Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Honest Reporting's Lessons for Scribblers

Reference:

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/Dishonest_Reporter_Award_2009.asp

All struggle with two broad and fundamental approaches in the development of opinion, reporting, and rhetoric: subjective self-interest and objective universalism.

Do we speak for ourselves?

Do we speak for all?

Do we "bend and twist it some" for our persons, family, relatives, and business and political loyalties, or do hew to other rules and tools to discern true states of affairs that we may then report dispassionately albeit with a deeper and altogether more considerate passion?

First person or third?

Honest Reporting's year-end wrap on pundits with pinheads indirectly addresses the questions I've posed and similarly provides a few lessons in criticism and journalism gone astray.

Starting with the egregious rolls of the biased in the coverage of the war in Gaza -- e.g., "And when Hamas fired a rocket from a foreign press building, an Al-Arabiya journalist's delighted reaction was caught on camera for YouTube posterity" -- Honest Reporting goes on to cover Pat Oliphant's cartoon of a head, goose-stepping, Star of David pushing goon, The New Statesmen's enabling Ken Livingstone to "guest edit" and make a propaganda sheet of the mainstream staple, Max Blumenthal's comparison in the Huffington Post of Iran's protest-stomping Basij Militia and the Israeli Defense Force, and sundry other indulgences in the language of subjective--and pernicious--self interest. 

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Eritrea - Clever News

NAIROBI, Dec 16 (Reuters) - A group of mostly elderly Christian women said to have been arrested last week for practising a religion not endorsed by the Eritrean government have been released in the capital, a diplomat said on Wednesday.

Credit writer Jeremy Clarke and editor Giles Elgood with composing just the right phrase that both report and challenges earlier stories involving the persecution of Christians in Eritrea (see OA&L "Eritrea - Gaming in Dark Infospace": http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2009/12/10-1005.html).

The story of the arrest of about 30 Christian women gathered together in an outlawed splinter of the Methodist Church may or may not be true, but the condition of the story jives with similar journalism issues associated with the regimes of other "presidents (and / or clerics) for life".

1. Where is the byline?

2. How many degrees of web-separation are there between the byline and an e-mail address or other fast contact (e.g., international telephone) data?

3. Where is other press "in-country" to check or cover the same story independent of prior coverage?

4. Proper nouns: who was arrested, first-name, last name; where and when; and . . . what did they say or what did any interlocutor, lawyer or government official, have to say about their arrest in their stead? 

Arrested one week . . . released another . . . organizationally incestuous coverage (one story, each source credits another beneath its own roof for breaking it) . . . inability to develop independent second, third, and fourth party corroboration  . . . all of that, as I like to say: "positively Orwellian."

In terms familiar to those who shamelessly publish propaganda, the damage is done with merely the accusation--no need to go into it.  The reader catches the headline, "Jewish doctor harvests organs for transplant", and that's enough, and if there's a seed for the libel, its character will always differ wildly from the header.

According to Nationmaster, a compiler of good-to-know state statistics, Eritrea supports 5 ISP's and 120,000 users.  I'd gamble on their being one or two English-typing "citizen-journalists" in that population.  However, even with laptop journalists prevalent, autocracies generally inhibit unofficial coverage of sensitive subjects, and the likelihood of seeing this story more fully investigated and vetted may be slim. 

Reference

Nationmaster.  "Africa > Eritrea > Internet."  http://www.nationmaster.com/country/er-eritrea/int-internet

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Eritrea - Gaming in Dark Infospace

NEWS ALERT: Asmara Detains 30 Christian Women, Group Says

December 7, 2009

Security forces in Eritrea have detained dozens, mostly elderly, Christian women in the capital Amara as part of a crackdown on evangelical activities, an advocacy group said Monday, December 7.

Source: http://www.worthynews.com/7038-news-alert-asmara-detains-30-christian-women-group-says

NEWS ALERT: Asmara Detains 30 Christian Women, Group Says

Posted on: 2009-12-07 02:57:19 By Worthy News Africa Service

ASMARA, ERITREA (Worthy News)-- Security forces in Eritrea have detained dozens, mostly elderly, Christian women in the capital Amara as part of a crackdown on evangelical activities, an advocacy group said Monday, December 7.

