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The Press: Rigging the Coverage
- what you see is not what you get |
Coverage about the breakdown of the partial ceasefire in Syria
illustrated the main way corporate news media distort public
understanding of a major foreign policy story. The problem is not that
the key events in the story are entirely unreported, but that they were
downplayed and quickly forgotten in the media’s embrace of themes with
which they were more comfortable.
In this case, the one key event was the major offensive launched in
early April by Al Nusra Front — the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria —
alongside U.S.-backed armed opposition groups. This offensive was
mentioned in at least two “quality” U.S. newspapers. Their readers,
however, would not have read that it was that offensive that broke the
back of the partial ceasefire.
On the contrary, they would have gotten the clear impression from
following the major newspapers’ coverage that systematic violations by
the Assad government doomed the ceasefire from the beginning.
Corporate media heralded the ceasefire agreement when it was
negotiated by the United States and Russia in February, with the Los
Angeles Times (2/3/16) calling it “the most determined diplomatic push
to date aimed at ending the nation’s almost five-year conflict.” The
“partial cessation of hostilities” was to apply between the Syrian
regime and the non-jihadist forces, but not to the regime’s war with
Nusra and with ISIS.
The
clear implication was that
the U.S.-supported non-jihadist opposition forces would have to
separate themselves from Nusra, or else they would be legitimate targets
for airstrikes.
But the relationship between the CIA-backed armed opposition to Assad
and the jihadist Nusra Front was an issue that major U.S. newspapers
had already found very difficult to cover (FAIR.org,
3/21/16).
U.S. Syria policy has been dependent on the military potential of the
Nusra Front (and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham) for leverage on the
Syrian regime, since the “moderate” opposition was unable to operate in
northwest Syria without jihadist support.
This central element in U.S.
Syria policy, which both the government and the media were unwilling to
acknowledge, was a central obstacle to accurate coverage of what
happened to the Syrian ceasefire.
This problem began shaping the story as soon as the ceasefire
agreement was announced. On Feb. 23, New York Times correspondent Neil
MacFarquhar
wrote a news analysis on
the wider tensions between the Obama administration and Russia that
pointed to “a gaping loophole” in the Syria ceasefire agreement: the
fact that “it permits attacks against the Islamic State and the Nusra
Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate, to continue.”
MacFarquhar asserted that exempting Nusra from the ceasefire “could
work in Moscow’s favor, since many of the anti-Assad groups aligned with
the United States fight alongside the Nusra Front.” That meant that
Russia could “continue to strike United States-backed rebel groups
without fear … of Washington’s doing anything to stop them,” he wrote.
On the same day, Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal
reported that
Obama’s “top military and intelligence advisers don’t believe Russia
will abide by a just-announced ceasefire in Syria and want to ready
plans to increase pressure on Moscow by expanding covert support to
rebels fighting the Russia-backed Assad regime.”
For two of the country’s most prominent newspapers, it was thus clear
that the primary context of the Syria ceasefire was not its impact on
Syria’s population, but how it affected the rivalry between powerful
national security officials and Russia.
Note Almere-Digest: not only the Syria news is rigged by the media,
but also most of the news, depending on who pays the salaries of the
journalists writing the story, and the policies of the corporate media
conglomerate they work for .
Read more: Rigging the Coverage of Syria – Consortium
