Death of independent journalism

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

“Without independent journalists reporting, citizens will continue to laugh in entertainment halls or play with electronic gadgets, not noticing the conflagration smoke rising on the horizon.”

Fifteen years ago, my Haitian friends arranged a trip for me to Cite Soleil, the largest and creepiest slum area in the Western Hemisphere on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Everything was very simple - I was placed on a pickup truck with an F-4 camera. The driver and two security guards promised a two-hour drive around the area so that I could take pictures. We agreed that I should stand in the car, but as soon as we arrived, I could not resist jumping off the car - I began to wander around the area, photographing everything that got into the camera lens. The guards refused to follow me, and when I returned to the intersection, the car was no longer there. Later I was told that the driver was simply afraid to stand in the area.

It was said about this area that it is easy to get there, but it is possible not to return. I was still young then, energetic and slightly reckless. I wandered around the area for a couple of hours and no one interfered with me. The locals watched in some amazement as I wander around the area with a large professional camera. Someone smiled politely, someone waved his hand affably, some even thanked. Then I noticed two American military jeeps with machine guns mounted on them. A crowd of hungry locals gathered in front of the jeeps - they stood in line to enter the area enclosed by high walls. American soldiers carefully examined everyone, deciding who to let in and who not. They did not examine me, and I calmly walked inside. One of the soldiers even grinned maliciously at me.

However, what I saw inside was not so funny: a middle-aged Haitian woman was lying on her stomach on the operating table. An incision was made in her back, and American military doctors and nurses fumbled in her body with scalpels and clamps.

- What are they doing? - I asked the husband of this woman, who was sitting next to him, covering his face with his hands.

- The tumor is being removed - was the answer.

Flies and larger insects flew everywhere (I had never seen such before). The stench is unbearable - illness, open wound, blood, the smell of disinfectants …

- We are training here - we are working out the scenario in conditions close to combat - the nurse explained - after all, Haiti, like no other place, is close to conditions reminiscent of combat.

- Well, it's, after all, people, my dear - I tried to argue. But she interrupted me.

- If we had not arrived, they would have died. So, be that as it may, we are helping them.

All I had to do was film the operation itself. It did not use diagnostic equipment to determine what kind of tumor the patient has. No X-rays. I thought that animals in veterinary clinics in the United States, after all, are better treated than these unfortunate Haitians.

The woman on the operating table moaned in pain but did not dare to complain. She was operated on only under local anesthesia. After the operation, the wound was sutured and bandaged.

- Now what? I asked the woman's husband.

- Let's take the bus and go home.

The woman had to get up from the table on her own and walk, leaning on the shoulder of her husband, who gently supported her. I couldn’t believe my eyes: the patient should get up and walk after the tumor was removed.

I also met an American military doctor - he walked me through the territory and showed me tents for American soldiers and service personnel from the contingent deployed in Haiti. Air conditioners were working there, everything was literally licked - not a speck anywhere. There is a hospital for American personnel with an operating room and all the necessary equipment - but it was empty. The comfortable beds were unoccupied.

“Then why don’t you allow Haitian patients to stay here after the operation?”

- Not allowed - the doctor replied.

“So you use them as guinea pigs, don't you?

He didn't answer. Perhaps he considered my question only rhetorical. Soon I managed to find a car and drive away.

I have never been able to publish material about this story. Perhaps in one of the Prague newspapers. I sent photos to the New York Times and the Independent - but I never got a response.

Then, a year later, I was no longer so surprised when, having found myself at a godforsaken military base of Indonesian troops in occupied East Timor, I was suddenly suspended from the ceiling with my hands tied. Soon, however, I was released with the words: "We didn’t know you were such a big shot" (after searching me, they found the papers of the Australian television and radio company ABC News, which stated that I was conducting research on its instructions as an "independent producer."). But then for a long time I could not find any Western media that would be interested in reporting on the atrocities and violence that the Indonesian military is still doing against the defenseless population of East Timor.

Later, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger explained to me the principles of the Western mass media - the “free Western press”. They can be summarized as follows: "Only those atrocities and crimes that can be used in their own geopolitical and economic interests should be considered really crimes - only they can be reported and analyzed in the media." But in this case, I would like to look at this problem from a different angle.

In 1945, the following reportage appeared on the pages of Express.

Atomic plague

“This is a warning to the world. Doctors collapse from fatigue. Everyone is afraid of a gas attack and wear gas masks."

