Journalists to debate concerns over war coverage

A host of the UK's top journalists are meeting later this month to discuss media coverage of the "war on terror". The Evening Standard's Andrew Gilligan (pictured), the Guardian's Peter Wilby, author Philip Knightley and investigative journalist Nick Davies are just some of the star names to address the Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) conference on November 17.

Entitled "The First Casualty? War, Truth and the Media Today", the conference will bring together practising journalists from print and broadcast media to address concerns over standards of war coverage.

David Crouch, chair of conference hosts Media Workers Against The War, said: "Amid all the current agonising about media integrity, and at a time when BBC management is preparing to cut news gathering even further, can there be any area more worthy of scrutiny than reporting the ‘war on terror'?

"This conference will set out the issues and debate how best to campaign to improve standards. It will seek to identify the main sources of pro-war bias as a first step to providing media workers with tools and resources for combating it."

Andrew Gilligan said: "Much of the British media seems now to have put reporting from Iraq in the ‘too difficult' category. This is the most important story in the world and it's amazing how little coverage it gets in the British press."

Peter Wilby said: "The press has apparently learnt nothing from the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the Iraq war."

Documentary maker Sean Langan said: "I think the coverage of the war in Iraq, and the wider war on terror, has been the media's darkest hour."

Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror, added: "The most effective way to prevent imperialistic, illegal and unethical wars waged by self-serving governments is a strong, aggressive and very loud media. It's just a shame we haven't seen much of that recently."

The half-day event at the London School of Economics will tackle the following issues:

* Have the media learned the lessons of Iraq?

* What are the pitfalls in reporting Iran?

* What can the BBC do to stand up to government bullying?

* What should accurate coverage of modern war look like?

* Are Muslims being unfairly targeted in the media?

David Crouch said: "The drums of a new war, this time with Iran, are beating. Journalists are concerned not to be used by pro-war politicians to push their agenda."

Tickets and more details are available from http://mwaw.net/conference/