W.J. Astore
Learning from Ashleigh Banfield’s Landon Lecture of April 2003
Early in 2003, Ashleigh Banfield was a star in the making. A rising journalist at MSNBC, she covered the opening stages of the Iraq War. Before that, she’d made a name for herself covering the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Smart, pretty, highly skilled, she was heading nowhere but up. Until she gave an honest lecture on her experiences in Iraq and the Middle East on April 24, 2003.
I’ve written before about Banfield’s honest and heartfelt critique of Iraq war coverage in the U.S. mainstream media, which won her no friends at NBC News. In fact, the NBC brass sidelined and essentially exiled her. I recently reread her Landon Lecture at Kansas State University and realized NBC wasn’t just angry about her critique of mainstream media war coverage: they were likely even more incensed at how she humanized and empathized with Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples and groups, including organizations like Hezbollah.
Here’s some of what she had to say back then in 2003:
But it’s interesting to be able to cover this [Israel and Palestine]. There’s nothing in the world like being able to cross a green line whenever you want and speak to both sides of a conflict. I can’t tell you how horrible and wonderful it is at the same time in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel. There are very few people in this world who can march right across guarded check points, closed military zones, and talk to Palestinians in the same day that they almost embedded with Israeli troops, and that’s something that we get to do on a regular basis.
And I just wish that the leadership of all these different entities, ours included, could do the same thing, because they would have an eye opening experience, horrible and wonderful, all at the same time, and it would give a lot of insight as to how messages are heard and how you can negotiate. Because you cannot negotiate when someone can’t hear you or refuses to hear you or can’t even understand your language, and that’s clearly what’s happening in a lot of places in the world right now, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, not the least of which there’s very little listening and understanding going on. Our language is entirely different than theirs, and I don’t just mean the words. When you hear the word Hezbollah you probably think evil, danger, terror right away. If I could just see a show of hands. Who thinks that Hezbollah is a bad word? Show of hands. Usually connotes fear, terror, some kind of suicide bombing. If you live in the Arab world, Hezbollah means Shriner. Hezbollah means charity, Hezbollah means hospitals, Hezbollah means welfare and jobs.
These are not the same organizations we’re dealing with. How can you negotiate when you’ re talking about two entirely different meanings? And until we understand — we don’t have to like Hizbullah, we don’t have to like their militancy, we don’t have to like what they do on the side, but we have to understand that they like it, that they like the good things about Hizbullah, and that you can’t just paint it with a blanket statement that it’s a terrorist organization, because even when it comes to the militancy these people believe that militancy is simply freedom fighting and resistance. You can’t argue with that. You can try to negotiate, but you can’t say it’s wrong flat out.
And that’s some of the problems we have in dealing in this war in terror. As a journalist I’m often ostracized just for saying these messages, just for going on television and saying, “Here’s what the leaders of Hezbullah are telling me and here’s what the Lebanese are telling me and here’s what the Syrians have said about Hezbullah. Here’s what they have to say about the Golan Heights.” Like it or lump it, don’t shoot the messenger, but invariably the messenger gets shot.
We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. Some of you may know his name already from his radio program. He was so taken aback by my dare to speak with Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut on the air. And that’s not all, as a porn star. And that’s not all, as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. So these are the ramifications for simply being the messenger in the Arab world.
Emphasis added. Original spelling retained. You can watch her speech here.
Banfield tried to be a real journalist for MSNBC. She tried to understand and report the Israeli perspective but also the perspectives of groups like Hezbollah, and for that she was severely punished.
For Hezbollah, you could say something similar of Hamas today. As Banfield says, you don’t have to praise groups like Hamas (or, for that matter, Israel). But what you should try to do as a journalist is to understand them and to report on them as clearly and honestly as possible. As she says, her reward was to be defamed and dismissed as a slut by a fellow reporter, even called an accomplice to murder, after which her bosses at NBC punished and demoted her!
It’s no wonder that mainstream media coverage by most reporters today is so slavishly pro-Israel. Who wants to be slut-shamed and demoted? Who wants their career ruined just because they sought to understand more than one side (the Israeli/U.S. one) of complex situations in the Middle East?
My brother once quipped: “We learn, good.” MSM reporters in America “learned good” that being rabidly pro-Israel (and, of course, pro-U.S. government and pro-war) is always the safest bet to accolades and promotions from their corporate overlords.
