"Give a Royal Marine the toughest commando training in the world. Award him a green beret. Send him into action with an overweight mother at the helm".
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| Anger over Iran hostages' media deals http://www.bbfans.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=30013 |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 09 Apr 07, 12:50 ] |
| Post subject: | Anger over Iran hostages' media deals |
A sailors' story told without a hint of scepticism "The newspapers' disappointment at the peaceful end to a story that had been boiling up nicely was palpable" Peter Wilby - Monday April 9, 2007 Was Iran's release of the 15 British sailors last Wednesday an occasion for relief and rejoicing? Not as far as the press was concerned. The storyline had been mapped out. There would be blindfolded captives, torture and show trials. Britain would respond with Churchillian rhetoric, gunboats, SAS raids and stiff upper lips and, if it didn't, Tony Blair, along with Margaret Beckett's caravan, could be given one last kicking. Instead, we had an Easter "gift" from President Ahmadinejad. The newspapers' disappointment at the peaceful end to a story that had been boiling up nicely was palpable. "Humiliated: Iran's evil president has made Britain look weak and foolish," stormed the Express. The sailors, noted Stephen Glover in the Mail, offered "supine effusions of gratitude". In no previous era, Glover asserted confidently, "would British servicemen have behaved in such a manner". We were now an "unmartial" people, sadly diminished from the halcyon days of Good Queen Maggie. Worst of all were the suits the Iranians provided for the released sailors. They were "shiny", declared the Mail, and the "denial" of ties was thought to be particularly insulting by the Sun. The Iranians' actions were explicable only in terms of Oriental wiliness. The sailors' release, according to the Telegraph's Middle East correspondent, Tim Butcher, was "a cynical ploy" to "buy time for its nuclear programme". The plan, he reasoned, must be to convince gullible Europeans that diplomacy could work, thus protecting Iran against a US-led attack. Iran, a Times leader concluded, was "an enigmatic mixture of fanaticism and pragmatism". In other words, what the hell was that all about? From the moment the sailors were seized last month, press coverage discounted the two most obvious explanations. First, it was possible the British service personnel had indeed strayed into Iranian waters. Given threats of a western military strike or even invasion, Iran might be justified in feeling jumpy about British inflatables in the Gulf. It might also suspect deliberate provocation by wily Occidentals, determined to provide further evidence of an aggressive and capricious regime ripe for Washington-imposed change. But the press has apparently learnt nothing from the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the Iraq war. British governments may be capable of all manner of dissembling over pensions, NHS waiting lists and school exam results but, when they are laying down the law to foreigners, they are still assumed to be as honest as the day is long. So a Ministry of Defence map purporting to show the sailors were well inside Iraqi waters was accepted by most papers without question. Only Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who headed the Foreign Office's maritime section from 1989 to 1992, pointed out that no maritime border between Iran and Iraq has ever been agreed and that the MoD's map was, to all intents and purposes, a fake. His revelation was buried on page 59 of the Mail on Sunday and largely ignored by other papers. Since Murray was sacked by the Foreign Office and later stood for election against Jack Straw in his Blackburn constituency, it may be thought he has an axe to grind. But the press's refusal to take him seriously recalls its similar treatment of Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who insisted before the Iraq war that Saddam had been "fundamentally disarmed". The second obvious explanation was that Iran had retaliated for the seizure of its own citizens by western forces in Iraq. These include five alleged "intelligence agents" taken during a US raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the Kurdish city of Arbil. But they, as the press told it, were "detained" - just like the people in Guantanamo Bay, I suppose - while our sailors were "kidnapped" and automatically became "hostages". Most early accounts of the sailors' detention - sorry, illegal capture - mentioned the Arbil incident only in passing. Not until last Tuesday did the Independent's Patrick Cockburn reveal the real targets of the US raid: two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit. Cockburn compared it to a hypothetical attempt by Iran to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 during a visit to Pakistan or Afghanistan. If newspapers were so minded, they could make other interesting comparisons - for example, between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's fairly open seizure of British sailors and the American CIA's secret seizures of Muslims for "extraordinary rendition" to countries that use torture. But sections of the British press have been suckered into portraying the Iranian regime as bent on making nuclear weapons and wiping Israel off the map, while arming and largely controlling militias in Iraq. The evidence for all these allegations deserves more scepticism than it gets in most papers. For example, when a bomb killed four British soldiers near Basra last Thursday, the