Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3
I. INTRODUCTION 4
KILLING JOURNALISTS FOR PROPAGANDA 5
THE PROBLEM OF A REPORTING-VOID 5
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 8
JOURNALISTIC RESPONSIBILITY TO SOCIETY 9
OBJECTIVITY 10
TRUTH 12
INDEPENDENCE 14
NEW WARS,NEW REPORTING 16
HUNDRED YEARS OF WAR 16
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ‘PRINTERS’ 18
FROM ARAB NATIONALISM TO ISLAM 19
JIHAD: MEANS TO AN END 21
REPORTING WAR IN SYRIA 22
FACTS AND FIGURES 23
NEW RISKS IN REPORTING 23
(SOCIAL)MEDIA AND TERRORISM 25
PROFESSIONAL TERRORISM MEDIA 27
MODERN DAY WAR REPORTING IN SYRIA 29
III. METHODOLOGY 30
ANTHROPOLOGY FOR JOURNALISTS 30
RESEARCH CORPUS:DIFFERENT TYPES OF JOURNALISTS 32
RESEARCH METHOD:INTERVIEWING (WAR-) JOURNALISTS 34
ANALYZING JOURNALISTIC INTERVIEWS 35
ANALYZING EMPERICAL DATA 35
IV. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS 37
CHANGES IN WAR AND WAR JOURNALISM’S PRACTICE 37
NEW REPORTING IN REAL LIFE 40
THE REPORTING VOID AND ISIS’FREE PROPAGANDA GAME 44
JOURNALISTIC RESPONSIBILITY IN THE FIELD 46
KIDNAPPINGS,BEHEADINGS &PRINCIPLES 47
OBJECTIVITY –THE AIM, NOT THE GOAL 49
TRUTH –HARD TO DISTINGUISH 52
INDEPENDENCE –A LOT MORE DIFFICULT 54
‘BEING-THERE’ AND IDEALS 56
CITIZEN JOURNALISTS AND ISIS’NEWS MONOPOLY 58
ONLINE NEWS HOARDING 58
ISIS’ONLINE MEDIA MONOPOLY 61
V. CONCLUSION 63
THE TOLL IT TAKES 63
HOW TO FILL THE VACCUM? 66
VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY 67
Acknowledgements
“Everyone has a story, complete with vested interests, and all the stories collide into contentious assemblages of partial truths, political fictions, personal foibles, military propaganda, and cultural lore. The louder the story, especially when it comes to violence and war, the less representative of the lived experience it is likely to be. In the midst of wars of propaganda and justification, the most silenced stories at war’s epicenters are generally the most authentic”.
Here, anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom (252) speaks about doing research in a war zone. Her research is about common people living in war-torn Mozambique, thus the most silenced stories at war’s epicenter come from them. In this thesis, however, the voices of journalists reporting on the silenced voices are the main focus. War journalists typically report on and from horrific imploded societies and their stories on these happenings have for a long time been the only knowledge we, the newsreader at home, gathered from such areas.
What these journalists stumble upon themselves while reporting on these horrendous events is not something we all hear about on the 8 o’clock news. Let alone the difficulties they encounter while doing their jobs. In the current war in Syria and Iraq, journalists cannot report from occupied lands in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) (note, in this thesis ISIS is used instead of Islamic State (IS), to not give readers the impression that the group is a state de facto). The changes war journalism is going through, in the sense that journalists cannot be exactly where they need to be to report on matters, is as important a happening as the events that occur in Syria and Iraq itself. For not being able to report from ‘ground zero’ is unheard of in the history of war journalism as occupancy.
The aim of this thesis is therefore to give those who provide us with information from war zones, and risk their lives while doing so, a voice. This is a voice that is silenced by the happenings they report on, until they are included in those same happenings, as was the case with James Foley only last year. By gathering information on war journalism in the current Middle East, the dangers that now go along with it can hopefully be reduced, by learning from the past.
I. Introduction
“I call on my friends, family and loved ones, to rise up against my real killers: the U.S. government. For what will happen to me, is only a result of their complacency and criminality. My message to my beloved parents: save me some dignity and don’t accept some meager compensation for my death, from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin with their recent aerial campaign in Iraq. I call on my brother John, who is a member of the U.S. air force: think about what you’re doing. Think about the lives you’re destroying, including those of your own family. I call on you John. Think about who made the decision to bomb Iraq recently and kill those people, whoever they may have been. Think, John. Who did they really kill? And did they think about me, you or our family when they made their decision? I died that day, John. When your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people, they signed my death certificate. I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope of freedom and see my family once again. But that ship has sailed. I guess, all in all, I wish I wasn’t American.”
On the 19th of August 2014, American war journalist James Wright Foley spoke these words. He spoke strong, trying to keep his voice steady. After the words “my death”, his voice cracked a bit.
These words were the final words he would ever say. ‘Jihadi John’, a militant of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), beheaded him, seconds after he had finished his last sentence. Foley died while in captivity of ISIS and was used for a propaganda video, from which the words above are taken.
The use of journalists as means to communicate such a bloody message is a new development in journalism. No longer can journalists go into Syria or Iraq and report the news without being actively targeted by kidnappers. They no longer have bullets and bombs to fear most. The consequences this has for journalism as an occupation and the results for the news we, the reader and television viewer, follow on daily basis, are unclear. This thesis tries to shine light on this development.
Killing Journalists for Propaganda
When the role of a journalist changes during times of war, the journalistic occupation changes accordingly. Katie Adie knowingly states: “The very nature of war confuses the role of the journalist” (in Allan and Zelizer, 44). Adie herewith alludes to the journalistic aim of trying to remain distant and unaffected by all the war atrocities around them.
In the current conflict in Syria and Iraq, staying objective is a mere part of the complete picture. Journalists moreover have to try to stay independent and tell the truth, often under very extreme circumstances. One extra circumstance of late, as mentioned before, is the use of journalists as a part of the war they cover. This is part of ISIS’ propaganda tactic, which is a well-oiled machine, as will become clear in this thesis. The militant group has a great presence on social media, next to other new voices from civilians rising up in war zones, which further complicates the role of the journalist in this conflict.
James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012, around Thanksgiving. Hereafter, more and more journalists disappeared. At the end of 2013, the number of journalists gone missing in Syria and Iraq became unparalleled. David Rohde of The
Atlantic:
“Thirty journalists—half of them foreign reporters, half of them Syrian— have been kidnapped or gone missing in Syria, the Associated Press reported last week. The number is unprecedented. Syria today is the scene of the single largest wave of kidnappings in modern journalism, more than in Iraq during the 2000s or Lebanon during the 1980s. A combination of criminality, jihadism and chaos is bringing on-the-ground coverage of the war to a halt.”
