[All notes below by Tom Gross]

THE STASI? FILTH?

Some people have asked me why so many Israelis have cancelled their subscriptions to Haaretz, even though they acknowledge that Haaretz has some very good reporting.

One key reason former subscribers cite is that day after day Haaretz runs stories about Israel which many find hateful, with headlines like this one from earlier this week:

“Mutiny in the Israeli Stasi: exposing the occupation’s worst filth”

Most readers of these dispatches will be aware of these things but here are a few observations nevertheless:

* The use of the word “Stasi” suggests Haaretz headline writers don’t know much about the Stasi, and just how malignant an organization it was.

* The use of the word “filth” puts Haaretz in the same category as the Chinese Communist news agency and the old Pravda at the height of the purges when tens of millions of innocent people were killed. To the best of my knowledge, the word “filth” is not now used in headlines like this by any other respectable newspaper in the world – the only “mainstream” media where this kind of term is still used is in North Korea. The word “filth” is also used by some of the more radical and anti-Semitic elements of the Iranian regime, and by some Al-Qaeda types.

* The English edition of Haaretz is read primarily by non-Jewish opponents (or enemies) of Israel abroad. They might enjoy this kind of headline and continue their paid subscriptions to the online version of the paper, and presumably the owner of Haaretz is happy with that.

ADVICE ON ISIS FROM THE GUARDIAN’S CHELSEA MANNING

Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning has started writing for The Guardian.

Her first comment piece was posted yesterday afternoon:

“How to make Isis fall on its own sword”
By Chelsea Manning

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/16/chelsea-manning-isis-strategy

The Guardian website’s bio of Manning reads as follows: “Chelsea E Manning is a United States Army intelligence analyst. She writes for the Guardian in her personal, civil capacity. Her opinions do not represent those of the US Disciplinary Barracks, the US Army, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or any other government department, branch or agency of the United States.”

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/chelsea-e-manning

Not mentioned in The Guardian’s bio online is that last year Manning was convicted of violations of the U.S. Espionage Act and other offenses, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Personally I think the U.S. justice system has been overly harsh on Manning, and unnecessarily cruel and degrading towards him/her during the period after her arrest, but The Guardian still might have mentioned her conviction in her bio.

(The print edition of The Guardian also runs Manning’s piece today and the bio does mention he was convicted.)

SOME OF THE “CIVILIANS” KILLED IN GAZA, DETAILED ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS

The BBC and other news outlets continue to significantly mislead the public over the number of civilians killed in Gaza this summer – while failing to report properly on the civilians being killed by America in Afghanistan, and by the US and Iraq jointly in Iraq – you have to follow other media, like Reuters, for details of those killed in American airstrikes.

The International New York Times is still obsessing over the Gaza issue. For example, yesterday on its front page and again on an inside page, it ran color photos of Gaza destruction from a month ago -- while the International New York Times print edition as far as I could tell, didn’t even mention the U.S. airstrike that killed 14 civilians (including children but no militants) in Afghanistan a few days ago. Other media reported on it, but not the New York Times. This fits into a longstanding pattern of New York Times selectivity. (The Times did have one small report online – in which it mentioned the death toll was only four Afghan civilians – but I could not find it in the print edition of the international NYT.)

Both Palestinian Authority President Abbas and Hamas leaders have now acknowledged that about half the Palestinians that died in Gaza this summer were militants (or resistance fighters as they call them). This is about the same number that the IDF has cited.

Among those hundreds of persons the BBC is still citing in reports as Israeli-killed civilian casualties are those who died a natural death in Gaza and those who died as a result of the hundreds of misfired Hamas rockets that fell short and landed in Gaza.

And there are many individuals who are being counted as civilians who were clearly not.

I suggest that journalists from the BBC and elsewhere subscribing to this list scroll down, this link for example.

AP IN GAZA: “STREET CAFES AND BEACHES ARE PACKED. STREETS ARE CHOKED WITH SHOPPERS. WEDDING HALLS ARE BOOKED SOLID.”

In contrast to the doom and gloom of the New York Times, BBC and Haaretz, the Associated Press reports yesterday:

Gazans Rush to Enjoy Life after Ruinous War
By Hamza Hendawi (AP)

After a ruinous war, Gaza is rushing back to a veneer of normalcy at astonishing speed. Street cafes and beaches are packed with people until late at night. Commercial streets are choked with shoppers. Wedding halls are booked solid.

