wfn.org | News coverage on Iraq misses full story

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

April 9, 2001 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
10-21-71B{167}

NOTE:  A sidebar (UMNS #168) is available for use with this story.

By Linda Bloom*

NEW YORK (UMNS) - Because of misleading or inadequate news coverage, many
Americans don't realize that the decade-long. sanctions against Iraq are
destroying its people rather than its leader.

That point, and the plea that the sanctions - imposed by the United Nations
but chiefly backed by the United States and Great Britain - should end was
made continuously during an April 5-6 workshop on "The News Embargo on
Iraq." The event was co-sponsored by the World Association for Christian
Communication (WACC) and the North American Regional Association of WACC.

Church leaders have been calling for an end to sanctions since 1992,
according to the Rev. John McCullough, a United Methodist who serves as
chief executive for Church World Service, the relief agency of the National
Council of Churches. The agency, which has supplied millions of dollars
worth of food and other supplies to Iraq over the past 10 years, has
remained "acutely aware of the impact of the economic sanctions" through its
contacts with the Middle East Council of Churches and other agencies on the
ground there.

In 1997, UNICEF estimated that more than 1.2 million people in Iraq,
especially small children, the elderly and the sick, had died as a result of
the sanctions. Now, the number is thought to be 1.5 million. A 1999 UNICEF
survey showed the mortality rates for children under five had nearly
tripled, from 56 deaths per 1,000 births to 131 per 1,000 births.

That the United States is "virtually alone" in maintaining its support of
the sanctions is partly because of the lack of information given to U.S.
citizens, who don't realize the policy is "morally intolerable," McCullough
said.

In fact, racism, ignorance, prejudice and a mislead fear of Islam have led
not to the crippling of Saddam Hussein but to a direct attack on the Iraqi
people, according to Dennis Halliday, who was the U.N. humanitarian
coordinator for Iraq from 1997-98. "This is the kind of attitude that allows
an entire people, a culture, to die," he declared.

Like Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for 17
months from 1998-2000, resigned the job in protest of the devastating
effects of the sanctions. But being against the sanctions, he said, does not
mean being in favor of Saddam Hussein. It means not standing by while
countless people die needlessly because they lack basic medicines and food.

"A lot of what you see, a lot of what you hear, a lot of what you read about
Iraq is the story of death," von Sponeck added.

In the four years of the U.N.'s oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq,
only $8.8 million worth of food supplies have actually been sent there,
according to a recent U.N. report. For Iraq's 22 million people, he said,
that translates to only $110 per person per year. So while the program is
important, it is "severely, severely inadequate."

Social progress made in the 1970s and 1980s has been totally reversed and
there is strong evidence that Iraq's middle class has been destroyed.
Unemployment ranges from 60 to 75 percent. And UNICEF's latest "State of the
Children" report shows Iraq dead last of 188 countries in terms of
children's welfare.

Von Sponeck accused the international community of flouting international
law in the case of Iraq. "The U.N. Security Council today is in
violation...of the laws that it helped to create to protect innocent
civilians," he said. "I think that's a scandal and the media needs to point
it out."

In general, that has not happened, according to Rania Masri, coordinator of
the Iraq Action Coalition. When studying how the U.S. media presents issues
of Iraq in 1999, she found that most media outlets:

	*	significantly ignored or downplayed the effects of
sanctions;

	*	ignored or discredited reports of civilian victims of
bombings;

	*	promoted the image that "Iraq is Saddam and Saddam is Iraq;"

	*	lacked balance by repeatedly quoting sources from only one
side of the issue;

	*	spoke with the voice of the government, such as "We
bombed....;"

	*	dramatically exaggerated the threat of Iraq's weapons;

	*	made no analysis of the events of the conflict between Iraq
and the United States.

Assessing media coverage during February and March, Masri said she found
many of the same characteristics. Coverage of the U.S. bombing of Iraq on
Feb. 16, for example, simply reiterated statements made by U.S. government
officials as fact. Only two of the 300 news outlets surveyed - the Houston
Chronicle and St. Louis Post-Dispatch - mentioned the two Iraqi civilians
killed by the bombing by name.

Masri did praise the Seattle Times for publishing 10 editorials over the
past six years in favoring of lifting the sanctions and credited
anti-sanction activists in the area for contributing to the paper's
enlightenment on the issue

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, has visited Iraq
six times and believes the churches must take the lead in dismantling the
direct attack on the people there. "What we (U.S.) are doing must be
condemned without hesitation," he declared.

The April workshop is one of a global series of meetings sponsored by the
WACC to bring the Christian principles of communications to bear on specific
problems. In addition to the co-sponsors, organizations providing funding
for the event included the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries,
Church World Service, American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central
Committee, Maryknoll Missioners, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of
Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

# # #
*Bloom is News Director in the New York office of United Methodist News
Service, the church's official news agency. 

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United Methodist News Service
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