The Problem of a Reporting-void
At the root of the current issues in war reporting in Syria and Iraq lays the reason of doing this research: a reporting-void. With the reporters not going into these countries anymore, news from the region becomes less and the voices of the people in the war-ridden areas grow weaker.
This is a problem, in my view. A part of history is left undocumented because of this. At the same time, the readers – and editors somewhat – have gotten tired of the Syrian story, just as with other tragic war tales. Nonetheless, in order to get some news from the region, journalists scour the Internet for interesting happenings from the area. Activists and armed groups, in their place, make sure journalists find what they are looking for: “Syria’s new news ecology created an entire system producing activist-fueled content for domestic consumption as well as international audiences” (Wall & el Zahed, 721). Social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram serve as perfect channels to transmit armed group’s sentiments. Public opinion and, to some extend, foreign policy are then based on news articles written by differently informed journalists.
When journalists adopt the news as it is stated by one of these armed groups or a member of the civil society, this raises a question, namely: how objective and accurate is the news we read about the war against ISIS in the West? Chouliaraki mentions in regard to these ‘amateur recordings of conflict’, which are being used to mobilize an emotion with the public, “were earlier the privilege of journalistic professionals” (1362). According to her, this rise of local actors has complicated the re-usage of news in Western media. From my perspective, this occurrence, which stems from the changing manner of ‘being at war’ in general, makes for new forms of journalistic war coverage. Instead of being there, news is still made by journalists (and others), but through different channels. What the consequences of this are will be clarified throughout this thesis. Thus, the halt of traditional coverage, the unprecedented number of kidnappings and their use for propaganda purposes, and the consequences of social media ‘news’ are then some of the main themes in this thesis, leading to the following research question and sub questions:
How is war journalism changing due to the particular features of the ISIS-conflict in Syria and Iraq?
• How is the war in Syria and Iraq different from wars before?
• What do these changes mean for the journalistic occupancy and output in
Syria and Iraq?
These questions will be answered throughout this thesis, starting with the theoretical framework. In this theoretical chapter, concepts that are important to understand the current changes in war journalism will be explained. These include, but are not limited to, objectivity, independence and truth in reporting. Furthermore, an insight into the history of war reporting will be given, where after the history of violent Islam will be presented. The nexus between reporting in and on Syria and ISIS’ influence thereon will then be described. There after, the influence of social media on reporting from this region will be presented.
After the theoretical framework, the methodological chapter will show how I conducted my field research in the Netherlands and Turkey, where I interviewed eleven journalists about their jobs of reporting from and about a war zone. When I read about James Foley’s story in August of 2014, the horrible uniqueness of the situation struck me. Journalists who cannot go into the area they report about anymore, due to a ‘price’ on their heads, had to have horrible consequences connected to it, I reasoned. After speaking to some war journalists in the Netherlands I therefore traveled to Turkey, to meet the reporters who still tried to document the events in ISIS occupied lands. My initial plans of going to Gaziantep, the last big city at the southern most border between Turkey and Syria, fell through, since none of the journalists were there, closest to the action they could get. “Gaziantep is too dangerous”, I was told. The kidnapping of journalists supposedly already spread into Turkey. All the journalists I spoke to therefore resided in Istanbul, waiting for the news to find them, and meanwhile scavenging the Internet for usable stories. The rest of the time, most of my correspondents met up to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and share war stories with their colleagues in one of the many cafes near Istiklal Caddesi. The old days when they could still witness all the action and dodge bullets dominated their stories.
Gathering from these experiences, the empirical chapter subsequently will present the connection between the theoretical chapter and the data I gathered while interviewing my correspondents. And lastly, the conclusion to this thesis will be drawn.
II. Theoretical framework
Over the past century, numerous wars have been fought and, therefore, reported on. The journalists, who saw it as their duty to record these battles, submerged themselves in often life-threatening situations. According to Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer (25), reporting war:
“especially combat, has always been typically dangerous, demanding great resourcefulness in gathering and transmitting information. Journalists may unthinkingly subscribe to or knowingly comply with the objectives, ideologies, and perspectives of one or another side to the conflict. Alternately, they must struggle to make sense of the “big picture” in resistance to information monopolies imposed by state and military. Such challenges and difficulties are the essence of war reporting, and these attributes figure into the genre of war reporting that results.”
Even though the battlefields are no longer Napoleon-esque, one group opposing the other with cannon balls, these ethical dilemmas and problems faced by journalists in war reporting have, all in all, stayed the same over the past century. This ‘essence’ of war reporting – actively pursuing the truth, resisting information monopolies – is still lived up to by modern day war correspondents.
What did change, however, are the circumstances under which journalists must do their work in war zones. These changed circumstances correlate with the changes in war itself. A wide scope of ways to fight a war have come and gone in the 20th century. From the First World War via the Vietnam War to the First Gulf War, all of these conflicts have a common denominator: journalists could travel (embedded) from one fighting group to the other, through the organized chaos that is war.
Phillip Knightley, for instance, traversed many of these conflicts that he describes in his book The First Casualty (1975), which forms a classic example of war reporting. Classic in that sense too, that Knightley reported on conflicts that would fit the more traditional, Napoleon-esque idea of war. Or, in the words of Allan and Zelizer (25), Knightley’s study covers:
“a series of massive, violent conflicts that nearly all involved organized, “regular” armed forces of distinguishable enemies, often nation-states, or of warring regions, ethnicities or social classes within nation-states whose legitimacy was contested.”
But these are not the kinds of conflict that contemporary war journalists try to report on. Taking into account the wars of the beginning of the 21st century, the essence of the conflicts has been ever changing. When focusing on the contemporary Middle East, distinguishable enemies and regular armed forces are not always clear – changing levels of armature of rebel and army forces, as well as armed civilians further complicate the conflict. And these changes naturally make the practice of war reporting in the region more complex.
This theoretical framework will provide the knowledge necessary to disentangle and better understand these changes in both conflicts and war journalism, and answer the main question: How is war journalism changing through
the particular features of the ISIS-conflict in Syria and Iraq? First, in order to lay the
groundwork, a brief outline of the journalists’ responsibility to society will be given. Thereafter, the changes in the essence of war in the Middle East will be put in a historical perspective, along with the role of Islam in this debate. Thirdly, light will be shed upon the way journalists conduct their reporting from these modern warzones in the Middle East, with a focus on Syria. And lastly, the case of ISIS will be discussed in-depth – what makes the current ‘war against the Islamic State’ so unique to report for journalists?
