Journalism is an imperfect craft. Reporting, especially in conflict zones, involves bias. It is the responsibility of media organisations to maintain a commitment to fact-based reporting, regardless of any bias. As readers empowered by the wealth of information available on the internet, we must maintain a critical approach to how media organisations shape our understanding of conflicts and critical issues. The Syrian civil war, arguably the most important conflict of the moment, is a perfect example – and yet we fundamentally know very little of what happens on the ground.
There is no single Syrian perspective on the conflict or the future of the country. Some Syrians hate Bashar Al Assad but are fearful of the rebels. Others believe the rebels are freedom fighters. No country has a uniformity of opinion and, in a conflict situation, people arrive at their personal opinions because of a complex set of calculations.
But, as Brian Kappler argued in The National yesterday, “in the fight for public opinion, the new theatre of war is the internet, especially social media”. He outlined the contours of the battle by exploring the fiery debate over the White Helmets, a civil defence organisation in Syria that has been at the centre of debate about who are the “good guys” in Syria and who are the bad.
In the West, the White Helmets have been portrayed as heroes with no political allegiance, but some journalists have recently uncovered information that has cast a different light on the group. Namely, that they are being used as pawns to stoke anti-Assad and anti-Russia rhetoric. Regardless of the truth, the White Helmets controversy highlights just how skewed the media narrative of Syria has become. But what is lost as a result?
The majority of western reporting on the conflict is based on activist or human rights groups that collect information from unverified sources and “citizen journalists” on the ground. The “reporting” is then collated by correspondents based in Istanbul or Beirut. Make no mistake, reporting inside Syria is extraordinarily difficult and often downright dangerous given the targeting of journalists by groups such as ISIL. That doesn’t excuse the gross lack of perspectives for a variety of Syrians.
As the battle for Syria’s future enters a new phase following the fall of Aleppo, the prevailing media narrative about the war will require extra scrutiny by news consumers and worried onlookers. We can’t afford to take any piece of news or analysis for granted because the conflict bears heavily on the region and the world.
