Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [7]
This bias is politically advantageous to U.S. policy-makers, for focusing on victims of enemy states shows those states to be wicked and deserving of U.S. hostility; while ignoring U.S. and client-state victims allows ongoing U.S. policies to proceed more easily, unburdened by the interference of concern over the politically inconvenient victims. It is not a credible reply that difficulty in getting evidence on “unworthy” victims can account for the application of such a gross double standard, as an alternative press with meager resources has been able to gather a great deal of material on their mistreatment from highly credible sources, such as major human rights organizations and church representatives.27 Furthermore, only political factors can explain the differences in quality of treatment of worthy and unworthy victims noted throughout this book, illustrated in chapter 2 by the more antiseptic reporting of the abuse of unworthy victims (even U.S. women raped and murdered in El Salvador) and the greater indignation and search for responsibility at the top in the case of worthy victims.
That the same massive political bias displayed earlier in the coverage of Popieluszko and the hundred religious victims in Latin America continues today is suggested by the media’s usage of the word “genocide” in the 1990s, as shown in the accompanying table. “Genocide” is an invidious word that officials apply readily to cases of victimization in enemy states, but rarely if ever to similar or worse cases of victimization by the United States itself or allied regimes. Thus, with Saddam Hussein and Iraq having been U.S. targets in the 1990s, whereas Turkey has been an ally and client and the United States its major arms supplier as it engaged in its severe ethnic cleansing of Kurds during those years, we find former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith stating that “while Turkey represses its own Kurds, its cooperation is essential to an American-led mission to protect Iraq’s Kurds from renewed genocide at the hands of Saddam Hussein.”28 Turkey’s treatment of its Kurds was in no way less murderous than Iraq’s treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but for Galbraith, Turkey only “represses,” while Iraq engages in “genocide.”
The table shows that the five major print media surveyed engage in a similar biased usage, frequently using “genocide” to describe victimization in the enemy states, but applying the word far less frequently to equally severe victimization carried out by the United States or its allies and clients. We can even read who are U.S. friends and enemies from the media’s use of the word. Thus, with the United States and its NATO allies warring against Yugoslavia in 1999, allegedly in response to that country’s mistreatment of the Kosovo Albanians, official denunciations of that mistreatment flowed through the media, along with the repeated designation of the abuses as “genocidal.” The same pattern applies to the Iraqi regime’s abuse of its Kurdish population—after it had ceased to be a U.S. ally29—an enemy state, official denunciations, harsh sanctions, and parallel media treatment.
Mainstream Media Usage
of “Genocide” for
Kosovo, East Timor, Turkey, and Iraq1
1. NO. OF TIMES WORD APPLIED TO SERBS, TURKS, ETC.2
2. NO. OF EDS,/OP-EDS DOING THE SAME
3. NEWS ARTICLES
4. FRONT PAGE
COUNTRIES/DATES
1. Serbs/Kosovo 1998–1999
220
59
118
41
2. Indonesia/East Timor, 1990–1999
33
7
17
4
3. Turkey/Kurds, 1990–1999
14
2
8
1
4. Iraq/Kurds, 1990–1999
132
51
66
24
5. Iraq Sanctions, 1991–1999
18
1
10
1
1. Mainstream media used in this tabulation, based on a Nexus database search, were the Los Angeles