[Peace-discuss] Libyan Deaths, Media Silence

[C. G. Estabrook]

Libyan Deaths, Media Silence
Were Dozens Killed in Majer NATO Airstrikes?

8/18/11

Allegations of Libyan civilian deaths as a result of NATO bombing have often 
been covered in the corporate media as an opportunity to scoff at the Gadhafi 
regime's unconvincing propaganda (FAIR Blog, 6/9/11).

But dramatic new allegations that dozens of civilians were killed in Majer after 
NATO airstrikes on August 8 have been met with near-total media silence.

According to Libyan officials, 85 civilians were killed in Majer-- a town south 
of Zliten, a site of frequent clashes and NATO airstrikes. There is no reason 
journalists should take this claim at face value. But reports from the scene 
suggest that something significant happened. According to Agence France Presse 
(8/9/11), "Reporters attended the funerals of victims and saw 28 bodies buried 
at the local cemetery.... In the hospital morgue, 30 bodies -- including two 
children and one woman -- were shown along with other bodies which had been torn 
apart."

The AFP report included NATO denials, with a spokesman claiming that the target 
"was a military facility clearly."

A Reuters correspondent (8/9/11) "counted 20 body bags in one room, some of them 
stacked one on top of the other.... In total, reporters saw about 30 bodies at 
the Zlitan hospital." The New York Times (8/10/11) ran a 170-word version of a 
Reuters dispatch which noted: "There was no evidence of weapons at the 
farmhouses, but there were no bodies there, either. Nor was there blood."

Amnesty International has called for an investigation, which led to this mention 
from CNN anchor John King (8/11/11):

Amnesty International is demanding that NATO investigate whether a Monday strike 
on Moammar Gadhafi''s forces killed 85 Libyan civilians including 33 children. 
NATO says it has no evidence of civilian casualties at this point.


A Nexis database search yields very little coverage in U.S. outlets beyond that 
brief comment. But that is not because no reporters were present. CNN 
correspondent Ivan Watson covered a mass funeral after the strikes. But his 
report aired only on CNN International (8/10/11). Watson reported a visit to 
"three or four houses that had been demolished by some kind of missiles from the 
sky."

He added:

We were also shown a morgue where there were the bodies of at least 25 people. 
Many of them appeared to be men. There were some women and children included 
among those corpses.


Watson noted that it was "impossible for us, from this perspective, to confirm 
whether or not 85 people were in fact killed, but it does appear that at least 
some women and were among those hurt in this deadly strike." (You can watch 
Watson's report here).

Watson's CNN.com report (8/10/11) included an interview with a Libyan who 
claimed that nine members of his family were killed in the attack, including his 
two-year old daughter. Watson also interviewed a man who was burying his daughter.

It is curious that Watson's reporting was shared with CNN's international 
audience, but not broadcast to its domestic audience.

But Watson did appear on CNN a few days earlier from the scene of another NATO 
strike in Zliten. The point of that report (8/5/11) was to suggest that official 
claims of civilian deaths were suspicious. In that segment, Watson noted that on 
a visit to a law school that had been attacked by NATO forces, he found what 
"appear to be uniforms over here, these olive green pants. And then we have got 
boxes here that look an awful lot like they could have been holding ammunition."

Reporting that undermines Libyan claims of civilian casualties has been a staple 
of the war so far-- as evidenced by headlines like "Libya Government Fails to 
Prove Claims of NATO Casualties" (Washington Post, 6/6/11) and "Libya Stokes Its 
Machine Generating Propaganda" (New York Times, 6/7/11).

Is Majer being ignored by the media because it is just more clumsy Libyan 
propaganda? Or is it because the story might conflict with the media's 
overriding message that Libyan civilians aren't dying in NATO's airstrikes? In 
any event, corporate media outlets that have so diligently sought to debunk 
Libyan claims of civilian deaths should investigate what happened in Majer. On 
the BBC website, reporter Matthew Price published one such effort (8/11/11), 
headlined "What really happened in Libya's Zlitan?" There should be more like it.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4379