Express reporter Burchet was the first reporter from allied countries to enter the atomic-bombed city. He drove 400 miles from Tokyo alone and unarmed (that was not entirely true, but the Express might not have known about it), with only seven dry rations (since it was almost impossible to get food in Japan), a black umbrella and a typewriter. Here is his report from Hiroshima.

Hiroshima. Tuesday.

30 days have passed since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which shook the whole world. Strange, but people continue to die in agony, and even those who were not directly injured in the explosion. They are dying of something unknown - I can only define it as a kind of atomic plague. Hiroshima does not look like an ordinary city that was bombed - it looks like a giant steam roller has passed here, destroying everything in its path. I try to write as impartially as possible in the hope that facts alone will serve as a warning to the whole world. The first ground test of the atomic bomb caused devastation such as I have never seen anywhere in the four years of war. Compared to the bombing of Hiroshima, a completely bombed Pacific island looks like a paradise. No photograph is able to convey the full scale of the destruction.

There were no references or quotes in Burchet's report. He arrived in Hiroshima armed only with a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a camera and the desire to show unadorned the most disgusting page in the history of mankind.

Journalism was then a passion, a true hobby of such reporters. The military commander was required to be fearless, precise and quick. It is also desirable that he be truly independent.

And Burchet was one of those. Probably, he was even one of the best military correspondents of his time, although he also had to pay his price for independence - he was soon declared "the enemy of the Australian people." His Australian passport was taken from him.

He wrote about the atrocities committed by the American military against Koreans during the Korean War. About the cruelty of the command of the American troops towards their own soldiers (after the American prisoners of war were exchanged, those of them who later dared to talk about the humane treatment of them by the Chinese and Koreans were intensively brainwashed or tortured). Berchet wrote reports on the courage of the Vietnamese people who fought for their freedom and their ideals against the strongest army in the world.

It is noteworthy that, despite the fact that he was forced to live in exile and despite the persecution as part of the "witch hunt", many publications in those days still agreed to print and pay for his reports. It is obvious that in those days censorship was not yet absolute, and the mass media were not so consolidated. It is no less remarkable that he did not have to somehow justify what his eyes saw. His eyewitness reports themselves served as the basis for conclusions. He was not required to cite countless sources. He did not need to be guided by the opinions of others. He only came to the place, talked with people, cited their statements, described the context of events and published a report.

There was no need to quote that a certain Professor Green said it was raining - when Burchet already knew and saw that it was raining. There was no need to quote Professor Brown as saying that sea water is salty, if that’s obvious. Now this is almost impossible. All individualism, all passion, intellectual courage "banished" from the reporting in the mass media and documentary filmmaking. The reports no longer contain manifestos, no "I blame". They are sleek and discreet. They are made "harmless" and "not offending anyone." They do not provoke the reader, they do not send him to the barricades.

The media monopolized coverage of the most important and explosive topics, such as: wars, occupations, the horrors of neo-colonialism and market fundamentalism.

Independent reporters are hardly hired now. At first, their own in-house reporters are “checked” for a long time, and even their total number is now much less than several decades ago. This, of course, has a certain logic.

The coverage of conflicts is a key point in the "ideological battle" - and the propaganda mechanism of the regime imposed by Western countries around the world completely controls the process of coverage of conflicts on the ground. Of course, it would be naive to think that mainstream media are not part of the system.

In order to understand the essence of everything that is happening in the world, it is necessary to know about the fate of people, about all the nightmares that occur in the zones of hostilities and conflicts, where colonialism and neo-colonialism show their sharp teeth. When I speak of "conflict zones" I mean not only cities that are bombed from the air and bombarded with artillery. There are "conflict zones" where thousands (sometimes millions) of people die as a result of the imposition of sanctions or from poverty. It can also be internal conflicts inflated from the outside (as now in Syria, for example).

In the past, the best reporting from conflict zones was done by independent reporters - mostly progressive writers and independent thinkers. Reports and photos demonstrating the course of hostilities, evidence of coups, stories about the fate of refugees were on the daily menu of the man in the street in the conflict-causing countries - they were served to him along with boiled eggs and oatmeal for breakfast.

At some point, mainly thanks to such independent reporters, the public in the West learned about what was happening in the world.

The citizens of the Empire (North America and Europe) had nowhere to hide from reality. Top writers and Western intellectuals talked about her in prime time on television, where shows were also shown about the terror perpetrated by the military of these countries around the world. Newspapers and magazines regularly bombarded audiences with anti-establishment reporting. Students and ordinary citizens felt solidarity with the victims of wars in third world countries (this was before they got too carried away by Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, which pacified them by allowing them to scream on their smartphones, instead of trashing the business centers of their cities). Students and ordinary citizens, inspired by such reports, took to protest marches, erected barricades and directly fought security forces in the streets.