However, Gazans acknowledge the revelry thinly masks trauma and widespread despair. Many complain that none of the gains they hoped for from the war have been realized.

Hamas security agents are so omnipresent people nickname them the “ground drones” - a play on the Israeli drones that often hover over Gaza.

Most main squares are adorned with giant billboards extolling jihad against Israel.”

Full article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/gazans-rush-enjoy-life-ruinous-war-184211918.html

LADY GAGA AND TONY BENNETT SING TO PACKED CROWDS IN TEL AVIV

Although many tourists are still frightened of coming to Israel, things are also back to normal after a summer of rockets attacks on Tel Aviv and other Israelis cities. (Because of its low crime rate, Israel is actually one of the world’s safest countries.)

On Saturday evening Lady Gaga performed for 25,000 people in Tel Aviv, speaking in Hebrew at times and saying it was “wonderful to be back in Israel”.

At one point Tony Bennett joined her on stage and sang a duet with Gaga. The next evening Bennett gave his own concert in Israel, his first in the country.

Both he and Lady Gaga noted in interviews what a lively and beautiful country Israel is and what a vibrant city Tel Aviv is.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT FINES KURDISH CHANNEL FOR SHOWING THE HOLOCAUST FILM THE PIANIST

The Turkish State Council for Radio and Television has fined the Kurdish channel Gün TV for showing the Oscar-winning drama film about Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody) a Jewish pianist who survived the Holocaust. The fine was ostensibly on the grounds that the Pianist was a violent film, even though other films on Turkish TV are much more violent.

Erdogan’s ruling party has on many occasions been accused of anti-Semitism. An opposition deputy condemned the decision to fine the channel as “ridiculous.’’

Story from the Turkish press here:

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/kelebek/keyif/27199827.asp

(The screenwriter of the Pianist, as well as two of the lead actors in the film, are subscribers to this dispatch list and I am speaking to them to see whether they wish to write a joint protest letter to the Turkish government.)

BILL CLINTON GETS CAUGHT ON CAMERA DISPARAGING NETANYAHU

At the end of Sunday’s “Iowa Steak Fry Fundraiser” organized by Senator Tom Harkin, former U.S. President Bill Clinton was recorded making negative comments about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he agreed was “not the man” to make peace with Palestinians.

The former President was caught making the comments at the end of the 3 hour 15 minute C-Span coverage, in an informal conversation with pro-Palestinian activists, after he thought the camera had been turned off.

Clinton also claimed that at the Camp David talks in 2000 he had squeezed then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak into giving Yasser Arafat almost everything he wanted, including parts of Jerusalem.

Clinton said he “had gotten [from Barak] 96% of the West Bank, land swaps in Gaza, appropriate water rights and East Jerusalem, something that hasn’t even been discussed since I left office. And by the way, don’t forget, both Arafat and Abbas later said they would take it: ‘We changed our minds, we’ll take it now’.”

By contrast, his wife Hillary Clinton has turned into a strong defender of Israel in recent months. On the Jon Stewart show and elsewhere, she stood up for Israel’s military campaign to stop rocket attacks from Gaza this summer and praised Netanyahu for his leadership and moderation.

BIBI AND THE “LANGUAGE” OF THE PEACE PROCESSORS

Observers say that Bill Clinton has never let go of his grudge against Netanyahu for winning the election against Shimon Peres after Yitzhak Rabin was killed. “It’s nasty and personal for Clinton,” one insider remarked.

Another reader points out that “Of course, Netanyahu makes a convenient whipping boy. No one seems to remember that Netanyahu ceded most of Hebron, something neither Peres nor Rabin did. i.e. he did more to advance the peace process than any of his critics ever did. And more than any Palestinian leader ever did.

“Netanyahu may be as flexible as most of his predecessors but he doesn’t speak the language of the peace processors. They will never forgive him for that.”

NOTABLE ABSENCES FROM THE WORLD’S TOP UNIVERSITY RANKINGS

A reader writes:

Would it be inappropriate to point out that not one Arab country is represented on this list of the top 200 universities and ask that all those professors at western universities who so tirelessly campaign to boycott Israeli universities (where about 20% of the student body are Arab, and which produce major scientific and medical breakthroughs as well as Nobel prize winners) take a Sabbatical to go to one of the universities in the Arab world and improve it?

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ng-interactive/2014/sep/16/-sp-qs-world-university-rankings-2014

Some Arab universities, particularly in the gulf, receive very high funding, so one might have expected them to do better.

