[Media-watch] FW: THE MARLISE SIMONS MANUSCRIPT
David Miller
david.miller at stir.ac.uk
Tue Mar 16 21:17:10 GMT 2004
message from Ed Herman
----------
From: "Ed Herman" <hermane at wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:01:30 -0500
To: <hermane at wharton.upenn.edu>
Subject: FW: THE MARLISE SIMONS MANUSCRIPT
Colleagues and Friends:
David Peterson and I have put up an extensive analysis of Marlise Simons¹
coverage of the Yugoslavia Tribunal for the New York Times, which we believe
will interest Times watchers as well as media analysts. We are looking for
a publication outlet for this article, which is unfortunately very long
(18,000 words, 27 pages single-spaced), and any suggestions along this line
would be welcome. For anybody who cannot download the piece, we would be
pleased to send a hard copy upon receipt of a name and address. I have
reproduced the first 4-5 pages of the document below to give its flavor and
tempt you to work through the full article.
Ed Herman
Marlise Simons on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda
Service
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
While the concept of a ³party line² is usually associated with totalitarian
parties and their offshoots, controlled by a state that imposes a
politically serviceable version of history on its underlings and agents, it
is very common for something like a party line to emerge in the U.S.
mainstream media as they deal with a demonized target accused of
misbehavior. In such cases the media quickly jump onto a bandwagon that
takes the official and politically convenient view as obvious truth, and
they then devote their efforts to elaborating on that truth.
This was the case in the years 1981-1986, following the shooting of Pope
John Paul II in Rome in May 1981 by the rightwing Turk, Mehmet Ali Agca.
These were years in which the Reagan administration was attempting to
portray the Soviet Union as an ³evil empire,² and it welcomed anything
helpful in Soviet denigration. It was soon charged in the Readers¹ Digest,
NBC News, and elsewhere that the Bulgarians and KGB were behind the
shooting, and this theme was latched onto and became a de facto party line
with great speed. There was virtually complete closure on questions of the
validity of the charge, and the media devoted all their efforts to filling
in details and obtaining speculations on why the KGB did this and its
political ramifications. The charge was in fact untrue, as came out in a
Rome trial against the Bulgarians that ended in 1986, in CIA officer
disclosures in 1990, and in the absence of any supportive evidence from the
newly opened secret service files of the now allied Bulgaria. The mainstream
media quietly crept away from the story in which their performance had been
outlandish in terms of adherence to theoretical news values--with the New
York Times among the most outlandish--but outstanding in terms of propaganda
service to ongoing state policy. (1)
A very similar process can be seen in the media¹s treatment of the Balkan
conflicts in the years 1990-2004. Here also a party line that conformed to
the political aims of the governing elite gradually emerged and eventually
hardened into unchallengeable truth. In a broad sketch of the official
line‹also the standard media version-- there was a bad man, a Communist
holdover and dictator, who used nationalist appeals to mobilize his people,
who were ³willing executioners.² (2) This bad man strove for a ³Greater
Serbia² and in the process committed major crimes of ethnic cleansing and
genocide that were initiated and mainly carried out by him and his forces.
The West, led by the United States, belatedly entered this fray, eventually
bombing the bad man¹s proxy forces in Bosnia, forcing the Dayton Agreement
on him, but with the West still eventually compelled to war against him to
protect the Kosovo Albanians. The West organized a Tribunal in 1993 to deal
with his and others¹ crimes, and that Tribunal, though hampered by sluggish
cooperation from the West and more serious obstruction by the Serbs, has
done yeoman service in the cause of justice and reconciliation. (3)
This party line, which is contestable on each facet of its claims, (4)
entered into the premises of journalists and editors at the New York Times,
just as the line on the Bulgarian-KGB link to the Papal shooting gripped
them for many years (followed by silence, without apology), with closure
imposed in both cases. The Times reporter who was most familiar with
Yugoslavia, but who failed to adhere to the party line, David Binder, was
removed from the region in favor of less knowledgeable but more
accommodating journalists, just as Raymond Bonner was removed from reporting
on Central America in the 1980s for his failure to adhere to the party line
evolving there. (5)
We will illustrate this party line treatment in the Balkans wars by
examining the work of Marlise Simons in her coverage of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or simply Tribunal) for
the New York Times. Simons has been the paper¹s principal reporter on the
Tribunal and one of the paper¹s leading reporters on the Balkans in general,
and as we would expect, and as we will show, she has been an undeviating
adherent to the party line. Our analysis is based on the study of her entire
output of 120 articles dealing with the Tribunal, extending from December 7,
1994 to December 14, 2003 (excluding only her articles with fewer than 200
words). (6)
Sourcing
A party line commonly takes its cues and information from official sources.
