Fisk-it Friday, or something clever like that
“He had a . . . a frightening self-righteousness.” Robert Fisk could be talking about just about anybody; hell, excepting the gender issue, he could probably be talking about me. He is, instead, referring to the infamous Osama Bin Laden, the first enemy of America the free world and founder of Al Qaeda, the name that strikes fear into . . . Okay, enough clichés for Osama.
Fisk is in Dublin thanks to Seminars.ie to speak at the National Concert Hall at a Q&A-type interview with RTÉ’s John Bowman, who “did a great job on Questions & Answer“, says Fisk. Indeed he did. Several questions, one answer. The interview is conducted on the NCH’s main stage – there are two chairs, a central table that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever and, oddly, a vase of greenery on a higher table in the background. Are we supposed to feel like we’re in a cosy livingroom setting?
Before I go, I’m instructed that Fisk loves the Arabs. I don’t necessarily think this is a negative thing, but the impression I’m given is that I should at least be aware what I’m dealing with before I get there. He loves the Arabs; bear that in mind. Eh, thanks. I will.
Fisk doesn’t give the impression, on a Thursday night in Dublin, that he loves Arabs. He’s wearing some form of light-coloured linen shirt, if that could be considered a concession to Arab climes, but the only person I’m sure Robert Fisk loves, upon leaving the main hall, is, well, Robert Fisk. It’s safe to say that he’s a fan of himself. Bowman does a commendable job of bringing up Fisk’s detractors, allegations Fisk swipes away with a laugh. “Oh, we’re great friends, don’t get me wrong – but that statement just doesn’t stand up.” They’re all “great friends”, these journalists, even the ones who hate him. “We go way back.”
The interview centres very much on events in the Middle East, with a strong focus on Israel and Palestine, talking about Fisk’s time in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon . . . he is a man who is, one could say, well travelled. Things are looking good until the session is opened up to the audience, a 400 or so strong cohort of elderly gentlemen. Men outnumber women roughly 10 to one; E, my companion, is quite probably the youngest in the room. The first question is an indicator of things to come. “Robert, I just wanted to say – you’re a great man. The work you’re doing, it’s, it’s, eh, it’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing.” Possibly useful advice, 40 years ago, but Fisk has been doing what he’s doing for that long, and it’s unlikely that he needs any encouragement. In fact, he might benefit from the opposite, but I digress.
The next: “Bob, we were in Lebanon together in ’72 . . .” I usually avoid Q&A sessions; this was sold to me as an interview with John Bowman, which, for the greater part, it was, but you can’t miss the people who use question-time to show off their impeccable knowledge of Middle Eastern politics, or the politics of oil. Ten minutes of posturing before the question arrives: “Would you care to comment on that?” Well, I think you’ve already said it all, sonny.
There are questions about depleted uranium being used in munitions in the Middle East. “Most definitely, it is,” says Fisk. “I went back [to Iraq] after the war in 1991, and saw children with leukemia, cancer, in families that had no history – well, everyone in Iraq smokes 5,000 cigarettes a day, of course, but this was different – children who had been playing in the street with depleted uranium, one little girl who had started bleeding through the nose. I did a report on it. When I went back a year later, they were all dead.” When Fisk talks, he is compelling; he has seen sights that we dare not imagine, sights that we avoid on the television.
It is to the question of the ethics of war photography that the conversation keeps returning; one man in the audience expresses a distaste for graphic images on the news. “If I see a murder, blood running down the street, I turn away – I don’t want to see that while I’m having my tea.” Fisk is unapologetic about the need for graphic images on television. “What we get now is what I call a bland-ising of news coverage. The BBC reporter in Iraq gets his news copy fed back to him from Reuters, whose offices are 20 feet away. They send their report to London and it comes back to him, so what we’re seeing is dead news.” Citizen journalism has a large part to play, and Fisk bemoans the censorship indulged in by photo editors, the world over.
“If you’re supporting a war, you need to see the war – you need to see what it is that you’re supporting.” He will not be swayed. “I was at a hospital in Basrah [in Iraq] when a man came in holding a young girl, his daughter, a beautiful girl. She was wearing jeans, and he was holding her in her arms and, below the ankles, her bones were protruding . . . she was dead.” He was conducting an interview with a doctor at the time, and says he saw photographers take the picture – of the true horror of war, of this woman lying in her father’s arms. The next day, the photograph was run in several newspapers, with the caption “an injured woman in her father’s arms”, and the photograph had been cropped carefully, above the ankles. What we’re seeing, according to Fisk, is a watered-down version of a horrific truth.
And to what end? We have no problem seeing visions of war. “Saving Private Ryan is probably the closest you’ll get to the reality of war,” he says. “We’ll happily see war on film, but when it comes to the real thing, it’s no, no, we can’t show that on the 6 o’clock news, while people are eating their dinner.” What about respect for the dead? Fisk laughs bitterly. “We don’t respect them when they’re alive – but as soon as they’re dead, they’re worth respecting? Please.” What would Fisk have us do? “Show the pictures. I’m not saying 24/7, bombard people with images of dead people and blood and guts, but show them the reality, show them what’s happening, what war is.”
Finally, what do we do about the Middle East? Fisk recommends we do nothing. “We have no business there,” he says. “Send doctors, send teachers, by all means – but we need to get our soldiers out of the Middle East. They don’t belong there. You can’t go in, expecting these people to benefit from our nice, happy democracy; they don’t want it, they don’t want us there. And we’ve interfered enough.” The audience claps, I clap. He makes good sense, the same Fisk. I think I like him almost as much as he likes himself.
* As an addendum, Fisk makes reference at one point to the fact that there are very few women in the audience with questions. Dutifully, one woman stands up. “I hope this isn’t a stupid question . . .” she begins. No self-aggrandising for her. The men in the audience could have taken her lead, or maybe us women should learn that there’s no such thing as a stupid question; why should men be the only ones who are entitled to be stupid?
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