ICE CONFERENCE SPECIAL Copyright 2011-1/2. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 8, No 1/2 2011 25 Doublethink in the mass media: Fallujah and the politics of human rights reporting Florian Zollmann examines the UK press cover- age of the US attack on Fallujah in 2004 and concludes that they conformed to the predic- tions of the ‘propaganda model’ by playing down serious violations of international law Since World War II the importance of human rights has significantly increased and a diverse range of human rights standards has been insti- tutionalised in international accords (Donnelly 2007). The formalised agreements can be placed within two categories: international human rights law (i.e. a set of laws aimed at protect- ing human rights) and international humanitar- ian law (i.e. a set of laws aimed at protecting human rights during armed conflicts). Inter- national human rights law and international humanitarian law are subsets of international law which incorporates a further range of trea- ties, conventions, principles and customs (Reh- man 2010: 19-26, 765). The basic tenet of international law is the Unit- ed Nations Charter (UN Charter) which came into force on 24 October 1945 and has since become binding law for all signatory states including the USA and United Kingdom. The UN Charter’s preamble proclaims a determina- tion ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. Any use of force in violation of the UN Charter can be termed unlawful aggres- sion. Christian Tomuschat (2008: 154) sees a connection between the UN Charter’s focus on the prevention of war and the preservation of human rights: ... war and armed conflict have been placed under the regime of the [UN] Charter because they are susceptible of bringing ‘untold sorrow to mankind’. This is tantamount to saying that prevention of war constitutes indirect protec- tion of human rights. Tomuschat seems to echo the judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal, at which the Nazis were convicted, who saw Germany’s illegal war as the major crime of World War II. In their semi- nal verdict, the judges concluded: To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole (Judgment, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nurnberg [sic], Germany, 1947 (Official Text), cited in Gerhart 1998: 1109). The Nuremberg verdict includes an important argument: wars are prerequisites for human rights abuses and should thus be avoided. Today, the body which has the law enforce- ment power to stop wars and maintain ‘interna- tional peace and security’ is the United Nations Security Council (Bailey and Daws 1998: 19). By using their veto power, however, the perma- nent members of the Security Council are able to avert the Council’s capability to act (for a dis- cussion of the veto system see Bailey and Daws 1998: 226-230). International enforcement to prevent human rights violations has rarely been applied because human rights are regarded as state affairs (For- sythe 2006: 58). This gap was filled by nongov- ernmental organisations and advocacy groups who monitor human rights and shame their abusers. Accordingly, Thomas Risse and Ste- phen C. Ropp (1999: 275) argue that: transnational human rights pressures and poli- cies, including the activities of advocacy net- works, have made a very significant difference in bringing about improvements in human rights practices in diverse countries around the world. In conjunction with these developments, vari- ous courts, mandated to prosecute violations of international law and human rights, were established during the last decade of the 20th century thus signalling an end of the era of immunity: they include two UN ad hoc crimi- Florian Zollmann