Where's the attribution?

I WAS beginning to think I was the only person troubled by the unquestioning reportage of the assumed assassination of Osama Bin Laden and four of his supporters, wives or bodyguards.
Thank goodness for the Independent, for whom at least two correspondents were willing to doubt the version of events being put out by US President Barack Obama and his acolytes.
The cry of American journalism used to be “attribution, attribution, attribution.” Reporters were taught to take care that they made it clear when they were communicating someone else’s version of events, unless they had witnessed them directly.
Sometimes this was taken to ridiculous extremes, as in “President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas today, according to police” when the event had been seen by millions on television.
But at least that mind-set would have prevented the outrageous gullibility of the media in the wake of the Bin Laden incident. Here are some of the statements made by the media in Britain, particularly the BBC, with the required attribution in italics.
Osama Bin Laden was shot dead today, according to US President Barack Obama. None of the news agencies witnessed the shootings, nor can they be sure the dead man is Bin Laden.
There was a fire fight when Bin Laden refused to surrender, according to American sources. Again no impartial members of the media saw what happened and shouldn’t have reported the official line as fact. He could have been shot in the head, or in the back, or both.
Bin Laden’s body was buried at sea to prevent his grave becoming a shrine, alleged the White House. Even if the dead man was Bin Laden, how do we know he was buried at sea, and even if he was, how do we know the motive was to prevent his grave becoming a shrine? We don’t. Bin Laden, or his double’s body, could be laying on a slab in an American laboratory for all the media knows.
Even the supposed DNA testing of the deceased was just too glibly accepted as evidence by the media.
Geoffrey Robertson QC in The Independent points out that Justice, the word used by Obama to describe the death, used to mean arrest, trial and sentence after due process. Yet no other correspondent I saw, with one notable exception, questioned the wisdom of the President’s use of words. Robertson also argued cogently why it would have been wiser to capture Bin Laden alive and put him before a tribunal.
The other exception was The Independent’s peerless correspondent Robert Fisk who, in a brilliant personalised news report, bemoaned the triumphal references to resounding victories. He also pointed out that if the dead man from Abbottabad turn out not to have been Bin Laden, Obama will lose the next US election.
His shame will be no greater than that of the media who so slavishly reported events they couldn’t possibly verify as facts.
These events unfolded just days after similar unquestioning coverage of the bombing of a so-called command centre in Tripoli, that turned out to be a mansion in which President Gaddafi’s youngest son and grand-children were killed.
There is unlikely to be any independent analysis of those cold-blooded killings now they have been overtaken by the Bin Laden story, but both cases show how our view of these momentous times are being manipulated with the complicity of a lazy and unprofessional media.

Silence on regime change

THE BBC’s reporting of events in Libya, already outrageously slanted, hit new depths of journalism tonight. The other media are nearly as bad.
The military action by America, the UK and France, from bases in Italy, was sanctioned by the United Nations on the understanding that it was to be confined to protecting Libyan citizens from attack and slaughter by the forces of dictator, Colonel Gaddafi.
They were specifically told that they were not to aspire to regime change.
This was very lucidly and eloquently explained by Penrith and Border MP, Rory Stewart, on Question Time last Thursday, when the unconventional Conservative MP warned of mission creep, as the Americans call it.
So what has happened? After bombing forces loyal to Gaddafi as they were said to be about to attack the rebels’ base city of Benghazi, the allies have been laying a trail of destruction across the North East coastline of Libya, clearing the way for the rebels to follow.
This is an obvious and blatant contravention of the UN resolution. It is not protecting Libya’s people from attack. It is giving the rebels clear military support.
That is interference in a civil war. Earlier today the Russians, who were so sceptical about the UN vote they abstained, pointed out this deception.
But what do the British media do? They ignore the Russian comments and blithely continue reporting the allied action without any analysis.
This evening the BBC and national newspaper web-sites were still lauding the “untrained” rebels for defeating Libya’s professional army, as they closed in on Colonel Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
Upbeat jingoistic language, like “the rebels have made lightning advances west from their stronghold in Benghazi”, litter the news channels.
But it is obvious that Gaddafi’s loyal troops dare not fight back, otherwise they will be bombed out of existence by the missiles from warships and aeroplanes. Some of the eye-witness reportage, notably in the Independent on Sunday, showed just how brutal and horrific these attacks on Gaddafi’s soldiers had been.
If this is not engineering regime change, I don’t know what is.
This issue ought to be right up there at the top of the BBC’s news agenda, not ignored as it was on the main news bulletins.
The public may support David Cameron’s decision to send troops and machines of war to Libya , but opinion polls would suggest the opposite.
It was not comforting to realise that he was only now starting to make contact with these rebels and find out what sort of people they are and what their aims are.
It is not the media’s job to decide what is right or wrong. But it is their job to highlight inconsistencies between what the Government says is the policy it supports and the reality on the ground. That is why licence fee payers pay for reporters to travel to these foreign trouble spots.
For reporters and camera crews to meekly follow the military line without putting it in political context is a betrayal of their profession.