Partial Blackout on Iraq.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Mainstream press largely ignores plight of Iraqi infants - Brief Article

I would have thought it was big news.

On February 13, Hans yon Sponeck stepped down from his post as head of the U.N.'s Oil for Food program in Iraq.

In his resignation letter to Kofi Annan, Von Sponeck said it was "ethically ... no longer tolerable" for him to stay on in his post. He cited his "concern over the continuation of a sanctions regime in Iraq despite overwhelming evidence that the fabric of Iraqi society is swiftly eroding and an international awareness that the approach chosen so clearly punishes the wrong party."

Then, within hours, Jutta Burghardt, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq, also resigned. She, too, cited the suffering the sanctions were causing.

But some major news outlets in the United States barely took notice.

The New York Times gave only the spottiest coverage to Von Sponeck's resignation. And it managed to misspell Burghardt's name in the tiny item it devoted to her. I also searched high and low in Time magazine, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report but could not find a single mention of either resignation.

By contrast, The Washington Post ran a decent story by Colum Lynch on the resignations, as did the Los Angeles Times in a piece by Maggie Farley. Von Sponeck, who was a thirty-six-year veteran of the United Nations, told her: "The sanctions are taking their toll on the wrong people in every respect."

These resignations follow that of Denis Halliday, Von Sponeck's predecessor, who resigned in protest a year and a half ago.

There's something going on here, but the newsmagazines and The New York Times couldn't be bothered to find out what.

This partial blackout must have delighted the State Department. "We are very pleased about his impending departure," State Department press secretary James Rubin said of Von Sponeck at a press briefing on February 14, according to the department's web site. "It has long been our view that Mr. Von Sponeck has exceeded his mandate in purporting to comment on areas that are ... beyond the range of his competence or his authority with respect to the wisdom of sanctions. Mr. Von Sponeck was a humanitarian affairs coordinator. He was not the arbiter of national or international security for the world."

A reporter did ask a good follow-up question: "Within this range of competence, however, were infant deaths."

Rubin: "Right."

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