British journalist Robert Fisk weighed in on post-9/11 media last Friday, in a sold-out lecture at the OISE auditorium entitled, “September 11: Ask Who Did It But For Heaven’s Sake, Don’t Ask Why.”
“In the days and weeks that followed Sept. 11, 2001, I became increasingly disturbed by the vapid, hopeless, gutless, unchallenging journalism which passed for coverage in the Western media,” Fisk said.
A foreign correspondent in the Middle East for the last 26 years, Fisk currently writes for London’s The Independent. He is also the only Western journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden three times, most recently in Afghanistan in 1997.
Fisk passionately warned his audience against what he described as the passive and unquestioning acceptance of government statements that have been blended into headlines in the Western media.
He also expressed his disapproval of America’s war on terror and its planned war on Iraq, arguing that Iraq is not connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. He further questioned why so few journalists have commented on how rapidly American foreign policy shifted from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.
“We do not want to investigate just how target Kabul became target Baghdad, and, in the coming days, perhaps target Damascus or target Beirut,” said Fisk. “Let’s always ask the ‘why’ question. Let’s do what the Americans used to tell their journalists to do and tell it how it is.”
Fisk further discussed the power of language and illustrated how specific vocabulary has been used to frame the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically how the word “terrorism” has become synonymous with Arabs.
“It is difficult to explain to Arabs, for example, why the New York and Washington massacres were acts of terrorism—which they were—but a massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut between Sept.16 and 18, 1982, has never been called an act of terrorism by journalists or by governments,” he said, after which the audience applauded.
Munira Mohammad, a second -year U of T student, was impressed by Fisk’s lecture. “It’s great that there are journalists who are not afraid to speak out about stuff like this. Now, when you read the newspapers, you see the same articles being printed word for word. You don’t get as much diversity as you might think in the press. People like Fisk increase your faith in the media,” she said.
Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin introduced the lecture.
