• Editorial
• Public Surveillance
• Global Awareness
• Personal Maintenance
• Entertainment
• ANMag Series
• بالعربي الفصيح

What happened to the Lebanese detainees in Syrian Prisons? They were killed 51.8% They are still living 32.9% They were freed 10.6% Nothing 4.7% Total Votes: 85

Media in Conflict Zones
By Farah Salka, Staff Writer

Beirut, Lebanon − ‘The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.’ 1- Stephen Hawking

Experience has shown that conflicts are usually fought on more than one ground, on two to say the least: the first being the battlefield itself and the second being the minds of the people.2 The second part involves disseminating powerful propaganda that aims explicitly at dividing the world into what is called the ‘good people’ and the ‘bad people’. The process is plagued with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive a sense of legitimacy.3 Media houses have their competing means of swaying terminology. During the bloody school siege of September 2004 in Beslan, Russia, CNN was the only channel to use the term ‘terrorists’ referring to the abductors. BBC resorted to them as ‘hostage takers’, and Al-Jazeera merely labelled them as the ‘Chechen gunmen’.4 The same case occurs in reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Muslim insurgencies in the Philippines, Thailand or Kashmir. CNN reports about ‘terrorists’, BBC about ‘radicals’ and Al-Jazeera, countering both, reports about ‘resistance fighters’. The 2003 ongoing war in Iraq was coined by Al-Jazeera as an American ‘invasion’ and its troops ‘invaders’. CNN and BBC prefer the term ‘U.S.-led multinational forces’. Al-Jazeera uses ‘prisoners of war’ for the same people whom BBC and CNN call ‘inmates, or detainees’.5

‘We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.’ Walter Lippmann6

Definition of Censorship

Censorship can be perceived as the act of consciously eradicating or hiding information from the citizens, which they have the right to know of, as article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)7 states. This act is usually headed by the government, religious factions or mass media corporations. There exists also another category of censorship, namely self-censorship. This occurs when journalists, voluntarily and consciously, report in a certain way that is prescribed for them by government or society, for fear of repercussions if they do not censor their thoughts accordingly. Extreme political correctness falls under this category. The removal of specific information from the public, referred to as sanitisation or whitewashing, takes the form of ‘cleaning up’ a set of facts to suit the perception of the side censoring them. Defenders of such a stance often claim that this is done solely for the purposes of guarding the best interests of the citizen and that there are certain conflicts that are better not delved into nor known about. This might be true in a sense, but deep thinking of the philosophy behind such calls for censorship reflect a slippery slope system whereby many hidden issues are being unreleased for the false excuse of protecting the public’s interest.8 Censorship can be explicit or implicit: the first referring for cases where the law itself deems certain criteria tolerated or not, the second referring to cases where there is intimidation causing people to hesitate in expressing an opinion they hold freely. Both kinds stand in stark violation of every individual’s human right to express himself/herself freely and know without restraints.

Kinds of Censorship

One can sum up the forms of censorship into five: moral, military, political, religious and corporate censorship. Our focus will be on political, military and corporate censorship, which, in some cases, can be intertwined. Military censorship is portrayed in the case of the ongoing war in Iraq, where there is a restriction on media coverage by the US government, prohibiting the filming of dead soldiers’ bodies. The reasons behind this censorship are claimed to be for the preservation of national security and integrity. Political censorship applies to cases when the government hides secrets from its people so as to eradicate the risk of a revolt and keep the situation under control. Corporate censorship refers to the cases where the editors of media outlets stand in the way of publishing any kind of data that might put them or a business ally in a negative, avoidable stance. 9

    “Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.” Noam Chomsky 10

Definition of Propaganda

There is a very thin line between categorising a speech, report or footage as a reliable piece or as mere propaganda. It is quite an uneasy process to distinguish what ought to be trusted and what not; it usually rests on the perception of the audience to question the sources, and differentiate between fake and real. The term propaganda, although usually acquainted with militarism and wars, is undeniably present in all aspects of our lives, be it political, social or commercial. It can be defined as the manipulation of media by skilled PR (Public Relations) outlets for the purposes of disseminating information that is not purely, if at all, true, claiming it as reality. It is indeed a wide phenomenon that presents itself in different forms. We can in addition, speak of the relationship of propaganda to cultural sensitivity, ranging from one audience to the other. We can recall the Danish cartoons 11 and how in their case, media was said to be propagating racism and prejudice.