The accompanying table shows how much Marlise Simons has depended on
Tribunal and NATO officials for her information and as a guide to what was
relevant (rows 1-6). These account for almost half of her sources (48.6
percent); and if we include the human rights group officials cited by
Simons, all of whom were entirely sympathetic with the Tribunal¹s work, (7)
and indictees who had agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the
Tribunal, we are over half (53.8 percent). If we remove the category
³other,² most of whose members were supportive of the Tribunal, the ratio
rises to 60.1 percent. Virtually all of the sources cited by Simons that
contest the party line are indictees and defense counsel (lines 8B and 9).
She cites only a single witness for the defense, as compared with 32
witnesses for the prosecution and four prosecution experts.
TABLE 1
SOURCES USED BY MARLISE SIMONS IN REPORTING ON THE TRIBUNAL (8)
SOURCES NUMBER OF PERCENT OF
PERCENT OF
ARTICLES
ARTICLES TOTAL LESS
³OTHER²
1. ICTY Personnel: 125 30.9
34.9
2. Prosecution Witnesses: 32 7.9
8.9
3. Prosecution Experts: 4 1.0
1.1
4. Indictments: 11
2.7 3.1
5. ICTY Court Judgments: 7 1.7
2.0
6. NATO Country Officials: 19 4.7
5.3
7. Human Rights Group Officials: 14 3.4
3.9
8. Indictees: 41
10.1 11.5
A) Class A: 6
1.4 1.7
B) Class B: 35
8.6 9.8
B-1 Milosevic alone: 26
6.4 7.3
9. Defense Counsel: 37
9.1 10.3
10: Defense Witnesses: 1 0.2
0.3
11. Defense Experts: 0
--- ---
12. Experts With Dissident Views 0 ---
---
13. Other: 49
12.0 13.7
* Totals: 407
100- 100-
** Totals minus ³other² 358
*** Tabulations of interest:
Percentages of totals
A: 1-6 198
48.6 55.3
B. 7 + 8A 20
4.9 5.6
C. A +B 8A 218
53.6 60.1
D. 8B + 9 and 10 73
17.9 20.4
E. D Milosevic 47
11.5 13.1
These numbers understate the bias, because the prosecution is given more
prominence, more space, and more friendly treatment. Indictee and defense
counsel statements are briefer, more often paraphrased, come deeper in the
articles, and often give the appearance of a token inclusion designed to
provide a nominal balance. Their words are sometimes in satire-intended
quote marks highlighting their implausibility; and they are imbedded in
articles in which Simons¹ sympathy and identification with the prosecution
is readily apparent. (See Language and Tone, below.)
The most telling evidence of Simons¹ overwhelming bias in sourcing is the
fact that in 120 articles she never cites a single independent expert who
might have raised questions about the Tribunal¹s purpose, methods, or
evidence. Among the informed critics ignored were: Charles Boyd, David
Chandler, Phillip Corwin, Tiphaine Dickson, Fiona Fox, Robert Hayden, Jon
Holbrook, Diana Johnstone, George Kenney, Raymond Kent, Hans Koechler, John
Laughland, Michael Mandel, General Lewis Mackenzie, General Satish Nambiar,
Jan Oberg, Walter Rockler, Alfred Rubin, Kirsten Sellars and Cedric
Thornberry. One of these excluded experts, Robert Hayden, actually gave
lengthy testimony during the Tribunal hearings on the case of Dusko Tadic
on September 10-11, 1996. Hayden was contesting the views of James Gow, a
prosecution witness. Simons cited at length Gow¹s testimony for the
prosecution, and noted that Gow provided the courtroom a ³history lesson² in
the wars that consumed Yugoslavia, portraying these wars as the result of a
³plan conceived in Belgrade.² But Simons never cited Hayden¹s testimony for
the defense. (9) We see here in miniature a pattern that has repeated
itself throughout not only Marlise Simons¹ reporting on the affairs of the
Tribune for the Times---but throughout the Times coverage of the breakup of
Yugoslavia overall.
Framing
Framing and sourcing are closely linked, as the use of a particular source
allows that source to define the issues and to fix the frames of reference,
presumably those acceptable to or preferred by the journalist. Thus in the
case of the Papal assassination attempt of 1981, the Italian government and
prosecutors took as their frame the certainty that the KGB and Bulgarians
had hired Agca to shoot the Pope‹and after 17 months in an Italian prison,
and numerous indications by his interrogators that they would be pleased to
find a KGB-Bulgarian connection, along with a variety of inducements, Agca,
while also periodically claiming to be Jesus Christ, had ³confessed² to the
connection. The U.S. media took this as a truth around which the story was
framed. Similarly, in Moscow in 1936, the prosecutor¹s claim that Leon
Trotsky had organized a conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet government,
supported by documents and confessions, was the frame used by the Soviet
media as well as the prosecutor. In each of these cases there were
alternative frames, but the media ignored them.