SOME AMERICAN WOMEN LEAVE TO JOIN THE ISLAMIC STATE

Reuters reports:

Islamic State Attracts Female Jihadis from U.S.
By Alistair Bell
Reuters

EXTRACTS

At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi.

In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St. Paul snuck away from her parents on Aug. 25, flew to Turkey and joined IS in Syria.

In addition, law enforcement officials say they learned of 15-20 men with connections to the Minnesota Somali community fighting for extremist groups in Syria.

Moreover, scores of European Muslim women, mostly from Britain and France, have joined IS.

Full article here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/14/us-iraq-crisis-usa-women-idUSKBN0H90DE20140914

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

ARTICLE

WHY JOURNALISTS SAY ISRAELI-ARAB REPORTING IS ‘RIGGED’

Why journalists say Israeli-Arab reporting is ‘rigged’
By Dafna Maor
Haaretz
September 14, 2014

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.615621

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict receives a disproportionate amount of attention in relation to its size and importance in the world; journalists follow the herd and suffer from groupthink; and there is fear of Palestinian censorship, backed up by threats.

These are just a few of journalist Matti Friedman’s claims against the foreign media and its coverage of Israel.

“As a former insider, and as an Israeli with left-wing opinions that are not radical, I think the decisions that the bureaus of the large global media outlets in Israel make are politically motivated and disguised as motivated by journalistic considerations,” says Friedman, a Canadian-born journalist who immigrated to Israel in 1995 and worked as a reporter for the Associated Press.

During his career he has worked as a reporter in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Moscow and Washington, D.C.

In 2013 he published “The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World’s Most Coveted, Sacred and Mysterious Books” (Algonquin Books).

His article about press coverage of Israel, entitled “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” which appeared in Tablet magazine in late August, was shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook and made a good many waves.

In his article, he compares the coverage of Israel to that of other large news events all over the world.

“News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close,” he wrote.

He suggests an explanation for the way Israel is covered.

“The people who make the decisions at the newspapers – I speak from direct experience – are hostile toward Israel. They see themselves as part of an ideological alliance that includes NGOs and UN agencies.

“The move in social circles that are pro-Palestinian and hostile toward Israel and, and they see journalism not as a way to explain the complex story to people but as a political weapon with which they arm one side in the conflict,” he writes.

Friedman is one of a few journalists making such claims about the foreign media. Other veteran journalists who share his view include Tom Gross, a commentator on international affairs and a former reporter on the Middle East for the Sunday Telegraph; Richard Behar, who published an exposé in Forbes entitled “The Media Intifada: Bad Math, Ugly Truths about New York Times in Israel-Hamas War”; and Richard Miron, formerly a BBC reporter on Middle East affairs, who wrote about the subject for Haaretz (“Media self-reflection on Gaza war coverage is necessary, but unlikely,” September 1, 2014).

WHITE SUPERPOWER

“One should not forget that the media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about many issues. Yet when every allowance has been made, the sustained bias against Israel is, I believe, in a league of its own,” Gross told Haaretz.

“There are a mix of reasons for this,” Gross says. “Foreign news reporters tend to want to change the world and to challenge the big powers. In their heads, Israel is a big power, partly because they view Israel as very close to America, perhaps more than it actually is. To them, attacking Israel is attacking America.”

“Another reason is that many have a kind of guilt about being white and Western, and the history of their own colonization. Israel is perceived as a white country and the Palestinians are perceived as non-white, even though in fact many Palestinians have lighter skin than some Israelis. Many Western journalists abroad have barely heard of the fact that there are Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews.”

“And then there is the fact that Israel is a Jewish state,” Gross adds. He cites coverage of the involvement of France, which could also be viewed as a white superpower, in three wars taking place in Africa.

“There are very few American or British journalists covering the conflicts in Mali or the Central African Republic – though France is perceived as a white country. If France was a Jewish country, the BBC would most probably send large numbers of reporters there, like it did to Gaza,” Gross says.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST STORIES OF THE YEAR

In early 2009, two of Friedman’s colleagues received information about a significant peace initiative that Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister at the time, had offered the Palestinian Authority, which turned it down. “This had not been reported yet and it was – or should have been – one of the biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau decided that they would not publish the story,” Friedman writes.

“Some staffers were furious, but it didn’t help. Our narrative was that the Palestinians were moderate and the Israelis recalcitrant and increasingly extreme. Reporting the Olmert offer – like delving too deeply into the subject of Hamas – would make that narrative look like nonsense. And so we were instructed to ignore it, and did, for more than a year and a half,” Friedman says. AP’s former head of Mideast reporting, Steven Gutkin, wrote in response to Friedman’s story: “The story was little more than well-written hogwash,” and denied that any decision making was influenced by prejudice.

