A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Kristina Borjesson

There it was, the first story on AOL's January 17, 2008 front page news line-up: "FBI Wants You to Notice Them" and then "Most Wanted List Gets Updated." And there too, of course, was a not-so-recent black and white photo of Osama bin Laden and a description of why he's at the top the list: "Osama bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world." Notice, not a word about 9/11, the deadly national trauma to which Osama's name is most commonly linked in the minds of Americans.

That's no accident. It's no accident either, that on a regular basis unauthenticated and suspected-as-bogus video and audio representations of this international bogeyman are regularly trotted out to the press. This time, it's the FBI updating its list and announcing a new ad campaign to feature top fugitives on billboards in twenty cities -- yet another way to keep Osama's mug before the eyes of American citizens so they can feel afraid -- very afraid, and angry, too. But based on what?

Late last month, it was an Osama audiotape that couldn't be authenticated. That didn't stop Associated Press reporter Salah Nasrawi from writing about it and quoting from it as if it were real. This month, it's Osama at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted List and this story written by Associated Press reporter Paul Schemm: "Bin Laden's Son Wants to be a Peace Envoy." Now here's one that looks and smells like Oscar gold. Accompanying Schemm's piece is a photo of Osama's 26-year old son Omar stylin' a black leather jacket and what looks like a serious set of braid weaves. Omar, Schemm reports, wants to be an ambassador for peace. And -- hold on to your hats, folks -- his father "wants a truce."

Osama wants a truce? Really? Omar told Schemm that he hadn't seen or heard from his father since 2000, when Omar walked out of an al Qaeda training camp after deciding "there must be another way." The question is, who really has seen or heard from the real Osama bin Laden since 2002? In his story on a purported December 2007 Osama audiotape, Nasrawi buried a line about the tape being unauthenticated eleven paragraphs down. In his piece, Schemm doesn't question Omar's present tense references to his father. "He doesn't have email," Omar tells tells the Associated Press reporter, "He doesn't take a telephone." If he had something like this, they would find him through satellites. Not once does Schemm ask Omar the burning question: Is your father alive? The burning follow-up question is: What proof do you have that your father is alive?

Why, one might ask, didn't Schemm ask these questions?

The answer is that Schemm believes, even though he has no proof, that Osama is alive. Here's what he writes in the middle of his story: "Osama bin Laden, believed [my italics -- believed by whom?] to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region, offered a truce to Europe in a 2004 audiotape [again, a purported tape] and a conditional truce to the United States in a 2006 message."

At the time the 2006 message was released, this article appeared on CNN's website: "U.S. Rejects bin Laden Tape's ... Truce Offer." The choice of words for the title is strange, as it literally says that the U.S. is refusing an offer made by an inanimate tape, not bin Laden himself. The subtitle is interesting, too: "CIA: Voice Warning Americans Believed [my italics] to be al Qaeda Leader's." These headlines clearly indicate that the 2006 message that Schemm is reporting as a sure-fire Osama missive was previously reported as purported (another word used in the CNN web article) to be bin Laden.

Schemm writes on: "In November, he called on European nations to pull out of Afghanistan in a message seen by some experts as an effort to reach out to Europe." What experts? Was the tape authenticated? By whom and how?

Finally, he wraps it up: "But in a series of messages since last fall, he has also been calling for Muslims to rally around jihad, or 'holy war,' encouraging fighters in Iraq in particular to continue their battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces." Really? Who authenticated those messages and how?

Here's my message to Mr. Schemm: You are risking your credibility big-time with this kind of reporting. You, the rest of the press, and the American people really need to demand that these and other threatening messages be VERIFIED and AUTHENTICATED before they are released. "Purported" isn't good enough. "Unauthenticated" isn't good enough. "CIA believes," or "The Defense Department released" or any of those other sketchy words and phrases that lean hard on official sources that have lied in the past or outright tell you that you're getting un-vetted information, do not, I repeat, do not, cover your ass.

Beyond that, ask yourself if you're not participating in an ongoing perception-building and perception-maintaining campaign. Go back and try to authenticate every bin Laden message that's been released since 2002. If you can, explain in detail how you did it. If you can't, report that and explain why. Refuse from here on out to report on anything related to bin Laden and the War on Terrorism that you can't verify or authenticate.

Kristina Borjesson is an investigative reporter and the author of FEET TO THE FIRE, The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

Also see: Kristina Borjesson: Does The Hormuz Videotape Literally Produced by the Pentagon Mean Cue Up the War with Iran? [0]

and

Kristina Borjesson: Are the Osama Tapes Fake? [0]

See: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/19/binladen.tape/index.html [1]

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

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