The media have failed us

The Big Read: The connection between power and the media is not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents.

In the western context, it's about words - the use of words. It is about semantics; the misuse of history; and our ignorance of history. We journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

For two decades now, the US and British - and Israeli and Palestinian - leadership have used the words "peace process" to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

We western journalists, used yet again by our masters, have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan as saying that their war can be won only with a "hearts and minds" campaign. No one asked them the obvious question: Wasn't this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnam war? And didn't we, the West, lose the war in Vietnam?

Yet now, we western journalists are actually using, about Afghanistan, the phrase "hearts and minds" in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition rather than a symbol of defeat.

Meanwhile, the "peace process" has collapsed. Therefore our leaders, or "key players", as we like to call them, tried to make it work again. The process had to be put "back on track". But there was a problem when the "peace process" had been put "back on track" and still came off the line. So, we produced a "road map", led by Tony Blair.

But the "road map" isn't working. And now, I notice, the old "peace process" is back because of the opening of "indirect talks" between Israelis and Palestinians.

This isn't just about clichés, this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, "we" have become "them".

We are told, in so many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are "competing narratives". How very cosy. There's no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories.

The phrase is a species, or sub-species, of the false language of anthropology.

It deletes the possibility that one group of people - in the Middle East, for example - are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly "competing narratives".

So an "occupation" can become a "dispute". Thus a "wall" becomes a "fence" or a "security barrier". Thus, Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes "settlements" or "outposts" or "Jewish neighbourhoods".

There are no "competing narratives", of course, between the US military and the Taliban. When there are, however, you'll know the West has lost.

Now, let's look at history. Our leaders love history. In 2003, George Bush thought he was Churchill as well as George Bush. He was standing up to the "appeasers" who did not want a war with Saddam Hussein who was, of course, "the Hitler of the Tigris".

The appeasers were the British who did not want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair, of course, also tried on Churchill's waistcoat and jacket for size. No "appeaser" he. America was Britain's oldest ally, he proclaimed, and both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder to shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940. None of this was true.

America did not fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940, when Hitler threatened invasion and the German air force blitzed London. No, in 1940, America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality. It did not join Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941. Ouch!

Now, after foreigners tried to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should look at more recent times. Saddam had "weapons of mass destruction". You can fit "WMD" into a headline, but, of course, he didn't have them. The American press went through embarrassing bouts of self-condemnation afterwards. Yet now it is softly - very softly - banging the drums for war in Iran. Iran is working on WMDs. And after the war, if there is a war, more self-condemnation, no doubt, if there are no nuclear weapons.

Yet, the most dangerous side of our new use of the words of power - though it is not a war since we have largely surrendered - is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words. History, too. They know that we are drowning our vocabulary in the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of "experts". Here, for example, are some of the danger words: "power players"; "activism" ; "non-state actors"; "key players"; "geostrategic players"; "narratives"; "external players"; "peace process"; "meaningful solutions"; and "change agents" (whatever these sinister creatures are).

How do we escape this disease? Watch out for the spell-checkers in our lap tops, the sub-editor's dreams of one-syllable words, and stop using Wikipedia. And read books - real books, with paper pages. History books, especially.

The flotilla, the convoy of boats that attempted to reach Gaza, I don't think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis.

I think the people aboard these ships, from all over the world, were trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do.

They were bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer.

In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid, as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn't the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian "intervention" in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?

But no. We dare not offend the Israelis.

And so, ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Has the media failed them as well? Is it showing documentary footage of Clinton's attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair's humanitarian "intervention" in the Balkans, just to remind its viewers and readers, and the people on those boats, that this is about hypocrisy?

The hell it is! It prefers "competing narratives". Few politicians wanted the Gaza voyage to reach its destination, be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the "peace process", the "road map".

Keep the "fence" around the Palestinians. Let the "key players" sort it out.

• Fisk is The Independent newspaper's Middle East correspondent. This is an edited version of his address to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on May 23.