{"id":63415,"date":"2015-09-07T19:09:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63415"},"modified":"2015-09-07T19:09:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:09:26","slug":"missing-from-reports-of-yemeni-carnage-washingtons-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/missing-from-reports-of-yemeni-carnage-washingtons-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing from Reports of Yemeni Carnage: Washington’s Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Washington Post provided a photo of the kind of jets the US had sold to Saudi Arabia\u2014but when such jets were used to kill civilians, they were out of the picture. (photo: Fayez Nureldine\/AFP)<\/p><\/div>\n

The New York Times<\/strong> (8\/30\/15<\/a>) reported on the deaths of civilians in a military assault in Yemen. Wrote reporter Saeed Al-Batati:<\/p>\n

Airstrikes by a Saudi-led military coalition killed at least 13 civilians working early Sunday at a water plant in northern Yemen, the plant\u2019s owner said. <\/em><\/p>\n

The bombings appeared to be the latest in a series of airstrikes by Saudi Arabia or its Arab coalition partners that have hit civilian facilities with no apparent military target nearby. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This photo of the aftermath of an airstrike in Sana, Yemen, accompanied a New York Times story (6\/24\/15) that provided a detailed account of the human toll of the air war\u2014but made no mention of the US\u2019s responsibility. (photo: Mohamed Al-Sayaghi\/Reuters)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Washington Post<\/strong> (8\/30\/15<\/a>) briefly covered the story too, using a Reuters<\/strong> wire report<\/a> that gave a higher death toll:<\/p>\n

An airstrike by warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition, which said it targeted a bomb-making factory, killed 36 civilians working Sunday at a bottling plant in the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah, residents said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Noting that another airstrike had killed four people in Sanaa, Yemen\u2019s capital, the piece continued:<\/p>\n

The attacks were the latest in an air campaign launched in March by a Saudi-led alliance in support of Yemen\u2019s exiled government, which is fighting Houthi forces allied with Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n

Both of these reports left out the information that made this news particularly relevant to the papers\u2019 mostly American readership: The US government is actively backing the air war in Yemen that killed those civilians, as the Times<\/strong> and Post<\/strong> have both reported. The Times <\/strong>(3\/26\/15<\/a>) wrote at the start of the Saudi assault:<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said Wednesday night that the United States was providing intelligence and logistical support for the campaign in Yemen, and that President Obama had authorized a \u201djoint planning cell\u201d with Saudi Arabia to coordinate American support for the military offensive.<\/em><\/p>\n

And the Post<\/strong>, in a piece headlined \u201cHow US Weapons Will Play a Huge Role in Saudi Arabia\u2019s War in Yemen\u201d \u00a0(3\/26\/15<\/a>), noted that the weaponry involved largely comes from the US:<\/p>\n

US officials said they will offer intelligence and logistical support to the Saudis, but that\u2019s really only a piece of it: The Saudi military is equipped with billions of dollars in advanced American-made weapons.<\/em><\/p>\n

But that \u201chuge role\u201d often disappears when the the leading papers are discussing the carnage that results from the air attacks that the US is supporting and supplying. Thus when the Times<\/strong>\u2018 Rick Gladstone (8\/22\/15<\/a>)\u00a0reported that \u201cSaudi-led airstrikes on a residential district in Yemen\u2019s<\/strong> southwestern city of Taiz had killed more than 65 civilians, including 17 people from one family,\u201d according to Doctors Without Borders, and that the death toll in the war included \u201chundreds of civilians killed in airstrikes,\u201d Washington\u2019s role in facilitating those deaths went unmentioned.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Jim Naureckas is editor of <\/em>EXTRA! Magazine<\/a> at<\/em> FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)<\/u>. He is the co-author of <\/em>Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error<\/a>, and co-editor of <\/em>The FAIR Reader. He is also the co-manager of FAIR’s website.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington\u2019s role in facilitating deaths unmentioned by mainstream media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}