Newspaper Watch - No Evidence, Just Leaks and Misinformation

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Thursday May 25, 2006 14:01 by chekov chekov at indymedia dot ie

Village Magazine Column 25th May 2006

In the Sunday Independent of May 21st, Gene Kerrigan pointed out that the leaks of the Tribal Secta reports into the health service, which were reported as front page news by the Sunday Independent on several occasions, were misrepresentations of the whole truth. Unfortunately, the editor seems happy to continue the tradition, as evidenced by the front page of the edition in which Kerrigan’s article appeared.

This time the story concerned the Afghan asylum seekers who were on hunger-strike in St. Patrick's cathedral. The headline claim that "Afghan says: 'I am a rapist and killer'" was based upon the contents of the Afghanis' asylum applications. These applications are confidential under both national and international law. The Sunday Independent merely stated that this information “is understood” without mentioning by whom, although the inference that the information had been leaked to the paper by the Department of Justice was obvious.

The Afghanis' spokespeople have denied the claims, although it would be impossible for them to respond properly without knowing who the alleged rapist and murderer is – if they had been given the space to do so, which they were not. The Afghani protestors' complaints included the poor standard of interpretation available to them and this could explain such an improbable approach to seeking asylum. Unfortunately, due to the confidential nature of such applications, there is no way of verifying whether the leaks were accurate or were simply fabrications as was the case with the Tribal Secta “exclusives”.

Presenting selective and unverifiable leaks as front page headline news displays an alarming willingness to adopt the role of the “government’s media apologists,” especially when the very same edition of the paper carried Kerrigan’s article pointing out the recent history of such leaks turning out to be lies. Doing so on such a sensitive and volatile issue, with the potential for an exacerbation of public racism, is grossly irresponsible.

While the front page story was highly dubious and unverifiable, the accompanying article by Mark Dooley can only be called staggeringly dishonest. The article was entitled "Hunger strikers have nothing to fear. Afghanistan is now safe and secure" and described the "political miracle" that has taken hold in Afghanistan since "liberation". There is such a wealth of information which flatly contradicts this claim, from right across the political spectrum, that it is difficult to know where to start. For example, on May 15th, Time magazine wrote: "Businesses have closed, and recent intense clashes between Taliban fighters and security forces have created a sense that the political order installed in Kabul after the Taliban's ouster may itself be about to collapse under pressure from the resurgent Taliban insurgency and under the weight of its own dependence on local warlords”. The Irish Independent itself carried a story on May 18th headlined: "scores killed in major gunbattles in Afghanistan ."

Dooley also asserted that "there is nothing psychologically damaging about our asylum process." Once again, this assertion is contradicted by such a large volume of hard evidence that it is hard to know where to begin. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 56 mental health studies of displaced people, printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005, found that "living in institutional accommodation, experiencing restricted economic opportunity" had serious negative consequences on mental health. These are exactly the problems that have been repeatedly highlighted by bodies such as the Irish Refugee Council and in Irish medical studies. Irish asylum seekers are housed in "direct provision" housing, with an allowance of 19 euros per week and regularly face a lengthy and traumatic process which is proven to have adverse psychological effects. But, sure why bother with evidence?