By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)_
August 28, 2000
I started writing a daily analysis of the day's news, based on facts not opinion, two years ago because I believed there were a lot of people tired of the network treatment of news as entertainment rather than fact-reporting. And, I was right. There are a lot of thoughtful readers out there.
One of them wrote me last week from Belmont Shore, California with the following comment:
"I enjoyed reading your recent piece "Why the Media WON'T Discuss the Clinton Kosovo Fraud". As usual, you did an excellent job demolishing the myths and misinformation that we in the U.S. have been presented about this conquest of a foreign land. "That said, however, when I finished the article it seem to me that the promise of the title still had not been fulfilled. Yes, we know that our government officials blatantly lied to us with the full collaboration of the major media, but I still have a hard time fathoming WHY the press went along with it."Even if most of the working press consists of doctrinaire supporters of this administration, surely some of them (even the most prominent) realize that a Watergate-style scoop that exposes in prime-time this level of official mendacity and corruption would give them huge amounts of publicity and prestige. A (for instance) one-hour special on the lies about Kosovo hosted by Sam Donaldson would put his name on the front pages of every newspaper in the country and immeasurably build his reputation as a fact-digging reporter (however undeserved).
"So why don't any of them do it, even if just out of simple self-interest? Television news, especially, thrives and builds ratings on controversy -- what could be the motivation for remaining in lockstep with the party line when splashy headlines would be so easy to achieve? "I hope you will address this issue again in a future article, and I look forward to reading more from you.
From the point of view of network executives, who presided over the broadcast of bald-faced lies in the guise of news about Kosovo, what would they gain by now informing the American people that billions of dollars had been, and still are being spent to maintain a lie in Kosovo, and much of what they had previously reported was false? It would not be in their self-interest. It would further erode the low level of trust that the American people have in the media. In the past week, Dan Rather had told the American people that the leak about Independent Counsel Ray's new grand jury in the investigation of the case involving President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was obviously coming from Ray or the Republicans. It wasn't. It came in an inadvertent slip of the tongue by Democrat appointed Federal Judge Richard Cudahy. However, Dan Rather has not apologized for his statement, nor has Al Gore who suggested much the same thing.
It is easier, or has been throughout most of Clinton's administration, for the networks to report almost anything they wanted to report once the President was overseas. A case in point is yesterday's visit by President Clinton to Nigeria.
CBS news in a 749 word report on the President's trip, spent more than half of it talking about what he was wearing - a "flowing robe" given to him by one of the Chiefs and Clinton's a very brief report on Clinton's appeal
"to the leaders of the oil-rich nation to set aside political acrimony so that their citizens can lift themselves from poverty and isolation."He praised President Olusegun Obasanjo's leadership in stabilizing Nigeria, and told the nation's National Assembly they must develop a better working relationship with Obasanjo if their nation is to surmount "the wrongs and errors of the past."
In effect what Clinton told the 110 million Nigerians to forget their desire for more local autonomy and get behind the centralized government of the Capital. The Lagos "Observer" in an editorial pointed out:
"But why did he choose to dwell so much on the politics of our "national question"?"One reasonable speculation we can make is that the man had good briefing from his host. President Obasanjo must have whispered to him on the grave threats to unitarism since he assumed office. Even if Clinton were not so briefed, he could have picked up the issues from the Nigerian media. For, in the past one year or so, the strident clamour for restructuring of Nigeria has been the popular theme of national debate. There is a way of presenting these matters to a visitor to make them appear rebellious acts against the state. Doing so leads to wrong recipes.
"The issue is not that Nigerians are tired of living together in a plural setting. The over 300 ethno-linguistic groups that make up Nigeria enjoyed relations going back centuries before the British cloned them together between 1900 and 1914. What is being detested and rejected is the arrangement which makes Nigeria a unitary state, rather than the federal one which the various groups subscribed to at independence in 1960. This overcentralisation favours certain ethno-regional sections which are content at having Nigeria good only for plundering, not for developing. On the contrary, the victims of the deformed federalism insist that the country must return to the core idea of the 1960 system so that the constituting units and or regions can enjoy the autonomy to decide what resources to exploit and how to distribute the outcome therefrom. The platform for deciding this should be a national conference, which like South Africa's CODESA, can do its work whilst with the Obasanjo administration carries on its constitutional assignment of governing. This is essentially the demand of the oil-producing states, the South-West, the South-East and the progressive sections of the Middle Belt region. The Obasanjo administration dismisses this demand as secessionist. This is the source of national crisis.
"The burning issues featured in President Clinton's historic address could well have been made by President Obasanjo, although hearing them from a neutral authority makes a significant difference to how the ideas are assessed. On each occasion when the government had an opportunity to engage in this type of soulful dialogue with Nigerians, it tended to alienate them more. The National Assembly itself whose robust applause interrupted Clinton's speech so many times, has not bothered enough to deal with these matters that agitate the majority of the citizenry."
In other words, he is urging the people of Nigeria, a large country with over 356,668 square miles and 110 million people and over 300 ethnic groups to remain united under a strong central government at all costs after he spent the past eight years presiding over and encouraging the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a European nation with 98,766 square miles, 22,826,000 million people and fewer than 10 e ethnic groups into six tiny nations.
Do you suppose he made the trip to Nigeria to urge unity, after encouraging the six republics and two autonomous provinces of Yugoslavia to break apart by bombing the Nation of Yugoslavia for 79 day because he learned from his mistakes in Kosovo? Or can we just assume he is encouraging unity for some other reason? Certainly he can be assured that the American media will not point out his inconsistency. The American media could see no great story during Lyndon Johnson's administration in the war for liberation among the Ibos, over a million of whom died in the Biafran war. It cannot be expected to tell the American people much about the seething resentment of the Nigerian people towards the system of government in Nigeria which gives a huge amount of power to the central government and very little to the people of the provinces.
Nor can we expect the media to suddenly begin to tell us the truth about Kosovo, when the truth at this point would reveal media incompetence to those who believed their lies about Kosovo.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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