Journalistic Responsibility to Society
According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ (ASNE) Statement of Principles, the moral guidelines of paramount importance for journalists are responsibility, freedom of press, independence, truth and accuracy, impartiality, and fair play. For the sake of this thesis, objectivity (impartiality), truth and independence will be discussed, seeing that these are the principles most likely to be under pressure in conflict situations.
Taking together, these principles form journalists’ responsibility – on its own an important principle that becomes apparent throughout this chapter – towards the
society they try to inform and, when they are not met, create a moral vacuum – as is the case in most warzones. This is why these guidelines have to be critically examined.
Objectivity
Like Deuze and others mention, objectivity is one of the core values of journalism: “journalists are impartial, neutral, objective, fair and (thus) credible” (447). Objectivity can also be viewed as one of the highest goals for journalists, as Blaagaard (1078) notes:
“Professional journalism’s modern heritage means that the rule of ‘Stoic [...] professional objectivity’ and ‘self-abstraction’ (Peters, 2005) has been promoted in professional journalism and mediated communication (Dahlgren, 1995, 2009; Habermas, 1989). Despite resistance, backlash, and ongoing academic and professional discussions, objectivity has had and still has (Muhlmann, 2008; Richards and Rees, 2011; Schudson, 1978; Wien, 2005) a strong impact on western journalists’ understanding of the journalistic practice and function in society.”
The journalistic ideal of objectivity began developing in the last century, coming from a growing recognition that journalists were often unconsciously biased. “The call for journalists to adopt objectivity was an appeal for them to develop a consistent method of testing information - a transparent approach to evidence - precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 81). This scientific way of viewing the concept of objectivity was first laid bare by Walter Lippman in 1919. In his view, a journalist is not objective, but his method can be. “The key was in the discipline of the craft, not the aim” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 83). According to Kovach and Rosenstiel, this understanding of objectivity as a method is absolutely contemporary to the current understanding of media. In this understanding, objectivity is not a fundamental principle of journalism, but merely a device to persuade the audience of one’s accuracy (83).
Later, well into the twentieth century, objectivity became a dominant reporting mode, but not in the way Lippman had envisioned it. The practice of objectively gathering news, taking into account the journalists’ subjective flaws, made place for
the complete opposite. “Most people think of objectivity in journalism as an aim, not as a method. And many citizens scoff at this intention, since they have little idea of the methods journalists might be employing” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 83). The objectivity code thus became an end result as opposed to a practice guide. In relation to U.S. media, Pedelty states that it has created “a set of irresolvable contradictions for working journalists. While the rules of objective journalism prohibit reporters from making subjective interpretations, their task demands it” (7).
In the book Reporting War, Howard Tumber also mentions that objectivity can be conceptualized as an impossible goal: “‘Objective reporting’ is associated with ways of gathering news (knowledge about places, people, and events) and conveying them in a detached, impersonal way free of value judgments” (201). This is an admirable aim, but the act of reporting itself already places limitations (such as space, time, and pertinence) on the ability to report the whole truth (Tumber qtd. In Allan and Zelizer 201). Tumber also notes a second instance in which objectivity is used: as a strategic ritual, allowing for the defense of the profession.
Thus, objectivity is seen as a set of practices or a performance. “Although within the professional modern practice of journalism it is widely accepted that objectivity is an ideal that cannot be reached, it is equally acknowledged that the history of journalism has provided resistance and alternatives to the discourse of objectivity” (Blaagaard 1079). In this way, objectivity is both an occupational norm and an object of struggle. In the following references of objectivity, there will be two kinds of this concept: the method of doing objective journalistic research as Lippman meant it, and the objective reflection of the happenings a journalist tries to report it, which Tumber notes to be an impossible goal.
Nevertheless is objectivity a prized status to claim within journalism. The public gives (or does not give) journalists a sense of prestige, because they see them as “beings that have control over their actions and decisions” (Frunză and Frunză 39). With this control, the journalist is attributed the ability to take a step back and shed an objective look on the situation. But, when looking at embedded journalism in the Falklands and Iraq, Tumber notes that there was a clash of sentiments. “On the one hand the journalists carried the occupational ideology of impartiality and objectivity while the military rucksack on their backs symbolically carried more than the single source of their
provision: in effect, where did their commitments lie – to traditions of journalistic practice or to those who could or did protect them, the military?” (qtd. in Allan and Zelizer 202).
Before discussing the goal of objectivity in war while embedded with the military further, it is important to discuss reporting the truth, for, “aspirations to report truthfully are couched in the language of objectivity” (Tumber 446).
Truth
According to the famous 20th century British journalist James Cameron, “objectivity was of less importance than the truth” (qtd. in Tumber 446). In war situations, reporting the truth was for him more crucial than noting the events in a neutral manner. Those working in conflict resolution have re-examined the principal of objectivity over the past few years. The exclamation ‘we are here to report the truth objectively, we don’t get involved’ does not sit well with many researchers anymore.
Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, for example, say that journalists are always involved in the conflict. In practice, they can’t reflect the situation objectively: “they only see a fraction of the action, especially in battle, they don’t know the whole picture. For the same reason they question how the reporter can claim to be reporting the truth. A small slice of the truth, perhaps, not the whole picture. And a partial reporting of the truth often distorts the overall picture” (qtd in Aslam 339). Lynch and McGoldrick note that media discourse influences the construction of meanings in conflict, and these have often been conceptualized with reference to framing theory (1043). Hence, we only see a part of the bigger picture; in the way the journalist (subconsciously or not) chooses to show it to the world.
To report is to select, shape and frame. In the words of Robert Entman, framing is the “process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among them to promote a particular interpretation” (164). Much research has been done on what journalists do and do not report on. In their research on U.S. senators during the 1970s and 1980s, Kuklinski and Sigelman write about the “Paradox of Objectivity”: during times of seismic change in the political landscape, the very routines journalists daily practice produce what might be interpreted as biased network coverage (812). By covering the election winners, for example, journalists ‘underreport’ on the critics, which creates a bias.
