Roxana Saberi's Plight and American Media Propaganda

An Iranian appeals court this morning announced
that it was reducing the sentence and ordering the immediate release of
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was convicted by an
Iranian court in January of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight
years in prison. Saberi's imprisonment became a cause celebre
among American journalists, who -- along with the U.S. Government --
rallied to demand her release. Within minutes of the announcement,
several of them -- including ABC News' Jake Tapper, Time's Karen Tumulty, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder -- posted celebratory notices of Saberi's release.

Saberi's release is good news, as her conviction occurred as part of extremely dubious charges
and unreliable judicial procedures in Iran. And, as Ambinder
suggested, her release most likely is a positive (by-product of the commendable (though far from perfect)
change in tone towards Iran specifically and the Muslim world generally
from the Obama administration. But imprisoning journalists -- without
charges or trials of any kind -- was and continues to be a staple of
America's "war on terror," and that has provoked virtually no
objections from America's journalists who, notably, instead seized on
Saberi's plight in Iran to demonstrate their claimed commitment to
defending persecuted journalists.

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating
him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera. For virtually the
entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this
journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage -- let alone any
outcry -- from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world). As Kristof noted
when al-Haj was finally released in 2007: "there was never any real
evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist"; "the interrogators
quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions" and "instead, they
asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released;" and "American
officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or
meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in
the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done."

In Iraq, we imprisoned Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein -- part of AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning war coverage -- for almost two years with no charges of any kind,
after Hussein's photographs from the Anbar province directly
contradicted Bush administration claims about the state of affairs
there. And that behavior was far from aberrational for the U.S., as
the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which led the effort to free
Saberi -- documented:

Hussein's detention is not an isolated incident. Over the last three years, dozens of journalists-mostly Iraqis-have been detained by U.S. troops, according to CPJ research. While most have been released after short periods, in at
least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by
U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction.
In one highly publicized case, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance
cameraman working for CBS, was detained after being wounded by U.S.
military fire as he filmed clashes in Mosul in northern Iraq on April
5, 2005. U.S. military officials claimed footage in his camera led them
to suspect Hussein had prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces.
In April 2006, a year after his arrest, Hussein was freed after an
Iraqi criminal court, citing a lack of evidence, acquitted him of
collaborating with insurgents.

Right now -- as the American press corps celebrates itself for demanding Saberi's release in Iran -- the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, even though an Iraqi court last December -- more than five months ago -- found that there was no evidence
to justify his detention and ordered him released. The U.S. -- over
the objections of the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders and Reuters --
refused to recognize the validity of that Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned.

One
finds only a tiny fraction of news coverage in the U.S. regarding the
treatment of al-Haj, Hussein, Jassam and these other imprisoned
journalists as has been devoted to Saberi. It ought to be exactly the
reverse: the American media should be far more interested in, and
opposed to, infringements of press freedoms by the U.S. Government than
by governments of other countries. Yet the former merits hardly a
peep, while the latter provokes all sorts of smug and self-righteous
protests from American journalists who suddenly discover their brave
commitment to press freedoms when all that requires is pointing to a
demonized, hated foreign government and complaining.

Many people
scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American
citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process. Our
establishment media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior
of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are -- look at those Iranianmullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture -- while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by our own government.

In
Iran, at least Saberi received the pretense of an actual trial and
appeal (one that resulted in her rather rapid release), as compared to
the journalists put in cages for years by the U.S.
Government with no charges of any kind, or as compared to the
individuals whom we continue to abduct, transport to Bagram, and insist on the right to imprison indefinitely with no charges of any kind.
Who was treated better and more consistently with ostensible Western
precepts of justice and press freedoms: Roxana Saberi or Sami
al-Haj? Saberi or Bilal Hussein? Saberi or Ibrahim Jassam? Saberi or
the Bagram detainees shipped to Afghanistan and held in a dank prison,
away from the sight of the entire world, without even a pretense of
judicial review, a power the Obama administration continues to insist
it possesses?

Pointing to other governments and highlighting
their oppressive behavior can be cathartic, fun and gratifying in a
self-justifying sort of way. Ask Fred Hiatt; it's virtually all he ever does.
But the first duty of the American media -- like the first duty of
American citizens -- is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own
government. That's not as fun or as easy, but it is far more
important. Moreover, obsessively complaining about the
rights-abridging behavior of other countries while ignoring the same
behavior from our own government is worse than a mere failure of duty.
It is propagandistic and deceitful, as it paints a misleading picture
that it is other governments -- but not our own -- which engage in such
conduct.