Many of them, after reading these reports, watching the footage, left for the countries of the Third World - not to sunbathe on the beach, but to see with their own eyes the living conditions of the victims of the colonial wars. Many (but by no means all) of these independent journalists were Marxists. Many were just wonderful writers - energetic, passionate, but not committed to a particular political idea. Most of them, in fact, never pretended to be "objective" (in the sense of the word that was imposed on us by the modern Anglo-American mass media, which involves citing diverse sources, which with suspicious consistency leads to monotonous conclusions). Reporters at the time did not generally hide their intuitive rejection of the imperialist regime.

While conventional propaganda flourished at the time, spread by well-paid (and therefore trained) reporters and academics, there was also a mass of independent reporters, photographers and filmmakers who heroically served the world by creating an “alternative narrative”. Among them were those who decided to change the typewriter to a weapon - like Saint-Exupery or Hemingway, who cursed the Spanish fascists in reports from Madrid, and subsequently supported the Cuban revolution (including financially). Among them was André Malraux, who was arrested by the French colonial authorities for covering events in Indochina (later he managed to publish a magazine directed against the policy of colonialism). Orwell can also be remembered with his intuitive aversion to colonialism. Later, such masters of military journalism as Ryszard Kapustinsky, Wilfred Burchet and, finally, John Pilger appeared.

Speaking about them, one should take into account one more important feature in their work (as well as in the work of hundreds of reporters of the same kind): they had a well-established mutual assistance, and they had something to live on, travel the world. They could continue to work on the royalties from their reporting - and the fact that these reports were directed directly against the establishment did not play a special role. Writing articles and books was a fairly serious, respected and at the same time fascinating profession. The reporter's work was considered an invaluable service to all of humanity, and reporters did not need to engage in teaching or anything along the way to make ends meet.

Over the past couple of decades, everything has changed dramatically. Now we seem to live in the world described by Ryszard Kapustinsky in Football War.

(The 1969 "Football War" between Honduras and El Salvador, the main cause of which was problems caused by labor migration, broke out after a conflict between fans at a match between the two countries and killed from 2 to 6 thousand people - approx. Transl.).

In particular, I mean the place where we are talking about the Congo - a country that has been plundered by the Belgian colonialists for a long time. Under King Leopold II of Belgium, millions of people were killed in the Congo. In 1960, the Congo proclaims independence - and Belgian paratroopers immediately land here. "Anarchy, hysteria, bloody massacre" begins in the country. Kapustinsky is at this time in Warsaw. He wants to go to Congo (Poland gives him the currency necessary for the trip), but he has a Polish passport - and at that time, as if to prove the West's "loyalty" to the principles of freedom of speech, "all citizens of socialist countries were simply thrown out of the Congo."Therefore, Kapustinsky first flies to Cairo, here he is joined by the Czech journalist Yarda Buchek, and together they decide to go to the Congo via Khartoum and Juba.

“In Juba, we have to buy a car, and then … a big question mark. The purpose of the expedition is Stanleyville (now the city of Kisangani - approx. Transl.), The capital of the eastern province of the Congo, where the remnants of the Lumumba government fled (Lumumba himself had already been arrested and the government was headed by his friend Antoine Gisenga).

Yard's index finger leads along the Nile's tape on the map. At some point, his finger freezes for a moment (there is nothing scary, except for crocodiles, but the jungle begins there), then he leads to the southeast and leads to the banks of the Congo River, where the circle on the map stands for Stanleyville. I tell Yarda that I intend to take part in the expedition and I have an official order to get there (in fact, this is a lie). Yarda nods in agreement, but warns that this trip could cost me my life (he, as it turned out later, was not so far from the truth). He shows me a copy of his will (he left the original at the embassy). I'm doing the same thing.

What is this passage talking about? The fact that two enterprising and courageous reporters were determined to tell the world about one of the greatest figures in the history of Africa's struggle for independence - about Patrice Lumumba, who was soon killed by the efforts of the Belgians and Americans (Lumumba's assassination actually plunged the Congo into a state of chaos that continues to this day). They were not sure that they would be able to return alive, but they clearly knew that their work would be appreciated in their homeland. They risked their lives, showed all the wonders of ingenuity to achieve their goal. And besides, they were just great at writing. And “other people took care of the rest”.

