Understanding the Western Press

Time Magazine and the Fake Hezbollah Interview
By As’ad AbuKhalil – Sun, 2011-09-04 13:25

The fake interview by Nicholas Blanford of a supposed Hezbollah member allegedly implicated in Hariri’s killing was a journalistic scandal and a clear intelligence ploy. The interview published in Time Magazine presumably intended to bring the accused out—electronically speaking—in order to locate him. The story reveals a lot about the way in which the Western press operates. This is not the first time that coverage of the Middle East has been associated with scandals and propaganda. Western media have served as government tools since the US war on Iraq in 1990. It only got worse over time, especially since Sep. 11.

The US press is more obedient to the government than, say the British or French press, because the former lacks experienced experts on the Middle East who can make foreign policy decisions independent of government pressures. European media are more likely to employ experts who reside in the region and who know the languages. In the US press, the tendency is to rely on roving correspondents who know little on every country they cover, and on stringers who are filtered through the Zionist foreign editor in New York City. This is not the first time that coverage by Blanford reaches a bizarre level. Blanford, before the 2006 war, specialized in counting (in Western media) the number of missiles owned by Hezbollah and the amount of cash that Iran gives to Hezbollah. No one dared to ask Blanford where he got this information that even intelligence services don’t possess, although his estimates of Hezbollah missiles curiously matched Israeli intelligence estimates cited in the Israeli media. And only weeks ago, Blanford wrote a story in which a Hezbollah “fighter” brags to him about Hezbollah’s smuggling operations. Blanford never explained why a Hezbollah fighter would confide in him—him of all people, given his pro-Israeli and pro-Hariri tendencies.

But then again, don’t underestimate the extent to which ill-informed Western reporters are duped and deceived in their work; and don’t underestimate the extent to which some journalists fabricate for fame, and others receive planted intelligence stories. The natives can outsmart the White Man too. But this alleged interview was a bigger scandal than previous ones. Blanford signed his name to the story and later had to embarrassingly admit that he was not the interviewer, and that he was not present during the interview although he offered psychological analysis of the accused and reported that he appeared relaxed. Later, Blanford claimed that the accused appeared relaxed from the text of the interview. But Blanford is guilty twice: once as a journalist and the second time as a writer who is authoring a book on Hezbollah. Anyone who knows anything about Hezbollah would know that the notion that a Hezbollah commander or “fighter” would identities himself and would even—to a Western reporter—volunteer his ID card is ludicrous. Any of my students who have written papers on Hezbollah would have dismissed the interview as a hoax, or worse.

But Blanford persisted: he said that he trusted Time magazine which had sent him the interview from New York City (although it did not claim that the interview took place in Times Square in New York City). And when pressed by the skeptical Lebanese press (which is more qualified to judge the interview than the Western press), Blanford resorted to an odd response: he said that he trusts Time magazine because it is “respected.” Of course, Time magazine has not been “respected” for years as a Western media outlet, especially Time and Newsweek. The latter two became outlets of the most tabloidish and sensationalist stories. Time is more interested in Princess Diana than in foreign policy stories, and the number of foreign policy stories chosen as cover stories went down from around 20 in the 1970s to only a handful per year now.

So what is “respected” about Time? Blanford was relying on Arab misconceptions about Western press in a region where people still think that Barbara Walters and Larry King are “journalists.” The Western media did not make a big deal out of this scandal because digging any deeper would have embarrassed the US government and March 14. Blanford is a well-known propagandist for Hariri court and his book on Rafic Hariri is nothing short of a piece of propaganda window dressed as hagiography. (The book relied totally on accounts of Hariri court members and jesters and contained the early accusation about Syria’s responsibility for Hariri’s killing. Don’t be surprised if Blanford writes another edition to include the latest Hariri theory about the assassination.
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