When covering international news or foreign wars, there are certain places journalists can go and many that they cannot. Usually, the places where journalists are allowed to be on the ground are carefully selected either by the government, the military or the politicians in whatever country a foreign correspondent goes into. The Huffington Post's blog, "Bearing Witness 2.0: You Can’t Spin 10,000 Tweets and Camera Phone Uploads" describes on how China shut down all forms of citizen journalism and gave a front row seat to traditional media. But, the Chinese government only gave tradition media a pin-hole view of what the situation actually was.
Arianna Huffington said that the Chinese modeled this off of Iran, but then where did the U.S. military gain it from? If we take a closer look at war corresponding since the Vietnam War, access to on the ground images, the relationships between troops and civilians and the overall climate of the conflict in the Middle East has been kept under wraps. After the effect the media had in ending the war in Vietnam, the U.S. military has made sure to not give all access passes to journalists ever again, only letting them basically be part of units and brigades in order to get a story. You don't really bite that hand that feeds you, and the nature of this relationship gives traditional media -- the ones usually granted the permission -- an on the ground experienced but that caters to the interest of the Military-Industrial Complex than that of foreign relations and democratic stability in the Middle East. The effect of this agreement it that we have not really seen any negative news of any wars in the Middle East where the U.S. is involved. For example, we really have no clue about the effect this had on civilian life because journalists are not rally allowed to venture. Sure we know the number of displaced families as well as civil casualties but what about the on the ground change of ideology? Did this have any effect on all these countries cultures? What's different now? What's the name? No one knows because the nature of pin-hole reporting only allows space for military stats and dehumanized the effects of war. Most of the time we don't really see citizen journalist accounts or bloggers touch the situation either, and that might be more because we don't have access versus not having it.
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It seems as if social movements nowadays start with the death of a sort of martyr on social media. For Egypt, it was the murder of Khalid Said. In Tunisia, it was the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi.
In the United States, the Black Lives Matter movement started with the videos of countless black men being shot by white policemen. There are many similarities with the case of Said and all the cases of police brutality in the U.S. For example, police officers making the situation seem as if the victim brought it upon themselves when in fact they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another similarity is how posting these videos and information on social media brought together a community of outraged individuals to create social movements. Like the New York Times article talking about Said says, “Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and cell phones made it easy for human rights advocates to get out the news and for people to spread and discuss their outrage about Mr. Said’s death in a country where freedom of speech and the right to assemble were limited.” The similarities between the BLM and Said’s case makes me think that articles like these, ones that talk about the importance of social media for the sake of transparency and activism, are a sort of critique towards U.S. media. Most mainstream media outlets in the U.S. don’t talk about police brutality videos in full or providing content for them. Many are not outraged for the sake of being objective or pleasing stockholders. Let’s face it; the rights to assemble in the states are complicated because as soon as you do assemble you’re considered a delinquent, or someone with nothing better to do. When you tell the truth, and nothing but it, you might lose your job and your credibility. Social media being a tool for developing countries to protests is a fine and dandy story, but I think places like the NYT do it because they cannot outwardly say “hey, this is what happens in our country” so they have to use a government associated with corruption as a catalyst for their self reflection. Activism and independent media in the U.S. depends on social media because other means are more concerned than what the public believes it to be, just like in Egypt. While reading about how the United States approved and supported the Military Coup in Honduras, bells rang. The article did point out that it the 2009 coup was much like many of the dictatoriships that happened in Latin America during the Cold War, but I was dissapointed that there was no continuity with the sotry at all in the article or elsewhere.
Something that I find that both mainstream media as well as independent media do is to focus on the Whistleblower and the content just of the leaks but not to delve into the context of the information and what it means for a country or entity that isn't the U.S. government or the corporation where the leak came from. There is no continuity in stories other than legal procedures against whistleblowers or against whatever institution kept the secret. Journalist forget to focus on reading between the lines of the information that was provided. For examples, what effects did the coup have on Hondura's citizens years later. Seeing that Latin America stills suffers the ramifications of Cold War era dictatorships and milita groups -- Colombia just ended a war that began as a repercussion to such military dictatorships -- it is safe to assume that Honduras would be in deep economic, political and social turmoil only 8 years after the unlawful transfer of power. But no one seems to talk about the fact that the country has one of the biggest disparity rates in the world because of the coup or that drug wars have escalated. It's not as if the raising cases of gang violence in Honduras have a direct correlation to the increase of Hondurans who try to come into the United States every year. But everyone forgot about the coup because the important part of the story was the secret, not the effect it had on a third world country. It is disappointing that journalists focus on the papers themselves, and the lies on behalf of the U.S. Government and forget who those actions actually affect. The same thing happened with the Pentagon Papers and the information leaked by Chelsea Manning: there is more of a focus on the actions of the whistleblowers and the domestic ramifications of the leaks but there is no continuity in reporting what this means for the countires who were actually affected by the actions themselves. Vietnam is still suffering the consequences of a war that should have never happened, U.S. troops are still in the Middle East and no other intelligence officers are willing to come forward and Honduras is yet to find stability in it's goverment or for it's people. I think we should start focusing more on the information and have investigative reporting take more in depth looks into the context of the leaks instead of focusing the act of getting the information itself. |
AuthorHi! I'm Isabella Grullon. I am a junior journalism major at Ithaca College from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
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