Is Rupert Murdoch sheltering his own Eason Jordan?
Gerard Jackson
For those of who have been out of the loop, Eason Jordon was a top executive at CNN who accused the American military of targeting journalists. For this vicious slander he was forced to resign, but only because the blogs had mercilessly exposed him on a daily basis.
But Jordan is not alone in his anti-American bigotry. Peter Wilson, foreign correspondent for Murdoch’s Australian, has also accused the American military of targeting journalists (The Australian, Shooting the messenger, 10 May 2004).
Wilson sets the mood by insinuating that the American forces deliberately bombed the pro-terrorist Al-Jazeera network offices. According to him “The Pentagon was furious that it had aired graphic footage of Iraqi civilian casualties and American soldiers who had been killed or captured . . .”
That the allies were “furious” because Al-Jazeera acted for Saddam was not something that Wilson cared to consider. (He’s never bothered to hide his anti-American views).
He then went on to give a vivid description of the situation at the Palestinian Hotel after it had been hit by US tanks. Having described the pain, panic, death and destruction Wilson then felt free to accuse the US military of deliberately targeting them.
His response to the military’s explanation “that one of the tanks on the Jumhuriyah Bridge had come under fire from the hotel, so its crew had instinctively fired in self-defence” was to call it “nonsense”.
In other words, the US military are a bunch of liars. An honest journalist would have responded by investigating the military’s claims. Not our Mr Wilson. So on his say so readers of Murdoch’s Australian are to take it that American troops deliberately targeted journalists for destruction.
This kind of ideologically motivated ex cathedra statement might go down with his comrades in the newsroom but it’s not good enough for the rest of us.
Wilson argued that “television footage from the roof showed the tank slowly turning its turret towards the hotel, lifting its cannon, then pausing for quite a while before firing straight at the camera. The soundtrack picked up no trace of any shooting from the hotel before the tank fired.”
For his information tank turrets always slowly turn. The second point is that just because the “soundtrack picked up no trace of any shooting” that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. If Wilson had been serious about getting at the truth he would have tried to find out what the tank crew were experiencing.
Men under fire have to frequently make snap judgements. This is what saves their lives. The crew claimed that they saw someone in the Hotel aiming what looked like a man-portable anti-tank missile system at them.
From a distance these anti-tank weapons bear a close resemblance to shoulder-mounted television cameras. So the crew did what any other soldiers would have done — they opened fired.
Claims by journalists that the crew lied about the cameras resembling should-fired anti-tank weapons have been exposed as lies by the following photographs.
Put yourself in their position: you are tired, on edge, you’ve been under fire and your comrades have been taking casualties.
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 14 February 2005
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Seeing someone from a distance in a hostile area aiming one of these things at them, what was the crew suppose to do? Wilson won’t tell us what he would have done because he adamantly refuses to consider the situation the tank crew was facing.. “Never give a US soldier a break” seems to be his motto.
If CNN can force Jordan to resign why can’t Murdoch sack Wilson who has done no less than Jordan? Wilson used Murdoch’s Australian to libel US troops as cold-blooded killers, a libel he is repeating in a forthcoming book (Long Drive Through a Short War to be published on 12 May 2005 by Hardie Grant Books).
So why won’t Murdoch act? If he has not got the guts to fire the lying bigot, at least force him to publicly retract his libel and apologise to the troops.
Note: When the Bush-hating Peter Wilson was the Australian’s Washington correspondent his political reports read like Clinton campaign press releases. Wilson never wrote a favourable word about a Republican. He even claimed that America "leads the world in child poverty,” and suggested that Reagan's administration was the most corrupt in modern history. Promotion was Wilson’s reward for his bigoted reports.
Murdoch’s own Eason Jordan: more damning evidence
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor