Translation by Rana Abdul
(Zaman Al Wasl)- “when the fox is caught, he plays dead,” an expression a colleague on Facebook “made as a special dedication to BBC’s professional consciousness and the English humanitarian consciousness on the eve of their special coverage in Aleppo.”
The comment came as a response to the BBC’s apology for their broadcasting shots accompanied with news headlines saying that the shots are of areas under regime control when they are areas under opposition control which are being subjected to the most brutal joint attack by the Russian planes and regime planes.
It was not the first time that one of the famous international schools in media falls into a professional trap, as the report was preceded by coverage of events in Syria which reveal BBC’s biased language to the regime.
Its most prominent report was about the UN investigators on human rights issues, dated 18-03-2014, and the preparation of lists of those accused of committing war crimes. The BBC titled its report “United Nations: The Syrian Opposition executed mass execution operations,” and did not see embarrassment or a lack of professionalism in placing a title attributed to the UN rather than attributing it to its personal view.
BBC also avoided mentioning the regime’s crimes in the report and said, “the Jihadists in the ranks of the Syrian opposition executed mass execution operation in the right of detained Syrians. The report documents a report issued by the UN investigators about different incidents in this regard including what happened in Aleppo’s children’s hospital in January 2014.”
BBC is not alone in this, as Reuters published a few days ago news about a UN decision on assigning an administrator to monitor the issue of detainees, missing persons, and crimes of torture, ignoring the documented 55 thousand photographs that Qasir leaked of around 11 thousand detainees who died under torture in the regime’s detentions or even in its military hospitals, in what has been termed the “crime of the age.”
The report focused on the violations of extremist groups that are incomparable to the atrocities the regime has committed against Syrians whether in type or amount.
In turn France Agency Press, did not exit the frame of polishing the regime. In addition to hosting a long conversation with Bashar, its news coverage did not hide the attempts to recycle the regime as fighting terrorism, and we have in its latest report news about the return of the people of Palmyra through the efforts of the governor of Homs and the transfer of some of their degrees, as a clear example.
Zaman al Wasl drew on the opinions of Syrian journalists who brought the major media outlets and news agencies’ bias to reporters’ orientations, whether in the Beirut office which is dominated by reporters who are loyal to allies of the regime, or to what remains of reporters still present in Damascus who can only remain as the regime approves of their presence.
In this context, a colleague who was a reporter for one of these news agencies reported that at the start of the revolution if he wanted to get a news piece released that would not be to the regime’s liking, he would wait until a particular colleague’s shift, as the colleague was pro Future movement, to get the news out.
In practice it is not possible to separate the editorial policy of the media outlet from the ways its reports deal with the event especially in government media or media close to the government. Private media are not accepted from this though the margin to distinguish them enlarges slightly based on the degree of objectivity and professionalism they exercise in covering the event. This margin expands more with major media outlets such as news agencies which are the presidential kitchens which presents the largest meal for receiving audience in the world in addition to the global satellites.
But the editorial policy is not the only judge in the matter, as reporters have their orientations and they move closer to objectivity or further away from it depending on the degree they place their orientations aside. Ethical aspects bring special engagement in some instances, except that it remains in the category of non-obligatory.
In the Syrian file, reporters’ professionalism mixed with political orientations and security commitments whereby there is no basis for professional media work, and it was barely present prior to the start of the revolution years where reporters in Damascus were supervised by security committees’.
After the spring in 2011, the regime automatically imposed its rules on reports restricting coverage to events the regime wanted the media to deal with, and twitter outside of the flock would lead to security prosecution, detention, being forced to not leave the profession, or deportation as happened with Reuters’ correspondent Khaled Oweis who was asked to leave after he published news of the arrests that happened in al-Marjeh square in April 2011.
Due to this, activists and reporters smuggled into conflict areas became the sources of information, especially as the Syrian border was no longer under the control of the regime. Some of those caught by the regime such as Suleiman al-Khalidi, Reuters correspondent in Aman, who was arrested for several months before being released and when the agency tried to cover up the issue and get the news out through it’s the now deceased photographer Khaled al-Hariri, the Syrian intelligence blew their cover and arrested him.
After these experiences, Reuters depended on the remaining members of its team in Damascus who do not see anything in Syria except the neighborhoods under regime control. It tried through several reports to imply that there is nothing wrong in Syria as if what is happening is going on in a different planet and this in comparison to the preliminary period when the orientation of the team contributed to a large extent to what was being reported.
AFP news agency did not differ in how it handled events in Syria, as it works within the confines of the lines drawn by the regime in an attempt to remain on the margin of objectivity.
Regarding Associated Press, anyone informed about the Syrian case knows that their reporter Albert Aji has become an official spokesperson for the regime, to the extent many of his colleagues call him “Major Albert” or the “Forth Regiment’s Journalist,” and if he was like this he would not considered reliable in his work, until this point, whereas other have been forced to leave the country, as what happened with the correspondents of the German Press Agency, or he is forced to leave his work as what happened with the correspondents for United Press, Sky News’, al-Arabiya news team, and the al-Jazeera news team knowing that these channels in the first months of the revolution did not indicate in any of their news what happened in Syria before the tables turned perhaps for political considerations.
We are not here to cast professional and national judgements on these people, but regime would not have allowed them to remain at their work if they were not obliged to communicate the message the regime wants to communicate to the international community opinion, or that their political and intellectual loyalties gel with the regime to begin with.
It is not enough to point out one example here, was there a journalistic material more stimulating for the media than the chemical bombing operation which killed 1500 people, mostly children? The answer is of course negative. Then other question is then why was the issue not covered? The answer presents two options either the point was to censor and the other was that the regime did not allow the regime them to cover it, and it was not indicated by either of them whether the first answer or the second both as excuses that are worse than the sin, and this is despite the humanitarian aspects that some of their countrymen have voiced towards the victims.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.