Last year [1998], the Western world waited with baited breaths as the inchoate “showdown” between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and US President Bill Clinton intensified over UNSCOM’s weapons inspections. The international community – particularly the Western world – contemplated strikes on Iraq, but put the decision on hold due to the intervention of the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, upon whom resolution was incumbent.

Although Kofi Annan was skeptical how fruitful his mission to Iraq would be, he went anyway in an attempt to resolve the crisis, and take Iraq away from the brink of war. After several hours fraught with tension, Annan became the guarantor to a peace deal. At the time, Washington refused to comment on the UN chief’s ostensible resolution; however, they gave a tacit indication that at least Saddam Hussein was making the effort to cooperate.

Unfortunately, late last year, relations broke down further and the Iraqi authorities subsequently expelled the UNSCOM authorities. This degenerated into another round of beggar-my-neighbour diplomacy, where Iraq maintained an obstinate stance that it would not allow the UNSCOM inspectors back into the country – particularly the British and the Americans, whom Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister, accused of being engaged in “sabre-rattling” diplomacy.

The Western Press was having a field day, with many newspaper editors pontificating over how and why Saddam Hussein ought to be “removed." Although many media never came out to support such an idea, some of them – particularly the newspapers – expressed this implicitly through the words they used, particularly the adjectives they used and the style in which they wrote.

This paper will attempt to provide contextual analysis of three reputable, and well-known, sources of news – Cable News Network, British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Guardian newspaper – and give an insight into how each media displayed their tendency through the type of articles they published.

In my search for archive material, I was able to obtain information regarding the “UN Inspector crisis” on the three sources listed above. I was unable, however, to find archive material on the International Herald Tribune website . Nevertheless, I was able to retrieve an article from the Washington Post – featured in the Guardian Weekly of the week ending September 6 1998 – and found it an interesting source.

The article written by Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post started out as a relatively objective piece of writing, but I later realized that the writer revealed his tendency as he developed his arguments.

I found the title to be relatively neutral in that it didn’t accuse Saddam Hussein of being belligerent. However, in the first paragraph, he opines how “Baghdad’s rapidly coalescing victory is a substantial defeat for world order, for the United Nations and for the Clinton administration”. I find this statement indicative of partiality, and was surprised that the Washington Post of all papers, did the most predictable thing by siding immediately with Bill Clinton.

Moreover, what of the apocalyptic vision of the “defeat for world order”? One need go no further than the development of his idea in his paragraph to realize that he is expressing the same realist ideas as his government. This type of argument, to me, smacks of an unwillingness to be sufficiently open-minded to consider that America may have had geo-political and strategic interests at the heart of its foreign policy.

He expresses further evidence of this view when he writes that “the struggle against Saddam {why not President Hussein?} must continue, with renewed US leadership”. He continues that “failure on Iraq will inexorably push the United States onto a solitary, unpredictable and expensive path outside the UN to confront these dangers. No-one should want that” he concludes the article.

What is Mr.Hoagland trying to intimate here -- that no one {who?} wants to see the “United States on a solitary...expensive path” to deal with dangers to world security? In my opinion, this is an implicit way of telling the world that America is, to all intents and purposes, the superpower, and that it is incumbent upon her to “confront these dangers” -- in other words, Iraq.

This article, however, is in stark contrast to the Guardian article , in which Ian Black, a Guardian journalist, writing from New York, maintains an objective stance vis-à-vis what he describes as “the latest stand-off over weapons inspections”.

In the article, he argues that an Iraqi defector’s claims that Saddam Hussein contravened UN sanctions, “seemed designed to bolster international support for the measures {a strike on Saddam Hussein}. He continues that the defector, Mr.Salih, “...is clearly being exploited for his propaganda.”

Further evidence of the Guardian’s impartiality is found later in the article -- “Arms chief tells Iraq UN will not stand aside” -- in which the same journalist argues that the weapons experts were called in to “analyse discrepancies in the results of tests on the nerve gas VX by laboratories in the US, France and Switzerland”. Whereas American experts found traces of VX on the Iraqi scud missile warheads, “those on Switzerland and France failed to find VX on {any} fragments”.

This is not to say that the newspaper was supportive of Iraq, or intent on denouncing the US-led decision to depose Saddam Hussein. In the same article, the author writes “the US, actively backed only by Britain, went to the brink of military action in February. But”, he continues, “ although it insists that it has not ruled out the use of force if President Saddam continues to defy the inspections, there is no appetite domestically...for the ‘severest consequences’ threatened if Baghdad tries again”.

