(first
published September 30, 2008 in Hyoron Shakaikagaku
Issue
#86, Doshisha University Faculty of Social Studies 2008)
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Nobody likes to apologize, not individuals, not institutions,
not governments, not even the gray lady known as the New York Times. Oh, the
NYT is quick to make micro-apologies, a misspelled name here, a typo there, and
every once in a while a fabulist such as Jayson Blair gets shown to the door
for untruthful writing, but when it comes to really big stuff, at the editorial
level at least, America’s best newspaper is as unrepentant and opaque as some
of the face-conscious Asian regimes it so readily criticizes.
So to understand the abrupt turnaround in NYT coverage of Burma
in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, we have to do some reading between the
lines. After a month of nagging
and finger-wagging, "Shame on the Junta," "More Shame on the
Junta," “No More Time to Lose,” “Children Face New Risks,” “U.S.
Frustrated by Myanmar Military Junta's Limits on Aid in Wake of Cyclone,” the Gray Lady
adopts a less hectoring tone:
"Now doctors and aid workers…say they have seen no signs
of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease…the number of lives lost
specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to
have been smaller than expected."
(NYT June 18, 2008)
WHAT??? NO STARVATION? NO WIDESPREAD OUTBREAKS OF DISEASE?
SMALLER THAN EXPECTED?
The worldview of the Gray Lady very much lives up to the New
York City-centric view of the world famously depicted on a cover of The New
Yorker
in which mid-town Manhattan looms larger than the rest of the world combined,
Asia but a frilly fringe on the edge of the map. Burma, or “Myanmar” as the NYT
style-sheet has it, is all but a blank slate, remote and difficult to imagine.
The point is, nationalism and one’s place in the world are
always at play in the news. It’s often hard for the editors of even a fine
newspaper to get sufficiently outside of themselves to see what they are doing
wrong.
The New York Times editorial board has a tradition of
chastising, and championing, foreign political trends about which they have
little first hand knowledge. Calls for “humanitarian intervention” might sound
noble when voiced in comfortable mid-Manhattan offices or after work at a fine
restaurant, but they do not comport with reality on the ground, and do not take
into account the visceral death and destruction that often comes from military
interventions.
When Americans harp on about humanitarian intervention and human
rights, it sounds good in theory, but real lives are apt to be changed by these
abstract ideas in unpredictable ways, as in Iraq. People around the world take
notice, and not without trepidation.
The government of Burma (or the "Myanmar junta"
according to the NYT style sheet) may indeed be bad news, but making bad news
worse is not good journalism.
The New York Times, to its credit, has a solid tradition of
fact-collecting in the field and thus the interventionist and jingoistic
tendencies of the editors are at times checked by reporters on the ground.
For an example of what happens when warped provincial American
values reign supreme, one only has to look American television news sources
that focus on and adulate the personalities of their own "news" stars
in a triumph of style over substance, a victory of innuendo and attitude over
news.
More dangerous still when the nation’s leading newspaper no
longer speaks truth to power but becomes the ventriloquist voice for those in
power.
Not too long ago, NYT reporter Judith Miller and other star
reporters echoed and amplified the drumbeat to war coming out of the Bush White
House and the office of Vice-President Cheney. By a combination of design,
carelessness and inadvertence, the Gray Lady lent considerable credibility to a
less-than-credible war effort based on bogus intelligence.
Popular opinion counts. Because the US is so powerful, a minor
shift in popular perception can make or break the attempt to intervene in a
controversial way far from US shores. To make blatant frontal attacks on a
government which, like it or not, represents a population suffering from
natural disaster is insensitive, if not incendiary, especially when hints about
regime change are made even before the floodwaters have receded.
So what’s Burma to think when the world’s most influential
newspaper—seen by foreign critics, and not without justification, as the house
organ for US imperialism—aligns its coverage of a terrible cyclone with the
interventionist position of the US government?
