Interview with unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail
international |
arts and media |
other press
Tuesday January 22, 2008 09:40
by David Manning & Miriam Cotton - MediaBite
'Scribes of the Empire'
Dahr Jamail is scathing about Western media coverage of the war in Iraq.
Excerpt:
MB[MediaBite: With regards sectarianism in Iraq , your writing, and especially your latest piece 'The Myth Of Sectarianism', points towards something far more complex than the mainstream narrative of majority Shia vs minority Sunni. Does this simplification result simply from journalistic laziness, an elementary misunderstanding of the society or something else?
DJ: I think it results from both journalistic sloth, elementary misunderstanding of the society and history, but mostly from most establishment journos being scribes of the empire. When we look at the consistent flag-waving that is accepted as journalism regarding Iraq, and how there is always this deferring to the administration's policies in Iraq, how can we expect critical reportage which shows the U.S.-backed death squads in Iraq, and other policies which have caused, fuelled, and continued violent sectarianism and power struggles?
I think that so many establishment media reporters, like so many Americans overall, fail to allow themselves to see the brutal nature of this empire, and what it is costing the rest of the world. I think that occurs because it's a terrifying prospect to accept that we here in the U.S. now live in a police state, the leaders of which are bent on global domination, and nothing short of a full-scale resistance movement here, or total economic meltdown, is going to change that.
Full interview:
http://www.mediabite.org/interviews_latest.html
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