Mail's front page hailed it as "Iran's real Easter gift", though army sources told the Guardian there was no hard evidence of this. As Cockburn wrote in February, it seems odd that a country which, four years ago, could supposedly produce long-range missiles is now unable to make a roadside bomb without Iranian help. The press is always willing, as it was over the capture of the sailors, to criticise a British government for putting its service personnel in harm's way and for not responding with suffi cient resolve when they get into trouble. But it treats foreigners, particularly Muslims, as always in the wrong. The Iranian regime may be as evil, aggressive and oppressive as the US and British governments want us to believe, though I find the case that it poses a signifi cant threat to anybody even less convincing than the case made in 2003 against Saddam (remind me when Iran last invaded another country). All I ask from the press is a little scepticism, a bit of inquiring journalism and an occasional attempt to test out the idea that Iran's rulers are just normal, blundering politicians making it up as they go along. It's not much to ask. Is it? guardian |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 09 Apr 07, 12:53 ] |
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Anger over Iran hostages' media deals guardian |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 09 Apr 07, 12:54 ] |
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Iran captives disagree over cashing in on their stories guardian |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 09 Apr 07, 19:05 ] |
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Story Selling Is Banned sky |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 11 Apr 07, 19:41 ] |
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The humiliating hostage deals that shame us all 11/04/2007 newsandstar |
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| Author: | JimD [ 11 Apr 07, 23:10 ] |
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"Give a Royal Marine the toughest commando training in the world. Award him a green beret. Send him into action with an overweight mother at the helm".
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| Author: | Madeline [ 12 Apr 07, 15:01 ] |
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From hero to zero Lieutenant wants to be Z-list celebrity Lt Felix Carman was one of the 15 soldiers captured by Iran. He spent last weekend giving TV interviews about how he was not cashing in and selling his story to the media. After his interview with Sky News he waited for the cameras to stop rolling before turning to the journalist and asking: "Who should I approach about auditioning as a weather presenter?" FYI What do ITV and the Royal Navy have in common? They're both good at losing ratings. Fnar. Source: Popbitch |
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| Author: | JimD [ 12 Apr 07, 22:57 ] |
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No 10 denies involvement in Iran stories row Downing Street has renewed its efforts to distance itself from the cash-for-stories controversy today, denying it had "anything to do" with the decision to allow Royal Navy personnel to sell their stories to the press. A Downing Street spokesman said: "As has already been made clear, no one in Number 10 - either the press office or officials - had anything to do with decisions taken by the Navy regarding their personnel receiving payments for media interviews." No10 had already left Defence Secretary Des Browne increasingly isolated today as it agreed to place a petition on its website that calls for him to be sacked. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Navy-media/ From the Telegraph |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 13 Apr 07, 17:25 ] |
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Our press, the worst in the west, demoralises us all Britain's frenzied media make sane politics near impossible, but this government still won't denounce their extremes Polly Toynbee - Friday April 13, 2007 Pictures of the coffins of the latest soldiers killed in Iraq filled the front page of yesterday's Daily Mail. "They won't be selling their story, minister", read the bitter banner headline. "Their silent homecoming from Basra in coffins draped with the union flag could not have been more different from the return last week of the 15 sailors and marines held captive in Iran - with goody bags and a green light to hawk their stories for cash." Most people must instinctively agree. The Sun and Trevor McDonald paid Faye Turney £80,000 for a story of not much derring-do, while the families of those coming home in coffins will get scant attention for their unbearable loss. The Mail wants a ministerial scalp: "Last night, Defence Secretary Des Browne was facing calls to quit as he admitted he should have blocked the decision to let the hostages sell their stories." But one key element is missing from its reportage. The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday made their own bids for Turney's story. They were among the papers who wooed her with money, flowers and sympathy, but savaged her when she sold her story elsewhere. The Ministry of Defence agreed to pass bids on to the sailors: the Daily Mail emailed an offer of "a very substantial sum". The Mail on Sunday combined its bid with the Sunday Mirror and jointly offered £100,000 in another email. The News of the World offered to outbid all others. Sky made an offer but the BBC did not. The Daily Express offered £30,000. Throughout the sailors' captivity, the