posted May 05, 2005 01:28 PM              

Wednesday 27 October 2004, 8:20 Makka Time, 5:20 GMT

Dubious objectivity may end up putting all journalists at risk



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Of settler crimes and media silence
Media accused of Iraq bias

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The head of the BBC's news operations is to accuse US media organisations of being overly patriotic in their coverage of Iraq.

Releasing an advance copy of his speech to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in New York, Richard Sambrook will tell journalists on Wednesday that even before the Iraq war most US news broadcasters "wrapped themselves in the flag".

Director of the BBC's global news division, Sambrook said the consequence was the US media did not perform the "role the public expects of them - to ask the difficult questions, to press, to verify".

"If a news organisation imbues itself with patriotism, it inhibits itself from asking some of those questions".

He also highlighted the increasing number of journalist deaths over the past year. More than 85 reporters have died over the past 12 months.

Earlier this year, the New York Times acknowledged it had failed to adequately challenge information from Iraqi exiles who were determined to show Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in a bid to overthrow him.

Self-criticism

But the BBC itself has lost a high-stakes battle with Prime Minister Tony Blair's government over its own coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq war.

The publicly funded broadcaster's chairman and director general were forced to resign after a judicial inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly - a weapons expert who was the source for a BBC report that the government "sexed up" evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"We now know that all of us failed to ask the right questions about WMD in advance of the war," Sambrook added.

His speech was in part to announce a new international committee to investigate the dangers facing journalists around the world, under the auspices of the International News Safety Institute.

posted May 05, 2005 05:50 PM              

IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
BuzzFlash
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
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By Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.

The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.

A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.

Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=426&row=1

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

posted May 05, 2005 10:20 PM            

To think, a judge put a woman to death for allegedly being in a persistent vegetative state...when he had a far more qualified candidate in Greg Palast.