Never before in the History of Human Intellectual Progress has it become so imperative to have impartial, independent, honest and factual sources of information which rises above any prejudice and bias than in the present times. We as a global community are dependent on these sources of information, may it be intelligentsia of our society, mainstream media or intellectual think tanks.
An article titled’ What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden’ was published in The New York Times on 19 March 2014 that defies all ethics of fair, transparent and unbiased journalism. This article is written by an English journalist, Carlotta Gall who has misrepresented information regarding Pakistan and its Establishments, especially the Army and the ISI by omitting certain facts in order to foster a misconception among the readers, thus committing confabulation.
There can be no apt response than to quote a paragraph from an article written by a German politician and Reich minister Joseph Goebbels on 12 January 1941. It reads, “….the English follow the principle that when one lies one should lie big and stick to it; they keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous”. This paragraph is commonly misinterpreted as ‘if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it and you will even come to believe it yourself’.
In this era of freedom of speech, through the mainstream media mainly the print media societies are influenced in how they think about different issues because media fills the knowledge gap by choosing what it wants the people to hear and read, may it be the projection of a minority view.
After the attacks of 9/11 the media gave an extensive, comprehensive and detailed account of the event through information as was provided by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion in favor of the War against Terrorism. But in all this mayhem a very grave concern emerged – due to the immense influence of mainstream media in driving the public opinion of the masses, if any media receiving inaccurate information could lead to building a public opinion in supporting a wrong cause.
Jim A Kuypers, an American academic and professor at Virginia Tech in his research study, “Press Bias and Politics:How the Media Frame Controversial Issues” of 116 mainstream US newspapers (including The New York Times, The Washington post and Los Angeles Times), maintained that mainstream US print media, ‘operate within a narrow range of liberal beliefs. Those who expressed points of view further to the left were generally ignored whereas those who expressed moderate or conservative points of view were often actively denigrated or labeled as holding a minority point of view’.
Carl Bernstein, an American investigative journalist and author of many books and also winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, in his article entitled “the CIA and the Media” wrote about The New York Times, “the agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials”. (http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine-cia-and-media.php)
Carlotta Gall, like all her other related articles and latest book “The Wrong Enemy:America in Afghanistan 2001-2004 “ left no stone unturned in projecting Pakistan as a Rouge Terrorist State and its Intelligence Agencies and Armed Forces running amok.
By repeatedly writing such kind of articles she has tried to ensure that readers interpret a particular point of view, that terrorism and Pakistan are synonymous, by so called ‘truth projection’ and ‘embedded journalism’. Also try to convey selected and highly controversial information to the readers to influence their emotions and objective reasoning. However, the Truth is far from it.
Michel Chossudovsky, an award winning author and professor at the University of Ottawa, and also the founder and director of the Centre of Research on Globalization, collected, composed and edited a set of key articles published by Global Research in the course of last several years under the title, ‘The 9/11 Reader’ wherein he states that ‘Osama Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored Jihad in Afghanistan. He was 22 years old and trained in a CIA sponsored guerrilla training camp. During the Regan administration, Osama Bin Laden who belonged to the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created and the operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence headed by Prince Turki Al Faisal in close liaison with CIA. The money derived from various charities were used to finance recruitment of mujahideen volunteers for Al Qaeda, The Base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had listed to fight the Afghan Jihad. The data was initially held by Osama Bin Laden”. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-911-reader-the-september-11-2001-terror-attacks/5303012).
Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a best selling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar and also an executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development. Quoting from his article, ‘Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to Al Qaeda chief spiked?” Sibel Deniz Edmonds, a former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistle-blowers Coalition (NSWBC) and author of the book, “Classified Woman-The Sibel Edmonds Story”, that ‘Pentagon, CIA and the State Department maintained intimate ties to Al Qaeda militants as late as 2001. She also claimed that Ayman al Zawahiri the current head of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden’s deputy at the time had innumerable regular meetings at the US embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan with US military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001 as part of the operation known as ‘Gladio. B’. Al Zawahiri as well as various members of the Bin Laden family and other mujahideen were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilization operations.”
(http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/whistleblower-al-qaeda-chief-u-s-asset/)
According to another article by Anthony Samson published in the prestigious The Guardian on 1 November 2001 quoting French newspaper Le Figaro, that, ‘two months before 9/11 in July, Osama Bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days treatment at the American hospital. While he was there, he was visited by CIA chief and head of Saudi intelligence Prince Turki Al Faisal’. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism).
Recently, Peter Bergen CNN’s National Security Analyst, director at the New American Foundation and the author of “Man Hunt:The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden”, rote in his article, ‘Pakistan Sheltered bin Laden? Prove it’ on march 21 2014, “it is hard to prove negatives, but having spent around a year reporting intensively on the hunt for Al Qaeda’s leader, for my book I am convinced that there is no evidence that anyone in the Pakistani government, military or intelligence agencies knowingly sheltered bin Laden.” He further writes ‘what did US officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was protected by the Pakistanis, if it were true?’
(http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/21/opinion/bergen-bin-laden-new-york-times/)
And the list goes on and on.
My advise to Carlotta Gall would be to look up to her father the prominent journalist, Henderson Alexander ‘Sandy’ Gall who spent a lifetime in these parts of the world where he was highly respected both by Pakistan and Afghanistan for his fair, impartial and extensive reporting in the media on the days of Afghan Jihad against Russian invasion in Afghanistan. So much so that he was awarded Sitara-i-Pakistan by the Pakistan government in 1985. But in the later years of his career he confessed that he was recruited by M16, the British intelligence agency due to which his reporting of the Afghan Jihad was questioned. Is it possible that the daughter could also be recruited by some intelligence agency, keeping in mind her prominence in journalism?
Just thinking out loud.