There are ample indications, taken from the pages of the Times
itself, that it initially adopted the US government line as expressed by USAID,
a relic of Cold War aid programs with historic links to the CIA. On May 9, 2008
NYT the "Quotation of the Day" is by Henrietta H. Fore, administrator
of the United States Agency for International Development: "It's a race for time,” she says,
as US warships neared the Burma coast. “A race to save lives."
The race was on.
The race to show the world how much the US really cared. First out of
the starting block was US First Lady Laura Bush who got on the air and made the
pronouncement that, and I paraphrase here, because she also talked about other
“world issues” in the same breath, that Burma was bad and America was
good. (see Huffington Post, “Laura
Bush Discusses Jenna’s Wedding During Myanmar Press Conference.”)
The first lady, to the extent she managed to stay on message,
made a point that was picked up by
the US media: the foreigners must accept US aid immediately.
“Unimaginable Tragedy if Myanmar Delays Aid” reads the
breathless NYT headline.
CNN naturally took this to mean that Burma should accept CNN
without hindrance or delay and the TV station went on to make a mockery of its
own sensational reporting by devoting lengthy coverage to the foiled efforts of
its star reporter to escape from his Rangoon hotel under the watch of local
security personnel. CNN’s cat and mouse game irritated Burmese authorities who
went on to tighten visa regulations, an example of hyperactive reporting
achieving the opposite of its intended effect.
When it comes to the imagined goodness of US intentions, and the
inexplicable lack of reciprocity by a foreign power, it does not require a
conspiracy, just unchallenged American hubris, for the US media to willingly
fill in the gaps. What followed was an inundation of reports crafted to help
news consumers to hate Burma, to hate it more than ever, and to feel a burning
need for change.
The pressure was on the US media, almost from day one, to put
pressure on the Burmese government to open up to US aid or else. The upfront humanitarian motive was to
relief suffering and save lives --all but the most cold-hearted pundits care
about that-- and rapidity of response does make a difference in disasters, as
the US learned bitterly from the Bush administration’s clay-footed response to
the Katrina disaster, but there were hidden political agendas and veiled
threats lurking in the editorial content.
The earliest NYT stories, filed by Seth Mydans sound as if they
were written in an air-conditioned apartment in a fashionable section of
Bangkok which they probably were because he was unable to travel to Burma until
later on. When Mydans was joined by others on the ground in Burma, the
reporting was at once more detailed and less sensational.
Consider the chronological flow of stories taken from NYT
coverage
“Myanmar Reels as Cyclone Toll Hits Thousands”
“Bodies Flow into Delta Area of Myanmar”
“Myanmar Votes as Rulers Keep Tight Grip on Aid”
“When Burmese Offer a Hand, Rulers Slap It.”
“UN Leader Tells Myanmar’s Regime there is ‘No More Time to
Lose.’”
“Myanmar Government Still Blocking Large-scale Relief; Death
Toll Rises Again.”
“Aid Groups Say Some Myanmar Food Aid is Stolen or Diverted
by the Military”
“US Frustrated by Myanmar Military Junta’s Limits on Aid in
Wake of Cyclone.”
By May 18 the psychological pressure to do something, anything
was accentuated by invoking the urgency of children in distress.
“Myanmar’s Children Face New Risks, Aid Groups Say.”
Thereafter, the Gray Lady’s tone becomes snide if not strident.
“2 Weeks after Cyclone, Burmese Leader Pays First Visit to
Refugees”
“Myanmar Camp for Refugees seem to be for Headlines Only”
“Myanmar Junta Begins Evicting Cyclone Victims from Shelters”
“Gates Accuses Myanmar of ‘Criminal Neglect’” over Aid.”
Early evidence that Burma was indeed getting aid to people in
need did not change this hegemonic narrative. How could aid from (communist)
China and (poor, backward) Southeast Asia possibly do the job? It was assumed
the Burmese government had no interest in looking after its own people, and
subliminally suggested that what the Burmese people really needed was the
steady hand of US intervention.
After weeks of emotional grandstanding and angry accusations in
the face of field reports that things were not so bad, the NYT editorial tone
begins to sound spent, imbued with a world-weary sense of resignation.