According to Friedman, activism has trickled into the profession. “It’s political activism disguised as journalism,” he says. If you don’t agree to run the most important story of the year because it will make Israel look good, then you are an activist. You are here not to explain, but to use your influence for the benefit of your own side.”

UNREPORTED HAMAS COVENANT

Friedman also points out that AP has never mentioned Hamas’s covenant – which calls explicitly for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, and blames the Jews for the French Revolution and the communist revolution in Russia – once in its reports, even though Hamas won the elections in Gaza.

Gross says that the reason for this among many is not because of any great affection for the Palestinians. “It’s not because they particularly like the Palestinians, or because Arab governments are paying them. For some at least, they are – perhaps unconsciously – uncomfortable with Jews, or at least with the idea of a Jewish state,” he says, though he adds that he does not think they are knowingly anti-Semitic.

Gross says of his own experience, “Many of my colleagues at the BBC would be shocked at the idea that they were anti-Semitic. But the coverage of Israel makes them feel better about their own colonialism.”

Both Friedman and Gross feel that the bias also does a disservice to the Palestinians, though not to Hamas.

Friedman points out in his article that there’s nearly “no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate.

“The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.”

Gross says he believes the anti-Israeli rhetoric encourages entrenchment among the Palestinian leadership and helps deter them from making the compromises necessary to achieve any long-lasting solution with Israel.

“Most Israelis think the media is biased because the Arabs have a lot of money, or they spend a lot of money on PR,” Gross says, during our meeting. “This may be true up to a point, but it’s just a small part of the reason that they’re biased.”

“And some of the bias may be subconscious or because they’re lazy. And they’re human beings, and human beings are often not objective. It’s also groupthink. They follow each other.”

Another problem, according to Friedman, is the revolving door between the profession of journalism and political involvement – in other words, the movement of people from journalism to large international NGOs or the United Nations.

“The journalists do not see those organizations or the UN as subjects to cover even though they are the strongest players working here,” he says. “There is no critical coverage of the UN even though it is swollen, inefficient and often corrupt.”

Friedman also points to laziness. “Many of the foreign journalists do not know the history,” he says.

“They do not know Hebrew or Arabic, and they have no real grasp of what is happening. Because of that, they stick to their colleagues’ story and move with the herd. The AP is a large organization and, like Reuters, part of the herd. Both agencies make similar decisions.

“The reason we did not know that the Middle East was about to erupt like a volcano was that the foreign media was busy counting houses in settlements.

“Israel is a tiny village on the side of a volcano, but the media describes it as the volcano itself. When we look into this distortion more deeply, we see that it is part of a problem that has been going on for the past five years – a problem that will be studied in journalism schools in the future.”

Friedman elaborates on the implications of the media’s faulty coverage of Israel.

“It reached an extreme situation this summer. The media outlets agreed to serve as part of Hamas’ military operations. Strategically speaking, Hamas knew it could rely on the foreign media’s cooperation – that it would not show rocket launches or combatants or speak at all about what Hamas wanted to accomplish. They knew, from the experience of the past few years, that the foreign media would cooperate. The foreign media served as Hamas’ deadliest weapon, and so we need to understand the media. This is no marginal subject for research, but a major part of the story.”

He estimates the chances that this attitude will change as slim to none. “My article was reported about in the [Wall Street] Journal and in the Washington Post, and I was interviewed on CNN,” he says. “There are signs that they are willing to take these assertions seriously. But it’s like an aircraft carrier: it’s impossible to change direction easily. I haven’t seen any reason to be optimistic over the past six years. As Israelis, we need to realize that at the moment, the game is rigged.”

UPDATE

Thanks to the various bloggers and journalists who linked to this dispatch, among them:

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-mizrahi-story-can-end-the-colonialist-myth/

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/09/a-rigged-game/

http://www.israellycool.com/2014/09/15/funny-how-haaretz-english-mistranslation-never-makes-israel-look-good/

http://hurryupharry.org/2014/09/16/the-mizrahi-story-can-end-the-colonialist-myth/

http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.cz/2014/09/the-most-ancient-of-indigenous-middle.html

AP’S EX-JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF RESPONDS

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

Almost two weeks ago, I circulated former AP correspondent Matti Friedman’s important article on the Associated Press’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

(You can read it, together with my note about the AP and Reuters, here: Ex-AP Jerusalem correspondent: How the AP (and others) covered up the truth to make Israel look bad .)

