open Democracy News Analysis - journalism & war - Comments

AgilisLux on "The media and the war: seeing the human "

AgilisLux — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:48:23 +0000

As a photographer I was used to write my captions that included details of what, when, where & who. This times are over!

Its okay when keywords contribute to exact searches, but I find the language exactly streamlined to reach the widest possible audience is alarming. When we “google” with keywords, we are distancing ourselves from the victims in an overflow of information.

For some years I even did not picked up a free newspaper when entering a plane that got me to the destination of a assignment because I have had enough of all kind of information I downloaded and printed out to brief myself with before start working there. This habit was born out of my personal experience that a very personal story was often used to stir the pot.

Fact is on the example of the fate of one single person, a victim, a conflict can not be explained. In one case a NGO who was reading the story evacuated some children that would hardly survive. This NGO vehicle in which the children where transported was attacked and the children badly wounded.

I have become very reluctant to contribute to Human Rights organisations and think that it is professionally not right for a journalist to follow the “do good approach” of “Humanitarian Organisations”. We as journalists can not lift the finger and fulfil the position as a “headteacher” for a better world. We are also not a instance for common moral. After all, - what actually is moral?
I might be driven personally by injustice, or what I believe injustice is; the main question simply remains for me as a freelance journalist: does the story has the market value to cover the costs, “the hazards and expense of reporting”?

In the past also some editors told me straight: if I get this out, I can loose my job (it was about disgusting behaviours among German troops in A-Stan) . This what they published was sometimes totally the opposite of their personal views just to please their employers.

Iraq and A-Stan are for the Western Media what is Cechenia for Russia. And here we have again a similarity to the “Humanitarian Organisations” who refused to help the people in Iraq knowing the occupying army's are behind them. I was embedded and also spend time with insurgents. The photos that have been sold where those of our armies...

We don't move away from our “human views”, it is maybe just the tsunami of information.

davidmatzdorf on "The media and Africa: doing bad by doing "good"?"

davidmatzdorf — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:29:14 +0000

I read the article with a growing sense of disappointment. I always look forward to articles that aim to puncture the auto-pilot mentality of lazy journalism and to champion clear and original thinking in place of clichés. As I read on, it became clearer with every paragraph that this was, instead, just another loosely-disguised attempt to have a pop at the "liberal media consensus" - that in itself being just the kind of easy, lazy buzz-phrase that the article set itself up to expose. The underlying assumption throughout the article, despite a token protestation to the contrary, is that "liberal" media are lazy and formulaic, whereas all vigorous attempts to puncture their consensus must, by definition, come from the right - a desperately sloppy assumption. Even the content - the several references to the failure of aid as a tool for development - turned out to be just an excuse to promote a right-wing agenda. On first reading, I thought "too right, aid just keeps developing countries dependent, what we need is liberation, not aid". But that was not what was being said: the hidden intent was that aid should be reduced to "make them stand on their own two feet". Thatcherism revisited. A letdown, the whole article.

george.carrano on "Ryszard Kapuscinski: from Poland to the world"

george.carrano — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:37:26 +0000

Excellent, perspective and well-deserved.