In the same vein, Martin Woollacott writing in the Guardian argues that “military action might eventually lead to a diplomatic settlement”, but then maintains that “again, Saddam would undermine {it}. Subversion of a deal would lead back to military action.” He then admonishes that “how long this might see-saw on is anybody’s guess. The larger crisis arises”, he continues, “from the fact that the huge capital of influence which America possessed after the Gulf War victory has been dissipated.”

All in all, I found the article to be relatively well-balanced in the way it presented the facts and analyzed them. The thesis of the article also lends weight to the title, and the author does also truly indicate the extent to which he believes -- as the title suggests -- no happy ending to the US-Iraq confrontation.

One of the accounts that was also balanced, I felt, was that of CNN. However, one of the first things I noticed was that CNN used six particular ways of describing the crisis: Standoff With Iraq; Inspecting Iraq; Strike on Iraq; Crisis in Iraq; Iraq vs. UN, and Showdown with Iraq.

Were all these slogans really necessary? Would one, or two, not have been sufficient? I found this suspect; because to me, it indicated that in an attempt to bring prominence to the issue (which country was leading the gung-ho policy anyway?), it was over-dramatizing the situation with slogans that were of no practical value to the gravity of the situation.

Furthermore, the problem in analyzing CNN's coverage lay in the fact that most of the articles have been written in cooperation with Reuters news agency, or Associated Press journalists. As a consequence, the former two's already objective way of reporting has subordinated CNN's tendency.

As for the BBC, I found no indication of partiality regarding its reporting of the crisis. I remember, for example, James Cox interviewing Robin Cook regarding the peace deal the UN secretary-general had made with Saddam Hussein. James Cox was consistent in the way he attempted to show how Robin Cook was merely following the US-line, which Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, had started. His questions seemed to be geared towards provoking the Foreign Secretary into saying something newsworthy that the BBC could later use as testimony of the government's double standards.

For example, Cox maintained that “Saddam was a wily old fox”; and that the UN secretary-general had “scope for negotiation”. Cook replied that the scope was “within the bottom line: UNSCOM inspectors should go back to work”.

“Suppose”, Cox continued, “he does give unfettered access, how can you trust him?”. The Foreign Secretary conceded that “they’d been there before where” – and here he used a loaded political term – “Saddam has used a systematic process of deception and concealment.” Coc countered “sanctions will be lifted …if he signs up to the agreement”. Only if he lives up to, complies with the agreement in a physical sense” was how Robin Cook retorted.

At the end of the interview, Cox asked him whether he agrees that the Foreign Office “ were not more assiduous?” Here , the Foreign Secretary argued defensively that it was “absolutely untrue” that Europe was against the airstrikes, yet Cox riposted that EU countries were “dubious about military strikes”, and what his opinion of it was a twin-track approach , with the possibility of military strike backed up by diplomacy”.

FINAL ANALYSIS
Having scanned through the sources, I feel that it is difficult to attribute tendency to any of the sources, because most of them were objective ;-- especially CNN and BBC, which are respectively American and British-based news organizations.

C.P.Scott, founder of the Guardian newspaper, once wrote that “comments are free; facts are sacred”. The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland’s comments, while free, were highly tendencious, and frankly predictable. Also, I found his perception of the facts about American foreign policy to be suspect.

This style however, paled into comparison with that of the Guardian’s, where even in its reporting, it initimated that the US was doing its best to really support strikes against Iraq:- “ The White House will today step up its efforts to win the hearts and minds of the American people for military action against Iraq” , and “President Bill Clinton and his advisers embark this week on what amounts to a marketing campaign for air strikes against Iraq”.

Finally , out of all the papers that I read through, none alluded to the motivation of Tony Blair’s relationship with Clinton – save the Guardian newspaper, in a ‘comment’ by Jonathon Freedland: “ No-one denies there are sound arguments for the US strategy on Iraq, just as there are robust reasons to hesitate. But the instant, unwavering support offered to President Bill Clinton by Mr.Blair seemed to originate elsewhere. The sheer speed of it spoke less of a deeply-considered approach to Iraq than a government instinct to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington.”

Some people may regard this quote to be biased because they may feel that it shows clear support for the Iraqis. They may also claim that it does this because it denies that the relationship between both Blair and Clinton was, and still is, beneficial. Perhaps, it may be common knowledge political leaders rarely form partnerships, or friendships, without considering their geopolitical motives. However, I would consider it significant, because it highlights what many people overlook – that a vigorously sustained support by a leader for something, or someone, usually involves more than just compatible views. Perhaps, here, I am biased too. Then again, I am a Guardian reader.