Steven Gutkin, who served as the AP Jerusalem bureau chief during the period about which Matti Friedman is writing, has now responded. I attach his rebuttal below. (It appears on “Goa Streets,” the website that Gutkin runs along with his wife Marisha Dutt.)

I know Steve Gutkin slightly, and he has what some might describe as a well-meaning, but largely naive “Jewish progressive world view”. It is unsurprising that he has denied Matti’s allegations.

Personally, I think Steve’s reply skirts around the issues and he doesn’t properly deal with most of the substantive allegations made in Matti Friedman’s piece.

(I know others at the AP who will back up Matti Friedman’s assertions but are afraid to speak out publicly because they fear that they will lose their jobs and worry that they will have trouble finding employment in international news journalism.)

Matti tells me that he intends to write a follow-up article responding to Steve’s rebuttal, which he says he will probably do in the course of the next week or so.

In the meantime, Matti told me the following which he would like me to share with readers of these dispatches:

“Steve’s piece is a well-put and generous enunciation of how people inside the system, and particularly Jewish people, view the problem that I’m talking about. Steve doesn’t deny the examples I gave, and I think a careful reader will find the article is less a rebuttal of my conclusions than a confirmation in different words. Furthermore, contrary to what Steve writes I did use the phrase ‘occupied West Bank’ and I said that the settlements are “ a serious moral and strategic error on Israel’s part”.

A RARE PIECE IN HAARETZ

For those of you who speak Hebrew, there was a long article in this weekend’s Marker magazine (which forms part of the Haaretz weekend edition) about the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The article is based on interviews with Matti Friedman and myself.

http://www.themarker.com/markerweek/1.2424631

I am told by the editor of Haaretz that the article will probably be published in English, in the English edition of Haaretz in a few days from now.

Haaretz, as many of you probably know, is often very critical of Israel (and of Israel’s supporters abroad) and it is rare for the paper to give space to those who believe there is a serious problem of media bias against Israel (and within Israel, including Haaretz).

EX-FRENCH HOSTAGE IN SYRIA: BRUSSELS JEWISH MUSEUM SHOOTER TORTURED FOLEY AND SOTLOFF

French journalist Nicolas Henin, who was held hostage in Syria with James Foley and Steven Sotloff, yesterday told French media that he -- together with Foley, Sotloff and others -- was tortured by a group that included Mehdi Nemmouche, the French-Algerian who is charged with murdering four Jews in a terror attack at the Brussels Jewish museum in May.

Henin was released in April with other French journalists after ten months in captivity when a ransom was paid to ISIS. Henin told French media that Nemmouche was one of several people who tortured them.

Report here from yesterday’s Le Monde.

(I posted the item yesterday at the time Le Monde published it on my public Facebook page. As a reminder, if you want to receive articles and other items more quickly, I sometimes place items on my public Facebook before I have time to prepare a dispatch, so please “like” this page to receive such articles: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. )

FIVE RECENT BEHEADINGS BY RADICAL MUSLIMS IN BRITAIN, NOT ONE OR TWO

There has been coverage in the UK in recent days about this murder:

“Woman beheaded: ‘Muslim convert’ known as Fat Nick suspected of slaughtering grandmother pictured for first time”

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/woman-beheaded-first-picture-of-muslim-convert-nicknamed-fat-nick-suspected-of-murdering-82yearold-9714057.html

Investigators say this brutal beheading of a grandmother in her north London home may have been inspired by ISIS’s recent beheadings (they beheaded another Lebanese man today) and that the perpetrator wrongly thought the victim, who was of Italian origin, was of Jewish origin.

***

There have in fact been five “successful” beheadings in the UK recently, as well as a number of “failed” attempts to decapitate victims.

The media continues to play down many of these incidents and various other deadly attacks, often failing to report that the perpetrators are converts to radical Islam.

JERUSALEM’S LIKUD MAYOR APPROVES PLAN TO BUILD 2,200 HOMES FOR ARABS

I hope the Western media doesn’t forget to report this:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-approves-plan-to-build-2200-homes-for-arabs/

A reader writes: They will report that Israel approves a plan to build 2,200 new homes in Jerusalem, but not mention that they are for Arabs...