Source: http://www.christianpersecution.info/index.php?view=7038

. . . The U.S. Department of State in its 2002 report on religious freedom in Eritrea reported:

"The Government instituted new restrictions on religious groups known collectively as 'Pentes.' Pentes include all groups that do not belong to the four principal religions--Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Catholic, and Evangelical Christian--such as Pentecostals, Born Again Christians, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baha'is, Buddhists, and other Protestants. In 2001 the Government began closing Pente facilities. Following a May 2002 government decree that all religious groups must register or cease all religious activities, all religious facilities not belonging to the four principal religions were closed by the end of the period covered by this report. The Government also continued to harass, detain, and discriminate against members of the small community of Jehovah's Witnesses" (USDOS 7 Oct 2002). [1]

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USCIS,,ERI,,3f5209b84,0.html

That last source not only provides a citation record for itself, but it notes the date on which reader accessed it.

Finally:

NAIROBI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Eritrea said on Thursday it was not aware of reports of an alleged mass arrest of Christians that a rights group says took place in the capital Asmara last weekend.

Eritrea's Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters by phone that he had not seen any reports of arrests and that any arrests would not have been religiously motivated.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEE5B90SO.htm

Ah, the blogger's second row seat to history, which may not be far from the seats of analysts elsewhere mining similar compilations, has its many joys.

Without being told, you should see the problem I do, but you may not see it the same way I do.

First, let me list the information path and motivation for interest.

1. Reuters AlertNet's list service has sent me e-mail with this teaser: "Eritrea says not aware of mass arrest of Christians http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEE5B90SO.htm."

2. Using Google's search engine, I track for "Asmara Christian Persecution", and that returns the UNHCR bulletin from January 2003 ("last accessed December 10, 2009"), which is really a Homeland Security Document--at least it carries the logo plus a bureau imprimatur), and which in turn has its own contributing rivulets.

3. Heading to the source of AlertNet's conveyance, "christianpersecution.info" in the U.S. credits "worthynews.com" reporting from Africa with the story, which Worthy News credits to Christian Persecution.

A simple byline and an e-mail address would be helpful at this stage of sniffing the story to see if there really is a story.

I certainly do believe that from Bethlehem in the Palestinian occupation or quasi-democratic ersatz provisional thugocracy to Lahore, Pakistan, that Christians do indeed face persecution for beliefs and activities undertaken in the name of Christ in Muslim-majority lands, but Eritrea, a less aligned dictatorship, may have a different interest in the control of Christian enthusiasms:

--In 2002, government spokespersons began comparing Pentecostal/charismatic and evangelical churches with Islamists and branded them a danger to national security.

--As a consequence of this, all churches not belonging to the Orthodox, Catholic or Lutheran denominations in Eritrea were ordered to close in May 2002.  [1]

Dictatorships serve the dictator, in Eritrea, Isaias Aferwerki who led the ranks in breaking away from Ethiopia and has presided provisionally since May 1993, and the same does not need his job made any more difficult than it already is.

Human curiosity and the Internet being what they are, search string "eritrea religious freedom" yields quite a different view of this issue:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=1&oq=Eritrea+religious&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SUNA_enUS250US250&q=eritrea+religious+freedom

In 2007, the Catholic News Agency conveyed this hearsay, "The expulsion of 14 Catholic missionaries from Eritrea two days ago is part of a plan of the Maoist dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerkito to destroy the Catholic Church in Eritrea, reports CISA": http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10989.

A Voice of America opinion piece had this to note earlier this past year:

The Eritrean government severely restricts freedom of religion for groups that it has not registered and infringes on the independence of its registered groups. Following a 2002 decree that religious groups must register, the government closed all religious facilities not belonging to the country’s four main religious communities: the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea, and Islam.

The Eritrean government continues to harass, arrest, detain, torture, and kill members of evangelical groups, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a reform movement within the Eritrean Orthodox Church. The government has failed to grant registration to any religious groups that applied for it in 2002. Religious meetings are restricted, and individuals are arrested during religious ceremonies, gatherings, and prayer meetings in private homes.

