Sunday, February 13, 2005

The myth of objectivity in war reporting

The myth of objectivity in war reporting

As a journalist, one must uphold an ethic entailing the establishment of truth and objectivity. One needs to look at an event and record the facts in an un-biased manner. The issue in question is maintaining objectivity when reporting on a conflict that your country is involved in.

Journalism has many goals, and it has many standards that it is expected to live up to. Perhaps the most desired goal of journalism, is objectivity. The ability to be detached and unprejudiced while gathering and then disseminating information. The idea being that such objectivity will allow people to arrive at decisions without the journalists personal views clouding his or her judgement.

And when we say here, “covering a conflict”, there are two ways that is done, one is by reporting as an embedded journalist, and the other is by reporting on the conflict from a distance.

When a reporter is on the front lines with military personnel, constantly in touch and developing relationships, it becomes difficult to report objectively. And confounding all of that is the fact that certain information that is more than newsworthy cannot be reported due risking national security. But war reporting is clearly the great exception from the cult of objectivity—if only because a reporter who disengaged himself emotionally from a skirmish's outcome would be inviting death. And who can say that that any reporter that goes out into a combat situation will eventually not become sympathetic with the guys they're travelling with. In addition, how can it be possible for such a journalist to maintain total objectivity or true balance? In Iraq for example, can we expect a journalist travelling with a marine patrol to get comments from Iraqi fighters?

This actually raises another question, one that plagues those on the front lines or those reporting from their pressrooms alike. Who is a freedom fighter, who is a terrorist, who is a separatist and who is an insurgent? Just because a military handout uses those terms, are we as journalists supposed to parrot them? Are the Tamil Tigers terrorists when those in East Timor were not? Are the Chechens terrorists when the Basque are separatists? Should journalists make these decisions, or use terms coined by politicians and war-mongers with vested interests?

There also gives rise to the question whether coverage should be objective, or balanced, or both? And how are the two different? For example few would argue that the famous Vietnam-era footage of the young girl running for her life while on fire from a napalm strike had a strong effect on anti-war sentiment. No one can deny that it was factual, but was it balanced? There were other sides to that war that were perhaps not highlighted to the same degree. And can objectivity be maintained without maintaining balance? Or can a report that reported the facts, but just one side of the story be termed objective and unbalanced, or simply not objective?

I personally think that objectivity cannot come without balance, for a journalist to be able to say that his story is objective, it has to be balanced, and that means all the facts, to the best of his ability, from both sides, as they were seen or heard. Perhaps the term resistance is best when a journalist is unsure of terrorist, freedom fighter or insurgents. We should not be the ones deciding that. However balance can be taken too far and I will come to that later.

Given that, we have to keep in mind that every reporter’s perception of what is true, or likely to be true, or what is good or bad differs. Each person's world conforms to its own set of culturally defined expectations and in such a way as to appear satisfyingly real in total to its creator. The definition of feminine or masculine beauty depends on if the viewer is European or an Australian bushman. Preconceptions, prejudices, biases, cultural norms and mores, education, superstition, peer opinion, all play their role in people creating their own realities. This also changes levels of acceptable objectivity for that person

Until ESP becomes a viable form of communication, descriptions must be in words. However, words are notoriously slippery things: no word means the same thing to everybody or even anybody.

Journalism requires making a series of decisions, the first and most important is deciding just what is news. Then there is the necessity to determine what events constitute news: disasters, either natural or man-made, economics, politics, religion, people interacting with each other or animals or nature or whatever is of interest? Of course, the decision maker receives that power based on years of experience in determining what is news. However, that merely proves the above point that experience is a basis of a person's reality.

And then comes the actual reporting. As in selecting which events are news, someone must decide which words best describe the event. These decisions are based on the reporter's world as he or she examines the facts gathered and decides what words those receiving the report will best understand.

Television, using pictures in reporting the news, might allow the argument that pictures don't lie. Since people can actually see what is occurring or has occurred, the event is reported objectively. Nonetheless, the pictures are as subjective as words. Again decisions based on a world view are made: at the bottom the reporter or camera operator decide where to aim the camera, at what focus, at what distance, using a close-up, a medium or long shot, and at what angle. A great example is the Iran Hostage Crisis in which the mobs would sit around basically picnicking until the cameras appeared. The mob would then stand, chant and wave banners. A close-up camera shot can make ten people look like a mob; a long-shot can make thousands look like a local dispute. An example would be the bringing down of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad. There are no long shots of that event.

