The great Libyan embed
Written by duckrabbit“Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for further interrogation. This is unacceptable,” said MSF General Director Christopher Stokes.
I’m not the only one who has been struck by the one sided reporting of the Libyan revolution. It seems the media were largely only capable of presenting one point of view applied to the spring revolutions. What happened in Tunisia was narratively speaking interchangeable with what happened in Libya.
This makes for an easy story and easily read photographs.
Good guys fight badass dictator (who we’ve kissed ass to over the years) and good guys win Hollywood style. Afterwards we can all sleep safely in our beds. In the meantime the more kick-ass action the better.
But now according to the BBC those good guys are accusing both human rights organisations and MSF of being Gadaffi’s fifth column
The head of Misrata’s military council, Ibrahim Beitelmal, denies involvement in any abuses and says his accusers have a hidden agenda.
“I think that the people working under the guise of human rights organisations or doctors without borders are Gaddafi’s fifth column. There may have been a few cases of former rebels taking revenge but that doesn’t mean that the orders have come from my office to torture prisoners.”
Was the Libyan war reported, photographically speaking, as one continuous emotional and intellectual embed (in bed) with the rebels? One that audiences are preconditioned not only to accept, but actually to celebrate, from news print, to internet, TV reels and gallery spaces.
Yesterday I got this shocking email from MSF (printed below). Read it and ask yourself how are we now to read the photography of Misrata (a place synonymous in the photographic community with the deaths of the photographers/filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros)?
There is a thin line between propaganda, bang bang chasing pictures and journalism.
It seems now we were fed a lot of the first two and very little of last.
Should any of us really be surprised by this? That it’s almost impossible to jump on a plane, visit a country you’ve never been to before, where you don’t speak the language, that is immersed in full on tribal civil war, embed with one side, and then tell a story that is anything else but flawed?
Anyone else feel cheated?
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Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (8 Comments)
This should come as no surprise. The so-called “Arab Spring” was nothing more than a catch phrase tagged onto a story that the media.. traditional or otherwise, had neither the resources or desire to properly investigate. Hash tags, sound bites, and instagrams will never equal great reportage, but it seems they have replaced it.
‘ Hash tags, sound bites, and instagrams will never equal great reportage, but it seems they have replaced it.’
Terrific quote. Deserves further investigation Kenneth.
Our own so called reporting of domestic news in the US is so utterly flawed, twisted and misinformed- how could so called reporting from half way across the world be any less so?
In defense: There have been reports about human rights violations of the “good guys” in major publications for a long time. While the media was more on the side of the rebels and the main narrative is simple and clear, easy to communicate, it has not failed to point out their wrongdoings. The situtation of Tawarghans was widely reported for example.
Hi Daniel,
thanks for your comment. Definitely there has been some coverage of violations on both sides. Would you agree though predominantly the narrative was that the rebels were the good guys? I think very few questions were asked about their motivations, or who would come into power.
Having watched and read the news, personally I’ve never heard of the ‘Tawarghans’. That’s not to say they haven’t been reported, just how stories settle in audiences minds.
Yes, it was. At the beginning, they were defined by who they fought against. But questions about their motivations, who will come into power etc. have been raised for months. The narrative in the media was not that one dimensional. What people perceived or consumed is a different story.
Hi Daniel,
I think your comment is slightly contradictory.
‘The narrative in the media was not that one dimensional. What people perceived or consumed is a different story.’
So who is to blame if people ‘perceived’ or ‘consumed’ a different story? At the very least your comment highlights a failure, does it not?
I meant that these stories were reported and if you wanted to get a more differentiated view of the rebels, their action and motivations, it was definitely possible. Responsibility is not only with the media, but to some extent with the consumers. The MSF report was by no means a surprise to me, probably because I worked in Libya, but I think it was all there to read in the media. There have been reports of arbitrary detentions of dark skinned Libyans, extra judicial killings of alleged Gadhafi supporters, looting of towns like Tawargha, IDPs, collateral killings of NATO attacks etc. in mainstream media at least since August.