Reporters often fail to ask 'why' - correspondent

Journalists often observe a "gutless silence" about the real agenda of Western powers, veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk told a gathering atthe West Belfast Festival.

Journalists often decline to tell the truth in conflict situations because they want to avoid controversy and to have "an easy life", according to veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk.

He was delivering a lecture on journalism - "September 11th: ask who did it but for heaven's sake don't ask why" - at the annual West Belfast Festival. Around 500 people attended the event at St Mary's College.

Fisk has spent 26 years covering the Middle East for a number of leading newspapers. He has also covered the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia and has won the British International Journalist of the Year award seven times.

He accused many journalists of "biased reporting" and a "gutless silence" about the real activities and agenda of Western powers. In the Middle East, in particular, there was a "history of lies and deceit".

Many journalists "copped out" of telling the truth and merely repeated Western propaganda because they wanted "an easy life unencumbered by hate mail and letters to the editor". Journalists who didn't shun controversy and were committed to the truth would be accused of supporting terrorism, he added.

Fisk hated "the what and the where stories that leave out the why". Last December his car broke down near the Afghan-Pakistani border, he said. A crowd of Afghan refugees who had lost relatives in the US bombing of Kandahar thought he was an American and tried to kill him.

Badly beaten, he was rescued by a Muslim cleric. He feared the incident would be reported "as another Muslim-bashing story with a lone Briton attacked by angry Afghans". He wrote later of the attack: "If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."

This led to much media criticism, he said. A Wall Street Journal headline read: "Self-loathing multiculturalist who got his due". In other newspapers, he has been accused of supporting Osama bin Laden, of being "in cahoots with terrorists", and of being "a total nutcase", he said.

Such allegations are made when journalists don't write stories which fit the standard US/British/Western line, he claimed. It is deemed "wicked" to suggest there could be reasons for September 11th and "even worse" to outline what those reasons might be.

Journalists highlighting that American B-52s don't "distinguish between men wearing turbans and women and children", that bin Laden's terror bases were built by the CIA when he was their friend, and that there was a gross imbalance when the world's most powerful nation bombed "ravaged, starving Afghanistan", were accused of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, he said.

Mr Fisk questioned the language journalists employ when covering the Middle East conflict. The "occupied territories" were now the "disputed territories", as though it was an argument over land deeds.

"Jewish settlements" had been transformed into "Jewish neighbourhoods". A Palestinian attack on a settlement was then reported totally out of its political context. Arab militants were "terrorists" but Israeli militants were only "fanatics" or "extremists". The BBC described the assassination of Palestinian suspects by Israeli death squads as "targeted killings", the Israeli government's own phrase, Fisk said.

The dominant media line was that hatred was destroying the Middle East peace process. It was not considered that the peace process itself didn't work and was contributing to the problems, he added.

The West Belfast Festival, a huge event in the city, continues until August 11th, with literary and sporting events as well as theatre, exhibitions and current affairs discussions.

A political debate with guests including Sinn Féin TD, Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, and Ulster Unionist Assembly member, Mr James Leslie, will be held in St Louise's Comprehensive School tonight. It will be chaired by author and journalist Susan McKay.