If war makes objectivity impossible, or at least very difficult, why do we pay so much lip service to it? Perhaps because journalists think the myth of objectivity will help keep them safe - even when they have declared sides.

Take the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example. After allied troops toppled the Taliban regime, Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison purchased a used laptop and hard drive in Kabul on which he found al-Qaida correspondence and terrorist plans. Included in the 1,750 files recovered was information on the movements of an al-Qaida operative whose itinerary paralleled that of Richard C. Reid, the now-convicted shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63 - information that would help the military or CIA further its anti-terrorist initiative. On Dec. 31, 2001, his paper published the first of its stories based on its computer finding. Before publication, it shared the information on the computer and hard drive with the U.S. military. And I quote here the Journal’s Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger telling the New York Times on Jan. 21, 2002, "We decided that this was the right thing to do in moral terms and reporting terms,". Again I quote. "In moral terms, we would have been devastated if we had withheld information that could have saved the lives of our servicemen [emphasis added] or of civilians. In reporting terms, we wanted to verify what we had." Most of us would cringe at asking the military to verify or look at information and then telling us what we can print or not. However, the patriotic duty is something that most of us would also give in to. However, as it can be seen, sides were being taken. The information was not shared with the public beforehand, but the other way around.

Coverage of war has never been objective. And to expect it of embedded journalists would be a bit naïve. The embedded journalists might tell us who's gaining territory, who's retreating, who's on fire. Hazy truths, at best. And nothing approaching a complete account of any battle will be feasible until long after war's end, when reporters interview soldiers from both sides. Citing security reasons, the forces accompanying the journalists will control the big picture as rigorously.

Why should we expect it to be any other way? No government has ever endorsed the notion that the press should have unfettered access to the battlefield. Even the pretence that war correspondents should be objective is a recent development. Until the early 20th century, war writers routinely wore the uniforms of the army they covered and carried arms against "the enemy." Their dispatches openly (and honestly) rooted for the home team. While covering the Spanish-American War as a journalist, Stephen Crane aggressively maneuvered his way ahead of U.S. troops so that he could accept a Puerto Rican village's surrender on behalf of the soldiers, Phillip Knightley writes in his history of war reporting, ‘The First Casualty’.

Objectivity needs a method to integrate new information with existing knowledge. Until new information can be incorporated into what one already knows, it is useless. When confronted with new information one must effectively ask oneself, "How does this add to my understanding of reality?" That information must be interpreted by, and tested against, what one already knows. I cannot emphasise this enough.

When a reporter is embedded with US troops and witnesses the destruction of Iraqi resistance, he or she has obtained new information. If this reporter is committed as a matter of principle to objectivity, he or she has by now a lot of knowledge pertaining to what was witnessed. The reporter needn't, and shouldn't, constantly be a cheer-leader for America in this case. They needn't say "it was a great achievement for freedom-loving people," but that fact should prevent them from reporting a falsehood. For example, because of their knowledge, they should not report the "other side" with equal credibility, e.g., "the Iraqis, on the other hand, consider themselves victims of imperialist aggression." The sum of knowledge the reporter possesses (or should possess) disproves the Iraqi claim and should be presented as being false.

At the same time, reporters who present "both sides" equally are not thinking objectively, or at least they are not communicating objective knowledge. Objectivity requires integration with all knowledge one possesses and not merely the unintegrated information at hand. Whether one likes it or not, the reporter will have to, has to, and always will have to make judgements on the credibility of information, and not just report everything he happens to lay his hands on. Objectivity comes when a reporter presents information, and seeks to verify that from sources other than the originating point of the information, and then presents those facts as well. An objective report presents the story being released by the official authority, and then shows all the evidence that such claims are false. If the case may be. At that point, it's perfectly objective for the reporter to draw the conclusion that someone is covering up the truth, because such a conclusion is warranted by the evidence. Being objective means recognizing that not everybody's point of view is equally valid or deserves equal respect. That is how I see objectivity differing from balance.

I think a concerted effort should be made to suspend the race to be first, offering less trivial coverage and replacing the reporter's instant insights and speculation with the honesty and simple humility of an occasional, "We don't know."

