Reporting Syria and future emergencies

Jess Hill has an interesting post over at The Global Mail, discussing how opposition activists in Syria are distorting the information fed to journalists…

But it’s not the information — it’s someinformation. Syrian activists are not journalists — they’re activists. They’re risking their lives to get their story out, and many pursue a specific agenda: to convince the international community to intervene and arm the opposition.

Of course, it will come as little shock to most journalists that activists are prepared to twist the truth to serve their agenda. That’s the deal. I interview you and get a story, while you get a chance to promote your message. That’s why most journalists are professional cynics. Why is this person telling me this? What do they gain? What are other people saying? Whose side are they on?

This much is obvious and is no great surprise.

But the real issue of course is that it is so difficult for journalists to get in and close up to the truth. Those that have done – again as Hill points out with the help and guidance of opposition activists – will still be bombarded with propaganda, but at least there is a chance of seeing, smelling and tasting things first hand. Most have to make do with reporting from outside and that’s what makes it so hard to judge…

In the short term at least, journalists have little choice but to continue to rely on activists for much of their information. The challenge for the media, however, is to go beyond the heroes versus villains narrative that’s developed over the past year, and to interrogate some harder truths.

Why, after a year of horrific violence, do significant number of Syrians still support the regime, or at least the status quo? Why, after so long, have there still been no major defections from the government? And who are the armed opposition groups known as the Free Syrian Army?

Regular readers of this blog will know where I’m about to go…

Now does this sound familiar? It sounds to me much like coverage of the Darfur conflict as it unfolded. Journalists prevented from entry relying on a small collection of opposition voices, rebel commanders who know what they want and articulate it via satphones. In the case of Sudan, the cause was taken up by a lobby with a very definite interventionist agenda, fuelled by dissidents outside the country.

So the point I want to make is that ultimately this is the way coverage of humanitarian crises is going. Famine and conflict do not occur in liberal democracies. They occur in oppressive regimes that want to keep journalists out. Next year it could be North Korea.

Journalists will increasingly be reporting by remote control. That should not be an excuse for failing to question the source of information. That’s the job. And just because our sources are battling an undeniably BAD MAN, we shouldn’t assume they are telling the truth or take anything for granted. And that goes for Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and George Clooney too.

The Drones Club

Could drones – currently used by the CIA for targeted assassinations (just don’t call them that, especially as they often seem untargeted) – be used for good? Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis, co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network, seem to think so…

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

In some ways it is not so very different to what George Clooney is already doing with his Satellite Sentinel Project. And it is not the first time it has been tried with drones. Sam Bell once tried to buy a drone in his hols to fly over Darfur…

The executives offered an old, low-end, limited- range UAV for $5 million. That was still, as Bell puts it, “a bit out of our price range,” but he thought it might be worth splurging–until he and fellow anti-genocide crusader Mark Hanis ran their potential purchase by an expert.

Oh, so Hanis has form. And has already been told once it was bonkers.

Anyway, this time he reckons he has the arguments licked with an interesting mix of good intentions and an appeal to everyone’s favourite freedom fighter…

This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn’t the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work?

Well, here’s one reason. A black and white, name em and shame em approach to human rights isn’t the only show in town. Lots of organisations have taken a different stand to ensure they retain access to people hurt or imprisoned. You might want to check with the Red Cross and see how they feel about this. But if your aim is to escalate a conflict and ensure aid agencies are prevented from entering, then this is exactly the right course to follow. And then what about the legal status of invading a country’s airspace?

It may be illegal in the Syrian government’s eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria’s territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state’s brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.

Of course in Libya there was also the small matter of UN resolution. But anyway, what’s the harm when you mean well?