Thus, in reporting (or not reporting) on news events, journalists affect those same news events. In times of upheaval, the conflict frame – disagreement between two or more groups or countries – is widely discussed and researched. Researches found that “the presence of conflict is consistently listed as one of the most important criteria for identifying which events will become news stories” (e.g., Eilders, 1997; McManus, 1994; Staab, 1990, qtd. in De Vreese, Peter & Semetko 109). Lee and Maslog also write about this: “Conflict reporting is often sensational and a mere device to boost circulation and ratings” (qtd. in Yang Lai Fong 19). In the case of war or terrorist attacks, journalists should be extra careful in what they do or do not report, for “the relationship between terrorist organizations and the press is often described as one of mutual interest, since both terrorists and news organizations benefit when information about terrorist attacks is turned into the commodity of news” (Hoffman et al 576).
Moreover, choosing to write about a subject brings along all different kinds of (perhaps) unintended consequences. This is also stressed by Galtung and Ruge in their 1965 essay ‘The Structure of Foreign News’: “The journalist scans the phenomena (in practice to a large extent by scanning other newspapers) and selects and distorts, and so does the reader when he gets the finished product, the news pages, and so do all the middlemen” (71). This notion suggests that the journalistic practice and outcome are so influential that there are two forms of journalism to be formed: war and peace journalism. According to Lynch and Galtung (qtd. in Lynch and McGoldrick 1042):
“Where ‘war journalism’, the dominant stream, is ‘violence-oriented, elite-oriented, propaganda-oriented [and] victory-oriented’, ‘peace journalism’ is ‘conflict (and peace)-oriented, people-oriented, truth-oriented [and] solution-oriented’ (1998). Peace journalism was originally conceived, therefore, as a ‘remedial strategy’ (Lynch and McGoldrick, 2005: 224), exploring and promoting ‘the policy implications of the [1965] study.”
This divide between war and peace journalism is not static and neither is everyone’s perception of ‘the truth’. Actively pursuing and finding the truth seems in this light a
mere objective instead of a real accomplishable goal, just like being truly objective. Or, as Hackett puts it: “The ideal of objectivity suggests that facts can be separated from opinion or value judgments, and that journalists can stand apart from the real-world events whose truth or meaning they transfer to the news audience by means of neutral language and competent reporting techniques” (qtd. in Muñoz-Torres 569). Of course, in practice, the whole truth exists just as much as complete objectivity.
Nevertheless, for reporting war, being able to separate facts from opinion is a valuable asset. For many war correspondents, ‘truth’ and ‘a sense of making history’ are primary motivations to do what they do (Tumber 445). But, notwithstanding how valuable frontline correspondents are to the public knowledge of war, their perspective, no matter how assiduously it cites available sources, can never be in itself the whole truth. Tumber (449) notes:
“There are the added difficulties that, in circumstances in which combatants are all conscious that the mediation of the conflict can be of major significance, all sources are unreliable. The journalist’s job is made that much more difficult when he or she is reliant for information on those who have an agenda. Sources endeavour to persuade the journalist that their perspective is the correct one, conscious that media play a key role in contemporary conflict. At other times sources bypass journalists, going directly to news media especially to propagate their view.”
Denis McQuail also mentions the effects of reporting war on the consequences for truth: “The mediatisation of war coverage encourages and protects the propaganda efforts of whoever has most control over access to the battle zone to communication facilities” (114). When a journalist is embedded with or caught up in war propaganda from a certain battle force, the quest for truth becomes even more difficult. These factors combined make it so that the journalistic principles of objectivity and truth are put under pressure during times of war, as is the principle of independence.
Independence
According to ASNE’s Statement of Principles Article III, “Journalists must avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety as well as any conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict”. Or, as Frunză and Frunză state, the journalist is a guardian of liberty, because he
is a keeper of responsible actions (39). In a situation of conflict, like a warzone, this might seem difficult or even redundant.
But even in times of war, or high patriotic fervor, journalism’s role is to ensure that an open society is maintained and enhanced through critical and independent reporting and analysis, Ward states. “This framework rules out narrow, nondemocratic forms of patriotism that call on journalists to mute their criticisms of government or military policy, or to beat the drums of war” (Ward 165). This is more easily said than done, seeing that sometimes a journalist cannot ‘just’ maintain his independence.
The notion that journalists “function the best when they maintain an independence from those they cover is simple to understand but more difficult to adhere to, especially in times of conflict and crisis” (Chan 61). As journalists, “we know what is required to retain our independence”, Chan says. Journalists don’t join marches, sign petitions or serve boards – “by becoming journalists, we give up the right to be partisans”, he states (61). If a journalist would mingle him or herself in this kind of business, a conflict of interest could arise. This could be defined as “a clash between professional loyalties and outside interests that undermines the credibility of the moral agent” (Day qtd. in Froneman & Swanepoel 25).
In order to avoid these conflicts of interest, journalists should not have obligations to any groups and have to be committed to offer the truth to the public. “Journalists should not accept any gifts, free travel, special treatment or any privileges, which could compromise their integrity. It boils down to independence, responsibility and accountability - the very words that come to mind when discussing embeddedness” (Froneman & Swanepoel 25). Being embedded with, for instance, the military, creates a professionally challenging environment for journalists (Dodson 105), seeing that responsibility and freedom, two of the most important concepts for journalists’ work, could at some point be at stake.
When journalists use the words ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’ “they most often mean them within the context of an institutional role: the duties, obligations and opportunities of journalists and the organizations for which they work within political society” (Wilkins 807). Journalists “embody freedom, but they are also responsible to professional ideals that link to human virtue. They are free to be responsible to
themselves and to others in particular societies and culture” (Wilkins 809). To fulfill their responsibilities to society while embedded, journalists should be able to continue to report “professionally”, without interference (Carlson and Katovsky qtd. in Dodson 105).
But is this an accomplishable goal? As Tumber notes: “Inside a military unit as an embed it is hard to imagine how the inescapable reliance on the limited sources available could even approximate to objectivity” (448). When embedded in one’s own country’s military, the correspondent’s professional values of impartiality and objectivity can look wrong or misplaced. However, when a journalist finds him or herself embedded in a military, the discourse of independence can serve as a defense mechanism, against the possibility of compromised professionalism. Or, as Dodson (144) argues, “stating independence reinforces the professional identity”.
All in all, a conflict forms a very specific context for journalists to work in, one that does not always allow room for the common ideals of journalism such as objectivity, truth and independence. During a war, journalists’ professional attitudes are adapted to fit a new, dependent reality, rather than fully rejecting their practices and professional postures.