Elements of Propaganda

Tactics that are widely attributed, compose of exposing only partial facts, focusing on specific select stories that are in no means objective and underpinning reasons for uncalled for and unacceptable actions due to security reasons. Other strategies include categorising individuals as necessarily either the ‘good people’ or the ‘bad people’, de-contextualizing violence as if it is rootless, portraying it as though it is unavoidable and concentrating solely on specific acts, rarely on the structural causes that have attributed to those violent acts.12

Propaganda and War

Propaganda in conflict areas, and at times of war, can be best portrayed with the case of Rwanda. This small African country broke all records in 1994 when, in a matter of only a hundred days, up to one million people, namely three quarters of the Tutsi population, were brutally murdered by their natives.13 In a world of utopia, the media is said to be responsible for preserving a just image of reality on the ground, exposing human rights violations and making the public aware and a partaker. In the world we live in, however, the Rwandan genocide proved how far we are from that. The genocide portrayed the consequences of the failure of intervention in the face of mass murder. The failure to predict the genocide, to thwart it, and then to stop it, is one of the greatest scandals of the last century. Media, in addition to the international community, should equally share the responsibility of its impotence in immediately grasping the degree of the carnage and mobilising the world’s attention to what is happening. No reporting of the nationwide butchery campaign showed until it was too late, almost three weeks into the genocide. Lives were considered very cheap in this genocide.14 One of the greatest sorrows is that this was an enormous failure for the profession of journalism, both for Western and Rwandan reporting. The Western reporting was marred by four setbacks. While a full fledged genocide was taking place, a civil war was reported. Violence was said to be on the wane when it was actually escalating. The early declared deaths were hugely underestimating of what was happening in reality, sometimes by a factor of ten. Last but not least, in the first two weeks, Western media outlets focused almost entirely and purely on the capital, Kigali, which contained only four percent of Rwandans in danger, leaving all other areas neither discussed nor reported. Human Rights Watch declared that no human rights entity ever suggested the slightest possibility of genocide until April 19, a date too late, given the genocide has started two weeks prior.15

Pertaining to the written media in Rwanda, the most well-known newspaper was the Kangura. It was renowned for its historical hatred of the Tutsis and Hutus who were tolerant and expressing desire for change, freedom and democratic openness. If one takes a look at the radio medium, the leading RTLM broadcasting played even a more indulgent role in propagating the genocide ideology. There was incitement of hatred and a clear call for violence against Tutsis. There were also examples of specific orders given, persons identified by name, and their explicit location provided. This, indeed, goes even far beyond incitement. Is media powerful to an extent to which it can yield such influence as to propagate genocide, if we put aside all other structural factors in the conflict? The case of Rwanda proved that ethical media, when hijacked by hate media, can lead a society into genocide, putting the exact profession of reporting in question. John Honderish asks the question, ‘How could this happen? How could the world's media miss genocide? And even more troubling is: could it happen again?’16 The case of Darfur in Sudan today brings many questions to mind. The media’s response with the ‘conspiracy’ of silence remains reminiscent of that of Rwanda. Rarely, if ever, are the dynamics of the situation of Darfur been effectively analysed by the media. Professor Susan Moeller warns: ‘Reporting the news is both a political and a moral act. An element of shame is involved in not reporting responsibly instead of reporting equitably. If the media does not bear witness truthfully and thoughtfully, the good/bad stereotypes endure, and the lack of concern persists.’17

Politics always triumph on the priority of preserving human dignity. The propaganda war launched in Ireland by the British media was also intriguing enough. The selective amnesia, the nameless assassinations, the constant picturing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as terrorists in Television (TV) drama, cartoons and jokes, the fake press cards and the re-voicing of IRA members by actors on TV are all examples of how precarious and far-flung propaganda can get.18

At times when the media reports propaganda and partial scenarios, certain audiences do not even question those reports because their senses have grown used to believing those inherent stereotypes − and that is very dangerous. We will try to delve deeper into the forms of propaganda which are being taken for granted day by day. We will focus precisely on the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the American media portrayal of the events subsequent to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. We will delve into the human rights violations and how/if the atrocities are being covered in America on equal bases. The question that will be focused on is how much that right of freedom of expression and truth in information has been respected in the case of the American reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To be continued…

[Top]