Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
HaswarinSyriaalsodestroyedjournalism?
With both sides of the Syrian war having no respect for media or journalists, writes Baroud, no
impartial journalist is allowed to carry out his or her work in accordance with the minimum
standards of reporting. Al-Jazeera
WHEN a veteran war reporter like Robert Fisk constructs his argument regarding
the siege of Aleppo based on watching video footage, then one can truly
comprehend the near impossibility of adequate media coverage on the war in
Syria.
In a recent article in the British Independent, Fisk reflects on the siege, uprising
and atrocious Nazi massacres in Warsaw, Poland in 1944. The terribly high cost of
that war leads him to reject the French assertion that the current siege in Aleppo
is the worst massacre since World War Two.
Why do we not see the defending fighters, as we do on the Warsaw films? Why
are we not told about their political allegiance, as we most assuredly are on the
http://www.newagebd.net/article/5004/haswarinsyriaalsodestroyedjournalism
1/4
12/17/2016
HaswarinSyriaalsodestroyedjournalism?
2/4
12/17/2016
HaswarinSyriaalsodestroyedjournalism?
reporters of what was really transpiring on the ground, and that countless
reporters agreed to be embedded with US-British forces, thus further contributing
to the one-sided narrative. One is left to wonder if any truth ever emerged from
Iraq.
Then, again, we know that hundreds of thousands have died in that catastrophic
military adventure, that Iraq is not better off, and that thousands more are still
being killed because this is what happens when countries are invaded, destabilised,
hurriedly reassembled and then left to lick their wounds, alone.
The chaotic violence and sectarianism in Iraq are the direct outcome of the US
invasion and occupation, which were constructed on official lies and dishonest
media reporting.
Is it too much to ask, then, that we learn from those dreadful mistakes, to
understand that when all is said and done, nothing will remain but mass graves
and grieving nations?
As for the lies that enable wars, and allow the various sides to clinch on their
straw arguments of selected morality, few ever have the intellectual courage to
take responsibility when they are proven wrong. We simply move on, uncaring for
the victims of our intellectual squabbles.
The extreme bias shown in foreign media coverage of similar events in Iraq and
Syria will be a rewarding subject for PhD students looking at the uses and abuses
of propaganda down the ages, wrote war reporter, Patrick Cockburn.
He is right, of course, but as soon as his report on media bias was published, he
was attacked and dismissed by both sides on social media. From their perspective,
a proper position would be for him to completely adopt the version of events as
seen by one side, and totally ignore the other.
Yet, with both sides of the war having no respect for media or journalists the
list of journalists killed in Syria keeps on growing no impartial journalist is
allowed to carry out his or her work in accordance with the minimum standards of
reporting.
Thus, the truth can only be gleaned based on deductive reasoning as many of us
have successfully done, reporting on Iraq and Palestine.
Of course, there will always been the self-tailored activist-journalist-propagandist
variety who will continue to cheer for death and destruction in the name of
whatever ideology they choose to follow. They abide by no reasoning, but their
own convenient logic that which is only capable of demonising their enemies
and lionising their friends.
Unfortunately, these media trolls are the ones shaping the debate on much of what
http://www.newagebd.net/article/5004/haswarinsyriaalsodestroyedjournalism
3/4
12/17/2016
HaswarinSyriaalsodestroyedjournalism?
http://www.newagebd.net/article/5004/haswarinsyriaalsodestroyedjournalism
4/4