And, as I wrote in my previous piece on Banfield: Any young journalist with smarts recognizes the way to get ahead is to be a cheerleader for U.S. military action, a stenographer to the powerful. Being a critic leads to getting fired (like Phil Donahue); demoted and exiled (like Banfield); and, in Jesse Ventura’s case, if you can’t be fired or demoted or otherwise punished, you can simply be denied air time.
Banfield tried to tell us there’s a difference between journalism and coverage; that far too many voices of dissent had been silenced in America before and during the opening stages of the Iraq War; that war coverage was (and is) far too often both one-sided and sanitized.
Again, it’s worth a few minutes of your time to listen to her lecture and reflect on her honesty and integrity—and how she was punished for it.
After watching this, you’ll understand why the reporters you see today on U.S. TV and cable networks are nothing like Ashleigh Banfield.
“War is ugly and it’s dangerous” and it fuels hatred. Yes it is and yes it does, Ms. Banfield. Thank you for your honesty, your integrity, and your courage.
Bracing Views 
Shameful, these embedded-complicit-craven mainstream ‘journalists’…but, in the end, they have no shame.
The Fourth Estate: R.I.S. (rest in shame)
Thank you, WJA; you’re always right on.
(What is Ms. Banfield doing these days–these 21 years on?)
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Regrettably, tragically, we only consider the most recent status, results & effects but rarely do we look back to see the cause of the current tragedy occurring in the middle East, in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel & Lebanon. Dennis Ross in his book, “The Missing Peace,” documents the missed opportunity Palestine had but squandered. During the last 20 days of President Clinton’s presidency, there was a Declaration of Peace & of independent Palestinian nationhood which also includes other benefits for the Palestinian people. Five major Moslem Arab countries (Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan & Saudi Arabia) all supported this offer & declaration. Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, Chairman Arafat’s advisor, advised Arafat to sign the aforementioned offer, that Arafat would never get a better offer, & if Arafat didn’t sign the offer, Arafat would betray the Palestinian people. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack signed the Declaration for Israel. Arafat refused to sign the Declaration; Clinton’s term presidency ended; & Ehud Barack lost reelection. This was one of five offers of peace that Israel offered Palestine. Israeli official Abba Eban once said that Palestine never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Later Arafat said that he wished he had signed the offer. Why aren’t you & other journalists writing about Palestine’s repeated failure to accept peace & nationhood?
,z
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The Biden administration and too-many Democratic senators and congressional representatives want it both ways: to unconditionally heavily arm the Israeli state against Palestine AND to keep the Palestine-/human-rights-supporting voters active and onside.
But I doubt that Arabic/Palestinian/Muslim voters will collectively compromise and sell their souls by giving Biden a pass on his blatant bloodying hypocrisy towards the current mass slaughter of Palestinians by Israel.
U.S. Republicans, meanwhile, went into their ‘Christian’ mode by withholding their political support for helping literally starving Palestinian children. (Really, what would Jesus say?!)
Still, any American president who, quite unlike Trump, seriously tried implementing truly humane, progressive policies — notably a genuine anti-war effort, a universal guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare, a significant reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and military spending, increasing the minimum wage while also reigning in Wall Street abuse/corruption [etcetera] — would likely be assassinated.
Besides having to suffer and brutally die from manmade famine, there have been tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians killed by Israeli assaults. There has been a very-long-term oppressive Israeli occupation.
This is Israel’s and the collective West’s business-as-usual perception thus inevitable non-intervention. Palestinians are considered disposable. Generally, Israel and Westerners, including our legacy news-media, have been getting accustomed to so many Palestinian deaths over many decades of violent struggle with Israel.
For decades they have been perceived thus treated as not being of equal value to those within Israel. This may help explain the relative poverty, with Palestinian children picking through the mountains of Israeli waste basically dumped on territory annexed or on the way to being annexed. Ergo, their great suffering and deaths are somehow less worthy of our actionable concern.
The mainstream news-media I consume daily, even the otherwise progressive outlets, are largely replacing daily Gazan deaths and suffering with relatively trivial domestic news, especially as leading stories.
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ARAFAT wanted the return of Palestinians to their rightful territory from which they were dispossessed. “In 2000, after Yasser Arafat rejected the offer made to him by Ehud Barak based on a two-state solution and declined to negotiate for an alternative plan, it became clear that Arafat would not make a deal with Israel unless it included the full Palestinian right of return, which would demographically destroy the Jewish …”
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Booo to you, IR. Chairman/President Arafat refused to drink BClinton’s Koolaid because it didn’t contain (i) the internationally enshrined right to return or (ii) East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. There was a third prime objection but I don’t have it in what’s left of my mind at the moment (might have been a state on a MINIMUM of the 22 percent left of “Palestine” after myriad Colonial Zionist depredations over the decades). The word then was that Yasir Arafat would have been assassinated by his people had he dared to buy off on such a dastardly trap.
