miss say expand warehouses for those little scary. we are also suggesting they grow varieties that can be exported to regions like europe in the middle east of them. so next time there's a crisis here, we can saw the produce that last week. housings of farmers started marching to move by to demand financial assistance, be ended their protest after the state government agreed to their demands. those include subsidizing prices and waving loans. some say the solution is only a temporary fix. markers enjoy all. oh, so that owner to you, the entire system needs to be overhauled right now. political parties interfere and decide who's allowed in the market. this should only be buyers and farmers, no one else. additionally, farmers need to learn to balance onion production with demand, so they can get a good price harvest season is expected to begin next month. farmers hope they'll benefit from new policies and start recovering their losses. pardon him at the larger sierra lawson gown?

western india. ah, this is al jazeera and these are the top stories the sour. so a spanking giant u. b. s as buying troubles rival credit suisse for just over $3000000000.00 in the state backed deal. it's hard, the deal will show up confidence in the global banking system after the collapse of to us lenders on friday, the liquidity outflows and markets well, activity shows that it was no longer possible to restore the necessary confidence. and that the swift and stabilizing solution was absolutely necessary. and the solution is a takeover of crazy stories by u. b. s. it is supported by the for the right on still following several meetings with the national bank. we've our regulator or the fit, not waste credit stories,

and you'll be us. and you can see welcome to the stakeholder and is supporting it by guaranteeing the framework conditions necessary for its success. chinese president, she's paying and said to travel to moscow on monday for to day visit brushes, president vladimir putin has welcomed what he calls china's constructive role. and trying to in the ukraine war after years of hostility officials and to run say, presidency br him. racy is welcome to an invitation by king solomon to visit read. earlier this month, the countries reached an agreement broken by china to re open embassies. just one day after the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for him, brushes, prison plan, a person made a visit to the russian occupied city of maria, poland ukraine, who drove around several districts on saturday and was shown restoration work at a theatre and a university hello estonians have been protesting in hebron and garza against talks between israeli and palestinian officials and egypt. hm. ass which governs the

garza strip, has condemned the west bank, both palestinian authority for taking part in the meeting. the talks were bid to try and calm, a surge of violence and the occupied whist back. both of the headlines, the news continues here on al jazeera, after upfront up next. frank assessments justice means to give them the basic human rights, not only in the camp, but also inside the mac, informed opinions, find administration are very concerned about this development, especially for what it means for china's power on the world's day critical debate. only both the legal reform dog the see the in depth analysis of the days headlines inside story on al jazeera, 20 years ago this week, the united states launched its invasion of iraq, a move that members of u. s. president george w bush's administration, had been planning for months if not years in the run up to the war,

the administration. and it's sarah gets, went into overdrive pushing the narrative that iraq and it's leader. saddam hussein posed in immediate and significant threat to the united states. most of the media uncritically repeated dubious claims about weapons of mass destruction and possible links to al qaeda claims that were thoroughly debunked in the months and years that followed. so how complicit was the media in selling the iraq war to the public and has the press learned any lessons from past failures? that's our discussion this week in it up front special. ah, joining us today is katrina vanden heuvel. publisher, an editorial director of the nation, norman solomon founder and executive director of the institute for public accuracy and author of war made easy. how presidents and pundents keep spinning us to death . and peter, all born former chief political commentator for the daily telegraph, an author of the rise of political lying. want to thank you all for joining me on

up front. katrina. i want to start with you in the lead up to the iraq war. we saw officials and sarah gets up with the administration of been u. s. president george w bush making the rounds in the press. and during those press rounds, it seemed like they were making a real effort to link the security of the united states post 911 to an imminent threat from iraq. can you walk us through the administration strategy to sell this iraq war to the general public? or the administration was determined to sell this war? i'm knowing, as we know now that they didn't believe there is a tie between the attacks of $911.00 and iraq, but that there was a shock therapy plan ah, to undermine and jean change iraq. and it was one of the media's greatest failures to date in accepting and failing to be a skeptic man,

he said norman solomon and others, media ended up being lap dogs, not watch dogs. there was a failure of skepticism. there was an acceptance of what was a lie. and just one example in the 2 weeks leading up to the war on tv, you had one of say, 200 pundits commentators, military experts, one raised questions or any skepticism about going to war. that is a failure and it wasn't just fox, but it was the liberal kind of intelligentsia, the david rem next. jeff goldbergs of the atlantic, jonathan shade as recline. these were ones who, including the think tanks and washington lubricated the way for the lives of the white house. norman, can you pick up on that idea that katrina is laying out here? i mean there's the bush strategy there. the sarah gets there. the people who echoed talking points and then there is this press failure, the katrina just reference the right. there were some exceptions. there were people

