II. On political rights and freedom
The presidential election, often symbolized as US democracy, in fact is the
game and competition for the rich people. Presidential candidates have to raise
money far and wide for their expensive campaign costs and most of the donors are
big companies and millionaires. President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick
Cheney had raised as much as US$113 million in their 2000 presidential campaign,
a record in US history, and the fund-raising is expected to reach US$200 million
for this year's re-election campaign (See Britain's Independent newspaper on
January 20, 2004).
Statistical figures from the centre for Responsive Politics showed that
Lockheed Martin Corp, the country's biggest arms dealer, has been the biggest
political donor. The company had donated US$10.6 billion for political campaigns
in the US from 1999 to 2000 and has been the main donor to the Committee on
Armed Services of the House of Representatives as well as one of the top 10
donors to the Committee on Appropriations of the House.
The so-called "freedom of press" in the United States has also been brought
under intensive criticism. According to an investigative report of the Sonoma
State University in the United States, freedom of press, speech and expression
of opinion in the United States is amid a crisis. An increasing number of US
media organizations are getting involved in false reporting or cheating
scandals. On June 5, 2003, two chief editors of the New York Times resigned
after their role in a plagiarism scandal was exposed. John Barrie, head of
Plagiarism.org in Oakland, California, claimed that "every newspaper in this
country is not doing due diligence" and "everybody's got this problem."
Meanwhile, the US Government has exercised an extremely tight control over
news media, which went to the extreme during the 2003 US-led war against Iraq.
During the war, the US Government had tried every means to prevent the press
from getting timely and true information and had wielded its hegemony to
override the journalistic principle of "faithful and unbiased reporting". Peter
Arnett, a veteran reporter with the US National Broadcasting Company (NBC), was
fired simply because he voiced some of his personal views on the Iraq War. News
coverage by international media in Iraq also often fell prey to US restrictions
and crackdown. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused US
troops in Iraq of frequent "obstruction of journalists trying to do their jobs
in Iraq" and described the number of attacks on press freedom there as
"alarming" (See Reuters story on October 20, 2003).
In January 2004, the US-installed Iraqi Interim Governing Council issued an
order to ban the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV station from covering any activity of
the Council's members between January 28 and February 27. A book named "Black
List," co-written by 15 American reporters, has warned that America's press
freedom is facing danger. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro,
Kristina Borjesson, one of the book's authors and a former reporter with the CBS
(Columbia Broadcasting System) and CNN (Cable News Network), said that US
authorities had controlled all information to be spread by the media while
journalists had degenerated into the government's stenographers (See French
newspaper Le Figaro on May 8, 2003).
The US has also time and again launched attacks on news
media organizations and journalists in Iraq. In one of such attacks on April 8,
2003, the US troops bombed the Baghdad branch of an Arab TV station and killed
one cameraman on the spot.
