'Democratic' governments do what their master wants

On 11 July 2011, Robert Fisk said this in The Independent:

“Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. THE ISRAELIS TRIED TO RUBBISH MY REPORTING; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. ‘I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing,’ he told me later. ‘He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn't demand it. I didn't show it to him.’

BUT THINGS CHANGED. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that ‘there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk’ and – for heaven's sake – that ‘perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis'. ALL OF WHICH, OF COURSE, WAS OFFICIAL ISRAELI GOVERNMENT POLICY AT THE TIME.

Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home's full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that THE MEN HAD BEEN MURDERED, the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn't see how we would be ‘justified’ in running a report ‘so long after the event.’

In other words, THE VERY SYSTEM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM, OF FACT-CHECKING AND MONTHS OF INTERVIEWS, BECAME SELF-DEFEATING. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli ‘inquiry’ was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to 'justify' publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home's concerns evaporated.

When he died, of cancer, it was announced that his deputy, Charles Wilson, would edit the paper. Murdoch said that Wilson was ‘Charlie's choice’… Murdoch had signed up to all manner of guarantees of editorial independence, oversight and promises of goodwill when he bought The Times – AND HAD THEN FIRED HIS FIRST EDITOR, HAROLD EVANS…

In west Beirut, where dozens of Westerners were being kidnapped, I opened The Times to discover that A PRO-ISRAELI WRITER WAS CLAIMING ON OUR CENTRE PAGE THAT ALL JOURNALISTS IN WEST BEIRUT, CLEARLY INTIMIDATED BY ‘TERRORISM,’ COULD BE REGARDED ONLY AS ‘BLOODSUCKERS.’ Was the paper claiming that I, too, was a bloodsucker? In all this time, MURDOCH HAD EXPRESSED EXCLUSIVELY PRO-ISRAELI VIEWS, AND HAD ACCEPTED A ‘MAN OF THE YEAR’ AWARD FROM A PROMINENT JEWISH-AMERICAN ORGANISATION. THE TIMES EDITORIALS BECAME MORE AND MORE PRO-ISRAELI, THEIR USE OF THE WORD ‘TERRORIST’ EVER MORE PROMISCUOUS.

The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after THE USS VINCENNES HAD SHOT DOWN AN IRANIAN PASSENGER AIRLINER OVER THE GULF. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US SHIPS HAD ROUTINELY BEEN THREATENING BRITISH AIRWAYS AIRLINERS, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American ‘leaks’ that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.

Next day, MY REPORT APPEARED WITH ALL CRITICISM OF THE AMERICANS DELETED, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it. This was when I first made contact with The Independent. I DIDN'T BELIEVE IN THE TIMES ANY MORE, CERTAINLY NOT IN RUPERT MURDOCH.

Months later, a senior night editor who had been on duty on the night my Vincennes report arrived, recalled in a letter that he had promoted my dispatch as the splash, but that Wilson had said:

‘There's nothing in it. There's not a fact in it. I wouldn't even run this gibberish.’ Wilson, the night editor said, called it ‘bollocks’ and ‘waffle.’ The night editor's diary for that day finished: ‘Shambles, chaos on Gulf story. Brock rewrites Fisk’…

I don't believe Murdoch personally interfered in any of the above events. He didn't need to. HE HAD TURNED THE TIMES INTO A TAME, PRO-TORY, PRO-ISRAELI PAPER SHORN OF ALL EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE…

Almost every Arab journalist knows the importance of self-censorship, or direct censorship, and where kings and dictators do not need to give orders. They have satraps AND MINISTERS AND SENIOR POLICE OFFICERS, AND ‘DEMOCRATIC’ GOVERNMENTS, who know their wishes, their likes and dislikes. AND THEY DO WHAT THEY BELIEVE THEIR MASTER WANTS…

MURDOCH COULD NEVER BE BLAMED. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a ‘news’ story than a president of Syria is for a massacre…

IN THE STERILE WORLD OF THE MURDOCHS, NEW TECHNOLOGY WAS USED TO DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THEIR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRIVACY.”