Reality television (UK Guardain on Al-Jazeera)

When US forces recently demanded that a team from the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera leave Falluja as a condition for reaching a ceasefire with the local resistance, it came as no surprise at the network's headquarters in Doha. Reliable sources there say that coalition officials threatened to close down the al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad earlier this year and last week sent a letter accusing the network of violating the Geneva convention and the principles of a free press.

Since the "war on terror" began, al-Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of the Pentagon. "My solution is to change the channel," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said this month in Baghdad, "to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources."

The trouble for Kimmitt is that millions of people in the Middle East disagree. Al-Jazeera has become the most popular TV network in the region - with a daily audience of 35 million - precisely because it has shown the human carnage that US military onslaughts leave in their wake. If it became a "legitimate, authoritative, honest news station" of the kind that routinely censors the realities of US military operations, it would lose its audience.

The al-Jazeera reports of US snipers firing at women and children in the streets of Falluja have now been corroborated by international observers in the city. Perhaps it is natural that a military force should seek to suppress evidence that could be used against it in future war crimes trials. But it is equally natural that a free media should resist.

Read the rest at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1197129,00.html