Transatlantic Media

The European media devoted heavy coverage to the relatively lenient prison sentence (five and half years) for terrorist offenses given to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay August 7. But while the European media has been virtually unanimous in denouncing Guantanamo and everything to do with it, interpretations of the sentence varied widely.

The British leftish daily the Guardian and the German conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung both reported the argument that the verdict could help legitimize the military tribunal. From Washington, the Guardian’s Elena Schor reported that

“… supporters of the tribunal process asserted that Hamdan’s acquittal [on some charges] by the jury of six military officers immunized the Bush administration from criticism that Guantanamo defendants are deprived of basic legal rights.”

Similarly, Frankfurter Allgemeine Washington correspondent Katja Gelinsky cited both John McCain, who said that the verdict “shows that the jurors have carefully weighed the evidence for and against,” and prosecutor Lawrence Morris, who said it confirmed “the fairness and justice of the tribunal.”

The tone in the Guardian and the Frankfurter Allgemeine was similar to that of an August 8 article in The New York Times. While acknowledging that the trial had raised critical questions about the military tribunals, The New York Times reported that “military prosecutors here said the sentence proved that the Bush administration’s system for trying detainees was legitimate and fair.”

A different line was taken by the Times of London’s Washington correspondent Tim Reid, who concluded that Hamdan “will never be released” – because the Pentagon may hold enemy combatants indefinitely. This was not regarded as a foregone conclusion by the Guardian or the Frankfurter Allgemeine. The Guardian reported that

“The judge in his case, U.S. navy captain Keith Allred, told reporters at the prison camp that it is unclear what future Hamdan faces in six months but that he would likely be eligible for an administrative review of his status.”

Reid also characterized the verdict as “the latest blow to the Bush Administration’s efforts to justify its highly controversial military tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay.” Rather than legitimizing the court, as suggested by the Guardian, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and the New York Times, Reid reported that the verdict would

“bolster the case made by civil rights groups, and much of the international community, that holding Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely is unjustifiable, particularly after they have been tried.”

In a commentary August 8, Reid went as far as to claim that “the five and a half year sentence was nothing short of a disaster for the Bush administration,” and that “the White House has made clear for months that whatever happened to Hamdan, he would still be held indefinitely.”

One of the more irritating habits of some journalists is to describe a recent event as “little noticed.” By this they mean that they alone appreciate its significance and can exclusively reveal it to the world. Frequently, however, the event has in fact been reported elsewhere but these reports have gone “unnoticed” by the egocentric writer.A similar phenomenon has been occurring in a cascade of reports in the U.S. media about the so-called “forgotten war” in Afghanistan, the latest from macho military TV and print correspondent Oliver North in the Washington Times August 10.(“Report from a forgotten war.”) The word “forgotten” suggests that North’s report from the ground in Afghanistan is boldly reintroducing Americans to a war that has vanished from their minds.

But who has actually “forgotten” the war in Afghanistan? Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was there in a blaze of publicity last month, and his Republican rival John McCain has visited four times, most recently in March. A Nexis search reveals a deluge of reports alluding to this “forgotten war” in recent years. Does a constant diet of stories about a “forgotten” war cause people to forget it?

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune, owned by the New York Times, appears to be vaguely aware of the problem. It published a lengthy analysis of the war August 4, followed by another long piece on August 7 on the “forgotten war.” By August 8, the headline on the second story had been changed to “nearly forgotten.”

But the main point is that even if the war has been forgotten by many Americans, it has not been forgotten by the other countries fighting in Afghanistan, where it is a major and controversial political issue. There have been heated exchanges on troop contributions in the German, Dutch, Danish and Canadian parliaments. The war is constantly in the news in Britain and Canada, whose forces are engaged in heavy combat, and also in Australia. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Opposition in Britain and very possibly the next prime minister, has said, “Afghanistan is our absolute Number 1 foreign-policy issue.” (”Going to the country”, Sunday Times Magazine, July 20, 2008).

The U.S. media frequently fail to mention that a large part of the Western effort in Afghanistan is a NATO operation and significant numbers of allied soldiers are dying there. North’s piece is a typical example. He reports the war as if only Americans were fighting and wrongly describes it as “Operation Enduring Freedom.” But that is only the U.S.-led counter-terrorism effort. The NATO force in Afghanistan is known as ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). The United States has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan (15,000 in ISAF and 19,000 in Enduring Freedom.) The other NATO allies have about 30,000 in ISAF. North’s report, like those of others in the U.S. media, suggests that what is being forgotten is not the war but America’s allies.

In a delightful series of articles from across the United States, Frankfurter Allgemeine’s Washington correspondent Matthias Rüb has been taking the pulse of the United States three months before the election. Rüb shows that not all reporting from rural America has to be marred by popular stereotypes and old clichés.

Starting from Washington D.C., Rüb spurned the main highway (I-95) and drove south on the smaller Route 29 to get a better sense of rural America. En route to Florida, Rüb filed reports on the rich history of Monticello, the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, on the rapid high-tech business expansion in Charlotte, North Carolina, and on the great human sacrifices on display at the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia where 414 flowers are planted to honor the 414 Georgians who have fallen in Iraq.

Rüb’s articles do a fine job of displaying America’s diversity, often neglected by Europeans who see the United States as a homogenous country. Take the stark contrast between Charlotte, where Rüb described the “amazing development” of the last two decades, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he found one of the highest rates of financial foreclosures. In Fort Lauderdale, so-called Repo-Men, or repossession agents, are flourishing:

“Perhaps it’s no coincidence [given the high foreclosure rate] that a company is headquartered here, which according to its own data is not only the uncontested world market leader, but which has also tripled its operations in the past three years. The company is National Liquidators, which specializes in seizing and auctioning all kinds of water vessels from jet skis and sailboats to fishing boats, yachts, and small cruise ships. (…) In Florida alone, an average of five boats are seized every day.”