THE DAILY MAIL AGAIN USES HIGHLY SELECTIVE PHOTOS TO REPORT ON ISRAELIS

Meanwhile, this is what passes for journalism in the (London) Daily Mail, the world’s most read newspaper online.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745110/Wish-watch-jihad-Fierce-three-way-battle-just-border-Syria-attracts-ghoulish-Israeli-daytrippers-armed-binoculars.html

Of course, the Daily Mail will use any excuse for mixing a bit of genocide and beheadings (in Syria) with some pretty girls with nice legs…

-- Tom Gross

ARTICLES

JAMES FOLEY AND FELLOW FREELANCERS

James Foley and fellow freelancers: exploited by pared-back media outlets
In this new age of journalism, publishers should not abdicate responsibility by hiding behind low budgets
By Martin Chulov
The Guardian (London)
August 21, 2014

For more than three years now, much of what the world has seen, read and learned about the Middle East has been produced by journalism’s newest hands. They are not recruits, in the true sense of the word: few have the endorsement of established media outlets. Even fewer have been sent to the region with budgets, backing, or even basic training.

But from Tunisia to Syria and all stops in between, freelance reporters and photojournalists have reported history with a determination that old media could rarely match, even during the halcyon days when media organisations could afford to maintain correspondents and bureaux around the world.

Libya was a magnet for many freelancers when insurrection broke out in February 2011. Some had covered the tumult next door in Egypt, others were drawn to journalism, wanting to witness the end of Gaddafi’s cult-like state.

As the battle for east Libya ebbed and flowed around the town of Ajdabiya, the freelancers at times outnumbered the anti-Gaddafi rebels on the frontline. Both groups – with a fair few staff reporters among them – would often surge forward together or scamper for safety when regime forces advanced. James Foley was among them.

Foley, an affable, former reporter for the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes, was typical of the new band. He arrived with a sense of purpose and opportunity and, at times, immunity to the dangers. There were plenty of potential buyers for his frontline images and no shortage of other like-minded young journalists willing to cut their teeth in war reporting.

In 2011 he was captured in Libya with two other freelancers. A friend travelling with them, the South African photographer Anton Hammerl, was killed. Around the same time, four New York Times journalists were outflanked by Gaddafi’s troops, captured and taken to Tripoli. Foley was released after 44 days, and returned to reporting soon after.

For media organisations, ever tighter budgets and an abundance of eager freelancers meant that Libya was a buyer’s market. Many freelance reporters worked with no insurance, no expenses, or even airfares to get them home again.

But Libya soon proved as potent and unpredictable as any other war. The good guy/bad guy narrative that appeared clear-cut at the start drifted steadily to uncertainty. Difficult, important, decisions needed to be made about who to trust and when to cut and run.

For many freelancers, safety in numbers offered the best strategy. Foley formed strong bonds with many colleagues he met along the way, some of whom he would work with, or be imprisoned alongside, in Syria.

After the fall of Tripoli and Gaddafi’s death two months later, Libya rapidly became yesterday’s news. By then, the new war in Syria was dominating. It soon became the most dangerous conflict to cover anywhere in the world. And many of those who had started reporting in north Africa were soon going to the sectarian killing fields of Aleppo, Idlib, Homs and Hama.

But the fact that the Syrian war was far more important did not mean any change in the way coverage was funded. Media outlets which wanted gripping tales and images were willingly taking work from Syria’s frontlines. Foley was again front and centre, along with Manu Brabo, who had been captured with him in Libya and would go on to win a Pulitzer prize as a contract Associated Press photographer for his work in Syria.

All the while, they and other freelancers were using nothing more than their wits to survive in an ever more hostile environment. From the summer of 2012 to mid-2013 the risks taken by many reporters – including staffers with institutional backing – increasingly overshadowed the rewards. By then, working in northern Syria had become close to impossible because of the kidnap threat. Every trip over the border involved a real risk of not making it back.

Foley’s luck ran out in November 2012. He was seized near the Syrian town of Binnish, along with another photographer with whom he had entered the country. Both were on the last day of a two-week trip through dangerous areas that they knew well.

Foley was initially captured by a local warlord who later joined the group Islamic State, bringing his valuable booty with him.

In the year that followed at least 11 more journalists were seized in Syria, including many staff reporters. Yet, still the demands for freelance work came, with few outlets prepared to insure any non-staffer working inside the country.

Stripped down, pared-back journalism has created opportunities for those who dare, but it has also allowed outlets to hide behind flaky bottom lines as a means of abdicating responsibility. Radio stations, television networks and print outlets continue to outsource their coverage to reporters who often work without basic protection.