who pushed back, there are people who were skeptical, but in general, there seem to be a commitment to blindly repeating the bush administration's talking points with almost no scrutiny. the question to me is why, why would a media infrastructure allow that to happen? a conformity is so extreme and when we have exceptions, that's not the essence of propaganda. the essence is repetition of the code words the catch phrases, the frame of reference and the assumptions of the united states has the progress of to try to work its will on the world, including militarily, to the extent that seems strategically advisable and pragmatically possible. and so i think we have not only the careerists conformity and opportunism but also the to, to tional interlock with what has been called the military industrial complex. and that really continues so that the echo chamber was not simply

a problem with individual career drive, but also really the very structure of media, the way that the advertising and the ownership intersects and is interwoven with the entire political economy and government. i think some of the why can be answered by examining the revolving door not only literally, between media and government officials, but psychologically there is a sort of a worldly gig. it goes around. what do you mean when you say that you said what the revolving during the world? what do you mean exactly? well, i mean that the personnel often move from government to media and vice versa. and also the assumptions about us progress in policy are also shared in that way. and quite literally when we talk about the up to the invasion of iraq just about 20 years ago. now we have

a situation where there would be from the vice president's office. dick cheney from rumsfeld at the pentagon and so forth, lies planted and leaked to people like judith miller and michael gordon at the new york times. they would be front page. and then those lies about suppose the weapons of mass destruction in iraq would be cited by bush and cheney and others. see, it's not just us thing. it is the news media. so this recycling was very insidious . peter, there are multiple pieces to these strategies, particularly when you look at them in a global context. in the u. k. the message from prime minister tony blair, at the time, took one slightly different focus than the one in the us. it was less about the imminent threat and the looming danger at the onset, it was more that the country was going to war as a moral duty to liberate iraq from saddam hussein, a dictator with

a track record long track record of human rights abuses. blair, even once ro, quote the moral case against the war has a moral answer. it is the moral case for removing saddam. how effective was that strategy in garnering support for the war. busy well, the black did think that was a moral case for war, but actually he was extremely diligent in, in the venting full slacks about sam, which were then nodded states, remember that in britain use the dossier of weapons of mass destruction. we notorious clay of 45 minutes of destruction of but at sea so that her 2 apparently average chemical weapons on biological weapons. i'm pretty sure susan, that title was it was a fabrication,

was the decision to prioritize the moral urgency rather than the urgency of the, of the w m. d. 's. a strategic choice is that when that was more palatable to the british public was that one of the media was more willing to accept what, how do you account for the difference making in terms of what they chose to focus on. well, because they said also had a parallel strategy of the single cleanser victims of the regime, many of whom a real woman said that let's not get it was a barbarous dictator. there wasn't oh nonsense. and they were on sign from a grant that saddam was a a noxious figure. the trouble is that wasn't the grants for invading iraq. i don't recognize what you're saying. the tea party fusion of persons of this bags ahead of the wall was the production of fabricating evidence that saddam

hussein's iraq posed a imminent threat to, to international courses. and but a katrina, keep in mind that this was a time just after 911 when it wasn't unusual at all to see the white house directly responding to journalists who questioned their narrative. they warned them they intimidated him, accused them of being unpatriotic. oh, what effect did that strategy have on the circumstances under which journalists were working while trying to do their jobs? well, i think we've seen in times of war or in the run up to war, the ability to quiet oppress court. there were very few questions. i remember in the run up to war the iraq or helen thomas is no longer with us, was one of the few was racing tough questions and they can continue to marginalize her. but i want to pick up on what norman said. it's not just the individuals, it's the news organizations which maintained

a kind of warlike support and didn't raise the tough questions which were clearly in need of being raised. you had a, judith miller being pumped with emigrate shelby's nonsense. but let's look at tv, for example, norman, who was then involved with phil donahue showing emerson, b, c, was essentially ousted, and that wasn't a personal decision. that was a corporation, a fearful of taking on a president's war. help me understand how we get it makes sense intuitively that a journalist doesn't want to book the system from their news organization because he's stay employed by these news organizations. right? but there are many people who believe that big corporations drive government, not the other way around. why is the big news outlet? why would a news corp, why would it would g e or whoever? right. be afraid of a government be afraid to push back or speak out against

a war to be afraid to tell the truth. why are they afraid of administrations when they have those are several reasons mark. one is, you know, in washington often that the, that conformity drive is not necessarily one of oppression. that's one of seduction . boom journalists have access. they want to be inside. secondly, these news organizations are not. we did a center fold years ago or the news organizations and little cogs in big corporations which have business in washington regulatory and other business. so there's that web and then there's just a mindset. i remember doing chris matthew sunday show and i said, i thought you iraq was a war of aggression. david gregory, all 65 of them stood up, loomed over me and said, how dare you say that that is on american? i think to be american is to be unyielding in defense of civil rights, civil liberties of justice and of speaking you know the truth to power. the problem