From Florida, Rüb travelled to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Kraemer, Louisiana where he filed a report August 6. You can follow Rüb’s tour on the website of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Rüb’s itinerary so far:
Undated: ‘Monticello (Virginia): On U.S. 29 through Virginia’
August 2: ‘Charlotte (North Carolina): Where the Crisis is still Distant’
August 3: ‘Fort Stewart (Georgia): Inexhaustible Stock of Flags’
August 4: ‘Fort Lauderdale (Florida): The Business of “Repo Men”‘
August 5: ‘Biloxi (Mississippi): Gambling is the Savior’
August 6: ‘Kraemer (Louisiana): Banana Republic in the River Delta’

Transatlantic media coverage immediately after of the collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of trade talks in Geneva July 29 provided a wide range of different perspectives on the same story.  Commentators blamed the failure variously on the United States, India, or China, or a combination of some or all of them, with occasional tangential swipes at the European Union and Brazil.

United States Media Coverage

Washington Post: ‘Trade Talks Crumble in Feud Over Farm Aid’, July 30, 2008

The Washington Post reported that whereas American and European officials were prepared to make big concessions, the talks fell apart after India and China insisted on keeping the right to protect their farmers and accused the United States and other rich nations of exaggerating the generosity of their offers. India’s chief negotiator, it said, “may have played the biggest role in undoing the talks.” The Post said the talks “at times took on a highly charged, personal tone that immediately cast the negotiations as a power struggle between the developed and developing worlds.

“Within 24 hours of landing in Geneva nine days ago, Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, infuriated First World negotiators, comparing their efforts to hype their proposed trade concessions to Nazi propaganda.  His comments drew sharp reprimands, particularly from Washington’s top negotiator, U.S. Trade Ambassador Susan C. Schwab, the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors.”

The article conceded that Brazil ultimately was more flexible than India and China, but still lumped it in with the hold outs.

The New York Times: ‘After 7 Years, Talks on Trade Collapse’

The New York Times report was among the few to observe that the failure of the negotiations “delivers a blow to the credibility of the World Trade Organization.” It also noted a strategic power shift among the countries at the table, pointing out that India and China have become aware of their economic power and are finally asserting themselves.

European Media Coverage

The Guardian: ‘Tariffs: WTO talks collapse after India and China clash with America over farm products’

The Guardian blamed the collapse of the talks on disagreements between India, China and the United States. It quoted remarks by U.S. Trade Ambassador Susan Schwab that sounded pushy and condescending:

“[Schwab thought] it was ‘unconscionable’ that developing countries were insisting on shielding their farmers…’in the face of the food price crisis, its ironic that the debate came down to how much and how fast could nations raise their barriers to imports of food.’ She [Schwab] suggested that if India and China had got their way ‘we could have come out with an outcome that rolled the global trading system back three years, or five years, or 30 years: 30 years of progress.”

The report said Schwab “has come under fierce political pressure from Capitol Hill to secure fresh markets for America’s rust belt manufacturers.”

It added, however, that EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson “had also come under intense political pressure over promised reforms to Europe’s lavish common agricultural policy.”

The Guardian recalled that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had demanded an urgent meeting with Mandelson in the middle of the negotiations, a summons that Mandelson politely declined, and that Sarkozy had tried to rally other countries, including Italy and Greece, to reject the deal as it stood. Thus while the headline fingered the United States, the report seemed to suggest that Europe would also have had trouble accepting the outcome.

The Scotsman: ‘US Clashes With New Giants’

Like the Guardian, the Scottish daily The Scotsman laid most of the blame on the United States for clashing with India. The Scotsman, however, was one of the few to point out that Brazil and India had been allies in the past during these trade rounds and that their split at this meeting was remarkable.

The Times of London: ‘Why the Doha Round of Talks Finally Died’

The Times laid the blame unequivocally on India. Almost all of its report focused on Kamal Nath, the Indian Trade Minister, who ‘was gritting his teeth, doing his best to justify a wrecking operation that has earned him brickbats from all round. He has brought to an end a seven-year struggle for a global trade agreement that would open boarders and reduce subsidies and he knows it.’

The report said India disagreed not only with the United States but also with ‘a host of developing nations in Latin America, including Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina,’ as well as other countries such as Thailand.

“The trade row finally destroyed the fiction beloved by development charities and poverty lobbyists that we live in a world divided between North and South, or rich and poor. Instead, we live on a globe of powerful and conflicting interest groups - Asian peasants versus Latin American farm laborers, for example.”

FT.Com-Financial Times: ‘Negotiators sift the debris for signs of hope’

The FT stressed the importance of an agreement for many of the countries involved, including Brazil. Nevertheless, while noting that WTO chief Pascal Lamy did not view the failure as final, the FT argued that Western countries were unlikely to offer similar concessions again soon. It blamed the collapse squarely on disagreements between India and the United States, with some meddling by China.

Der Standard: Greetings from the New World Order
In Austria, a commentary in Austria’s biggest daily publication Der Standard struck a similar note to the New York Times, calling attention to the global power shift that has occurred since the start of the Doha round in 2001.  According to commentator Michael Moravec:

‘The reason the negotiations of a world-wide trade agreement failed spectacularly is easily explained: When the discussions began seven years ago in Doha, when the goals and basic conditions were specified, the world looked very different: China, India, and Brazil still belonged to the community of developing countries and the US and the European Union set the tone.  If an agreement was reached between Europe and the United States, the remainder would be a child’s game in comparison, one thought at the time.  Now, the negotiations failed because of India and China.’