The language of a captive community acquires certain durable habits; whole zones of reality cease to exist simply because they have no name
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journalism & warEncouraging reporters to become emotionally involved in the stories they cover is a worrying new trend argues the BBC’s David Loyn. He calls for objectivity. Des Freedman sees this as admirable but naive; the problems lie with the larger commercial forces that structure news rather than individual journalists. The debate journies with war reporters through Africa, the Middle East and Chechya, and back to the UK where David Elstein complains about the BBC's coverage during the war in Iraq; Danny Schecter and Lance Bennett both give the US media an earfull for failing to perform critically. Also: what has a philosopher to say about truth and objectivity in journalism?
AfPak, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza...how to break the pattern of "tragic accidents" that devour civilians?
The architects
of democratic intervention must let the media flourish
Reporting
of war needs to put civilian victims at the centre of the story
The 1988 poison attack on a Kurdish village should discomfort more than Saddam's henchmen (archive)
Media reporting of complex issues needs to escape the curse of formula
The renowned Polish journalist was a voice for pluralism, tolerance, freedom and dignity, says his former colleague Wiktor Osiatyñski. Read the rest of this post...
The foreign correspondent's decades-long observation
and insight revealed truths of power from Tehran and Addis Ababa to
Warsaw itself, says Neal Ascherson.
George W Bush’s musings about bombing the leading Arab satellite TV station betray hard truths about the United States’s “war on terror”, says Saleh Bechir. Read the rest of this post...
When the media reports wars or disasters, why are death tolls announced before bodies are counted? And what does this do to our democracy? Jean Seaton, author of “Carnage and the Media”, dissects the numbers game. Read the rest of this post...
Marielos Monzón, a Guatemalan journalist, received the 2005 Human Rights Journalism Under Threat award from Amnesty International. In her acceptance speech, she describes a land where new injustices have succeeded the horrendous violence of the 1954-96 period. Read the rest of this post...
A dispute over the political views of a leading BBC journalist reflects the concerns of the corporation’s hierarchy over its relationship with Britain’s New Labour government, says David Elstein. Read the rest of this post...
Blair, Campbell, Gilligan, Kelly, Hutton, Davies, Dyke...Butler. What, in essence, has happened in Britain? A guide to an unlovely, unfinished affair.
Why are government and media in Britain so hostile to each other? Because each seeks to control the narratives that shape people’s lives, says Tom Bentley of the think-tank Demos. In the process, both are damaged – and so is democracy itself. Read the rest of this post...
How do you tell African stories that engage a world audience? The pioneering African news journalist Sorious Samura – a streetwise sophisticate – talks to Caspar Henderson and Caspar Melville of openDemocracy.net about war, famine, Africa and reality TV. Read the rest of this post...
The BBC is under the spotlight following Lord Hutton’s report, which criticised its coverage of the British use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. How can the broadcaster recover from its latest collision with power? Read the rest of this post...
The crisis in Britain over the Iraq war, its intelligence and its reporting, is one of media as well as politics. John Lloyd asks: can journalism, both press and television, tell stories for active citizens rather than cynical couch potatoes? Read the rest of this post...
The Hutton report reveals the crisis of the British model of governance. Tony Blair and the BBC alike have fed the public realm’s “manipulative populism”, says David Marquand. Will Blair’s leadership now be consumed by it? Read the rest of this post...
The Hutton report is both hopelessly skewed and a devastating critique of the BBC’s failures, says David Elstein. But it provides the corporation with an opportunity to change for the better. Read the rest of this post...
A press corroded by cynicism could not see that the death of a British weapons scientist was a private tragedy, not a political scandal. Read the rest of this post...
The Hutton report on the death of a British scientist blames the BBC and clears Tony Blair, but misses the larger truth of the Iraq weapons affair: the British government’s system of command and control. Read the rest of this post...
The long walk to freedom takes place across language. What happens when words are abused by power, cheapened by war, or corrupted by media? This philosopher-TV executive surveys openDemocracy’s debate on journalism and war, and asks whether George Orwell’s dystopian vision of thought-killing ‘Newspeak’ has been realised in contemporary American journalism. Read the rest of this post...
The American media’s coverage of the 2003 Iraq war reinforces the pattern established in the wake of 9/11: a combination of intimidation, collusion, inattention, and ethnocentrism. A leading scholar of the media charts a dismal period in US journalism and asks whether a turn of the political tide offers hope of its revival. Read the rest of this post...
Swiss television processes the suffering of Chechnya according to time-honoured formulas recycled in dozens of wars worldwide: ruins, corpses, graves, tears. But Chechen custom defies the media conventions. How do the professionals then react? Irena Brezna fascinatingly explores the tensions between two worlds. Read the rest of this post...
The role of the news media in violent conflicts, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, is a major concern to combatants, publics, and media professionals alike. A scholar who has closely followed news coverage of the second Palestinian ‘intifada’ which broke out in September 2000 draws three significant lessons from the way the issue has been depicted on both sides. Read the rest of this post...
The Iraq war was not simply about regime change in a single country, but a prelude to a larger regional shift in political systems. The crucial impact on the Arab world will include a vital lesson for its media: no less than the inevitability of democracy. Can the Arab media rise to the challenge of telling this story truthfully? Read the rest of this post...
The “Palestine-Israel Journal” is a remarkable experiment in cooperation across the bitter divides of the Middle East conflict. In the face of financial pressures, a Kafkaesque transport system, and the reality of two distinct national narratives, its Israeli co-editor describes his colleagues’ efforts to remain true to their core purpose: good professional work. Read the rest of this post...
The human warmth and respect among those who produce a joint Palestine-Israel media journal, says a member of its editorial staff, helps them to withstand the intense pressures of the surrounding conflict. Read the rest of this post...
The BBC, under intense pressure in Britain itself over its coverage of the Iraq war, faces challenges to its professionalism and impartiality in an equally controversial political arena: Israel and Palestine. Sarah McGregor-Wood and Hillel Schenker of the Palestine-Israel Journal interview the BBC’s Middle East bureau chief, Andrew Steele, about the dangers and satisfactions of getting the story, telling the truth – and taking the rap from both sides. Read the rest of this post...
The Iraq war focused attention on how national broadcasters report armed conflicts. In Britain, the BBC could use Iraq to cultivate its dominant self-image of impartial professionalism – especially in light of the performance of companies like Fox News and al-Jazeera. But a deeper source of concern arises, suggests David Elstein: did the BBC’s very professionalism and investment of resources make it an inadvertent combatant in the government’s battle for public opinion? Read the rest of this post...
‘Peace journalism’ is a healthy alternative to the skewed coverage the world has seen of the war in Iraq, says News Dissector Danny Schechter. Brushing it off with a cry for ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ ignores all the real problems of reporting in today’s big business media world. Read the rest of this post...
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