The sorry state of journalistic freedom in Pakistan

There is a general perception that the press in Pakistan enjoys much more freedom than it ever did. There are also some circles that believe freedom of speech and freedom of expression are rights enjoyed by a broad spectrum of society and have touched levels never seen before. There is no doubt that the number of newspapers, radio stations and television channels has seen unprecedented growth in the last couple of years and with the number of radio stations and television channels still in the pipeline this trend will continue in the coming months. But this can be misleading if used as a standard to gauge the levels of journalistic freedom. The government is the main source of these misleading perceptions.
The number of journalists, print or otherwise has certainly increased but the improvement in their working conditions is debateable. For example police arrested two radio journalists Farhat Abbas Shah and Afaq Shah, working for the radio station FM Radio 103 on 10 November earlier this year at their radio's studios in Lahore, Punjab province in the east of the country. It is true that they were released on bail the next day but two days later the police raided the station and seized equipment, making it impossible for it to continue broadcasting.
According to the Lahore Press Club, the two radio journalists were arrested for broadcasting a report on a scandal at the Punjab cardiology institute. They were reportedly maltreated in the first hours of their detention.
In another incident, on 6 November, also this year, Qazi Muhammad Rauf, correspondent for the Urdu-language daily Express in the north-eastern Khyber Agency tribal zone, was seized by armed men and held for 24 hours by members of the Sheikhmalkel tribe angry at what they saw as a biased article.
Rauf had reported on clashes between the tribe and a religious organisation Amr Bill Maroof Wa Nahee Anil Munkar in the tribal area. Around a dozen armed men abducted Rauf and took him to a private detention centre where they beat and then chained him.
The authorities intervened following a tip off from his colleagues in the Tribal Union of Journalists and persuaded the tribal leaders to release him, on 7 November.
In yet another incident, police in Skardo in the north-east arrested the editor of a banned magazine Kargil International, Ghulam Shehzad Agha, on 4 November. The authorities accused the journalist and of backing autonomy for the Pakistani part of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani interior ministry banned the magazine that he ran on 8 September 2004, charging that it carried seditious and unpatriotic news.
Elsewhere, Sarwar Mujahid, correspondent for the Urdu-language daily Nawa-I-Waqt in Okara district in the east of the country was freed on 12 October 2004. He was arrested and detained on 31 July 2004 at Sahiwal prison in Punjab province.
Mujahid was held under the Maintenance of Public Order law. His detention appeared to be linked to his articles about a conflict between Pakistani paramilitaries and tenant farmers who have for years farmed land belonging to the army.
All these incidents were widely reported by the local press and I say this to clarify that atrocities against journalists are not carried out in a clandestine manner or with any fear of reprisal. These are just a few examples of violence against of journalists that takes place every year. And these are not the worst. Journalists have also been killed.
The frequency of such events is linked directly to the fact that the number of publications, radio stations, and TV stations in the country, and consequently, the number of journalists is at an all time high. But is is also an indication of the fact that the wielders of power have not yet reached the state where they believe they are beyond reproach or scrutiny. They act like the lords of the lands, and they citizens are their serfs, and any voice or cry that is raised against them is to be silenced.
Having said that, it is also wrong to say that the press in third world countries like Pakistan is unable to play its due role as the fourth estate simply because of undue interference from the government or other state machinery. There are many other factors that play a crucial role in undermining the freedom of the press and create obstacles in the dissemination of information. These can range from external pressures like state control and the influence exerted by political groups to increasing commercialisation in the media industry and dishonesty on the part of some journalists. In one way or the other, they have all acted as major impediments in the fair and objective coverage of events and issues.
The right to know is a fundamental right of every human being and heavy responsibilities lie on the shoulders of the press as we are supposed to ensure timely dissemination of facts without distortion, no matter what the circumstances.
And in most cases, this is being done; the press is playing a vital role in spreading awareness and in supporting causes like human rights, democracy, free speech and this has led to the general feeling that the press enjoys increased freedom, but in the true sense of the word, more than 50 years on from independence the masses are yet to taste the benefit of freedom.
The right to know can only be ensured if there is a sense of accountability and transparency in the workings of the government and the authorities feel that they are answerable for their actions, that they have a responsibility to the masses. And since the institution of democracy has never been able to develop properly in Pakistan, a truly representative and accountable form of government has never materialised in Pakistan. Hence the primary ingredient to the right to free speech has always been missing, and still is.
However, as I said, the censorship affecting press freedom does not emanate from the state alone. There are some forces and groups, distinct from the federal and provincial governments, which force the dailies to resort to self-censorship.