For religious zealots of both Christian and Muslim faith, Eritrea would seem ripe for picking on and for prosyletizing.  Where are the mujahiddeen of Eritrea?  Well here is the voice of one by proxy:

After the colonial powers such as Britain, France and the Netherlands withdrew in the 1950s and '60s, most African countries fell into the hands of communist or fascist dictatorships. Most of these post-colonial regimes followed a policy of systematic intimidation of Muslims, and indeed are still doing so."

Source: http://www.harunyahya.com/spring10.php

I'll take Harun Yahya, a Turkish intellectual, at his word.  On the same page, he goes on to assert this:

One of the reasons for the endless conflict, anarchy and war in Eritrea, one of the poorest regions in the world despite its socio-economic and geo-strategic importance, is the strategy of countries that dominate regional policies there, which is based on their own interests, totally ignoring the needs and demands of the people living in this region. Israel comes first among these countries.

Previous Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes had only one thing in common with the state of Israel: their anti-Islamic line. As we saw at the beginning of this book, Israel sees Islam as the greatest danger to its dominance over the Middle East, itself built on cruelty, violation and oppression. That is why there is always an Israeli presence in all regions where Muslims are oppressed and face extinction, from Bosnia to the Philippines, from East Turkestan to Eritrea. In his book The Israeli Connection: Who Arms Israel and Why? Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Israel's Haifa University characterizes such activities by his country all over the world over as "Israel's world war." As prominent Israeli newspaper columnist Nahum Barnea has noted, "Israel will become the Western vanguard in the war against the Islamic enemy.'"

What happened to the Maoists, the godless, the People of the Little Red Book?

I don't know, and I would well invite Harun Yahya to survey and detail the architecture of ideological thought and practice within Isaias Aferwerki's regime.

Oddly, Eritrea has for several years been linked to the conveyance of arms to Islamist anti-government insurgents in Somalia. 

Try swallowing this from an Al Jazeera story on a UN Security Council report:

In an accusation backed by some security experts and diplomats, Somalia's government said earlier this month that Eritrea continues to support al Shabab fighters with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

Eritrea rejects the accusations that it sends weapons to the al Qaeda-linked groups fighting Somalia's government.

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/05/200951603447360512.html 

And, of course, Eritrea doesn't persecute Christians and Muslims either.

Autocratic institutions and private kingdoms produce themselves, if you will, out of the light.

Burma, Cameroon, Phillipinnes, Zimbabwe, Iran, Eritrea may differ in atmosphere or cultural flavor, but they are all alike, and we, a global readership, may confuse ourselves with the vestigial alliances with which we have previously filtered our perception of events elsewhere and not yet vigorously drilled down to the core drivers of conflicts and of the world's tyrannies.

I am Jewish and I am pro-Israel and pro-Israeli, and with that comes the inclination, perhaps the obligation, by no means exclusive, to look into the darker regions, geopolitical and psychological, and contribute to the illumination of their gears and hinges.  Whether the most adverse of human processes are anchored in language, so much a part of the Islamic Small Wars, or in behaviors so myopic and narrowed to me and mine as to debase and dehumanize you and yours, which may indeed form the basis of a case against the west, I want to see certain inner workings, and I want you to see that intellectual and social machinery with me.

It is a hard thing transporting the better values of cultures and religions into more honest and noble alignments, but the ends cannot be otherwise in a globally and vigorously communicating social environment.

Cited Reference

Note: without question and neither to detriment nor honor, I write as I discover--definitely not a 19th Century research method here--and try for some control by keeping narrow in my interests and consequently able to recover information of which I've made myself aware and carry that into an integrating and synthesizing communication.  Above I've provided short reference inline for most quotations and hope that will suffice for readers surfing off on relevant tangents.

1. Department of Homeland Security, United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.  "Eritrea: Information on the Persecution of Evangelical Christians in Asmara, Eritrea."  January 28,  2003, ERI03002.ZAR, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3f5209b84.html [accessed 10 December 2009]

Other Reference

YNet News.  "Eritrea's Last Native Jew Tends Graves, Remembers."  Jewish Scene, January 5, 2006: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3246419,00.html

End Plate

Mendacity! Do you know what that is?
It's lies and liars!

  
  
Who's been lying to you? Maggie?

  
  
No, not one lie or one person.
The whole thing.

