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| Fifth Column |
| Point: Media in Sadaam’s Hip Pocket says Burns |
| 2003-09-16 |
| The following are the words of New York Times correspondent John F. Burns, on his experiences reporting from Baghdad during the war. From editorandpublisher.com via Drudge. From the point of view of my being in Baghdad, I had more authority than anybody else. Without contest, I was the most closely watched and unfavored of all the correspondents there because of what I wrote about terror whilst Saddam Hussein was still in power. Snip (self-congradualtion continues) It was also the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here. Why? Because they judged that the only way they could keep themselves in play here was to pretend that it was okay. There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror. In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people’s stories -- mine included -- specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper. Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance. CNN’s Eason Jordan’s op-ed piece in The New York Times missed that point completely. The point is not whether we protect the people who work for us by not disclosing the terrible things they tell us. Of course we do. But the people who work for us are only one thousandth of one percent of the people of Iraq. So why not tell the story of the other people of Iraq? It doesn’t preclude you from telling about terror. Of murder on a mass scale just because you won’t talk about how your driver’s brother was murdered. snip (detailed recount of journalists heroism) Now this son of a bitch sits in his home about three miles from here, saying he expects to be re-appointed director general of information. He has been meeting with director generals of ministries and is using a vetting process where they will disqualify only senior Ba’ath Party officials. I think this guy will be disqualified because he was a Mukhabarat official, but he is now saying to visiting correspondents, "Well, of course, we all knew it was time for a change in Iraq." This was a man who is incapable of telling the truth, who attempted at every opportunity to seduce Western women correspondents. He was screwing people in his office. He had photographs of himself and Saddam Hussein and a box of Viagra. This was a loathsome character altogether. Left in some of the naughty bits about Viagra. ... Now left with the residue of all of this, I would say there are serious lessons to be learned. Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers, and editors of great television networks should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places. It’s not impossible to tell the truth. I have a conviction about closed societies, that they’re actually much easier to report on than they seem, because the act of closure is itself revealing. Every lie tells you a truth. If you just leave your eyes and ears open, it’s extremely revealing. Note the NYT jouralist thinks all reporters should be heros like him. Inspirational to the writers in teh Fashion and Metro sections throughout the world. We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn’t recognize it. They rationalized it away. I cannot tell you with what fury I listened to people tell me throughout the autumn that I must be on a kamikaze mission. They said it with a great deal of glee, over the years, that this was not a place like the others. I did a piece on Uday Hussein and his use of the National Olympic Committee headquarters as a torture site. It’s not just journalists who turned a blind eye. Juan Antonio Samaranch of the International Olympic Committee could not have been unaware that Western human rights reports for years had been reporting the National Olympic Committee building had been used as a torture center. I went through its file cabinets and got letter after letter from Juan Antonio Samaranch to Uday Saddam Hussein: "The universal spirit of sport," "My esteemed colleague." The world chose in the main to ignore this. For some reason or another, Mr. Bush chose to make his principal case on weapons of mass destruction, which is still an open case. This war could have been justified any time on the basis of human rights, alone. As far as I am concerned, when they hire me, they hire somebody who has a conscience and who has a passion about these things. I think I was a little bit advantaged in this, because I am 58 years old. Look, I don’t believe in the journalist as hero, because I think that wherever we go, and whatever degree of resolve that may be required of us, there are always much, much braver people than us. I travel in a suit of armor. I work for The New York Times. That means that I have the renown of the paper, plus the power of the United States government. Let’s be honest. Should anything untoward come to me, I have a flak jacket. I have a wallet full with dollars. I’m here by choice. I have the incentive of being on the front page of The New York Times, and being nominated for major newspaper prizes. The people who we write about have none of these advantages. They are stuck here with no food and no money. I don’t want to be pious about this, but for a journalist to present himself as a hero in this situation is completely and totally bogus. We have the lure of a spectacular reward. That draws us on. I got a Pulitzer Prize in Sarajevo, which was awarded for "bravery" or something somewhere in the citation. I said, and I absolutely meant it, "I assume that we are talking here about chronicling the bravery of the people of a city that was being murdered. That was where bravery came into this. Then there were no rewards save the possibility of surviving." So I don’t want to present myself here as anything like that. No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, I think this vainglorious ambition is part of the same problem really. It is the pursuit of power. Renown. Fame. This writer that won a Pullitser that may have sited him for bravery takes a tough stand against self-agrandizement. Does Morten’s sell its salt grains in bulk. There is corruption in our business. We need to get back to basics. This war should be studied and talked about. In the run up to this war, to my mind, there was a gross abdication of responsibility. You have to be ready to listen to whispers. Final message: all other journalists are hacks and corrupt -even his friends. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #7 Frank Did you read the entire article? He relays a story about hiding in another reporter's room while trying to prevent death and disaster during the bombing of the Information Ministry. It is kind of surreal and beyond belief in several places. I have not run across the guy before. I don't go to the Times for news and last watched PBS in High School. I was a fan of Dr. Who. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-16 9:59:58 PM |
| #6 JDB - then he needs to name the other paper |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-9-16 7:33:49 PM |
| #5 I think all reporters, as with actors, are people who crave attention and that is why they go into the career fields that they do. They're self-aggrandizing by their very nature. "I know more than you!" That said, John Burns was one of the best there in Baghdad. His reports in the NYTimes were often the only ones worth reading and I looked forward to his PBS "News Hour" phone calls to Jim Leher (sp?). |
| Posted by: JDB 2003-9-16 5:08:25 PM |
| #4 Mo Dowd as a bitchy Lois Lane? Thanks SH for ruining that cartoon for me |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-9-16 5:04:27 PM |
| #3 I agree with what Burns says. I think he makes an excellent couterpoint to Ammapour. What he is saying is very important and true. The complete article is worth reading. That said, I found his report very self-aggrandizing. He pushes the NYT like it is the Daily Planet. I felt I could picture who was playing the Clark Kent role in his fantasy world. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-16 4:59:09 PM |
| #2 Burns is actually a damned good reporter, and it looks like he's naming the elephant in the middle of the room. This could be very interesting. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-9-16 4:10:41 PM |
| #1 Sh, I think I misssed your point. Burns seems to have opened a can of worms that the rest of the media won't touch with a ten foot pole. The media is full of liars, cheats and thieves? I thought only Bush and Co were that. Oh never mind. |
| Posted by: john 2003-9-16 3:21:28 PM |