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The London Blasts: Media Review
Thursday 11
May 2006
11 May 2006 - NARRATIVE DAY
The Government Publishes The Official
Story Of 7/7
First report 10am
Contents
The Propaganda Barrage Re-opens / The Narrative
Is Leaked / The Narrative Is Censored / The Reaction Is Muted
/ A Quick Note On Press Coverage / Action:
Letter-writing
THE PROPAGANDA BARRAGE RE-OPENS
Today the British Government publishes two
documents about the 7 July bombings in London last year. One is
the official Home Office 'narrative' of the 7/7 attacks; the other
is a 'parliamentary' inquiry by the Intelligence and Security
Committee (ISC).
(Actually the ISC is a
creature of Downing Street: the MPs on it are selected by
the Prime Minister, they report to the Prime Minister, and the
Prime Minister edits their work before he presents it to Parliament.)
The reports are expected to conform to the
Government's agenda for discussing the July atrocities: blame
'preachers of hatred' and 'extremism' and 'a lack of integration'
within the British Muslim communities; avoid connecting the attacks
with any aspect of British foreign policy.
At the time of writing (9am, Thursday 11
May), the documents themselves are not available to the public.
All we have is the press treatment of them. This is probably because
they cannot be published before they are presented to Parliament
- they may become available later today. So at this moment we
can only discuss what has appeared in the press so far. This is
interesting in itself, however, and primes us for a response to
the documents themselves.
THE NARRATIVE IS LEAKED
The most obvious question about the narrative
is whether it has been edited by the Government for political
effect since it was first drafted by a senior Home Office official.
We are in a position to ask this question because the draft narrative
was leaked to the Observer on
2 April.
The headline of that front-page story was:
'Official: Iraq war led to
July bombings'. Mark Townsend, Crime Correspondent for the
Observer, quoted from the draft narrative:
'Initial drafts of the government's account
into the bombings, which have been revealed to The Observer,
state that Iraq was a
key 'contributory factor'.
The references to Britain's involvement in Iraq are contained
in a section examining what inspired the "radicalisation"
of the four British suicide bombers, Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussain,
Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay.'
Townsend continued: 'The
findings will prove highly embarrassing to Tony Blair, who has
maintained that the decision to go to war against Iraq would make
Britain safer.'
There's more to say about this Observer
story and hopefully we'll get back to it later today.
THE NARRATIVE IS CENSORED
In the papers this week, no such finding
is reported. The Times today (page
2) goes so far as to say:
'In its narrative, the Home Office does
not support the theory of a fifth bomber... Nor
does it blame the attacks on the Iraq war, despite the
taped video by Khan which specifically referred to Britain’s
involvement in the invasion of Iraq as the prime motivation
for the July 7 plot.'
(Incidentally, Khan's video statement did
not specifically refer to Iraq as the prime motivation for the
attacks. The BBC translation of the shortened version of Khan's
video is here.)
So, predictably, the finding that the invasion
and occupation of Iraq was a key 'contributory factor' has been
censored by Number 10 before
the publication of the narrative - according to The
Times.
THE REACTION IS MUTED
This ought to be a huge story. Everyone knows
about the draft narrative - it was a front page Observer
story. It ought to be a front-page story, and Parliament ought
to be demanding an explanation for the reversal of opinion between
the (reported) professional Home Office assessment and the Downing-Street-edited
final version of the document (assuming The Times is correct in
its report).
Prediction 1: Neither of these things are
going to happen. (They ought to have happened already, as the
press has had the documents for several days now.)
Prediction 2: Everyone in the mainstream
media and political system is going to forget about the draft
narrative as if it was never leaked.
Prediction 3: It will be up to grassroots
pressure to force some journalists and some MPs to raise these
questions, and to get this fundamental information about the reports
across to the public.
A QUICK NOTE ON PRESS COVERAGE
There's a lot more one could say, particularly
in relation to the Intelligence and Security Committee report,
and we'll try and post about this later.
For now, we'll just note that only the Guardian
and the Times
make this their leading front-page story. The Telegraph
put it below the fold on page 4; the FT
focused on what executives will be most interested in (the recommendation
to have a clearer system of terrorist alerts) and put it on page
2. The Independent had a double-page
spread yesterday so there's nothing today. One
article was about the Big Questions about 7/7 - British foreign
policy was not mentioned. The other one (not available free online)
was similarly unthreatening to the Government.
ACTION: LETTER-WRITING
It's easy enough to ask the papers why they
haven't mentioned the foreign policy conclusions of the draft
narrative.
The FT slyly
includes a possible hook in the penultimate sentence of today's
article:
'Although the intelligence budget has grown
by more than 35 per cent since 2001, security officials report
they are still finding it difficult to keep pace with the threat,
which is assessed to have grown
since the war in Iraq.'
When writing to the newspapers, don't forget
to include your address and daytime phone number.
The relevant email addresses are:
Financial Times: letters.editor@ft.com
Guardian: letters@guardian.co.uk
Independent: letters@independent.co.uk
Telegraph: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
Times: letters@thetimes.co.uk
Posted 10.00 11 May 2006
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