Canadian Media: Cheerleading Regime Change in Libya
The media is supposed to serve as a check on power. In some avenues the media is successful, yet with regard to war and regime change, it has failed.
The bias toward warmongering from the media can be measured through several indicators, including the nature of news coverage and breakdown of sources consulted, the tone of headlines and articles, and the number of opinion pieces published supporting or opposing wars. This investigation will look solely at the official editorial stances taken by the National Post, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and occasionally the Montreal Gazette, on several states and conflicts.
Iraq and Afghanistan were the first defining wars of the 21st century. Haroon Siddiqui, long time Star columnist and editor, wrote in The Walrus that it is “useful to remember that much of mainstream media in Canada editorially endorsed both the war on Afghanistan and also the war on Iraq.” In a 2007 Briarpatch article, journalist Anthony Fenton, wrote, “Canadian editorial support for the Afghan adventure has been near unanimous, even though public opinion is deeply divided according to opinion polls.” This was important, according to Fenton, because it was “crucial to the establishment’s effort to push public opinion into line with Canada’s new foreign policy alignment.” In the 2010 text Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution, author James P. Winter went so far as to claim that “mainstream Canadian media have adopted the role of stenographers and cheerleaders for the war team.”
Some of Canadian media eventually admitted through editorials that both wars were disasters, which plunged a region into turmoil. Yet, like many pundits who pushed for the wars, there was no apology, or admittance that they were complicit.
In the following years, it also became clear that they had learned little from these conflicts. Canadian newspapers, even the more progressive ones, have overwhelmingly lined up behind, and cheered on, war or regime change directed against what they often refer to as “rogue states,” a slur for governments that act outside of the control, and often against the interests, of Western governments.
As the spectrum of “respectable opinions” in Canadian journalism has edged slightly more to the left with regard to issues of diversity and intersectionality, those against Empire have continued to find themselves relegated to the fringe. This is a disservice to Canadian journalism as a whole, and a reminder that ideological diversity is needed.
The first part of this series will examine the editorial stances Canadian newspapers have taken on war and regime change in Libya since 2011. Subsequent parts will do the same, but for Palestine, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
A month’s long NATO-led military invasion in 2011 turned Libya from a functioning state into a lawless war zone, where the slave trade has re-emerged.
A recent report from CNN found that there are slave auctions going on in at least nine different locations in Libya. They reported:
The auctions take place in a seemingly normal town in Libya filled with people leading regular lives. Children play in the street; people go to work, talk to friends and cook dinners for their families.
But inside the slave auctions it’s like we’ve stepped back in time. The only thing missing is the shackles around the migrants’ wrists and ankles.
In April 2016, Barack Obama stated that the worst mistake of his presidency was “failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was a mistake that Canadian media outlets made as well, though they have been far less willing to admit to their error. The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star all supported some form of military action against the Libyan government in the lead up, and throughout, the war.
The National Post editorial board went back and forth on the issue, claiming that something worse could replace then-Libyan prime minister Muammar Ghaddafi. Yet in March 2011, they ultimately decided, “Whatever the risks that attend military intervention, we must not permit a North African Srebrenica,” and called for a continued no-fly zone as well as for NATO to authorize military action.
In May 2011, The Globe and Mail wrote, “Stephen Harper was right to support the Libyan war as a moral imperative” and “there is no question that intervention was needed.” They argued that Parliament should spend more time discussing regime change in Libya.
In February 2011, the Toronto Star wrote, “Whatever the outcome, Gadhafi should be held to account. The world owes that much to those who have died fighting tyranny.” A few weeks later, they wrote that it’s good to “see Prime Minister Stephen Harper throw Canada’s modest military weight behind the United Nations as it moves to force Moammar Gadhafi to stop slaughtering the heroic but outgunned democratic reformers who have challenged his 42-year autocracy.”
These editorials were all written before, or during, the conflict.
On October 20, 2011, the day Gaddafi was beaten, sodomized with a bayonet, and then shot to death, the Post declared victory in an editorial titled, “Canada’s Proud Role in Libya.” They wrote, “Mr. Harper and other Western leaders should get credit for sticking by their initial decision to intervene.” A January 2012 editorial also cheered on the intervention, citing it as a successful effort.
After this point, there was almost total silence from all three editorial boards for years until Libya’s collapse became unavoidable. In a series of editorials from January 2015 to August 2015, the Post described how, “Though Libya has been largely out of Western headlines since NATO helped topple former dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, peace never truly returned to the North African nation.” However, in an October 2015 editorial, they wrote, “On Libya and Ukraine, the Tories correctly identified legitimate threats to Canadian and allied security interests, and acted.”
The Globe wrote a pair of editorials titled “Libya’s spectacular democratic failure” and “To defeat IS, we must learn from failure in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya,” published in August and November 2015, respectively. The editorials described how the country was far worse off than before, and how NATO hadn’t taken the proper steps to ensure the post-Ghaddafi era would be successful.
The Star wrote in a March 2016 editorial that Libya “has utterly fallen apart since Moammar Gadhafi was deposed and executed in 2011” and argued against sending further Canadian troops.
None of the three papers mentioned they had supported the war, admitted their mistake, or apologized. The Montreal Gazette actually painted Canada’s role in toppling Ghaddafi in a positive light, citing it as a precedent for strikes on ISIS.
Canadian editorial boards that supported the intervention in Libya must own up to their mistake.
