The problem with today’s journalists is that they write the “what” but leave out the “why,” British journalist Robert Fisk told a crowd of more than 200 on Thursday at Fisk Hall.
“Why do we journalists try so hard to avoid the truth?” Fisk asked. “All we have to do is tell the truth, or as the Americans say, tell it like it is.”
Focusing on America’s war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Fisk criticized journalism’s changing vocabulary and its “grotesque, misleading” stories.
For example, he said journalists use the word “disputed” instead of “occupied” when referring to land, “neighborhood” instead of “settlement” in reference to Israeli residences and “clash” instead of “battle.” A softer connotation makes it easier for them to publish biased, anti-terrorist stories, Fisk said.
Similarly, the word “terrorist” has become a racial slur, because its only connotation is with Arabs, Fisk said.
This manipulation of words “has been going on long before Sept. 11,” he said.
Currently a Beirut-based foreign correspondent for the Independent, a London newspaper, Fisk recently returned from the Middle East. In addition to his current assignments, Fisk also has covered the Gulf War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, the civil war in Lebanon and the Iranian revolution. Further, he has authored three books.
Fisk said American journalists leave out information unfavorable to their country and causes.
He cited a recent incident in Israel in which six Palestinians, four girls and two women, were killed by a missile aimed at their ambulance. In The New York Times’ report of this event, the paper included this information in the sixth paragraph, according to Fisk.
“In journalism school, we learn to put the most important information in the first paragraph. Apparently on that day, (The Times) did not think this important,” he said.
Coverage of the war in Afghanistan also left out critical information, Fisk said. For example, after Sept. 11 journalists did not report the terrorists’ motive.
“I hate the ‘what and where’ stories that leave out the ‘why,'” he said. “My duty is to report the ‘why.'”
Similarly, recent American coverage offers few reports of Afghanistan citizens killed by American bombers, he said.
When Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1994, he found that Americans knew the locations of all of his camps because in 1980 they had provided Afghanistan with money to defend against Soviet invasion.
American money helped build the camps and hideouts later used to hide bin Laden, Fisk said.
“Strange how that didn’t make it into U.S. newspapers,” he said.
Because he has written that Afghan hatred of Americans is somewhat justified, Fisk said he has been accused of “supporting evil,” acting anti-American and anti-Semitic, and being a defender of groups that deny the Holocaust. As proof of this Afghan hatred, he told the audience he was physically attacked in December by Afghans who thought he was American.
Despite receiving these accusations and experiencing such violence, Fisk said he will continue to denounce indiscriminate use of the word “terrorist” as well as one-sided journalism.
Fisk also addressed the debate over the lasting impact of Sept. 11.
“Has the world been changed forever?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I do sometimes wonder if our concentration on that one day is not becoming a kind of self-absorption.”
Fisk presented photographs from BBC News, a letter from the Independent, a video of a Palestinian forced to give up his home and Middle Eastern cartoons portraying him as a rabid dog because of his zealous reporting.
Some students and Evanston residents who attended the event, sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism, the Center for International and Comparative Studies, the Arab Cultural Society and Muslim-cultural Students Association, said they found Fisk’s alternative perspective to be insightful.
“I was interested to see how a British correspondent would be received,” said Lionel Edes, an Evanston resident. He added that he learned a lot about “the degradation of the (English) language and distortions of history.”
“This is a topic that has been so unexplored, swept under the rug,” said Naveen Malik, a Weinberg freshman. “It is about time people realize the truth.”