press laid siege to their desperately anxious parents and friends. Entry to front doors was gained by delivering huge bunches of flowers with envelopes attached offering fabulous sums. The Sun, of course, is double-smug: it got the story and now it can crow at the losers. "The very same people shouting loudest in uproar this week were making some of the biggest offers. I know - I've seen the emails," Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun's defence editor, told me yesterday. It is worth regularly quoting the Daily Mail and other poisonous newspapers because most Guardian readers never see them, and so may not quite understand what politicians are up against. But this episode is in a realm of its own for heart-stopping hypocrisy. Here is the Mail's thundering leader headlined, Selling Out Britain's National Honour: "It is clearly wrong that those who are in the forces should be able to sell their stories. And it is an insult to those who are fighting." The Mail called it "repugnant to see Faye Turney cashing in ... it sticks in the craw of all right-thinking people". Here is the same flabbergasting shamelessness in the Express: "How repulsive must be this spectacle for those who have suffered serious injuries and are now disabled. There will be no six-figure sums for any of them." Why not? Because the Mail, Express and the rest will not be offering them any. Why not? Because death and disability are boring. So as the stampede to trample Des Browne into dust thunders on, pause to consider the near-impossibility of conducting sane politics in Britain's frenzied media. Of course Browne shouldn't have disappeared: to empty-chair all the main news programmes instead of coming out fighting was a bad media-handling error. But refusal to appear on Newsnight is hardly a resigning offence. The MoD, trying to protect the sailors, warned them that selling their stories would invite hot vengeance from newspapers whose bids failed. Thirteen of them wisely took that advice and kept their heads down. By now Faye Turney and Arthur Batchelor may feel the money wasn't worth the abuse and mockery. But even if the interviews had been banned, the sailors' stories would still have been sold. A review of the regulations that will try to make it illegal won't stop friends and family selling stories. Squaddies secretly sell stories of "bonking in the barrack room" or kit shortages. The police get fat fees for tip-offs of celebrity arrests or the progress of crime investigations. Deep press chequebooks always find the bribable. But you have to pinch yourself over this latest hue and cry. The press is blaming the government for failing to stop them buying stories? The circularity of it makes the head spin. Why is there no queue of angry cabinet ministers itching to get on to the Today programme to denounce press hypocrisy? Why aren't they challenging the BBC's reporting, which follows the tabloid frenzy without investigating tabloid behaviour? Instead, the BBC repeated a much-denied tabloid smear that Downing Street chose which favoured papers got the interviews. Cringing to the media was always New Labour's weakness. They tried to ride the tiger, wooing Murdoch, schmoozing Dacre, imagining the press could be surfed or squared. Now the tiger's out of its cage and in full roaring attack on every front, there is nothing to lose by fighting and some public credit to gain. The British press, the worst in the west, demoralises the national psyche. It makes people miserable. It raises false fears. It proclaims that nothing works, everything gets worse, and it urges distrust of any public official or politician. Now it has the government on the run and a chance for Tory victory, there is no holding back its doom-mongering in this most healthy, safe and prosperous age. Yesterday Max Hastings offered readers of the wailing Mail a tale of national decline and moral woe such as rolls off some Associated Press repeat key, spreading national despair and anomie in high tones, for base political ends: "Loyalties erode, whether towards Queen, church, state or kith and kin ... Every road in the land is strewn with rubbish, discarded by people who care nothing for beauty ... People seem generally discontented ... There is a longing for times gone by ... Our forebears shared an understanding of how to cohabit with each other. This has been shattered by manic indulgence of self ... " What is so squalid about these newspapers is their use of figleaf sermons to cover their real business, done with corrupting chequebook, threat, intimidation, invasion of privacy, paparazzi aggression and vicious cruelty. Labour should use this disgrace to reign in chequebook tell-all by public servants, from those at the top such as Christopher Meyer to those at the bottom such as these sailors. It's time to look again at privacy legislation, a quid pro quo for the Freedom of Information Act the press abuses with petty assaults on government. The media is in danger of making government by any party impossible. polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk |
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| Author: | gerbilgranny [ 13 Apr 07, 21:17 ] |
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Madeline wrote: Our press, the worst in the west, demoralises us all Polly Toynbee - Friday April 13, 2007 poisonous newspapers heart-stopping hypocrisy demoralises the national psyche It makes people miserable figleaf sermons vicious cruelty polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk My sentiments entirely. 
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