jjimm, thanks very much for posting that transcript. A few thoughts are below.
december: "However, I would question his choice of CNN and Fox News to typify American news coverage. These two stations between them have at most around a million viewers. The major station news shows have 30 million viewers or more. "
I’m not sure where you get these figures from. It’s my understanding that CNN and Fox have been attracting an increasingly large viewership often at the expense of the traditional broadcasters. However, from my view, it’s not worth debating because I don’t see a great deal of difference between them.
Andrew Sullivan is one to talk about slant! I find it rather odd, for example, that he refers to the coverage on liberal churches as an “anti-anti-Saddam slant” when the churches in question support a non-violent removal of Saddam! Is one only anti-Saddam if one subscribes to the precise Bush form of being anti-Saddam? This brings “you’re either with us or against us to a new level.”
december, you can listen to the BBC world service on your local NPR radio station and judge for yourself (some PBS channels also air BBC television news). For that matter, you can use the link provided by jjimm to surf around. A great deal of the BBC’s coverage of news takes a very traditional form: reporters reporting on world events in a straightforward fashion. I think it’s absurd for Sullivan to cast the BBC as providing “not really news, utterly slanted, with a patina of…objectivity.” As though Sullivan himself, a world-famous hypocrite–(I’m assuming most of you know what I’m referring to)–is a Pulitzer-class investigative journalist! One of the best features of the BBC is the relatively short shrift given to punditry–the kind of punditry that has elevated Sullivan to prominence. (FYI december, the next time you come across a “liberal media” kvetch on the Straight Dope please remember that the New York Times is largely responsible for Sullivan’s prominence.)
As to the interview itself: I only read through it about halfway so far: but enough to get the tenor. I think it’s wonderful that British politicians are expected to deal with level of “cross examination.” Since Paxman is vigorous towards politicians of every stripe, there is no question of bias–just of the level of public questioning politicians must expect to deal with as one of the duties of their office. Blair has plenty of opportunities to make speeches without interrogation.
In fact, I actually felt sorry for Blair here and there; and here and there I agreed with him more than the people who were asking him questions, and thought he did a very good job of defending himself. That’s the way public debate should be. Can you imagine George Bush fielding those kinds of questions?! It’s almost unthinkable.
All that aside what is most interesting about the interview to me is the way that Blair justifies the war (or attempts to do so) to the British public.
*"PAXMAN: Prime Minister, for you to commit British forces to war there has to be a clear and imminent danger to this country - what is it?
TONY BLAIR: The danger is that if we allow Iraq to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons they will threaten their own region, there is no way that we would be able to exclude ourselves from any regional conflict there was there as indeed we had to become involved last time they committed acts of external aggression against Kuwait."*
Notice that this is very different from the kind of imminent threat arguments that we have gotten served up to us here: esp. the allegations that Saddam and Osama are in “partnership.”
Here is yet another interesting commentary, this time from Thomas Friedman, a Times columnist who usually makes my hair stand on end. He’s been supporting the war because he buys into the idea that Bush will make post-Saddam Iraq into an ideal democracy: a kind of Middle East Athens ;). I don’t share his confidence, but I do find myself entirely agreeing of his analysis of where Bush public relations have gone astray, provoking a much more polarized world opinion than was necessary.
Once again, the most interesting point in the column is where the motive for war is discussed:
" Tell people the truth. Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice ? but it’s a legitimate choice. It’s because he is undermining the U.N., it’s because if left alone he will seek weapons that will threaten all his neighbors, it’s because you believe the people of Iraq deserve to be liberated from his tyranny, and it’s because you intend to help Iraqis create a progressive state that could stimulate reform in the Arab/Muslim world, so that this region won’t keep churning out angry young people who are attracted to radical Islam and are the real weapons of mass destruction."
And this, mind you, is from someone who has fairly consistenly supported the war.
Once again, all the imminent threat rhetoric we’ve been spoon-fed is just so much baby food that our media allows to be served, even though important supporters such as Blair and Friedman don’t even buy it themselves. The hard questions are never asked.
Almost as bad (although not addressed by Friedman) is the insincere humanitarianism into which Blair has recently lapsed, and which Bush (in the special form of his “evil” rhetoric) has been pumping out all along. None of this is ever “cross-examined.” Imagine this question: “Mr Bush, since you’re so interested in human rights, what is your plan for helping out in <insert well-known horrific and tyrannical situation of choice>”
Yet people here in the US do perceive these things and I think they really resent this kind of massaging: which is precisely why they don’t bother to vote! (Something which is just fine for Bush since low turnout is good for Republicans.)
By contrast, the Paxman interview was harsh and had me feeling for Tony Blair. But how preferable to the soundbites we get, the uncriticized and unquestioned simplifications and obfuscations that allow Bush and many others to speak in a kind of Newspeak.