New Wars, New Reporting
In order to understand the journalistic principles and a journalist’s motives, actions, and ethics in war, war itself has to be understood. In the Middle East, wars have been fought, won and lost for centuries. One could fill a library trying to explain the immense complex history of conquerors and conquered in the region. This is too daunting of a task. Thus, for this thesis, only the most relevant happenings in warfare history will first be discussed in a brief, but in-depth manner. Then, the alterations this effectuated in war reporting will be dealt with. Lastly, Islam in the Middle East will be put in perspective, where after its influence on war and the changes this has evoked will be discussed.
Hundred Years of War
Most Middle Eastern countries have not seen real peace ever since the First World War. “Essentially, the Middle East finds itself in the same situation now as Europe did following the 1919 Treaty of Versailles: standing before a map that disregards the
region's ethnic and confessional realities”, states Bernhard Zand in Der Spiegel
Online. Because of the choices made by Western countries, the peoples of the
Middle East got intermingled and many citizens still see the borders drawn then as illegitimate. Historian David Fromkin, in his book A Peace to End All Peace, calls the core countries of the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine – the “children of England and France”.
According to Zand, no other group of countries has seen so many wars, civil wars, overthrows and terrorist attacks in recent decades as these countries. To understand why this happened (and keeps happening), the region’s history before World War I, the failure of Arab elite and superpower intervention, the role of political Islam, the discovery of oil and the tensions during Cold War all have to be taken into account.
When World War I ended in 1918, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and divided among the victors and their allies. France split up its mandate area into Lebanon and Syria, while England formed Iraq and Palestine. Transjordan was created as a buffer state. Hussein Bin Ali, the Sharif of the holy city of Mecca, was promised one Arab nation-state. The British and French divided the region into four countries, which are still among the most difficult to govern today.
In Syria and Lebanon, France exploited ethnic differences and governed on the principle of divide and rule (Selvik & Stenslie 33). Accordingly, the French created republics styled after their home countries. “None of them worked very well”, Bernard Lewis notes (61). Nevertheless, also because of this, the period between the end of the Great War in 1918 and the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 was a tremendously important era for the Middle East. “What occurred in these fateful decades transformed the destiny of entire nations, created new countries, brought overt European rule to the region, resulted in the drawing and redrawing of national boundaries, and gave rise to new dynasties” (Kamrava 103).
Syria has been in a state of instability more or less throughout the entire 20th century. “The country had experienced three separate military coups in 1949 alone, followed by further episodes of military intervention in 1952 and 1954” (Kamrava 264). Also, up until the early 1970s the Syrian armed forces had never really developed a cohesive organizational hierarchy or a sense of corporate identity. The
country drifted from domestic to international crisis and back, and was headed by leaders “generally seen as incompetent and self-serving” (Kamrava 264). As we shall see, general instability was not only the case in Syria.
The Emergence of the ‘Printers’
“Wars of one kind or another have been a regular feature of twentieth-century Middle Eastern life” (Owen qtd. in Heydemann, 325). Even before the start of the 1900s, an important happening occurred in this field: the war correspondent emerged in the Middle East. In the Crimean War (1854-56), West European journalists arrived for the first time in Ottoman Lands, “with the task of providing regular reports to avid readers of daily newspapers in London, Paris, and elsewhere. Some of them also made arrangements to provide reports to local newspapers, and some of these in turn, for the first time, began to publish daily” (Lewis 52). According to Lewis, this change was of immense significance and transformed Middle Eastern peoples’ view on both themselves and the world around them.
This emergence of ‘the journalist’ in the Middle East formed for the first time the opportunity to follow inside and outside the Islamic world (Lewis 53). Who the first war journalist was remains disputed, but he is said to have emerged during the Mexican War from 1846-48 (Roth 201). These so called ‘printers’ mostly enlisted to join the army to fight Mexico and therefore virtually no company was without a journalist. This obviously meant that war correspondents wrote from their country’s patriotic point of view.
Up until World War II and Korea, journalists accordingly wrote to the benefit of their countries, like Ernie Pyle, so-called America’s greatest World War II correspondent. “Correspondents reporting on World War II were certainly not expected to be disinterested,” Hallin notes (68). By this he means that journalists often set aside their ideals of objectivity and played the role of patriot and celebrant of national consensus. A good deal of this patriotism spilled over into the Vietnam period. But, it was in Vietnam that critique on the intervention of the anti-communists sparked within the correspondents’ community (Knightley 380).
A great contribution to the reporting in this era was the emerging ability to photograph and film the happenings in wartime. During the Vietnam time, television was a comparatively new medium and the demand from Europe and America for
graphic war images rose. One can say, that since the Vietnam War, reporting on conflicts has been more or less ‘free’: political restrains got less, correspondents were free to move around at will and censorship reduced (Knightley 423).
After the Vietnam War, changes started occurring more rapidly in war coverage, made possible by transforming technology. “The Vietnam War was the first conflict to be televised day after day; the 1991 Gulf War was covered live; the Kosovo war was the first in which the Internet was an important tool; and the 2001-2002 fighting in Afghanistan was covered through the use of mobile, satellite-enhanced news gathering. During the 2003 Iraq war, television, radio, and Web journalists were able to deliver their reports even faster” (Seib 10). Patriotic Pyle-style correspondence is gone, according to Mills, also because since Vietnam most combat correspondents have been short-termers. “Their reportorial stints are, with few exceptions, a matter of months, especially in Iraq, where being embedded with a unit limits a reporter's range. As a result, unlike Pyle, today's reporters do not strike the soldiers they are writing about as being in the war for the long haul, nor is their work widely read, as Pyle's column was (77).
Added to this is the fact that the very nature of war is changing – from linear strategic interactions to ‘mediated’, a process in which the media mediate between citizenry and the institutions involved in governments (Di Franco 2). But also, the reasons to conduct war had been changing for some time.
From Arab Nationalism to Islam
The political landscape of the Middle East had shifted dramatically by the end of the 1970s. Nationalism had been a powerful force since the 1940s, forming the character and destiny of peoples and countries, and it has been a dominant force ever since (Kamrava 171). In Syria under Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar’s late father, militarization and war preparation have been “an almost all-encompassing feature of the country’s political-cultural development and political economy. These processes determine how the regime governs, and strategies of social incorporation help legitimate the regime and the Syrian nation-state and form an important element of resource generation” (Perthes qtd. in Heydemann 151).
Secular nationalism was popular for a while, but it eventually crashed and burned. Instead, another common ground was found. Kamrava (576):
“The oil boom of the 1970s was fostering unprecedented economic and industrial growth and consequently dizzying social change. Rural-urban migration, uncontrolled urbanization, new industries and modes of employment, increasing diffusion and contact with other cultures—all of these developments had consequences for Middle Eastern societies’ perceptions of themselves and their state leaders. In the face of hostile and incompetent states, and a pervasive sense of social and cultural alienation among segments of the urban population, shelter was sought in the familiar and the comfortable, in Islam.”
