Telling it like it isn146;t

I first realised the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague ...

I first realised the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from The Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting. I could save my sorrows for someone else, he said. One of the joys of leaving was that he would no longer have to alter the truth to suit his paper8217;s more vociferous readers.

8220;I used to call the Israeli Likud Party 8216;right wing,8217;8221; he said. 8220;But recently, my editors have been telling me not to use the phrase. A lot of our readers objected.8221;

Ouch. I knew at once that these 8220;readers8221; were viewed at his newspaper as Israel8217;s friends, but I also knew that the Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu was as right wing as it had ever been.

This is only the tip of the semantic iceberg that has crashed into American journalism in the Middle East. Illegal Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are clearly 8220;colonies8221;, and we used to call them that. I cannot trace the moment when we started using the word 8220;settlements8221;. But I can remember the moment around two years ago when the word 8220;settlements8221; was replaced by 8220;Jewish neighborhoods8221; 8212; or even, in some cases, 8220;outposts8221;.

Similarly, 8220;occupied8221; Palestinian land was softened in many American media reports into 8220;disputed8221; Palestinian land 8212; just after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 2001, instructed US embassies in the Middle East to refer to the West Bank as 8220;disputed8221; rather than 8220;occupied8221; territory.

Then there is the 8220;wall8221;, the massive concrete obstruction whose purpose, according to the Israeli authorities, is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from killing innocent Israelis. In this, it seems to have had some success. But it does not follow the line of Israel8217;s 1967 border and cuts deeply into Arab land. All too often these days, journalists call it a 8220;fence8221; rather than a 8220;wall8221;. Or a 8220;security barrier8221;, which is what Israel prefers them to say. For some of its length, we are told, it is not a wall at all 8212; so we cannot call it a 8220;wall8221;, even though the vast snake of concrete and steel that runs east of Jerusalem is higher than the old Berlin Wall.

The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.

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If a Jewish colony built illegally on Arab land is a nice friendly 8220;neighbourhood8221;, then any Palestinian who attacks it must be carrying out a mindless terrorist act.

For Palestinians to object violently to any of these phenomena thus marks them as a generically vicious people. By our use of language, we condemn them.

We follow these unwritten rules elsewhere in the region. American journalists frequently used the words of US officials in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency 8212; referring to those who attacked US troops as 8220;rebels8221; or 8220;terrorists8221; or 8220;remnants8221; of the former regime. The language of the second US pro-consul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, was taken up obediently by American journalists.

American TV continues to present war as a bloodless sandpit in which the horrors of conflict 8212; the mutilated bodies of the victims of aerial bombing, torn apart in the desert 8212; are kept off the screen. Editors in New York and London make sure viewers8217; 8220;sensitivities8221; don8217;t suffer, that we don8217;t indulge in the 8220;pornography8221; of death that8217;s what war is or 8220;dishonour8221; the dead whom we have just killed.

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Our prudish video coverage makes war easier to support, and journalists long ago became complicit with governments in making conflict and death more acceptable to viewers. TV journalism has thus become a lethal adjunct to war.

Back in the old days, we used to believe 8212; did we not? 8212; that journalists should 8220;tell it how it is8221;. Read the great journalism of World War II and you8217;ll see what I mean. The Ed Murrows and Richard Dimblebys, the Howard K. Smiths and Alan Moorheads didn8217;t mince their words or change their descriptions or run mealy-mouthed from the truth because listeners or readers didn8217;t want to know or preferred a different version.

So let8217;s call a colony a colony, let8217;s call occupation what it is, let8217;s call a wall a wall. And maybe express the reality of war by showing that it represents not, primarily, victory or defeat, but the total failure of the human spirit.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. LA Times-Washington Post