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Richard Butler is one bloke I’d like to invite to a party. From what Mr. Ladder of Opportunity, Mark Latham, says about him, he’s a loudmouth drunk who’s been sacked from more jobs than Peter Costello’s had budgets. Dick, if I can be so bold, was the keynote speaker at a shindig held in my little part of the world the other week during which he made the observation that, in regards to the Latham meltdown, “the media just did the sensational stuff.” He went on to say, “you’ve got to be a critical consumer of the media”.
I found out about Dick’s flying visit when it was reported in the local paper, the Latrobe Valley Express. He was interviewed by one of the reporters and the article was published on page seven. Page seven! Imagine if Dick had been speaking at, oh, let’s say, the National Press Club and made the comments he made. It would be front page news across all the major papers. “Richard Butler says media publishes ‘borderline’ propaganda” – which is exactly what he did say. But, because Dick was visiting a depressed industrial backwater, out in the proverbial boondocks, his comments went totally un-noticed by the major media outlets.
Butler built his reputation as plain speaker when he was the UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997. To place him in the context of what was going on in Iraq at that time you must recall that it was post George Bush 1st little “invasion” and during the time of the supposed UN sanctions. You may recall these sanctions caused the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children and that Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State in the Clinton regime, said that these deaths were, “acceptable”.
While the kids were dying Dick and his UN chums were searching Iraq, high and low, for supposed weapons of mass destruction. They searched the palaces, now occupied by US generals. They searched factories, many of which are now shut down and unable to produce anything because of allied bombings or a lack of regular energy supplies. The UNSCOM inspectors searched the storage silos, now empty and rotting because farmers can’t till their fields due to unexploded ordinance from the sustained and ongoing allied bombings. In short his team, and that of Scott Ritter who followed him, couldn’t find a thing to justify the carnage now being wrought on that nation.
Another observation from Butler that made its way into the Latrobe Valley Express the other day was that when he faced media conferences and told them that his team had not found any weapons of mass destruction, the assembled media scrum got bored and walked out. Butler said that the reports he was giving were “good news stories … it’s great they’re not making any anthrax … it’s a good report.” This raises the question, ‘why didn’t the media report his findings?’
Perhaps, as Dick said, most of what is passed off as news these days is “borderline propaganda”. We all know, because the facts are not hidden any longer, that the stated reason for going to war – Saddam has weapons of mass destruction – was a lie. We know that our politicians and a compliant and lazy media misled us. We know for a fact that the allegations and outright lies were just that, lies and unsubstantiated allegations. Yet, the media did nothing to challenge this and we now find ourselves caught up in someone else’s war.
When Dick rolled up to the UN to tell them that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, the US, British and Australian governments all choruses that he was a lazy, no good for nothing UN flunky. In disgust he resigned and began telling anyone who would listen that Iraq had no weapons and, in chorus with Ritter, opposed the second invasion of Iraq under George Bush the Lessor. Both Ritter and Butler were “the experts”. They were at the top of the pile when it came to knowing what the state of the weapon stockpile in Iraq was, yet when they told the truth, and thus did their jobs, the media turned on them. In Ritter’s case with allegations of sexual misconduct and in Butler’s case, that he was a drunken disgrace.
Dick Butler’s comments in a little decaying backwater town were very interesting in themselves. What is perhaps more interesting is the fact that none of the major news organisations picked them up and reprinted or replayed them. We must ask, “why not?” I think it’s because to allow such comments to emerge from the smoky haze called “news and current affairs” would be to expose the prime weakness of the mainstream media. That is, it no longer reports the facts but, to quote Dick quoting Rupert Murdoch, “… they are just giving the people what they want.” To cut off his comments there is not good enough because he went on to say, “…but I don’t believe it. I don’t think they [the media proprietors and managers] know what the people want.”
As I mentioned earlier, Butler spoke about the media treatment given to Mark Latham’s book. In giving his opinion he said, “Mark Latham has written some really important stuff about how politics in Australia works. I hope that … doesn’t get swept away by the attendant garbage ….” So even though Butler is given the rough end of the pineapple in Latham’s book, he is still wise enough recognise the truth therein. It’s a pity the Australian media chose to play the man rather than the substance of Latham’s arguments.
But isn’t that how these things go? It seems to me that change starts at the margins, those places ostracised and remote from the centres of influence and power. Richard Butler made statements that are potentially explosive and it was one, small regional newspaper that had the guts to tell the story. We need more of this type of reporting because as Dick said, ‘the media proprietors don’t know what the people want’. I believe, like Dick, that people want real information and news. I believe that people want to hear stories that resonate with what they understand and experience. I believe people want people like them telling it as it is not some highly paid, pancaked, spruiker for the networks intoning ‘gems of wisdom’ from behind the safety of a teleprompter.
What happens to Richard Butler’s message is up to us. We can ignore it or we can act on it. If we choose to ignore it, it’s at our own peril. If we choose to act we are doing nothing more than claiming back what is rightfully ours, access to real information free of corporate spin and hyperbole.
As far as drinking mates go, I think I’d rather have a drink with Dick than many of the so called ‘reporters’ working in the mainstream press. To the local writer of the piece, Renee Kurowski and her editor, I say ‘well done’ for being brave enough to print an article that is critical of your craft. You put your higher paid and much better resourced city colleagues to shame. Perhaps we should get together and invite Dick over for a drink some time.