote honest and rational debate; not to make personal attacks on
you or anyone else.
You say that you did not use the word "beasts" in describing the
Serbian people. Here is the paragraph in full from which we quoted you,
as it appears on the Guardian Unlimited website at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3857957,00.html
"The Cold War, in short, could also have been called the Cold Peace. It
was a time of stability - terrifying stability. When it ended we found
ourselves in a new world, a place of reassuring instability, where the
prospect of a final, crashing Armageddon seemed much less, but where,
nevertheless, local conflicts could ignite more easily. After the
permafrost, the beasts. We are not well-prepared for this. The idea that our
people should go and die in large numbers appals us. Killing our enemies
appals us too. The war-hardened people of Serbia, far more callous,
seemingly readier to die, are like an alien race. So, for that matter, are
the KLA."
You wrote "after the permafrost, the beasts", and then
immediately introduced the Serbs whom you described as: "war-hardened... far
more callous, seemingly readier to die ... like an alien race." If you
were not describing the Serbs as "beasts", to whom were you referring?
Including the KLA as callous beasts only added to your harsh judgement of
the Serbs as a people. Such demonisation of groups targeted as "the enemy"
by our government has, sadly, been standard practice in
establishment-friendly reporting since WWI and earlier. As an admirer of
Orwell's writing, you are doubtless aware of this.
Your ill-posed division of "post-war consciousness of nuclear-protected
western society and others" is obfuscation - a cover for western crimes
against humanity. As Arundhati Roy noted recently, such words are but an
"equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery", with the west,
of course, comprising the civilised peoples and "others" being
savages. ("The algebra of infinite justice", Arundhati Roy, The Guardian,
September 29, 2001;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4266289,00.html.)
There was no mention in your article of the many victims of
"nuclear- protected western society": the millions killed in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos or in Central and Latin America, Iraq, Indonesia, East Timor
and elsewhere. These victims make a nonsense of any notion of a
"feminised" west and the "far more callous" beasts.
You say that you were "attacking a policy of bombing civilians and
poisoning water supplies from '15,000 feet', rather than threatening to
push out Milosevic with the more dangerous option of ground troops." Nowhere
in your article did you accuse Nato of "poisoning water supplies from
'15,000 feet'" - a truly shocking claim. Instead you lamented "attacking TV
stations and civilian water supplies" and warned of what might happen were
the Danube to be poisoned by the effects of war - not the same thing.
You did describe the attacking of civilian targets as "decadent" - a
curious word to describe what were, in fact, war crimes. Presumably you
would not describe Milosevic's crimes in Kosovo as "decadent". Your article
addressed your concerns that NATO victory might not be achieved by air power
alone. But what about the welfare of civilians, who would have suffered far
more had your advice on launching a ground war been taken?
Your claim that you were primarily concerned with the welfare of
civilians is further undermined by your point that, "Nato could yet win
the war and yet fail in its most important, undeclared war aim, which is to
stay together and alive as the world's most potent military alliance." You
added: "whether this happens or not - and on balance I'm more
optimistic...", suggesting that you shared Nato's view that the war's most
important - and undeclared - aim was to preserve NATO as "the world's most
potent military alliance". Any "humanitarian" intent, then was presumably
secondary. In fact, we would argue that it was non-existent, or almost so.
[See, for example, Noam Chomsky's "The New Military Humanism: Lessons from
Kosovo" (Pluto Press, London, 1999).]
Finally, we reject your presumption that we did not "welcome" the
withdrawal of Serbs from Kosovo or the fall of Milosevic. However, to
present these events as retrospective justification for NATO's war
crimes is crass. As Robert Fisk of The Independent concluded in the wake
of the bombing:
"Nato's bombing brought a kind of peace to Kosovo - but only after it
had given the Serbs the opportunity to massacre or dispossess half the
Albanian population of the province, caused billions of dollars in damage to
Yugoslavia's infrastructure, killed hundreds of Yugoslav civilians,
destabilised Macedonia and gravely damaged relations with China. And the
media called this a successful war." [The Independent, 29 June,
1999].
There are other aspects of your article, and mainstream reporting of
the Balkans war, that we do not have space to address fully here: such
as the nature of NATO's accept-or-be-bombed proposal, i.e. an ultimatum,
to the Serbs in March 1999. Or the relative timing of NATO bombing and
refugee flows: the west's leaders told us that the bombing was taken in
"response" to expulsions of Kosovar Albanians and to "reverse" the flow. But
there was scant mention anywhere in the mainstream media that the NATO
bombing actually +precipitated+ a huge flood of refugees, creating
conditions that allowed Serbian atrocities actually to escalate.
The aim of our media alert of October 3 was to show how the media -
in particular, the BBC - act as an establishment mouthpiece. Accusing
those who opposed NATO bombing of not welcoming the removal of Milosevic
is an irrational and lamentable response.
David Edwards and David Cromwell, Media Lens
SUGGESTED ACTION
If you would like to reiterate any of the above comments, or add new ones of
your own, please send an email to Andrew Marr:
andrew.marr@bbc.co.uk
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