2008 Woodie Awards
Dahr Jamail tells Iraq's untold stories
Skylar James
Issue date: 2/19/08 Section: News
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Jamail has covered the war in Iraq since 2003, covering various incidents of war. He published pieces of his documented observations, which (he maintained throughout his lecture) are a rarity of objective and unbiased truths amongst a majority of tainted media coverage regarding the war.
"I used to go back in time to use some examples from the media to highlight this garbage that passes for reporting in so much of the mainstream media," said Jamail at the start of his presentation. "I don't have to go back too far in time anymore."
"Dahr [Jamail ] is saying the same message that 'Project Censored' has," said Peter Phillips, professor of sociology and director of "Project Censored." "The corporate media is not giving the full story about what's going on in the U.S., and the world, and what the powerful people are doing."
This introduced the first portion of Jamail's presentation, which focused on the prevalence of propaganda associated with mainstream media.
He began by citing an article published by USA Today on Jan. 17. The article claimed that 75 percent of neighborhoods in Baghdad were secure, attributing the new success to military powers. The data was given by military sources.
"This is a great example of… propaganda disguised as journalism," said Jamail. "I can't tell you how many times I saw examples of this in Baghdad. Working there on the ground and seeing what's happening and then literally seeing the military press release… and then you can find line for line examples of those press releases. It's like they were copy and pasted on the front page stories for the New York Times."
Jamail continued, stating every living person was aware of the U.S. Government had lied, namely about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to 9/11, in order to provoke and justify the war. Now these tools of propaganda have run their course and given way to newer form.