The price of that dereliction has been paid in the dungeons of north Syria. The meltdown of the Middle East is one of the most important stories of our time, every bit as significant globally as the end of the cold war. Too many outlets have covered it through exploitation.

“I HOPED TO FIND A FRIEND, A KIND WORD, A HUG”

Woman’s work: The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
By Francesca Borri
Columbia Journalism Review (New York)
July 1, 2013

(With the exception of photographer Alessio Romenzi, the names in the article below have been changed for reasons of privacy.)

www.cjr.org/feature/womans_work.php

He finally wrote to me. After more than a year of freelancing for him, during which I contracted typhoid fever and was shot in the knee, my editor watched the news, thought I was among the Italian journalists who’d been kidnapped, and sent me an email that said: “Should you get a connection, could you tweet your detention?”

That same day, I returned in the evening to a rebel base where I was staying in the middle of the hell that is Aleppo, and amid the dust and the hunger and the fear, I hoped to find a friend, a kind word, a hug. Instead, I found only another email from Clara, who’s spending her holidays at my home in Italy. She’s already sent me eight “Urgent!” messages. Today she’s looking for my spa badge, so she can enter for free. The rest of the messages in my inbox were like this one: “Brilliant piece today; brilliant like your book on Iraq.” Unfortunately, my book wasn’t on Iraq, but on Kosovo.

People have this romantic image of the freelancer as a journalist who’s exchanged the certainty of a regular salary for the freedom to cover the stories she is most fascinated by. But we aren’t free at all; it’s just the opposite. The truth is that the only job opportunity I have today is staying in Syria, where nobody else wants to stay. And it’s not even Aleppo, to be precise; it’s the frontline. Because the editors back in Italy only ask us for the blood, the bang-bang. I write about the Islamists and their network of social services, the roots of their power – a piece that is definitely more complex to build than a frontline piece. I strive to explain, not just to move, to touch, and I am answered with: “What’s this? Six thousand words and nobody died?”

Actually, I should have realized it that time my editor asked me for a piece on Gaza, because Gaza, as usual, was being bombed. I got this email: “You know Gaza by heart,” he wrote. “Who cares if you are in Aleppo?” Exactly. The truth is, I ended up in Syria because I saw the photographs in Time by Alessio Romenzi, who was smuggled into Homs through the water pipes when nobody was yet aware of the existence of Homs. I saw his shots while I was listening to Radiohead – those eyes, staring at me; the eyes of people being killed by Assad’s army, one by one, and nobody had even heard of a place called Homs. A vise clamped around my conscience, and I had to go to Syria immediately.

But whether you’re writing from Aleppo or Gaza or Rome, the editors see no difference. You are paid the same: $70 per piece. Even in places like Syria, where prices triple because of rampant speculation. So, for example, sleeping in this rebel base, under mortar fire, on a mattress on the ground, with yellow water that gave me typhoid, costs $50 per night; a car costs $250 per day. So you end up maximizing, rather than minimizing, the risks. Not only can you not afford insurance – it’s almost $1,000 a month – but you cannot afford a fixer or a translator. You find yourself alone in the unknown. The editors are well aware that $70 a piece pushes you to save on everything. They know, too, that if you happen to be seriously wounded, there is a temptation to hope not to survive, because you cannot afford to be wounded. But they buy your article anyway, even if they would never buy the Nike soccer ball handmade by a Pakistani child.

With new communication technologies there is this temptation to believe that speed is information. But it is based on a self-destructive logic: The content is now standardized, and your newspaper, your magazine, no longer has any distinctiveness, and so there is no reason to pay for the reporter. I mean, for the news, I have the Internet – and for free. The crisis today is of the media, not of the readership. Readers are still there, and contrary to what many editors believe, they are bright readers who ask for simplicity without simplification. They want to understand, not simply to know. Every time I publish an eyewitness account from the war, I get a dozen emails from people who say, “Okay, great piece, great tableaux, but I want to understand what’s going on in Syria.” And it would so please me to reply that I cannot submit an analysis piece, because the editors would simply spike it and tell me, “Who do you think you are, kid?” – even though I have three degrees, have written two books, and spent 10 years in various wars, first as a human-rights officer and now as a journalist. My youth, for what it’s worth, vanished when bits of brain splattered on me in Bosnia, when I was 23.