Baʿthism, Bourguibaism, Nasserism, Arab Socialism and Qaddafi’s Third Way were all secular ideologies, where state and national interest stood central. After multiple defeats of the secular, inherently weak and corrupt leaderships, the people of the states in the Middle East and North Africa “resorted to higher levels of repression as a substitute for declining ideological popularity” (Kamrava 575). Islam thus steadily formed a solid ground for the people in the Middle East to substitute the feeling of Arab Nationalism.
Islam furthermore proved to be a fertile breeding ground for religious warfare in a new era. In the West, “God was twice dethroned and replaced – as the source of sovereignty by the people, as the object of worship by the nation” (Lewis 106). Where these ideas were alien to Islam beforehand, they became familiar during the course of the nineteenth century. Western manners of nation forming were adopted and shari’a law (Islamic law) was restricted only to marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Modern, Western European laws were adopted.
Recently though, a strong reaction has risen against these changes. Lewis (106):
“A whole series of Islamic radical and militant movements, loosely and inaccurately designated as “fundamentalist,” share the objective of undoing the secularizing reforms of the last century, abolishing the imported codes of law and the social customs that came with them, and returning to the Holy Law of Islam and an Islamic political order.”
Even Arab nationalism and patriotism, once deemed so important, are now questioned and sometimes denounced as anti-Islamic. Those nowadays known as Islamists or fundamentalists feel that the failures and shortcomings of the modern Islamic lands stem from the adoption of Western alien practices (Lewis 156). Groups like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and now the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), believe in this doctrine. They have a literalist interpretation of Islam and its precepts. “Their world is one of simple divisions: good versus evil; the oppressed versus the oppressors; the abode of Islam (dar al-Islam) versus the abode of war (dar al-harb)” (Kamrava 587). The best way to achieve their goals, for them, is jihad, which they interpret as the ‘holy war’, rather than, as more sophisticated Muslims would have it, ‘striving’ for betterment (Kamrava 588), and this is what currently drives the biggest terrorist cells in the Middle East.
Jihad: means to an end
This jihad has in the last decades often translated into violent attacks on both state leaders and on the state’s perceived foreign patrons. For example, Osama bin Laden’s attacks on American targets were accordingly inspired by a belief that the United States of America was the biggest patron of the Saudi royal family (Kamrava 588). The Islamic fundamentalists, as we know them today, breed in a vacuum of intellectual political discourse, “when the authoritarianism of the state makes it impossible to discuss and examine complex social and political problems in a reasoned manner. State terror elicits terror of a different kind, the terror of the young and the restless who want answers and solutions but find most avenues of expression blocked by an intransigent elite”, Kamrava states (589).
Such terrorist activities have provoked equally violent reactions from many Middle Eastern countries and their leaders, thus continuing a vicious cycle of political violence. In modern-day Syria, this is all too obvious. Armed Islamists in Syria believe that “the masses are rallying” behind them and the security forces of the state – backed by high-tech military equipment – will come tumbling down before the rebels’ superior moral purity (Ghadbian 84). When in 2011 the Syrian uprising began, the fighting erupted in a never before seen manner.
In the course of the Syrian Civil War, two major rebel factions emerged: Jahbat al-Nusra (JN), founded in the beginning of 2012 by Abu Mohammed al-Jowlani, and
the Islamic State of Iran and ash-Sham (ISIS). In April 2013, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), proposed a merge with JN and so ISIS was formed (al-Tamimi 5). It distinguishes itself from other rebel groups in Syria in a couple of ways: its major financial recourses, they reach out to locals with da’wah meetings, they run schools where Qur’an memorization is required, and it has set up Islamic courts and enforced the Shari’a Islamic law (al-Tamimi 10). In the long run, it is ISIS’ goal, as they have openly claimed in the recent past, to establish a Caliphate that should encompass the entire world. Jihad, however violent it gets, is a means to an end for the extremists. By May 2014, a sustainable resolution of the conflict was nowhere to be found in Syria as religious motivated clashes escalated (Hove and Mutanda 2).
Furthermore, a great deal of the reason why the situation in Syria escalated in this downward spiral of violence is the intermingling of, and the ill-conditioned relations between, the United States and Russia. According to Hove and Mutanda, Bashar al-Assad gained significant allies through the way he was alienatedly portrayed by the Western media. Russia was determined to demonstrate that the aftermath of the Cold War “was not to be misconstrued for a weaker Russia whose allies could be easily overrun for hegemonic tendencies advanced in the name of defending human rights” (2). The conflict in Syria, fought between several rebel groups and oppositions from inside the country, was now also being fought in an interstate manner between two of the worlds’ superpowers.
Reporting War in Syria
The essence of war is changing in the Middle East, and with this, the role of the journalists who report on the wars. Normative ideals such as objectivity, truth, and independence have gotten a rather arduous feeling to them. In practice however, more issues arise; how does a journalist get access to resources, interviewees and information in a warzone? How does he or she reach the area? Is the information he or she gathers in a conflict always trustworthy? And how does one keep one’s distance, to not become a part of the conflict?
These questions are directly linked to journalisms social mission of responsibility for the news it makes and to its public. This is a professional drive for
most journalists and thus has to be pursued. But, as many authors have stated: when war comes, the truth is always the first victim. When, as is the case in modern day Syria, journalists cannot easily reach the place of conflict, the truth becomes harder to find. The characteristics of this war make journalist’s jobs more difficult, especially since abduction, torture and beheading have become somewhat of a norm for ISIS.
Facts and Figures
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) stated in their end-2014 report Middle East Deadliest Region that an “unusually high proportion of journalists killed in relation to their work in 2014 were international journalists, as correspondents crossed borders to cover conflict and dangerous situations in the Middle East”. The CPJ started compiling records on journalist deaths all over the world in 1992. Since then, the past three years (2012-14) have been the deadliest and almost half of the recorded killed journalists in 2014 died in the Middle East. In Syria, the total number of deaths has come to an overall 80 since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, with 11 of them murders (the remaining 69 were killed during a dangerous assignment or by crossfire). Syria therefore is the second deadliest place for journalists, after Iraq with 166 deaths.
