The revolution will be televised
The avalanche of words spent on the role of the Internet and social networking media in the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa should not obscure that old-fashioned, impartial news reporters for the MSM (and its freelancers) are the ones getting the story out to the rest of the world – at great personal risk.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has been chronicling the assaults on journalists. In the New York Times, metro columnist and former Middle East correspondent Clyde Haberman summed it up this way:
Across the Middle East and North Africa, millions have taken to the streets to demand an end to the despotism that has defined the region since pretty much forever. Journalists have been in the thick of it, often in ways that go beyond their familiar roles as observers and chroniclers. They are part of the story themselves.
In Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria — pick a place — they have been beaten, jailed, harassed and otherwise prevented from gathering information essential to the rest of us, we who are not about to wander into the cauldron ourselves.
For all the tweets and Facebook pages in the world, there is still no substitute for having impartial journalists on the scene to tell us, as best as they can, what is going on. That notion is often considered quaint – even here on dotCommonweal at times. Many scoff at the idea that journalists can be impartial. But the journalists who are reporting to us on the revolution of ’11 deserve our appreciation and prayers.
I don’t understand why journalists would expect to be treated differently then anyone else in a war zone or political uprising. If violence is taking place and you are perceived by any faction that has resorted to violence to quash the opposing side – as being on the other side, then of course you will be targeted.People may or may not believe you when you say you are on their side or they might not want any media to expose their acts of violence and for journalists to expect them to strikes me as bizarre thinking.If people involved in the conflict perceive you as being neutral and don’t have a problem with that of course they will leave you alone. If your problem is with the lack of freedoms in other countries then isn’t that what the uprisings are about?Isn’t having a group of people call themselves “The committee to protect Journalists “just another way of saying you believe in democracy?[or at least freedom of speech.].
And what is a journalist? Someone with a journalist credential;an i.d. that says profession:journalist? Someone who is hired by a company [newspaper or t.v] which hires “journalists”, i.e.gives someone [who may or may not have a degree in journalism] an i.d. that says profession:journalist?
Now that everyone can text and photogragh what happens on the ground and transmit data to the rest of the world [through the internet or outlets like CNN],credentialed journalists are no more indispensible then the general public.One can say some journalists are more objective or more insightful or more fair or comprehensive in their reporting then others but the category itself does not place them apart from noncredentialed journalists on the ground.An uprising is not a movie and neither is a war.The days when two armies could face each other in a battle on a hill and professional journalists could be documenting the battle from a safe distance or as safely embedded tag alongs are over,The twenty first century is the century of the people and wars are no longer being fought just by armies.
“I don’t understand why journalists would expect to be treated differently then anyone else in a war zone or political uprising.”
But they are – they’re being singled out and attacked. The reporters who are there and the editors at their news organizations know that’s a risk. As I said, they deserve our appreciation and prayers.
By choosing to document the uprising in Egypt, the journalists were perceived as endorsing the uprising.The jourrnalists could have chosen to ignore the uprising as the Mubarck regime initially did and would have wanted them to do.Jourrnalists were perceived as aiding and abetting the uprising simply by documenting it.[suppose they gave an uprising and nobody came]They were attacked for being perceived as the enemy.Had they been in their offices writing a piece about how great Mubarck was,they would not have been perceived as the enemy and attacked.A jourrnalist in the streets during an uprising is just as much of an enemy of Mubarck’s regime then the other people in the street and will be singled out as being a greater immediate threat to the regime for having the power to validate and aid and abet the uprising by documenting it.He/she is seen as more of a threat then the guy/gal next to him who doesn’t have a camera.Journalists have power and are dangerous to one side and an asset to anothers.
We should indeed all be grateful to the journalists who put their safety at risk to report to us what is happening in places such as the Middle East (and not only that). Unfortunately they face dangers other than the purely physical — such as budgetary cutbacks which force them to be pulled out of hot spots because the home office (of the NYT or WaPo or whatever it might be) can no longer afford them. The threat, for instance, to cut back on federal funding for public broadcasting is a chilliing one, and one the results of such a cutback will no doubt be to lower the already not terribly high tone of public debate on great issues.
Perhaps some day we will get an accurate analysis of whether the internet and twitters, etc., have really been as important as we like to think or whether (as Frank Rich suggested a few weeks ago) our emphasis on these aspects is simply a reflection of an American view that technology can solve all ills.
PS I do not scoff at the notion of journalistic impartiality, but neither do I believe in it as an absolute. Not because I’m a post-modern freak, but because I’m a human being. I don’t believe in the impartiality of historians either (of which I’m one). But the way you tell the good from the bad is by trying to judge who are trying to be as impartial as they can, and who are grinding axes.