The same goes for Wilfred Burchet and a host of other courageous reporters who were not afraid to give independent coverage of the Vietnam War. It was they who literally thrashed the public consciousness of Europe and North America, depriving the passive stratum of the mainstream inhabitants of the opportunity to declare that they, they say, "knew nothing."

But the era of such independent journalists did not last long. The media and all those who shape public opinion soon realized the danger such reporters pose to them, creating dissidents seeking alternative sources of information - and ultimately undermining the very fabric of the regime.

When I read Kapustinsky, I involuntarily associate myself with my work in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Congo is now experiencing some of the most dramatic events in the world. Six to ten million people here have already become victims of the greed of Western countries and their irrepressible desire to control the whole world. The course of history itself seems to be reversed here - as local dictators, fully supported by the United States and Great Britain, destroy the local population and plunder the wealth of the Congo for the sake of the interests of Western companies.

And whenever I have to risk my life, no matter what hole it throws me (even into one from which it is quite possible that I may not return), I am always worried rather by the feeling that I do not have a "base" where they would wait my return and support me. I always manage to get out only thanks to the UN certificate, which makes a very impressive impression on those who arrest me (but not on myself). But my work, my journalistic investigations, filming do not guarantee any return. Nobody sent me here. Nobody pays for my work. I am alone and for myself. When Kapustinsky returned home, he was greeted like a hero. Now, fifty years later, those of us who continue to do the same work are just outcasts.

At some point, most of the major publications and TV channels stopped relying on slightly reckless, courageous and independent "freelancers" and began to use the services of in-house reporters, making them corporate employees. As soon as such a "transition" to another form of employment took place, these "employees", who still continued to be called "journalists", were no longer difficult to discipline, indicating what to write and what to avoid, and how to present events. Although this is not openly spoken about, the staff of media corporations already understands everything on an intuitive level. The fees for freelancers - independent journalists, photographers and film producers - have been drastically cut or disappeared altogether. Many freelancers were forced to look for permanent jobs. Others began to write books, hoping at least in this way to convey information to the reader. But soon they were also told that "these days there is no money to publish books."

All that remained was to engage in "teaching activities." Some universities still accepted these people and tolerated dissent within certain limits, but they had to pay for this with humility: former revolutionaries and dissidents could teach, but they were not allowed to show emotions - no more manifestos and calls to arms. They were obliged to “stick to the facts” (since the facts themselves were already presented in the proper form). They were forced to endlessly repeat the thoughts of their "influential" colleagues, overflowing their books with quotations, indexes and hard-to-digest intellectual pirouettes.

And so we entered the era of the Internet. Thousands of sites have sprung up and have gone up - although at the same time a lot of alternative and leftist publications have been closed. At first, these changes raised a lot of hope, raised a wave of enthusiasm - but it soon became clear that the regime and its media only consolidated control over the minds. Mainstream search engines bring predominantly right-wing mainstream news agencies to the first pages of search results. If a person does not know specifically what he is looking for, if he does not have a good education, if he has not decided on his opinion, then he has little chance of getting on sites that cover world events from an alternative point of view.

Nowadays, most serious analytical articles are written for free - for authors it has become something of a hobby. The glory of the military correspondents has sunk into oblivion. Instead of the joy of adventure in search of truth, there is only "serenity", communication in social networks, entertainment, hipsterism. The enjoyment of ease and serenity was originally the lot of the citizens of the Empire - the serenity was enjoyed by the citizens of colonial countries and the corrupt (not without the help of the West) representatives of the elite in remote colonies. I think there is no need to repeat that the majority of the world's population is immersed in a less easy reality, living in slums and serving the economic interests of colonial countries. They are forced to survive under the yoke of dictatorships, first imposed and then shamelessly supported by Washington, London and Paris. But now even those who are dying in the slums "sat down" on the drug of entertainment and serenity, trying to forget and not pay attention to attempts to seriously analyze the causes of their situation.

Thus, those independent journalists who continued to fight - military correspondents who studied at the works of Burchet and Kapustinsky - lost both their audience and the means that allowed them to continue working. Indeed, in reality, covering real military conflicts is not a cheap pleasure, especially if you cover them carefully and in detail. We have to deal with a sharp rise in the price of tickets for rare charter flights to the conflict zone. You have to carry all the equipment on you. You have to constantly pay bribes to get to the front of hostilities. You have to constantly change plans, faced with a delay here and there. It is necessary to settle issues with different types of visas and permits. It is necessary to communicate with the mass of people. And in the end, you can get hurt.