Ethnic and other militants groups regularly come up with demands or warnings to which the newspapers have to concede more often than not. Then there is also the issue of greatly increased commercialisation in the industry, newspapers organizations must remain solvent at all times otherwise they were liable to be sold out. Hence this leads to the killing of stories that may be detrimental to the reputation of a sponsor, regardless of how valid it may be. Or it can lead to the insertion of stories that are in the interest of certain sponsors. This is not ethical journalism and is a form of self-censorship exercised by newspaper owners and their marketing departments.
While it cannot be denied that a newspaper would be unable to survive without finances, there has to be a balance, and a policy needs to be drafted to ensure the effectiveness of content. The idea of a proper, functioning press council is yet to materialize but there are fears, and rightly so, that the authorities would aim to use the same as an instrument against the media.
The presence of some working journalists and representatives of the masses on such a body would increase its credibility. However, the government can only be stopped from creating such a body, and imposing its authority on the media in Pakistan, if the journalists take the lead and impose a strict code of ethics upon them. Moreover, it is sad but true that the people and institutions seeking press freedom have failed to strengthen themselves for the purpose.
The Council of Pakistan Newspaper editors, (CPNE) for example comprises newspaper owners, not professional editors. There is also the need of a press complaints commission, an accountability body, which might be established under the CPNE to ensure a fair and healthy industry, he said. It is also apparent that the credibility of the press has been just as severely damaged by the commercial interests of the owners as by any other external force.
Another factor that has led to a weakening of journalistic ethics and falling standards is the fact that the institution of the professional editor is under threat as many media owners have become their own editors. Ideally, a professional editor should be the only person taking decisions on editorial policy and journalistic content. The professional editor has a social conscience, the owner is first and foremost a businessman. But of course, that is being said, keeping in mind the fact that journalism is supposed to be a mission, not just a profession, and certainly not a business.
But the sales and marketing department is a very potent, and growing force in today’s newspapers, with perhaps no truly altruistic journalistic organization surviving this capitalist regime. Newspapers or journalistic bodies do not really help the situation much by accepting donations from the authorities.
Recently, there was an interesting situation where journalists in Islamabad had staged a walkout from the press gallery during the proceedings of the Senate in protest of the closure of the Islamabad and Rawalpindi Press club by the District administration as well as the registration of criminal cases against several journalists.
At first glance, this may seem to be just another act of state terrorism against the media. But there is more to the picture. The pressmen had accused the Punjab government of becoming a party to the dispute between the two journalist bodies, which was obviously not be acceptable to them. They also claimed that the press club had been sealed by the district administration on the direct intervention of Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Law Minister Raja Basharat.
But the key factor in this dispute was the allegation that the district administration had closed the doors of the press club to journalists when a losing candidate, also a journalist, used his influence.
Now, here is a prime example of, when journalists, resort to using their connections and then use the state machinery for their private gains, they do more damage to the institution and give the administration a chance to dominate them. There is no excuse for this, and journalists should constitute a self-regulatory body to ensure three things; that a code of ethics is formulated, implemented, and followed.
Eventually, the Minister of State for Overseas Pakistanis and Information Secretary of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) Senator Tariq Azeem assured journalists that the federal government would ask the provincial authorities not to become a party to the matter. This is utterly shameful and an embarrassment to the profession.
The government persists in making claims about increased press freedom in the country but, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières) in their report for 2004 announced that Pakistan's position has dropped by 20 places as compared to its standing in previous year 2003. Pakistan stood at 120 in 2003.
It is clear that there are two sides to the coin. It would be unfair, and inaccurate to simply blame the state machinery for suppression of a free press, or say that government censorship is the only factor undermining press freedom. It would also not be completely accurate to say that journalists are following ethical norms and conduct themselves with due dignity and respect.
In Pakistan, which is a new country, not yet 60 years old, democracy is still in its fledgling state, so the concept of free speech and expression is also not fully developed, and similarly, journalistic norms and ethics are also in their infancy and have not yet matured.
The formation of a press council, by the journalists to regulate themselves, to educate themselves about ethical reporting is one step in this direction. Increased awareness and education among the population so that they are also aware of their right to know is another step. The introduction of true democratic norms and a valid democracy in the country is also imperative if the press is ever to be free.
But most of all, what we need is the will to report what is happening with honesty, with no personal bias and with the aim of dispensing the truth because people have a right to know the truth.