IRAQ: Latin American Media Provided Balanced Coverage, say Experts

<a href=ipsnews.net>Inter Press Services News Agency Mario Osava*

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 21 (IPS) - Coverage of the war on Iraq in Latin America has been marked by efforts to send correspondents from the region despite the economic crisis, and by a largely successful attempt at balance, according to analysts.

Several large media outlets from the region spent special envoys to Iraq and the neighbouring countries of Jordan and Kuwait, while publications and radio and TV stations in Latin America incorporated material from the U.S. as well as European media in order to provide balanced reporting and commentaries.

A large majority of the public in Latin America has been opposed to the war from the start, according to opinion polls -- a position that is shared by most of the media in the region, which counterbalanced their traditional reliance on news, and especially broadcast images, coming out of the United States.

But Bernardo Ajzenberg, ''readers' advocate'' at the daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, told IPS that he believed there was ''a clear effort to maintain a certain balance, and to reduce the anti-American slant in news dispatches and in the publication of articles, analyses and interviews.''

He acknowleged, however, a few exceptions to that aim for balance, as seen in the titles of several supplements dedicated to coverage of the war, like the Folha de Sao Paulo's ''Attack by the Empire'', or ''Bush's War'' by another daily newspaper, O Globo. But he said there were also cases of bias in favour of Washington.

Meanwhile, Globo, Brazil's leading TV station, sought to remain impartial, Ajzenberg added.

But in an Internet survey carried out by the 'Observatorio da Imprensa' (Press Observatory), an independent organisation headed by Brazilian press guru Alberto Dines, 91 percent of the 4,099 people who have so far taken part agreed that in Brazil, ''opposition to the war led the media to take an anti-U.S. stance.''

Dines criticised coverage of the war in Brazil, saying there was an exaggerated use of ''indignation and of the 'politically correct','' combined with a lack of more in-depth information, while the media tended to ''simplify'' things due to side-taking or unfamiliarity with the reality on the ground.

Folha de Sao Paulo was the only Brazilian media organ to send special envoys to Baghdad, a reporter and a cameraman, who for safety reasons went to Amman for a few days when the Marines advanced into the Iraqi capital.

That provided a ''Brazilian perspective'' for the public, who otherwise would have had to depend on ''cold news reports,'' said Ajzenberg, the only ''readers advocate'' in a Brazilian print media outlet.

The Argentine daily newspapers Clarín and La Nación, Mexico's Televisa TV network and El Universal newspaper, and Chile's Televisión Nacional also had their own reporters in Iraq.

In Mexico, ''the balanced nature of TV coverage of the war was surprising,'' and the correspondent sent by El Universal provided ''a human face and colourful reporting,'' just as the paper's special envoy did in Afghanistan in 2001, Raul Trejo, founder of the news and media analysis magazine Ectcétera, told IPS.

That sense of surprise was shared by other analysts, who pointed to the rich mix of material from media outlets in the industrialised North with ''the other face'' of the war -- the human element, the position of the Iraqi government, and the harsh criticism of Washington.

Gustavo Sierra, with the Argentine paper Clarín, filed on-the-spot stories with a human face from Baghdad.

His reports, which graced the front-page of the newspaper and drew new visitors to its web site and listeners to the Mitre radio station -- which belongs to the same media group -- provided a blend of news and first-hand impressions from hospitals and shops in a war-torn city, similar to what a soldier might write home to his family.

Mexico's TV Azteca, Globo in Brazil, and even outlets in smaller Latin American countries like Costa Rica and Guatemala sent reporters to neighbouring countries like Kuwait and Jordan, many of whom went to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad.

There have never been so many Latin American journalists covering a war on another continent, and this region provided its share of the reporters who were killed, who numbered 13 in all.

Two press workers sent by Argentina's Telefe TV station, Mario Podestá, 51, and Verónica Cabrera, 28, were killed on their way from Amman to Baghdad.

On Apr. 14, the car in which they were driving rolled several times after its tires were hit by gunfire from an unknown origin, according to witnesses. Podestá was killed on the spot and Cabrera died in a hospital the next day.

The deaths of journalists in Iraq, and especially the cases of three press workers who were killed in U.S. attacks on the Palestine Hotel and the office of the Al-Jazeera Qatar-based TV network on Apr. 8 in Baghdad, triggered outcries from organisations like the International Federation of Journalists and the Brazilian and Uruguayan press associations.

But in Dines's view, accusations against Washington that the attacks were ''deliberate'' and amounted to ''murders'' and ''war crimes'' arose from a ''politicised and corporatist reaction'' by the press that was not based on real evidence.

Trejo also lamented the deaths, but dismissed allegations that the attacks were deliberate, and said they were transformed into something ''out of the ordinary'' due to the fact that journalists were involved, while in many cases the mainstream media remained silent regarding the deaths of thousands of civilians.

The challenge of providing balanced coverage of the war meant media outlets in the region had to creatively overcome a shortage of resources and the limitations faced by overworked journalists who lack the time and funds to train and prepare themselves, unlike their colleagues from rich countries, said Ajzenberg.

Such limitations especially affect international coverage. Folha de Sao Paulo, for example, had 20 correspondents posted abroad in the early 1990s, but had to cut that number by three-quarters as part of a downsizing and cost-cutting effort seen ''throughout Latin America,'' said Ajzenberg.

• Marcela Valente in Argentina, Diego Cevallos in Mexico and Humberto Marquez in Venezuela contributed to this report. (END/2003)