As we’ve pointed out, corporate TV outlets haven’t shown much interest in the Bradley Manning trial. And then when they do, maybe you wish they didn’t.
Covering the verdict announcement on last night’s NBC Nightly News (7/30/13), anchor Brian Williams said that Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski had “covered this story from the start.”
But you’d have a hard time believing that when you heard the way he described the Collateral Murder video, one of the most talked-about aspects of Manning’s trial. It is the gunsight footage from a July 12, 2007, U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed two Reuters journalists, along with an unknown number of other Iraqis (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/7/10).
But Miklasziewski apparently knows who died, because he described that video this way:
In a pretrial statement to the court, Manning admitted he leaked this classified video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed a number of insurgents and two innocent civilians.
But Manning did not describe the video as an attack on “insurgents,” because that is not what the video shows.
There are three distinct attacks captured by the video. First there is firing on a group of men— including the Reuters journalists–based on the presence of what the helicopter crew believes is a weapon. (A camera was incorrectly thought to be a weapon as well.)
After that attack, a vehicle appears, and some of the passengers get out to assist Saeed Chmagh, a driver who worked for Reuters who was wounded in the first attack.
The van is fired on, killing the driver and wounding two children–leaving one member of the helicopter team to remark, “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”
A third attack in the full version of the video is a Hellfire missile strike on a building, based on the fact that the helicopter crew saw armed men enter the building. Who was killed in that attack is hard to know, as a report by the New Yorker‘s Raffi Khatchadourian (4/7/10) noted:
No one in the Apache knows who is really in the building, and there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby.
The New Yorker piece also mentions that an investigator associated with WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, claimed to have located the owner of the building, who said that several innocent people were killed–including his wife and daughter.
So how does Miklasziewski know that the attacks mostly killed “insurgents”? That was the military’s cover story before WikiLeaks published the video, as Dan Froomkin pointed out at Huffington Post (4/5/10). That cover story is evidently still the one Miklasziewski is sticking with.
At the close of the segment, Williams refers to the Manning trial as “this widely watched case.”
Sure–but you would have to been watching it somewhere other than NBC Nightly News.
True believers in America’s wars know that civilians are transubstantiated into insurgents when U.S. ammunition enters their bodies. It is a miracle and one of the mysteries of the faith.
What’s wrong with you Peter?! You expect Miklasziewski to jeopardize a lucrative career as the stenographer for the pentagon by approaching the truth in his “reporting”? As Manning said in his trial [paraphrasing]: “It’s like boys burning ants with a magnifying glass”. The racist mercenaries (aka US soldiers) are unable to recognize the humanity of the people in those little countries they attack (illegally), dominate and subdue with indiscriminate force. Also, what do you expect from NBC? Propaganda IS their job. They have to rob Manning of HIS humanity because he recognizes the humanity of US victims.
Aside from the missing “have” here,
“Williams refers to the Manning trial as ‘this widely watched case.’ Sure–but you would have to been watching it somewhere other than NBC Nightly News.”
what do you mean? watching it for what?
You don’t really refute the claim that Miklaszewski had “covered this story from the start” — you just complain (correctly) that this coverage was inaccurate. Maybe Miklaszewski was there, but the network didn’t air much from him?
Lives of darker people means nothing to imperial powers. Twenty million died in 40 years of Cold war “stability.”
Based on the camera footage the army troops were fully justified in their righteous shoot. It was plaining visible that 1 individual posed a AK or RPG
so, two MAJOR obvious lies in..what was it? a two-minute report at the most?
thank you for watching, peter hart, since I find the news unbearable and i’m sick of the glamour and friendliness of the “news”teams stuck up on the television screen- and there’s nowhere on tv to go to avoid the Barbie and Kenny-boy pairs or the little group of elite chit-chatters to entertain us between the real business of tv- the OTHER commercial advertisements and deceptions.
we do need to understand what they’re reporting. it’s just SO hard to watch the manipulation in process. snake-oil salesmen and women are working overtime while the real information is only available (for now) on the internet and in the libraries……….and by watching what Washington is actually DOING.