is that those in power often know the truth. norman, that you and katrina have started to talk about this relationship between the professional and political pressure is applied to journalists to get them to conform. and some people who just decided that it was best for their career was just good business to go along with this war. i'm always trying to understand what the ratio is there just a little bit. i mean, you know, how much of this is the, were pressured, our jobs are making us do it. there's a military industrial complex that forces our hand and shapes our consciousness. and how much of it is, you know what that line is shorter. it's much easier to be on the front page if i just take this approach. how much of it is the ladder? because i'm starting to become more and more cynical as i get old. maybe you're becoming more realistic. yeah, the lines get shorter when you get more reward. there's a lot more goodies there and this is where the line between political analysis and sun. psychoanalysis becomes rather thin. katrina mentioned seduction.

and i think it's a very key point because yes, there are punishments for stepping out of line. and there are a lot of rewards for staying in line and going out on a limb is not very helpful to careers. if you think it's going to crack and there's not a mattress underneath to cushion your fall. and so we have examples in both directions where for instance, david remnant the editor of the new yorker wrote a de facto editorial a couple of months before the invasion of iraq, 20 years ago calling for that evasion in a clarion call apiece. and he edited a magazine during the months before the invasion of which repeatedly published articles that claimed that there was a direct tie between saddam hussein and al qaeda and $911.00 complete fall. so as

well as we speak, david ram. nick is still the editor of the new yorker. there is no accountability whatsoever. whereas people who did step out of line, for instance, phil donahue who's show, was cancelled a few weeks before the invasion of iraq, according to lead memos from and b, c. m s n. b c, precisely because you allowed and they were voices of minority of voices on the show, but still voices aloud on his program. that was unacceptable. because the memo from nbc that was leaked said that the competitors like fox would be waving the flag as the bombs fell on baghdad. they didn't want to be the network out. peter, what's your assessment of, you know, how much of this is just ra, naked, self interest and opportunity versus the kind of broader structural pressure. and then to wasn't really a situation where if you didn't go along with the system,

you're was career suicide because in some ways that it least it doesn't justify the action, but give some context for it. busy well, i was taken by something which could free, that's i just that which was the importance of access. but of course it's, it's, it's, it's a story. but i think that was a collapse of the skepticism. and it was also, of course to follow up another point, but those who oppose the war work targets. ready not in, but in the british pipers. i still remember scott rich are the former weapons inspector was very eloquent. the fabrications of the western intelligence agencies, politicians, and that way he was covered and bullied and smeared in the british president of the states was, was completely,

completely horrible. and so it was an unpleasant, that's no mark what, what strikes me is that there was another phenomenon in the run up to the war, not just media malpractice, but the new york times called the protests around the world, the other superpower. and there was a real sense of people, a community global community gathering to say no to war. that dissipated when the war began. but i think it remains what strikes me. i don't know if this strikes peter or norman is that we talk a lot about democracy in this country today in salvaging democracy. but at the nation, we believe for a 150 plus years, that war, the endless war does not permit true democracy at home. yet we have a kind of celebration of george w and the chinese and people who took us into a disastrous ford. there is no accountability in the system, you know, in,

with all of these people speaking out against the war with all of this critical analysis, all this deep pushback norman, why did the media look the other way? why was there such an effort to silence the resistance? because it's not like it wasn't fair or the key point that katrina alludes to that there was a huge disconnect between what people in the united states around the world wanted certainly many, many of them, including millions on the streets and what was coming from the mass media and i think that's symptomatic of the fact that at the time and especially as a war is launched in the so called professional ethos. if you are pro war, you are quote, objective. if you are anti war, you're biased. and in retrospect then being pro war based on lies means never having to say you're sorry at all. so that is both

a history that is distorted in real time or very quickly after, and also pre figurative so the cliche really applies. that the 1st casualty of war is truth and we have that not only in retrospect, but right now where we have a group think that is continual and the circumstances change, but the dynamic stays was the same. so in 2023, we can have anthony blanket and the president of the united states a job by saying that it is absolutely unacceptable for one country to invade another. and yet those 2 false teamed up for bogus hearings of the senate foreign relations committee in the middle of 2002, with biden, as senator chair and blinking as chief of staff railroading through excluding dissenting voices. railroading through the conventional wisdom that was