Freelancers are second-class journalists – even if there are only freelancers here, in Syria, because this is a dirty war, a war of the last century; it’s trench warfare between rebels and loyalists who are so close that they scream at each other while they shoot each other. The first time on the frontline, you can’t believe it, with these bayonets you have seen only in history books. Today’s wars are drone wars, but here they fight meter by meter, street by street, and it’s fucking scary. Yet the editors back in Italy treat you like a kid; you get a front-page photo, and they say you were just lucky, in the right place at the right time. You get an exclusive story, like the one I wrote last September on Aleppo’s old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, burning as the rebels and Syrian army battled for control. I was the first foreign reporter to enter, and the editors say: “How can I justify that my staff writer wasn’t able to enter and you were?” I got this email from an editor about that story: “I’ll buy it, but I will publish it under my staff writer’s name.”

And then, of course, I am a woman. One recent evening there was shelling everywhere, and I was sitting in a corner, wearing the only expression you could have when death might come at any second, and another reporter comes over, looks me up and down, and says: “This isn’t a place for women.” What can you say to such a guy? Idiot, this isn’t a place for anyone. If I’m scared, it’s because I’m sane. Because Aleppo is all gunpowder and testosterone, and everyone is traumatized: Henri, who speaks only of war; Ryan, tanked up on amphetamines. And yet, at every torn-apart child we see, they come only to me, a “fragile” female, and want to know how I am. And I am tempted to reply: I am as you are. And those evenings when I wear a hurt expression, actually, are the evenings I protect myself, chasing out all emotion and feeling; they are the evenings I save myself.

Because Syria is no longer Syria. It is a nuthouse. There is the Italian guy who was unemployed and joined al-Qaeda, and whose mom is hunting for him around Aleppo to give him a good beating; there is the Japanese tourist who is on the frontlines, because he says he needs two weeks of “thrills”; the Swedish law-school graduate who came to collect evidence of war crimes; the American musicians with bin Laden-style beards who insist this helps them blend in, even though they are blonde and six-feet, five-inches tall. (They brought malaria drugs, even if there’s no malaria here, and want to deliver them while playing violin.) There are the various officers of the various UN agencies who, when you tell them you know of a child with leishmaniasis (a disease spread by the bite of a sand fly) and could they help his parents get him to Turkey for treatment, say they can’t because it is but a single child, and they only deal with “childhood” as a whole.

But we’re war reporters, after all, aren’t we? A band of brothers (and sisters). We risk our lives to give voice to the voiceless. We have seen things most people will never see. We are a wealth of stories at the dinner table, the cool guests who everyone wants to invite. But the dirty secret is that instead of being united, we are our own worst enemies; and the reason for the $70 per piece isn’t that there isn’t any money, because there is always money for a piece on Berlusconi’s girlfriends. The true reason is that you ask for $100 and somebody else is ready to do it for $70. It’s the fiercest competition. Like Beatriz, who today pointed me in the wrong direction so she would be the only one to cover the demonstration, and I found myself amid the snipers as a result of her deception. Just to cover a demonstration, like hundreds of others.

Yet we pretend to be here so that nobody will be able to say, “But I didn’t know what was happening in Syria.” When really we are here just to get an award, to gain visibility. We are here thwarting one another as if there were a Pulitzer within our grasp, when there’s absolutely nothing. We are squeezed between a regime that grants you a visa only if you are against the rebels, and rebels who, if you are with them, allow you to see only what they want you to see. The truth is, we are failures. Two years on, our readers barely remember where Damascus is, and the world instinctively describes what’s happening in Syria as “that mayhem,” because nobody understands anything about Syria – only blood, blood, blood. And that’s why the Syrians cannot stand us now. Because we show the world photos like that 7-year-old child with a cigarette and a Kalashnikov. It’s clear that it’s a contrived photo, but it appeared in newspapers and websites around the world in March, and everyone was screaming: “These Syrians, these Arabs, what barbarians!” When I first got here, the Syrians stopped me and said, “Thank you for showing the world the regime’s crimes.” Today, a man stopped me; he told me, “Shame on you.”

Had I really understood something of war, I wouldn’t have gotten sidetracked trying to write about rebels and loyalists, Sunnis and Shia. Because really the only story to tell in war is how to live without fear. It all could be over in an instant. If I knew that, then I wouldn’t have been so afraid to love, to dare, in my life; instead of being here, now, hugging myself in this dark, rancid corner, desperately regretting all I didn’t do, all I didn’t say. You who tomorrow are still alive, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you love enough? You who have everything, why you are so afraid?