“THE US media’s gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of omission than their errors of commission,” William Blum, historian and fierce critic of US foreign policy, once astutely observed. “It’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies.”
Blum’s evergreen maxim very much applies to the British media, too.
Take the press response to Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently appointing Jonathan Powell to be his new National Security Adviser.
After reading the reports of the recruitment in the Financial Times, Guardian and i newspapers on November 9, I also accessed the news stories that appeared in the Telegraph and Times via the LexisNexis online database.
All of these established news organs note Powell was Tony Blair’s chief of staff from May 1997 to June 2007.
Their reports make much of Powell’s diplomatic work. All mention his role in brokering the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. The Guardian notes he is the chief executive of Inter Mediate, a British-based charity working on resolving international conflicts, and “since leaving office [he] has been a prominent advocate of negotiating with enemies to bring about peace, writing a book called Talking to Terrorists.”
The Telegraph reports Powell has “a wealth of foreign policy and government experience,” while several of the reports quote Starmer: “He [Powell] is uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance British interests.” The Financial Times notes Powell will have a “key role” in “shaping Britain’s position on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
Given the job description for his new position, amazingly, none of the five newspapers thought it pertinent to mention Powell’s central role in the illegal and aggressive invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and Britain’s subsequent military occupation. Or, for that matter, Powell’s role in Britain’s (also illegal) 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent occupation.
If we judge Powell’s political career in the 2000s using the limited, liberal framing endemic to these newspapers, his record is a disaster.
The British military interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan are now widely understood to have been catastrophes, leading to the deaths of hundreds of British soldiers. The presence of British troops in both countries energised the armed resistance.
The Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan, and Iraq’s social fabric was torn asunder to such an extent that Isis was able to take control of around 40 per cent of the country in the mid-2010s.
Far from protecting UK interests, the interventions significantly heightened the terrorist threat to Britain, with Iraq and Afghanistan a key factor in many attacks in Britain, including the July 7 2005 suicide bombings in London.