Despite the increased risks to Western journalists working in conflict zones, the overwhelming majority of journalists who face threat for their work are local. 60 of the 80 journalists killed in Syria are local (CPJ). Still, the danger of working as an international correspondent gained significant attention when members of ISIS executed U.S. freelance journalist James Foley. He had been kidnapped in 2012 in Idlib province in northwest Syria, along with colleague British journalist John Cantlie, who still remains in captivity until this very day. Two weeks after Foley’s murder, ISIS also beheaded U.S.-Israeli freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, who was captured in August 2013. In January of this year, Japanese freelance journalist Kenji Goto was thus far the last journalist who was beheaded by ISIS.
New Risks in Reporting
These violent messages sent by ISIS to the West pose a new threat to journalists. Since the targeted abductions of journalists and, accordingly, their beheadings starting in 2014, it has become challenging for journalists to go inside Syria. If they
can (which is most likely the case, since borders from Turkey and other neighboring countries are easily crossed), it is not wise. Journalists and aid-workers are actively targeted in the area, since they are often seen as accomplices of the enemy.
As a consequence for gathering news in these areas, Rantanen notes that in the Iraq war “the sources of news come under particular scrutiny. As is commonly known, the sources of news available to any medium have effect on what is covered and how it is covered. As Sigal (1986: 15) famously put it, ‘news is not what happens, but what someone says has happened and will happen’” (qtd. in Allan and Zelizer 302). In the case of Syria, this is also true; the news the public at home views is mostly not the journalist’s truth, considering journalists can’t go into the warzone. This shows how the mediatisation of war coverage “encourages and protects the propaganda efforts of whoever has most control over access to the battle zone to communication facilities” (Kim qtd. in McQuail 114), in this case, ISIS.
Moreover, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria currently has more than only a communication monopoly in the region. It has its own online magazine called Dabiq, first published in July 2014, shoots professional videos of ransom pleas, beheadings and IS-promotion propaganda, and it has a large presence on social media like Facebook and Twitter. News desks in the countries from which the war correspondents cannot go into the warzones need other sources for their news. The temptation of publishing articles about all the above named things ISIS produces can therefore become bigger. Or, as The Independent’s longtime Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk (qtd. in Allan and Matheson 184) in light of the two-week attack on Gaza in 2008 noted that the:
“Israeli use an ‘old Soviet tactic’ form Afghanistan, namely clearing the country of reporters so it could wage brutal war unhindered. Yet images and stories did emerge during the fighting that’s attested the ordeal of those within the besieged city. Local stringers, now commonly used by overseas news organisations in conflict areas where access is difficult or expensive (Hamilton and Jenner 2004), provided footage and news reports.”
This shows how, in the vacuum left behind by war reporters, others take their places. Whether they are local stringers the reporters used to work with, fighters from the attacking or defending party in the war, or local bloggers – word about the war eventually does come out. In modern day Syria, the Internet and social media made this clearer than ever, as we shall see in the next section. In what way does that influence the daily work of the war correspondents?
(Social) Media and Terrorism
The traditional media reports on violence, conflict and war all the time. In the case of ISIS and the ‘terrorism’ they convey media naturally play a central role. Terrorism in this sense can be defined as “a moral action, which results from both rational (deliberation) and experiential (habituation) processes, themselves the outcome of the interaction between individual and environment” (Bouhana & Wikström 12). This is, admittedly, a rather abstract definition. Many scholars have, mostly in vain, debated about a comprehensive definition of terrorism, so for the sake of this thesis, the more specific term ‘religious terrorism’ will be explained briefly.
Religious terrorism can, according to Gunning & Jackson, be distinguished from other forms of violence by its transcendent, utopian or religious goals, in contrast to the more pragmatic political aims of the ‘old’ secular terrorism. Therefore, the goal of Islamic terrorists is argued to be (371):
“ ‘Uniting all Muslims into one state, and dominating the world’ (Cook 2003, p. 52). In a similar vein, it is suggested that ‘religious terrorists’ are not interested in gradually building a better world or in reform, but in destroying the world as a means of hastening the prophesied return of ‘God’, ‘the Messiah’ or ‘the Mahdi’ in the final installment of human history (if the terrorists in question are millenarian), or at least a radical refashioning of society into a more God-fearing community.”
Because of this different worldview that Islamic terrorists adhere to, Juergensmeyer and others argue that these religious terrorists have anti-modern goals, which therefore means that they are anti-progressive. Religious terrorists work to “an antimodern political agenda”, Juergensmeyer notes (230). In the case of ISIS,
Juergensmeyer’s view seems a bit limited. The Islamic group makes use of high tech weaponry, is informed of the latest intelligence and recruits new fighters from all corners of the world. Their terrorism tactics are combined with guerilla tactics (Blumenau 1) and have advanced plans to take over the world. ISIS mixes religious terrorism with political ideas, in order to establish a Caliphate on actual territory in Syria and Iraq, which is why the group poses such a different threat than other groups before.
According to al-Tamimi, ISIS distinguishes itself from all other rebel groups in its outreach to Syrians and Muslims all over the world “by employing social media with remarkable effectiveness. “Indeed, the extent of ISIS’s political and media outreach aimed at garnering local support is unprecedented in the history of global jihadist movements” (al-Tamimi 8). By displaying spectacular violent performances, militant activists and terrorists gain access to the mass media, “which are constantly in search of sensational stories and images. […] Indeed, social movement struggles are largely waged through media wars of symbolic interpretation” (Juris 416). This shows that the war ISIS fights is not only fought on the battlegrounds in Syria and Iraq. “The media are part of the deadly game of terrorism”, journalist Terry Anderson therefore states (128). Anderson himself was kidnapped on March 16 1985 in Lebanon where he was working as a correspondent. He stayed locked up with the Islamic Jihad for seven years, whilst witnessing the powerful relationship between terrorism and the press.
According to Anderson, when the media report on a political kidnapping, an assassination or a deadly bombing, that means a first victory for the terrorists. “Without the world’s attention, these acts of viciousness are pointless”, he says. In this way, the media carry messages from and to anyone with the skill, knowledge or importance to make use of them. “It may be propaganda or it may be truth, but either way, the media carry powerful influence” (Anderson 129).
Terrorist organizations like ISIS use this influence to get their messages out and, in a way, the conflict. In Anderson’s case, photographs and videos were released of the captives “along with demands as if our faces – mine in particular – were some sort of instantaneous press pass”. And the press, of course, took the bait. “No media outlet could deny their audience, and especially not a hostage’s relatives,
a glimpse of the Americans held in Lebanon. It was a natural way to grab the world’s attention” (Anderson 131).