Access to the war zone is now even more closely controlled than it was during the Vietnam War. If ten years ago I still managed to get to the front line in Sri Lanka, then soon I had to forget about new attempts to get there. If in 1996 I managed to sneak into East Timor with a smuggled cargo, now many of the independent reporters who still make their way to West Papua (where Indonesia, with the approval of Western countries, staged another genocide) are arrested, imprisoned and then deported.

In 1992, I covered the war in Peru - and although I had the accreditation of the Peruvian Foreign Ministry, it only depended on me whether to stay in Lima or go to Ayacucho, knowing full well that Sendero Luminoso fighters could easily shoot me in the head on the way. (which, by the way, almost happened). But these days it is almost impossible to get into a war zone in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country occupied by the American and European military - especially if your goal is to investigate crimes against humanity committed by Western regimes.

To be honest, these days it’s generally difficult to get anywhere if you’re not “seconded” (which essentially means you let them do their work, and they let you write - but only if you write what you will say). In order for a reporter to be allowed to cover the course of hostilities, he needs to have some major mainstream publications or organizations behind his back. Without this, it is difficult to obtain accreditation, a pass, and guarantees for the subsequent publication of his reports. Independent reporters are generally considered unpredictable - and therefore not favored.

Of course, opportunities to infiltrate war zones still exist. And those of us who have years of experience behind us know how to do it. But just imagine: you are on the front line for yourself, you are a volunteer and often write for free. If you are not a very wealthy person who wants to spend your money on your creativity, then you better analyze what is happening “at a distance”. This is exactly what the regime wants - that there are no first-hand reports from the left; to keep the left at a distance and not give them a clear picture of what is happening.

In addition to the bureaucratic barriers that the regime uses to make it difficult for the few independent reporters to work in conflict zones, there are financial barriers. Almost no one, except for reporters from the mainstream media, can afford to pay for the services of drivers, translators, intermediaries who help to settle problems with local authorities. In addition, corporate media have seriously raised prices for this kind of services.

As a result, opponents of the neo-colonial regime are losing the media war - they cannot receive and disseminate information directly from the scene - from where the Empire continues to commit genocide, committing crimes against humanity. As I already said, now from these zones there is no longer a continuous stream of photo reports and reports that could stubbornly bombard the consciousness of the population in the countries responsible for these crimes. The stream of such reports dries up and is no longer able to cause the shock and anger of the public that once helped stop the Vietnam War.

The consequences of this are obvious: the European and North American public as a whole knows practically nothing about all the nightmares that are happening in different parts of the world. And in particular, about the cruel genocide of the Congo people. Another sore spot is Somalia, and refugees from that country - about a million Somali refugees are now literally rotting in overcrowded camps in Kenya. It was about them that I shot the 70-minute documentary "Flight over Dadaab".

It is impossible to find words that can describe the entire cynicism of the Israeli occupation of Palestine - but the public in the United States is well fed with "objective" reporting, so it is generally "pacified".

Now the propaganda machine, on the one hand, is waging a powerful campaign against countries that are on the path of Western colonialism. On the other hand, crimes against humanity committed by Western countries and their allies (in Uganda, Rwanda, Indonesia, India, Colombia, the Philippines, etc.) are practically not covered.

Millions of people became refugees, hundreds of thousands died due to geopolitical maneuvers in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. Very few objective reports have focused on the heinous destruction of Libya (and its current aftermath) in 2011. Now, in the same way, "work is in full swing" to overthrow the government of Syria. There is little reporting of how Turkey's “refugee camps” on the Syrian border are being used as a base for funding, arming and training the Syrian opposition - although several leading Turkish journalists and filmmakers have covered the topic in detail. Needless to say, it is almost impossible for independent Western reporters to get into these camps - as my Turkish colleagues explained to me recently.

Despite the fact that there are such wonderful resources as CounterPunch, Z, New Left Review, the mass of "homeless" independent military correspondents need more resources that they can consider as their "home", their media base. There are many different types of weapons that can be used in the fight against imperialism and neo-colonialism - and the work of a reporter is one of them. Therefore, the regime is trying to squeeze out independent reporters, limit the very possibility of their work - because without knowing the reality of what is happening, it is impossible to objectively analyze the situation in the world. Without reports and photo reports, it is impossible to perceive the full depth of the madness into which our world is being driven.

Without independent reporting, citizens will continue to laugh in entertainment halls or play with electronic gadgets, oblivious to the rising smoke of conflagrations on the horizon. And in the future, when asked directly, they will be able to say again (as has often happened in the history of mankind):

"And we didn't know anything."

Andre Vlcek