The frame within which the Tribunal worked was in effect a morality tale,
with a clear cut delineation of good and bad players, as described in the
third paragraph above. As regards the Tribunal itself, in the Tribunal, NATO
official, and establishment media frame (which are identical) the Tribunal
was obviously good‹independent, without political bias and simply seeking
justice, adhering to Western judicial standards, and working under
difficult conditions because of imperfect cooperation from the West and more
severe obstructionism from Yugoslavia. This was Marlise Simons¹ frame and
she never once departed from or questioned it. She repeatedly made
contestable assertions about recent Balkan history as unarguable truths,
such as that Milosevic was ³the man whom the world has seen stoke a decade
of war and bloodshed in the Balkans,² a claim that she usually offers in
the form of the charges by the prosecution‹³chief architect,² ³most
responsible²‹a simple-minded view that Lenard Cohen has described as the
³paradise lost/loathsome leaders² perspective. (10) Not once in 120 articles
does Simons provide an analysis or discussion of the litany of prosecution
charges and party line claims about the Balkan wars that she regurgitates
like a press officer of the Tribunal. For Simons the Tribunal is the agent
of justice in the morality tale, so that she accepts its claims as assuredly
true and its self-appraisal as independent and virtuous and feels no
obligation to ask any hard questions or probe into areas that might suggest
doubts about its role or methods.
There were alternative frames, however, among which we may distinguish: (1)
the Tribunal as a planned and effective political and public relations arm
of NATO; and (2) the Tribunal as a ³rogue court,² without legal standing,
that has violated numerous Western judicial principles in its eagerness to
achieve its assigned political goals. These alternative frames have been
employed by most of the 20 independent experts named above, so that their
exclusion was obviously linked to the fact that the alternative frames were
unwelcome to Simons and the New York Times. The alternative frames were
allowed only in statements by Slobodan Milosevic, who did denounce his
incarceration and trial, and the work of the Tribunal in general, as
strictly and unjustly political. This is a fine illustration of a standard
ploy in propaganda service: Confine the unwanted line of argument to the
mouth of somebody who has little credibility with the target audience,
making it easy to dismiss without confronting serious argument and facts.
With the prosecution as her guide and almost exclusive source of
information, Simons¹ articles largely repeat prosecution charges, transmit
the gist of evidence of the scores of witnesses produced by the
prosecution, and, absent any critical and independent counter-evidence and
analyses, confirm and reinforce the prosecution case and public acceptance
of the morality tale. This replicates the performance of the New York Times
in the case of the attempted Papal assassination, where the reporters¹ tacit
assumption of the truth of the Bulgarian-KGB involvement, ³news² featuring
confidently stated official claims and purported corroborating
evidence---e.g., ³we have the evidence that Agca worked in close
collaboration with the Bulgarians;² and ³all the evidence suggests²
(11)---and blacking out of inconvenient facts and dissident analysis,
strengthened common belief in the ³Bulgarian connection.²
In her reporting on the Tribunal, Simons repeatedly refers to prosecution
³momentum,² confidence and exhilaration, claims that they have ³solid²
evidence, with hints that if they don¹t have enough it is because of
effective cover-up by the bad man. (12) Scores of times she mentions the
numbers allegedly killed in Bosnia and at Srebrenica and charges of
Milosevic¹s and Serb responsibility, with conflicting evidence, context that
brings in the shared NATO-power and Bosnian Muslim and Croatian
responsibility for the violence, and alternative analyses, blacked out. (13)
She reports in detail numerous witness accounts of alleged violence suffered
at the hands of the Serb army and paramilitaries, extracting maximum
emotional leverage from these testimonials. (14)
Apart from her uncritical treatment of these witness accounts, Simons never
once suggests that this kind of mistreatment of civilians occurs in every
civil conflict and war, and that the Serbs could produce a very large number
of civilian witnesses to similar abuses inflicted on them by Bosnian
Muslims, Croats, and the U.S. Air Force. (15) Early in his trial Milosevic
spent two days showing slides that gave graphic detail on numerous civilian
victims of the U.S. bombing of Serbia, and he suggested that a formidable
case could be built against the United States and NATO by a Tribunal that
had different political ends. Simons mentioned his evidence briefly, but she
did not pause to reflect on his case or bring in an expert who might expand
on it. (16) When the issue of NATO culpability in its deliberate bombing of
civilian facilities came up during and after the 78-day bombing, Simons and
her paper evaded the issue and provided only NATO-Tribunal apologetics, as
described below.
Language and ToneŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠŠ..
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