Media Critiques
Did the United States deliberately destroy Iraq’s water supply during the Gulf War, and cause the “genocide” of more than half a million children by pushing economic sanctions that cut off supplies like chlorine, crucial to water purification?
Whether the water supply’s destruction was deliberate remains uninvestigated by mainstream and alternative media alike. Thomas Nagy’s own article fails to back-up that claim.
What is clear is that since 1991, thousands of children have died from water-borne disease, malnutrition and lack of basic medicine, all direct outcomes of economic sanctions.
According to a March 3, 2003 Houston Chronicle article, the United Nations estimated that more than 1.2 million people, including 750,000 children under 5, died because of lack of food and medicine between 1991 and 1997.
In 1998, the World Health Organization reported that 5,000–6,000 Iraqi children died per month, suggesting that sanctions killed at least 720,000 children in 12 years.
In an analysis of six print media outlets, 12 articles covering the effects of sanctions were published since Nagy’s 2001 story, five in mainstream and seven in alternative media sources.
Mainstream sources include the Associated Press, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Houston Chronicle, which alone published three of the five stories. Alternative sources include the Progressive, In These Times and Mother Jones.
In contrast to BBC news, which televised eight related stories within the last year, American commercial networks like NBC ignored the story behind the destruction of the water supplies. NBC’s local affiliate, KPRC Channel 2, reported no related stories.
NBC did report on the matter prior to the 2001 article, however. Between 1997 and 1998, NBC produced stories that accounted for almost 45 minutes of airtime. All but two briefly mentioned the people’s suffering.
Eight of the stories are less than a minute-and-a-half. Three stories are approximately two-and-a-half minutes and one broadcast, a debate about the pros and cons of lifting the sanctions, is 10-minutes-long.
The longest of NBC’s 12 broadcasts is a 15-minute-long Dateline special about the “status of Iraq following sanctions.” Disturbingly, it serves only to paint a misleading picture of Baghdad as a palace-rich, high-rent city with brand-label-filled shops and disco-loving people who have found a way to get around sanctions and moved on.
BBC news on the other hand, covered the evident devastation focusing on the child-death toll and the human effects of sanctions.
Although coverage of the story was provided, mainstream media reported the sanctions and their effects as simple facts. Despite limited resources, alternative media’s coverage is not only more abundant and thorough it questions these sanctions.
No story is more compelling than Chuck Sudetic’s “The Betrayal of Basra.” The 14-page article in Mother Jones’ December 2001 issue, supports Nagy’s claim of genocide. Only he and Houston Chronicle reporter Carol Christian in an article dated February 24, 1999, dare to use the word genocide in their reporting.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
Top of Page
|