Source: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/c/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-script.html

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Mindspiration

And we know from our own records that in spite of the falsification of truth that is taking place everywhere in the world, and in spite of the great advances in all spheres of life in the last hundred years, the human rights map of the world is more or less the same. The killing goes on, the torture goes on, the hidden and live burial of those who raise their voices against atrocities goes on, the suppression and the burning of books goes on; the kidnapping of journalists goes on; and the “goes on” goes on. And our work as defenders of the rights of these victims for freedom of expression, for freedom of breathing, for free trial goes on. And it will go on.

Baraheni, Reza.  "President's Report" in Five Years and Fifty Lashes: PEN Canada, 2002-2003 Annual Report: http://www.pencanada.ca/media/AnnualReport02-03.pdf

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Arresting Time in the Aftermath of a Suicide Bombing

Movies make it exciting.

Television news makes it forgettable.

A photograph, however, makes it stand still.

In the way of the web, I wanted to recall the name of the organization, ZAKA, cited in the previous post, and in the process found a war photographer's blog.  About thirteen months ago, Zoriah photographed the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Anbar Province, Iraq: http://www.zoriah.net/blog/2008/06/anbar-province.html.

At first, I confess, I thought I was looking over an event in Israel--old men wearing shawls, the legs of a man with slim black shooes on his feet; who could tell from that?  As I prepared to share the Zoriah site with you, I did the little bit of reading required: without the words, the same photograph could prove emblemmatic for many places.

Some time ago, I picked this up, loosely recalled, from a visit to the NASA Observation Group page: "If you look at a picture and think you have seen it, look again."

On first glance, I missed the one picture of two unidentifiable Marines that lost the journalist his embed privileges in Iraq . . . .

It was just 148 years ago that Matthew Brady's assigned photographer Alexander Gardner reached the Antietam battlefield at Sharpsburg, Maryland in time to photograph the dead before burial crews swept through the area.

Shocking at the time--the first ever of battlefield carnage--and in stereoscope, they may have set the tone for both objective and always gutsier war photography.

In today's information battlespace, the war image has become a convenient raw element for the fashioning of "spin" by partisan rhetoricians.  My principle: the photographer must write a completely accurate and honest caption for his work plus, and, this one way or the other, keep the context of the work clear.

With that for a start, however, there remains much to argue.  I'm not going to tackle the issue but may refer readers to a classic in the field, Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch 1975).

In consideration of what the Islamists have brought to Islam (also New York, Madrid, London, Islamabad, Mumbai, Mogadishu, and elsewhere), also the history of war photography in general, and perhaps the need to continue emphasizing (as may the "X-Ray Project" listed in the left-hand sidebar) just the plain ugly reality for humanity of every suicide bombing or other attack, I'm going to post this.

Reference

Gardner, Alexander.  "Antietam, Maryland. Confederate soldiers as they fell near the Burnside bridge."  LCC title.  September 1862.

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Blogging on the Front Lines

VIENNA, July 16 (Reuters) - Hooliganism charges against two opposition bloggers in Azerbaijan are unfounded and the case is fresh proof that freedom of speech is dying in the central Asian state, an official from Europe's main rights watchdog said on Thursday.

Adnan Hajizade, a video blogger and member of the "OL!" opposition movement, was arrested along with youth activist Emin Milli at a cafe in Baku on July 8, after they were beaten by two men in an unprovoked attack according to their defence team.

Azeri authorities say they committed "hooliganism". They face 2-5 years in prison if found guilty. [1]

Whether Iran or Azerbaijan, the powers would seem to be of the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" sort, for they would sore be the subject of more hearing, speaking, and seeing than they could themselves might stand.

What are they afraid of?

Mirrors.

Reference

1. Westall, Sylvia.  "Bloggers case shows Azeri free speech dying-OSCE."  AlertNet, July 16, 2009: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LG272224.htm

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Iranian Street Video - Useless

I just got back from YouTube.

In the plugged in, turned on, and tuned in swirl of the Internet, one submerges in the surf; however, what one experiences or observes there may be difficult to describe. 

It would seem most certainly difficult to describe on the part of a wave of citizen video-cellphone journalists, and while God may bless them for gathering and posting footage on the run, viewers around the world may be more puzzled than informed by what they're witnessing at their computers. 