accumulating was essential to invade iraq. so we are in or wealthy and territory here. and i guess what studying to me peter, you know, i heard katrina talk about you know, being not just shouted down and intimidated, but profoundly rejected by the american media when she has the audacity to call the iraq war a war of aggression. does that happen? now? do we see the same kinds of intimidation and final thing? is there more space for descent? is there more space for critical pushback? and is the media willing to cover it? think of that question? no. i except that on the fringes of the internet to work super papers on discover during the iraq war, the nation. thank you. the educating me, i'll just go home,

which at the time, but very brightly sitting up against the wall, mild eviction, a buzz about the ukraine debates. certainly a britain. united states is actually it's more constrain. it's a i was, was watching with a bike in parliament a few weeks ago when the discussion was what to do about your credit. and everybody was driving the escalating the wall the, the british prime minister, the labor party, national labor. the last is a name, any even of the marginal. and i wonder before we go, i wonder how much of it is how we analyze the circumstances. the word didn't think has come up in this conversation multiple

times and it keeps lingering in my mind in troubling me a little bit. i think about how reporters with the benefit of some of some hindsight have attempted to make sense of their failure to cover the iraq war properly. in other situations, an investigative reporter, bob woodward, for example, admitted to not doing enough, but he ultimately blamed once again group think as the reason why he didn't further question the rationale for war writing for bloomberg in 2013 as reclining. another name was come up in this conversation. he apologized for supporting the war. he said he was to yeah, i think that i was a young and dumb college student. he didn't get drunk at a frat party. he helped beat a wardrobe. this is something quite different. does this approach demonstrate the media's unwillingness to actually address its failures by framing them as individual choices? right? rather than symptoms of an actual structural problem, i will give you all an opportunity to respond to that. i'll start with you,

norman. was to something that's not often talked about. it's avoided because the structure of corporate power, interlocked with the military, industrial complex is very unpleasant. now, no repentance in redemption is very mood muted, really in the u. s. i think it was edward saeed, who pointed out that one of the huge crimes, if you will, of the western powers in the middle east is a complete lack of remorse. there still no remorse about what's being done to palestinian people from the united states. certainly not in his real either. and so we have this dynamic going on where people are absolutely encouraged to say, well, we made some mistakes. course other people are suffering and dying as a result of mistakes. but i do hope we hopefully do better next time, which reminds me of something i think attributed to mark twain. it's easy to quit

smoking. i've done at thousands of times that that, that is perfectly at peter. well, it is simply the case that made it will never, ever, under any circumstances, they go anything wrong unless it's too low. i'm not a massive arrows of judgment nature. it would never, but if they were always glad somebody else, but implement implementing bagley or somebody else with the media never makes i think the structural piece of media power is critical to understand. it's not just individual journalists, but they do have some power as norman was talking about david rem, nick and his cohort. again, the bar to dissent and dissent with reporting and facts and values is not high in

this country. a russian poet, gift guinea, you have to shinkel used to say, why is it you love, other countries just dissidence so much and not your own? and i think there's something to that and that people inside washington understand, as i said earlier, it's not true oppression. suppression, but it is seduction. if you want to be close to the rings of power and i think that's what we have to work against. and if i might, you know, there are 234 medias in this nano 2nd change in volatile media landscape. and i think a younger generation isn't necessarily watching the old t v. now will that change mind sense? and i do think many people in this country are listening to other things other than the think tanks. the reports did ministration. just to say briefly, the landscape of the world changed as a result of the iraq war in 2007,

putin gave this famous speech at the munich security conference, talking about the end of a unipolar world. and i do think the iraq war in many ways in the debacle. the legacy of debacle has changed the nature of the power coordinates of this world. and that should be remembered to as we move into more and more wars and try and find alternatives to war if possible. katrina norman peter, i want to thank you all for joining me on up front. thank you and give everyone that is our show up front. we'll be back next with ah

breaking down the headline still exposing the pilot attempting to silence reporting . what did you do? what did you investigate? why didn't you off the extra question? there are many during that said fencer, it will have a chilling effect on subsequent story. the listening post doesn't cover the news. it covers the way the news is covered to suppress moderate. and in some cases, amplify the content you see on your timeline. the listening on al jazeera, the latest news as it breaks. so trump is still the favorite here among the grass roots. and in many of the polls the be the republican presidential nominee with detailed coverage fire has stronger bob large back on the struggles based on daily basis by everyone here from around the world. fire that and go to the 1st to cause

of this trade was so hot it may have cremated the victims exactly where they were killed. ready too often of canister is portrayed through the prism of war. but there were many of canister thanks to the brave individuals who risk their lives to protect it from destruction . an extraordinary film, archived spanish for decades, reviews the forgotten truths of the countries modern history. the forbidden real part for the era of darkness on a j 0. ah swift spanking john u. b. s. as buying troubles vital credit suisse in a state bank deal to avoid market turmoil.