“Myanmar: Navy Aid Ships to Leave”
The failure of the US military to get permission to show its
stuff in storm-torn Burma thus noted, coverage shifts to other matters and with
other things going on in the world, the strident calls for intervention quiet
down.
The humanitarian intervention mood shift is encapsulated by an
Op-ed from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who opines that
intervention is good (she did it in Kosovo) but makes note of the fact that the
politics of Iraq (mostly the work of Bush and the Republicans) have weakened US
ability to intervene with credibility.
Meanwhile, NYT coverage from the field, augmented by the work of
other media, slowly, surely begins to paint a more balanced picture,
challenging the monomaniacal editorial line enunciated in New York.
“More Help Trickles in as UN Chief visits Myanmar”
“In Cyclone Relief, Monks Succeed Where Generals Falter.”
By June, the idea that Burma might just be capable of picking
itself up by its own bootstraps starts to kick in and gain strength,
culminating in a remarkable piece published on June 18 piece that suggested,
despite weeks of editorializing to the contrary, that Burma did okay without US
aid.
The June 18 reversal of editorial line is subtle but substantiated
by authoritative voices. Not only does the report state that there was no
starvation nor widespread evidence of disease, but it also notes that observers
in the field were less pessimistic than expected. “We saw very, very few
serious injuries,” said Frank Smithuis, manager of Doctors without Borders in
Myanmar. “You were dead or you were in okay shape.”
Still, some of the snide tone of old bubbled through, suggesting
the haze of righteousness hadn’t entirely cleared from the eyes of the Gray
Lady. In a line that reeks of rewriting at the international desk in New York,
gratuitous mention is made of an unrelated earthquake in China, slyly linking
China and Burma--the two regimes the Gray Lady loves to hate-- even though
earthquakes and cyclones are utterly unlike.
“Those who survived were not likely to be injured in the
aftermath by falling rocks or collapsing buildings, as often happens during
natural disasters, like the earthquake in China.”
Despite that silly aside, the coverage of the cyclone closes on
a sensible note as the NYT gently retracts some of its more feverish
forebodings.
American diplomat Shari Villarosa, “the highest-ranking United
States diplomat in Myanmar” is quoted as saying, “I’m not getting the sense
that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay.”
Subsequent narrative represents a major change in tone for the
New York Times, both in terms of style and substance. Not only is Myanmar
referred to as Burma, a term with friendlier connotations in common English usage,
but the “junta” is twice described as a “government.”
Words really do make a difference.
The subtle mea culpa continues. “The United States has accused
the military government of “criminal neglect” in its handling of the disaster
caused by the cyclone…but relief workers say the debate over access for
foreigners and the refusal of the government to allow in military helicopters
and ships from the United States, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial
relief effort carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks.”
The June 18 article gently distances itself from USAID position
that the paper had adopted at the outset of the crisis. It notes that 815 visas were issued for
foreign personnel, though USAID did not get in.
“It’s been overwhelmingly impressive what local organizations,
medical groups and some businessmen have done,” Ruth Bradley Jones of the
British Embassy in Rangoon is quoted as saying. “They are the true heroes of
the relief effort.”
Looking back on the voluminous number of New York Times reports
filed on Burma in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, certain patterns
emerge. At first coverage was
animated by an impatient, pro-intervention narrative arch. But the tone starts
to soften midstream and by June changes gear, resulting in a mea culpa of
sorts, concluding that US intervention was not strictly necessary and the delay
in aid was not a big deal.
It's partly a story of improved reporting due to improved
access, something journalism-shy countries like China and Burma need to better
understand. Good access allows for better reporting and more often than not,
more sympathetic reporting.
By the time the floodwaters had fully receded, the idea that
Burma might just be capable of pulling itself up by its own bootstraps with
help from its neighbors started to kick in and gain strength, culminating in
the inescapable conclusion that Burma could overcome the tragedy without US aid
after all.
pc