Booo to BClinton too! Bas*ard: he ASSURED Yasir Arafat that he/US wouldn’t vilify him if he refused the “offer.” Liar, liar….
Turn you on your head, IR: The Colonial Zionists never miss an opportunity to exploit an opportunity.
(Do aware readers recall? Bulldozer Sharon brazenly incited Intifada II very shortly, 10-2000, after the Barak/BClinton debacle/betrayal…Bulldozer invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque with 800 Ziogoons….and I read credibly, soon after, that the Zios fired 1 million-plus rifle shots before the Palestinians began to react and respond….)
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At the present moment, we need to focus on the more than 32,000 people killed in Gaza, most of them innocent women and children, and approaching famine and starvation of hundreds of thousands more.
We need to stop the killing, the wounding, the starving, the genocide, rather than blaming Palestinians for allegedly not wanting peace 25 years ago.
Gaza and its people are being destroyed. I’d say journalists should focus on that. And who’s destroying Gaza? The Israeli government and IDF, with liberal amounts of bombs provided by the United States.
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Thank you, sir, for your wisdom and advice. You are precisely correct.
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The mainstream news-media know quite well what readership butters most, if not all, of their bread and accordingly go in that self-compromised editorial direction.
The most journalistically compromised news-media I’ve read is Canada’s National Post newspaper. It epitomizes an extreme example of an echo chamber promoting unconditional support for the state of Israel, including its very-long-practiced cruelty towards the Palestinian people. And I mean unconditional support.
More progressive outlets like Canada’s other national newspaper, The Globe and Mail — progressive in regards to essentially following “woke” ideology — can be more deceitful and/or apologist in their pro-Israel coverage and especially op/ed writing since the 10/7 Hamas attack on Israel.
And even otherwise progressive mainstream news outlets are largely replacing daily Gazan deaths and suffering with relatively trivial news as leading stories. Sadly, that’s what most of those news outlets’ subscribers or regular patrons want, although that fact does not morally justify it.
Growing western indifference — including that of our mainstream news-media — towards the mass starvation and slaughter of helpless Palestinian civilians will only further inflame long-held Middle Eastern anger towards us. Some countries’ actual provision, mostly by the U.S., of highly effective weapons used in Israel’s onslaught will likely turn that anger into lasting hatred that’s always seeking eye-for-an-eye redress.
Yet, with each news report of the daily Palestinian death toll from unrelenting Israeli bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally, including present Ukraine, ever since I began regularly consuming news products in 1988.
It has long seemed to me as a news consumer that the value of a life abroad is typically perceived according to the abundance of protracted conditions under which it suffers, especially during wartime, and that this effect can be exacerbated when there’s also racial contrast. Therefore, when that life is lost, even violently, it typically receives lesser coverage.
Indeed, I cannot help but feel that genuine journalists with integrity would tender their resignations and publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s corrupt media product, be it from the Right or Left. They’d definitely not excuse themselves with: ‘But I have a spouse and kids to feed!’, as though they were forced into coupling, copulating and procreating.
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Any body who thinks that war with China sometime this year is not in the advanced planning stage needs to read and reflect upon this piece today from Reuters, US EYES CHANGE TO MILITARY COMMAND IN JAPAN AS CHINA THREAT LOOMS, SOURCES SAY:
TOKYO/WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will agree next month to tighter military cooperation, including talks on the biggest potential change to Washington’s East Asia command structure in decades, two sources said.
Washington will consider appointing a four-star commander to oversee its forces in Japan as a counterpart to the head of a proposed Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF) headquarters overseeing all of the country’s military operations, said the sources, who have direct knowledge of the plan.
“We are in discussion about how our planned joint command can strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and South Korea,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Monday at a regular media briefing when asked about the reports… .
Full article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-japan-plan-biggest-upgrade-security-pact-more-than-60-years-ft-reports-2024-03-24/ .
The Bottom Line, Bullet-Hits-The-Bone fact of the matter is that American Voters have never voted a “War-Time President” out of office. As it stands rights now, Biden will be able to run as a Two-War War-Time President with Ukraine and Palestine to his credit. And a War with China would make him a Three-War War-Timer.
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