When East Timor exploded and foreign journalists fled, American
reporter
Alan Nairn remained behind. To be arrested, it turned out, by the
Indonesian army, because his earlier reportage had earned him a spot on
a government blacklist In
a discussion with Media Channel Executive Editor Danny Schechter, Nairn
talks
about the press coverage of East Timor—what it did well, what it
did poorly and what it did not at all. He also has some advice for
covering future conflicts. Read the interview with Jakarta's
least-favorite journalist or watch it in Real Video.
ALAN NAIRN: I was in East Timor from before the elections. I
was arrested there by the Indonesian military in September, during the
attack on Dili by the army and militias. I was picked up on the street
and may have been the last foreigner walking around on the streets. By
that time, the U.N. compound had been evacuated; most of the foreign
press corps had evacuated more than a week before.
I think the corporate press has been complicit, in effect, in the
death and the killing in Timor because they haven't brought the facts
home.
After the Indonesian military invaded on December 7, 1975, the next
night on the "CBS Evening News," Walter Cronkite ran a 40-second item
indicating that the invasion had taken place. That was the last mention
of East Timor on the ABC, NBC, or CBS evening news for the next decade
and a half. The decade and a half in which the Indonesian military
killed—caused the death of—one-third of the original Timorese
population. By any definition, this was a major story. You had the most
intensive, proportional slaughter since the Nazis and you had direct
U.S. involvement.
DANNY SCHECHTER: Now recently, fast forward to the present. You were
in East Timor as the whole crisis unfolded. What about the media there?
What was your sense of how this was being covered on the ground?
ALAN NAIRN: Well, because the U.N. came to East Timor to administer
the referendum on independence, for the first time the world corporate
press, in a sense, discovered Timor on the map and there were dozens of
foreign journalists there. In the coverage I was struck by the fact
that the reporters at times were almost hysterical about the
terror—report after very dramatic report about how villages were being
burned, independents, advocates were being abducted, and whole
communities were driven into the hills. Women being raped. And the
reporters really drove home the drama of it. And that was very good.
It's good that was being done. However, the question was: Well, where
have they been for the past 25 years?
The terror on the ground was conveyed to the readers and viewers, but
what you didn't get was the fact that this was a U.S.-sponsored army
doing this killing, and up to that very moment the U.S. had continued to
ship in new ammunition. Members of the Indonesian military and police
were being trained by the United States.
DS: Finally, What advice would you have to the media in terms of
future coverage?
AN: My advice would be: Don't let Washington set your agenda. Don't
let any national government set your agenda. Go to the places where the
worst abuses, the worst mass killings are taking place, convey to the
public the facts in their correct proportion—as big and dramatic as they
are—and also talk about the accomplices. If those committing the crimes
are getting support from anyone else—including foreign governments—if
that's where their weapons and their training and their political
sustenance comes from, talk about that. Put it on the front page. Make
it a theme so people can decide if they want to be accomplices to these
kinds of terrors.