Professional Terrorism Media
This usage of news about kidnappings and it being fed by terrorists is, thus, not a new story. What is new, though, is the current situation in which the kidnappings happen, are used, and the consequences thereof in modern day Syria. The age-old propaganda tactic, “the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct behavior to achieve a response” (Jowett and O’Donnell qtd. in Lynch 72), is still used by ISIS today. ISIS uses the Western media the same way as its predecessors did before it, but there are some differences, as mentioned before: its omnipresent social media outlet, their own online magazine
Dabiq and the shooting of professional videos of the abductees, all get posted online
for the whole world to see. Moreover, because all this is present online, it therefore forces the media to give notice to it.
In this way, ISIS is less dependent of the Western media to cover their atrocities, than in the case that Anderson describes. One can say it even has built a media empire of its own. In a recent study on ISIS supporters’ Twitter activity conducted by the Brookings Institution, the sophistication of the network is laid bare. By using a sample of 20.000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts, the authors of The
ISIS Twitter Census show the size of the network, who takes part in its campaign and
how social media strengthens the organization itself. They found out, for example, that the mujtahidun (industrious ones) are prolific Twitter users who form the highly engaged core of ISIS’s social media machine. “This activity, more than any other, drives the success of ISIS’s efforts to promulgate its message on social media” (29).
Other than recruiting new ISIS soldiers and spreading propaganda on Twitter, the organization issues an online magazine entitled Dabiq. The first issue, The
Return of Khalifah, was released digitally on July 5, 2014. It provides
“English-language readers with battlefield updates, administrative reporting, and religious commentary” (Ghambir 1). According to Ghambir, researcher at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, it is likely that the magazine aims to speak to enemies as well as potential ISIS supporters in the Western world (2). In this light, Dabiq is a highly sophisticated propaganda pamphlet, unlike any other before seen in the
region. It is, moreover, an “outward-looking articulation of ISIS’s Caliphate vision” (Ghambir 10), which spreads its own news, rather than impartial journalists’ doing this job. ISIS’s own outreach ‘department’ assembles an approximately fifty-page publication in weeks, indicating a short timeline to publication (Ghambir 2).
Add to this the highly professional footage of hostage movies, and it seems like ISIS has an even more sophisticated media center than some in Europe. As was the case with journalist Anderson in the 1980’s uses ISIS footage of abductees. A difference is the goal: where the Islamic Jihad shoot videos of the captives for ransom purposes, ISIS asks for ransom quietly, and thereafter beheads the abductees on camera when their wishes are not fulfilled. In this way, the violence portrayed by ISIS is meaningful violence. This performative violence “can be seen as a mode of communication through which activists seek to effect social transformation by staging symbolic confrontation”, Juris notes (415). The social transformation in this case, is ISIS’ aim of establishing the Caliphate and doing everything in its power to achieve this goal.
This ‘Propaganda of the Deed’ (POTD) has been contributing to the ‘war of images’ being fought between countries in the Middle East and Western superpowers for some time now, Bolt notes. Where POTD was unsuccessful in the 19th Century due to a lack of means to reach mass audiences, ISIS now has the tools. It conveys a sustained message and explains, “how using violence could deliver a better society” (Bolt 24). In ISIS’ effort to produce such sensationalist violence and manufacture POTD about it, there seems to be no place for common war journalists to do their jobs anymore. Add to this that for foreign correspondents in Syria, conditions have become much less hospitable. According to the CPJ, “Covering combat is risky, but a much greater threat than a stray bullet are the murderers who kill journalists deliberately, using the generalized violence associated with war to cover their tracks” (qtd. in Tumber 442). In Syria, not only ISIS, but more than a dozen different armed groups from both the government and opposition sides have taken up arms and send out their own news onto the World Wide Web. This, more than ever, confuses the role of journalists in a war zone and raises questions about the news the viewer sees in the West.
Modern day war reporting in Syria
In this theoretical framework, the knowledge necessary to unravel the practice of modern day war journalism on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has been provided. Journalists’ responsibility to society has been discussed, with a focus on objectivity, truth and independence as the three most vital normative ideals for reporters. The changes in the essence of warfare in the Middle East have been presented in a historical perspective, in accordance to the role of Islam, where after the emergence of war correspondents was considered. Then, light was shed upon the way journalists report from warzones in the Middle East, and especially in Syria. The last part focused on ISIS and their propaganda mechanisms.
Tumber and Prentoulis already mentioned the changes in war journalism in 2003, but their findings are still as important as back then. As the journalist’s role as an interpreter becomes more pronounced and recognized, they say, the psychological dimension of war reporting is opening up a new debate (in Blaagaard 1077). New technologies are used and the lines between the public (blogger, ISIS) and media (journalist) are getting blurred. The indications for news coverage of future wars are not good, Tumber notes. A reassessment about the nature of witnessing, truth, and objectivity is needed, next to resistance against censorship, propaganda and misinformation (Tumber 204). In the next chapter, therefore, empirical data will be given about the practice of war reporters based in Istanbul, Turkey, in order to get an understanding of the current situation on the ground of reporting about the conflict with ISIS, and answer the main question of this thesis: How is war journalism
III. Methodology
“Precisely what counts as truth in a war zone, of course, is very much in the eye of the beholder” (Stuart Allan in Allan and Zelizer 360). Truth is, next to objectivity and independence, one of the main pillars in journalisms’ practice. Thus, to understand the changes in war journalism in Syria and Iraq, the eye of the beholder has to be understood. In the case of this thesis, this is the war journalists’ perspective.
To gain inside information on this point of view, interviews have been conducted with eleven journalists who work or have worked from Turkey in Syria and Iraq. Distinctions have been made between the different journalists and the ways they interpret their work, which will become clear in the first section of this chapter. The methods of conducting these interviews will be then discussed. Then, the manner in which the data that came out of these interviews will be analyzed in the empirical chapter hereafter will be discussed. But first, the choice of conducting interviews in an anthropological manner will be clarified, and why I chose this way of doing research to answer my main question.
Anthropology for journalists
“While some social scientists may be "rediscovering" the interpretive approach, it has always been at the core of cultural anthropology, and it is from anthropology that journalists can learn research methods that enrich their task, and which help to span this gap between journalism and social science” (Bird 5). Bird here speaks about the methods of researching and conducting interviews that anthropologists have mastered over time. In this thesis, the theoretical aspects of conducting anthropological research and journalistic practice in interviewing have been combined. This, in order to answer the main question as mentioned before:
How is war journalism changing due to the particular features of the ISIS-conflict in Syria and Iraq?
The sub-questions accordingly are:
