reporting and social media

Modern media outlets face many challenges one being with the Internet news travel fast, much faster than before and the enormous amount of news being seen at any given moment in the world is more than any human being can reasonably absorb. Meaning that any journalist must produce and be on his or her proverbial toes all the time. Some journalists here I follow in Ottawa are on Twitter all the time, they report what they hear and comment, though in 140 characters.

So editors decided to report only on news that will be of most interest to its readers. Per example hurricane Sandy travelled a very large distance and crossed and touched many countries, in the end all you heard was how Sandy had devastated New York City. What it did elsewhere in the Caribbean or in other US States or cities or even how it ended up in Canada was barely mentioned.
An almost universal decision was made to talk only about NYC because most news readers could understand the story quickly. Do editors talk to each other or merely follow what the other guy is doing. It seems that quickly is also the operative word in the news nowadays, this leads to often to factual errors and other mistakes, hard to correct once the story is out.

In the Arab Spring context, editors and journalists have labelled the different parties, in the arab world they are usually called rebels or militants, the word terrorist is not use because the rebels or militants fight an established authority in their own country. They would be terrorists if they attacked foreigners.
However there is no time for context to explain how or why this happened. Take Nigeria where groups have planted bombs and attacked civilians, these incidents are described as a fight between Muslims in the North and Christians in the South, in reality it is about land distribution, property rights and perceived injustices, the religious part of it is another issue not necessarily connected to this economic one. It would be too difficult to start explaining to the public at large the economic discrepancies of a country like Nigeria, so the media stick to the easy religious explanation though it is not factual.

The civil war in Syria is another example, a minority the Alawites have ruled Syria for 45 years and run the country like a mafia fief, ruining the economy in the process and setting the country up as a haven for various violent groups who could use their base in Damascus with impunity. Syria a transit point between Iran and Lebanon. Such detailed explanation of the situation would be too complicated and most news readers barely know where Syria is on a map.

This approach makes serious or grave news trivial matters. Everything is so quick and so simplified that our basic understanding goes out the proverbial window and the average person starts to think in terms of black and white issues. Also it de-humanizes the persons involved in such conflicts, they are so far away from us and we have such little understanding of them that generalities start taking precedence over hard facts. One fanatic becomes millions of fanatics or an entire countries population can all be put in one bag because it is all the same, an example Iran, all Iranians must be fanatics given the government they have, final conclusion is, they are not like us.

We now have the situation with Gaza in the middle-east which to me geographically would be more accurately described as the Near East but the media has made the middle-east a grab bag of all the countries from Morocco to Iran, easier for simple folks to understand. Leading a lot of people to automatically assume that Turks and Iranians are also Arabs because they are Muslims. A bit like saying that all Catholics are Italian. Forgetting that in all those countries in the grab bag that is dubbed the Middle-East you have ancient Christian and Jewish populations, though small still they are there and have been part of the fabric for a long time. Yes there are Palestinian Christians and Iraqi Jews and Christians and Egyptian Jews and Christians. But the media will not talk of this so as not to confuse the basic simplistic message of good against evil. Thus instead of informing the media spreads ignorance and stereotypes.

Here is Canada we have a similar situation, the media has always divided the country between the English and the French. Very simplistic but so much easier to do, spreading stereotypes and falsehoods all around. It continues to this day, despite the fact that we are now a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nation. There is nothing quite like a good stereotype to get the readers agitated and confused.

So in the latest reporting on the eternal conflict between the Israeli government against the Palestinians, they became Militants or is Hamas the Militants, what does the word militant mean? The Libyans are described as rebels to this day despite the fact that Ghaddafi is gone from power. Why then the word militants instead of simply the Palestinians in Gaza. At any rate this is not explained and neither is it explained that the millions living in that little strip of land called Gaza are just ordinary folks who cannot exit, leave or do anything, they are captive since the borders are closed by Israël. But you could be excused if you thought that all Palestinians where with the militants or worse. Do the Palestinians desire peace and a better life in a secure country, yes, they all do like any human being, but that is rarely discussed by the media.

The media loves to use all kinds of images and words to inject meaning, the other day a reporter for the CBC spoke of the Sacred City being shelled, then in the next phrased used Jerusalem. Sacred to whom, did this reporter mean Jews, Christians and Muslims? No she meant to the Israelis. Another CBC reporter called Jerusalem the Capital of Israel, not correct, Tel Aviv is the capital of modern Israel.
Ancient Biblical texts do not make international law today.

Then the BBC got into the act and presents lopsided reporting, it would appear from the perspective of the BBC News that Israel is far more at risk and suffers far more than anyone in Gaza. Given the terrible living conditions in Gaza compared to modern affluent Israel, one wonders where does this comparison come from. What is missing is the context, what Gaza is really like as a place to live for millions of people, a huge poor ghetto where people are contained in squalor and surrounded by a powerful modern, well equipped Israëli army who is preparing to invade, up to 75,000 soldiers ready to march and already staging an invasion. Given the population density of Gaza it is going to be a civilian blood bath.

The New York Times has a series of photos showing the two sides of that border, in Israel people lead modern affluent lives, this could be Florida. One photo shows a young women in a luxury car, talking on her cell phone next to a huge army tank, another photo shows Israeli citizens in a shelter, all are well dressed, they look worried but otherwise the photo could be a community centre in North America.

On the other side of the border in Gaza, people are poorly dressed, dirty, amongst ruins, desperate scared, some are injured looking bewildered, this is the third world. One comment says that a family has gathered together so if Israel attacks they will at least die together. All is devastation and despair, so far 45 civilians have been killed and 390 injured, medical support is weak due to the economic and military siege of Gaza by Israel. There is something totally unnerving about such photos and the inequality is stark.

What is truly obscene, is the IDF, Israel Defence Force on social media justifying their actions against civilians. Even if you accept that in politics and war there is no morality and no ethical behaviour, in the 21 century, there are laws on how civilians will be treated. Israel claims to be a modern state ruled by laws and says it abides by international treaties, so then why the social media PR campaign to try to justify its actions. I am not convinced and find no credibility in the explanations given by Israel so far on action in Gaza. It is not the first time in the last 35 years that Israel has launched military campaigns in the region against much weaker rivals.

Despite the fact that Israel claims it is only defending itself, an editorial yesterday in the Jerusalem Post by Gershon Baskin entitled ''Israel shortsighted assassination'' says that this campaign is not what it appears and Israel provoked this crisis by killing Al-Jabari, Security Chief of Hamas. An election is coming next year in Israel, PM Netanyahu wants to retain power at all cost and this type of action is a vote getter amongst the fanatical settlers and other groups who would like ''a final solution'' to the Palestinian question. He is politically in trouble and his war mongering against Iran during the USA Election campaign and his open support of Mitt Romney backfired badly so now he has to try something else.

We can still be hopeful that some foreign government will call Israel's bluff and refuse to look the other way. The argument of self-defence does not hold water anymore. It is high time for the Israeli government to find a true path to peace and a living arrangement with its neighbours, bellicose attitudes will not do.

A fascinating study by the University of Cambridge

A research paper by Prof. Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew.

Language change among our prehistoric ancestors came about via the arrival of immigrant men - rather than women - into new settlements, according to new research.

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The claim is made by two University of Cambridge academics, Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew, in a report to be published in Science on September 9.

They studied the instances of genetic markers (the male Y chromosome and female mtDNA) from several thousand individuals in communities around the world that seem to show the emergence globally of sex-specific transmission of language.

From Scandinavian Vikings who ferried kidnapped British women to Iceland – to African, Indian and Polynesian tribes, a pattern has emerged which appears to show that the arrival of men to particular geographic locations – through either agricultural dispersal or the arrival of military forces – can have a significant impact on what language is spoken there.

Professor Renfrew said: “It may be that during colonisation episodes by emigrating agriculturalists, men generally outnumber women in the pioneering groups and take wives from the local community.

“When the parents have different linguistic backgrounds, it may often be the language of the father which is dominant within the family group.”

Dr Forster, of Murray Edwards College, also pointed to the fact that men have a greater variance in offspring than women – they are more likely to father children with different mothers than vice versa. This has been recorded both in prehistoric tribes such as the 19^th and 20^th century Polar Eskimos from Greenland and in historic figures like Genghis Khan, who is believed to have fathered hundreds of children.

Indeed, his Y chromosome is carried by 0.5 per cent of the world’s male population today.

Perhaps the most striking example of sex-biased language change however comes from a genetic study on the prehistoric encounter of expanding Polynesians with resident Melanesians in New Guinea and the neighbouring Admiralty Islands. The New Guinean coast contains pockets of Polynesian-speaking areas separated by Melanesian areas. The Polynesian mtDNA level (40-50%) is similar in these areas regardless of language, whereas the Y chromosome correlates strongly with the presence of Polynesian languages.

Past studies have shown similar findings in the Indian subcontinent among the speakers of Tibeto-Burman and among the immigrant Indo-European languages as opposed to indigenous Dravidian languages.

In the Americas, too, language replacement in the course of postulated farming dispersal has also been found to correlate for the Uto-Aztecan language family.

Added Forster: “Whether in European, Indian, Chinese or other languages, the expression ‘mother tongue’ and its concept is firmly embedded in popular imagination – perhaps this is the reason why for so many years the role of fathers, or more likely, specific groups of successful males, in determining prehistoric language switches has not been recognised by geneticists.”

“Prehistoric women may have more readily adopted the language of immigrant males, particularly if these newcomers brought with them military prowess or a perceived higher status associated with farming or metalworking.

Egypt

In the last few weeks change has swept a part of the world where change did not seem possible. First Tunisia, a small country on the North African Coast. Regime change came fast, much faster than any thought possible, faster than any invading army could do.  In Tunisia a dictator once the ''good friend'' of many governments in the West, ''notre ami Ben Ali'' as he was described by the French government, became a tyrant the day those governments who had found him useful, no longer thought he could be of any possible use. So many despots in Asia, in Latin America, in the Middle-East and Africa have known the same fate, a friend one day and a useless tyrant the next. As long as they did what they were told and protected trade, all was well. Saddam Hussein was once a good friend, the ally against Iran, until that fateful day in 1990 when he invaded Kuwait.

Egypt is now in turmoil, though being the biggest, oldest, most populous of all Arab countries, not being really Arab since the Egyptians think of themselves as a distinct people, with a national history going back to the beginning of Civilization, once a great Empire, Egypt is a very different story.  Their President has been part of the national scene since the fall of the Monarchy in 1952.  As a young man in the army, he attached himself to people like Sadat and Nasser. He was there when Nasser died of a heart attack and Sadat succeeded him. Again he was on the podium the day Sadat was killed and assume the mantel. He has become the intimate of many heads of State, a good friend, someone they found reliable and provided stability for the region. Protecting investment and trade and a buffer for Israel. You do not abandon such an old friend and this is why so many governments in the West have been very reluctant to ask for his departure. The exception, the British PM, but then again is it wise for England to be so bold, they have a long controversial story with  Egypt, often seen in Egypt as would be colonial masters or aggressive power as during the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956.

What I find interesting about the crisis in Egypt is the response of Western Governments, on the one hand all important trade could be disrupted like the shipping routes through the Suez Canal, not a good thing, but how do you say this publicly without doing a double speak on democracy and human rights when you are one of those governments always hectoring the dictators.  Yes you might say democracy and the aspiration of ordinary people is important but not to the point of upsetting trade and investors. It is as if the aspirations of the Egyptian people are less important than those of Europeans or North Americans, Equality and Democracy yes, but some people are more equal than others. Its the old North-South Dialogue, the have and have not, developed and developing.

Mubarak says I cannot go, there will be chaos, really, there is chaos now. The ruling party has been shaken and all the other countries of the region have taken notice. Their despots are worried, notice how Colonel Khadafy next door in Libya is quiet. What the region does not have and cannot provide to its people is a dignified life, jobs, public services, like clean water, decent housing, health care, good schools, safe food and opportunities. When your population is 80% under 30 years of age, it is difficult for any old dictator to satisfy the young, having so little to offer.

In the West, we are scared of Islam and Islamist, thinking if dictators are swept away, for sure Islam will take over. That is a very simplistic analysis and insults the intelligence of the populations of countries like Tunisia and Egypt and all other Arab countries and our own intelligence. You have to be a simpleton to believe such idiocy, unfortunately it is still an argument found and reported in the media.

Then the other concern is if Mubarak who was present when Egypt made peace with Israel and inherited the legacy of Anwar Sadat, if he should go what then. Maybe the next fellow will not follow the same policies. So far all the actors involved on the scene and who are around Mubarak have not shown any signs of departing from the established peace treaty, why should they. Let's not forget that Egypt lives from tourism and also receives billions in foreign support to maintain the peace with Israel. It is very unlikely that any new government in Egypt would renege and change course, it would be too costly.

The Government in Israel has reasons to worry, unwise policies and aggressive attitudes of the past 60 years may come back to haunt them. But then again the poverty of all its neighbors and the enormous need for improvement at all levels would occupy any new government trying to satisfy the needs of a young population. The priority would not be Israel or a new war but instead how to satisfy the enormous  expectations of any regime change in the Arab world. Israel and the conflict would be quickly forgotten and put on the back burner.  Look at Tunisia, since the change of regime in that country a few weeks ago, the population has been enjoying the new freedom to simply do and say what you want without fear. They are looking at economic improvements and a new horizon.

Let us not forget that any people ruled by a dictator is just as deserving of the liberties we enjoy. Let's not deny them those same rights and opportunities because they happen to live in what we believe to be less advanced countries or because we want to protect our lifestyle, trade and investments before human dignity.