From Mike Wallace To Judith Miller

One of the greats of television journalism is dead. He passed away Saturday night at a caring home in the United States. 

At 93, Mike Wallace leaves behind a tremendous legacy. There is little question that American ingenuity takes the credit for the rise of TV journalism in the world. Mr. Wallace belonged to a generation of American TV professionals who set the standards for what we recognize globally today as news television. 

That generation of American journalists set the bar very high. 

That's the reason why the US media became so influential in the world. It certainly didn't happen because America had a formidable military power. 

What is unfortunate is that influential parts of US media failed to maintain the standards set by Mr. Wallace's generation, of rigorous questioning of authority. And of maintaining a credible distance between journalism and authority. Certainly the media's relationship with government must not be confrontational. But it should not be prone to government manipulation at critical times, such as when the state decides to launch a war of choice characterized by deceit. 

That's what happened with Judith Miller who misled The New York Times, the American people and the world on Iraq and the links between terrorists and WMD.  But she was not alone. NYT editors helped her and the paper become a PR arm for the government. It took one of those editors eight years to come clean on this. 

It gets worse. In recent years, some American editors willingly provided accreditation to intelligence agents disguised as journalists. It happened in the case of Roxana Saberi, caught red handed in Tehran spying for Central Intelligence Agency. She was released under a deal whose terms remain secret but appear to include a commitment on her part never to speak to US media about what she was doing in Iran. She was not a journalist and yet an editor of an American newspaper issued her a press card as cover for spying for CIA in another country. 

After 2002, a new type of journalism invaded US media and we in Pakistan experienced it firsthand. All of a sudden there was a rush of 'news reports' and opinion pieces all seemingly coming from diverse outlets quoting unnamed sources but reading from the same talking points: Pakistan is evil, nukes are up for grab, and this is a place worse than Iraq and hence needs to be fixed. 

None of this has anything to do with Mr. Wallace's legacy. 

And yet his passing provides us an opportunity to remember what endeared America to the world. It is the pure American ingenuity personified by Mr. Wallace's creed. That's the real face of America that the world should see. Not the militaristic, deceitful and the warmongering one personified by Ms. Miller, Ms. Saberi and those who backed them. Recently, this Miller-Saberi side of America has turned hateful, with the near assassination of Gabrielle Gifford and the brutal murder of an Iraqi mother in an American suburb. 

It's been a long way from Mike Wallace to Judith Miller. But it is Wallace that represents what's good about America. Let's stick to that. 

Roxana Saberi And The Am-Brit Media Lies

Since 2007, two nations – Britain and the United States – have been mounting a venomously anti-Pakistan campaign with variations on a single theme: Pakistan is falling apart, the nukes could fly around, Taliban will take over, and Pakistan needs the saviors, an Anglo-American military intervention to save the day.

The campaign has been based entirely on conjecture and insinuations that eerily match the latest U.S. plans for Pakistan. The more Washington talked about Pakistan’s double game, more ‘Pakistani Taliban’ and other shady terrorists and insurgents crossed from Afghanistan to terrorize Pakistanis and attack the military.

The Am-Brit media campaign against Pakistan is as colorful as the one run by the same Anglo-American media against Iraq before the invasion, all of course based on outright lies, doctored pictures and CIA-planted stories. None of these Am-Brit news organizations ever apologized later for becoming a tool in the hands of the CIA, the U.S. military and the U.S. government.

And just as in Iraq’s case, this campaign against Pakistan is exclusively an Am-Brit campaign, meaning that no one else is involved in running it except the Americans and the Brits. The occasional role of the Indian poodle doesn’t count. You don’t see the German media, or the Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Saudi, or any other media in any other country mounting this campaign.

It’s an Am-Brit operation. People in the military call it psy-ops, short for psychological operations.

The masterpiece in this regard was the October 2007 Newsweek cover story that decided that Pakistan and not Iraq was the most dangerous place on earth today [conveniently overlooking Iraq and Afghanistan were American and British secret ‘death squads’ were busy in murdering Iraqis.]

The latest masterpiece is BBC’s report released recently where BBC has concluded, while sitting in London, that only 38% of the NWFP province is in fact under Pakistan’s sovereign control.

Two weeks ago, it was CNN’s turn. It made the fall of Islamabad in the hands of a few terrorists the lead story for two days, raising a global scare. Then the Pakistani military strongly protested at this scare campaign which was false. That’s when the U.S. puppet Zardari government in Islamabad, and Mullen, Petraeus, Clinton, Holbrooke and the rest of the Obama admin came out to deny this and feign ignorance about the origin of these lies being feverishly peddled by the Am-Brit media.

According to BBC’s findings, a disorderly bunch of terrorists have suddenly defeated the world’s sixth largest standing army, and a professional one at that, and are now almost in control of one of the four federating Pakistani provinces.

And what was BBC’s source for this story that most Pakistanis missed in their own country? Well, 18 months of news reports filed by BBC correspondents from areas within Pakistan where terrorism incidents have occurred. BBC’s strategists concluded that this was ample proof the territory was no longer under Pakistani control.

What is the purpose of these scare stories in the Am-Brit media? Well, London and Washington have been keen to hide the massive failures in their Afghan occupation and seize the opportunity to move the war into Pakistan and punish the Pakistanis for supporting the Afghan Taliban [the real Taliban] and for not accepting the great Am-Brit wider plan of turning the Pakistani army into a local police force, contain the nuclear weapons, and allow India to become the new regional Am-Brit slave-soldier in charge of Am-Brit interests.

No one in the Am-Brit media talks about the money and weapons that these terrorists inside Pakistan are receiving from ‘someone’ in Afghanistan. This is how Pakistan has been destabilized in less than four years. Have you heard about organized terrorists armed with anti-aircraft guns killing Pakistanis and fighting the Pakistani military before 2005?

The BBC story fits in perfectly with scores of reports, op-ed pieces, statements and intensive public brainstorming on the U.S. think-tank circuit on how Pakistan’s different ethnic groups should be made to fight with each other in order to hasten the collapse of the Pakistani state.

Just to conclude with the BBC story. The BBC report ended with a statement from a correspondent in Islamabad warning that it would be inaccurate to say Pakistan has lost control of its territory because the terrorists are not an organized entity and are made up of small groups mounting hit and run attacks and so there’s no need to exaggerate.

Wow, BBC.

So after creating a stir, the report is concluded with an exit that allows for a retraction in the future.

And so the Am-Brit media lies continue. Read them with a pinch of salt next time.

P.S. Roxana Saberi, an American journalist, has just been released. While the Americans would have us think she was this poor truth seeker imprisoned by a dictatorial regime in Iran, the real truth comes out to show, again, how the Am-Brit media is a willing and ready tool of the Am-Brit intelligence and military. In 2003, Ms. Saberi, then an Iranian citizen, apparently worked in Iran as a translator in a government department that dealt with national security issues. Now, six years later, she was sent to Iran as a U.S. journalist. She worked her contacts to get hold of classified documents and was naturally going to hand them over to CIA. That's how she was arrested. Not a journalist but definitely shown as one, courtesy of one of America's 'free' media organizations for sure.