As part of my research I came across this great article in Arab Media Societyby Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk on the “Weaponization of News Media in the Middle East”.
Well, it is my conviction that journalists can never fully unweaponize themselves and never have. In conflicts there is no such thing as objective value-free reporting that serves none of the parties, be it directly on indirectly.
..Yes, to deserve its name news must be trustworthy and reliable in the sense that journalists must never report things they know to be untrue or they know to be manipulated. And yes, parties to the conflict abuse and use journalists and news media in increasingly violent ways.
All of that is patently true but the idea that, opposed to untrue and manipulated news, there could be such a thing as objective and unweaponized information is I think flawed, if not to say naive.
Weaponization takes many forms, sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle, from Al Qaida propaganda on Al Jazeera to the presentation of statements by the White House about Saddam Hussein’s supposed connection to 9/11 or his weapons of mass destruction. From the choice to give no coverage to, say, Darfur, Congo or North Korea, to the choice to cover a story on a daily basis. In the end every kind of representation and thus reporting involves a set of choices, and these choices inevitably empower some while disenfranchising others.
There is also a long section on Lebanon and how many points of view actually exist there, from 18 sects and many different political perspectives. She demonstrates that there are so many points of view, and so many different ways of describing them that it is almost impossibe to write about Lebanon without it being politicized in some way.
And then she talks about the importance of a journalists presence:
At the same time and to my surprise, while social scientists recognize that knowledge is never neutral, they do seem to expect from their media organizations objectivity and neutrality. To take this phrase from the conference paper: “Despite their purported neutrality, news organizations are not always innocent bystanders to conflict.”
We are hardy ever innocent bystanders to conflict. Merely with their presence journalists influence the parties they report on, so we are participants rather than bystanders. And our choice of what to report and how always serves certain power interests.
Russia has been slaughtering civilians in Chechnya for years and the decision of western media to all but ignore this means we are indirectly weaponized by Putin. When news media present the NATO ‘operation’ in Afghanistan as a ‘reconstruction mission’, this is political, and when we treat statements from the White House about, say, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or about Saddam Hussein’s collaboration with Al Qaida or about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, when we treat these statement as more trustworthy, then we are weaponized by the White House. We are weaponized by the Israeli government when we give coverage to victims of suicide bombings, and weaponized by the PA when we highlight victims of the Israeli occupation.
..My very first assignment as a Middle-East correspondent took me to Sudan where famine caused hundreds of dead every day. I went to a refugee camp in the south, collected my harrowing quotes and returned to the capital Khartoum. The night before I was to fly back to Cairo I went to an ex-pat party where I chanced upon a diplomat. I could not help losing my temper. How could Western policy makers fail to have a policy towards these poor Sudanese, I fumed, whereas a hundred times as much political effort went into the situation in Palestine even though a hundred times more people died in Sudan than in Palestine? The diplomat looked at me and made a point I will never forget: why are there hardly any western journalists in Sudan? How can a Western politician initiate new policies when the issue of Sudan is virtually absent from the media? She continued: If you journalists would have given as much space to every dead Sudanese as you had given to every dead Palestinian, politicians would be lining up here to solve the crisis.
As I said, journalists are rarely innocent bystanders to conflict and rather than continue the chase for the Unicorn of Objectivity, I believe journalists should come out and be honest to their audiences.”
Great stuff, lisoosh. I had never heard the term weaponization in connection with the news media. But it makes sense. But I am curious as to why Joris Luyendijk didn’t mention the most obvious examples — the doctoring of photographs and staging of videos to create false images of atrocities supposedly committed by the Israeli Defense Forces in Lebanon last summer.
It wasn’t just a few Lebanese journalists doing that, the BBC and Associated Press – and even Reuters – got in on the act. The creep in the green helmet even dug up dead children to parade them around as if they were fresh victims of Israeli bombs, and the press made sure this stuff got flashed around the world.
I suppose we should expect that sort of thing from Al Jazeera or Al Manor or Al Arabya even, but not the mainstream western media. Or should we…?
I’m late for the party too. The news about Hezbollah activity north of the Litani isn’t all that surprising, but it is scary. I wonder if Israeli intelligence is on top of it. They sure didn’t seem to be on top of everything last summer. And I suppose the Lebanese government doesn’t know about it?
Dan C.
Comment by Sage — August 10, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
Dan – The quotes were taken from the transcript of a speech he made. He did in fact reference a book that he said demonstrated examples of direct bias. You should read the whole piece, I did link to it. What I took from the article is that journalist tend to operate under a veneer of objectivity and that even without intentionally being biased, just using certain terms or phrases, or using one sides language to describe a situation in a conflict is a form of bias. He just thinks that journalists should be clearer about the limitations inherent in what they write. Of course there is also the issue that journalists can only write about what they see, and in controlling what they see in Lebanon, Hizbollah is doing a very effective job of controlling the news, that is the next installment.
In answer to your other question, Walid Jumblatt, a Druze leader has been beating the drum about Hizbollahland for a while, so yes, the Lebanese government would appear to be aware of it, although as we have seen before, they have a hard time facing reality and getting their act together in a timely fashion.
Comment by lisoosh — August 10, 2007 @ 2:45 pm