Forget about corroboration and other tests of valdity and reliability.

One could do with the following minimum in video captioning:

• Date

• Time

• Location

• Who or what is in the picture (e.g., identify state-sponsored militia or military to the unit; identify protest organizations, if any, in general)

• Why (explain tactical, strategic, or spiritual point of the action)

Most of all, commit (ye citizen videographers) to posting accurate, factual, and ultimately verifiable verbal data along with footage.

As I produce web commentary on conflict, I want to ground my opinion in as truthful a body of information and raw data as I can get from the Internet and other sources. 

While pictures may paint a thousand words, it often requires as many to provide viewers with a thorough "interpretation".  With events breaking in Iran and people recording them on their cell phones,  one asks for much less: again, date, time, location, subject identification, and a little bit of reasoning.

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Journalism: Another Primer

The inspiration for this post came from elsewhere this morning, but I thought to reprint it here because for those following Islamic and other conflicts, the idea that "truth is the first casualty of war" has a certain persistence: however, these days, with multiple observers with many viewpoints publishing through many, many channels, our ability to verify and validate reports has never been better; moreover, our ability to explore diverse interpretations of events may be considered nothing short of revolutionary because we're able to simultaneously research and absorb the literature of many cultures as we work with the meaning of the news.

 

By following conflict worldwide and identifying common characteristics and elements across all, the way all humanity looks on warfare may undergo more change than any of the cultures afflicted by warfare.  We're going to see the world's conflicts differently because our perspectives have changed radically.

 

Comments published elsewhere about the most fundamental aspects of journalism:

Whatever the source of news--any major web portal, any small blog, any flyer, any broadsheet--one may expect the following:

 

--Factual data: who, what, when, where, how, and why? Every truthful news statement answers those questions at least minimally.

 

--Verifiable and reliable data: any expression of fact may be accepted at face value, but one may want to check any first assertion or report with a second or third observation or responsible report, and not necessarily from cooperating sources.

 

In that few have the resources or time to investigate a story themselves, we may look instead for corroboration between diverse news sources.

 

If one has doubts about, say, Geo's reporting on a story, one may read about the same from Aljazeera, and then not stop there--head to Reuters and the BCC, and if that's not enough, go to France24 -- http://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/ -- and may all Google on to all elsewhere in the world.

 

Good factual information is first of all questionable: it may be met with skepticism but also pursued, tested, corroborated, and found, when one has read enough or conducted interviews enough and to satisfaction, undeniable.

 

Beyond the factual, argument or pursuasive speech may be of another order.

 

In the west, appeals based on the character of the speaker--and that may include credibility derived from a respected ancestry; to emotion (to fear and suspicion of a target; to the listener's ego through compliment, flattery, and promise); and to fundamentally practical thinking may mark a clever speaker, not necessarily one invested with goodness. For judging that, as listeners or readers, we may be careful to weigh a speaker's words in light of his less articulated or visible ambitions and unspoken motives.

 

Were I to list five dimensions with which to judge the acceptability of commentary and reportage universally, they would be these:

 

1. Accuracy.

 

2. Depth.

 

3. Fairness.

 

4. Humanity.

 

5. Integrity.

 

A Big Fat "Bravo-Zulu" for Thailand -- Freedom for the Press

Thailand's Parliament this week refused to extend the lèse majesté laws that restricted media coverage of issues involving the royal family and advisors.

What has taken them so long?

Thailand's lèse majesté laws abandoned: http://www.newswatch.in/news-analyses/global-monitor/9376.html

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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About Journalism -- A Short Reminder

Sorry, I've worked in PR, so, I guess, I'm tainted.

However, in the 101 scheme of things  . . .

1. Journalism exists to represent The Real in nature and in the states of affairs of humans;
2. Of benefit: cognizance and mastery of circumstance, individually and collectively, for anyone, everyone, anywhere in the world.

For too many movers and shakers -- businesses, clerics, criminals, mercenaries, and, of course, politicians -- the "Fourth Estate" looks as though it should be their agent (if it's not Murdoch's, lock, stock, and barrel).

Journalists, properly, ought to be the agents only of their own conscience and of God.