Abstract
Since 2011, the international media have done much to highlight the suffering of civilians in the on-going war in Syria, including through innovative forms of reporting such as VR journalism and news games. However, by the end of 2016, questions were being raised about a number of high-profile news stories, such as the use of chemical weapons, the role of the ‘White Helmets’ relief workers, and the bombing of Aleppo and other cities. Amid the claims and counter-claims of propaganda and ‘fake news’, news audiences glimpsed shifting and clashing explanatory framings of the Syrian war. A conflict that had initially been understood against the background of the ‘Arab Spring’ began to be seen as complicated by sectarian religious tensions, the rise of Islamic State, opaque factional and regional alliances, and international tensions reminiscent of the Cold War. An imperative to establish a moral framework for the story seemed to preclude more complex and searching questions about the motivations and actions of local and international actors.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Welcome to Aleppo (www.ryot.org/blog/stories/welcome-to-aleppo) and Endgame: Syria (http://gamethenews.net/index.php/endgame-syria/).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Panorama: Jihadis You Pay For, 4 December 2017, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09j0fql.
- 5.
Lucas Scott, Who are Syria’s White Helmets, and why are they so controversial?, The Conversation, 7 October 2016, https://theconversation.com/who-are-syrias-white-helmets-and-why-are-they-so-controversial-66580; Eliot Higgins, There’s No Such Thing as a Good Fake, Bellingcat, 30 November 2016, www.bellingcat.com/resources/articles/2016/11/30/theres-no-thing-good-fake-publicity-stunts-go-wrong/. Solon’s description of how a misleading counter-narrative was constructed could almost describe her own methodology: ‘The same handful of people are quoted as “experts” in articles that are repackaged and interlinked to create a body of content whose conspiracy claims gain a semblance of legitimacy’.
- 6.
Syria Gay Girl in Damascus blog a hoax by US man, BBC News, 13 June, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13744980.
- 7.
Higgins’s description of Beeley as ‘a person plucked from obscurity by Russian state media’, unwittingly presents her as his alter-ego (Newsweek, 13 February 2018).
- 8.
See http://syriapropagandamedia.org/about. Two authors of this chapter are affiliated with the Working Group. Similar criticisms had already been made by the Guardian’s former Middle East editor, Brian Whitaker, who described the Working Group as ‘more like a propaganda exercise than a serious academic project’ (Brian Whitaker The Syrian conflict’s anti-propaganda propagandists, Medium, 26 February 2018, https://medium.com/@Brian_Whit/the-syrian-conflicts-anti-propaganda-propagandists-ebb3e5752e16).
- 9.
See, for example: Eva Bartlett, How the Mainstream Media Whitewashed Al-Qaeda and the White Helmets in Syria, In Gaza, 6 January 2018, https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/how-the-mainstream-media-whitewashed-al-qaeda-and-the-white-helmets-in-syria/; Tim Hayward, The Guardian, White Helmets, and Silenced Comment, 12 January 2018, https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2018/01/12/the-guardian-white-helmets-and-silenced-comment/; Jonathan Cook The authoritarians who silence Syria questions, 27 February 2018, www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-02-27/authoritarians-syria-questions/.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
See http://arkgroupdmcc.com/casestudies/training/. ARK’s client list is at http://arkgroupdmcc.com/about/clients/.
- 13.
Jemma Dempsey, The most dangerous job in the world, Hemmingfire, 17 November 2015, www.hemmingfire.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2610/The_most_dangerous_job_in_the_world__96_Syria_92s_White_Helmets.html.
- 14.
Friends of Syria group agree urgent support for rebels, BBC News, 22 June 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-23016225/friends-of-syria-group-agree-urgent-support-for-rebels.
- 15.
In December 2015, the UK government reported spending £15 m on the White Helmets, as part of a £100 m ‘non-humanitarian aid’ package designed to help the opposition prepare for the ‘post-Assad era’; and a further £5.3 m for media activists, including ‘civil society groups and the likes of the White Helmets’ (www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481277/Syria_UK_Non-Humanitarian_Support_-_Public_Document.pdf).
- 16.
The Syria Campaign responded that while Purpose helped with ‘early set up’, from ‘December 2013, four months before its public launch’ it was ‘an independent legal organisation’ (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pxyMCGNvslgYmZOUmzdu5Y1xX2ccJLl4X9UGxK0uY1U/edit). Yet in November 2014 Purpose co-founder Tim Dixon presented the Syria Campaign as a shining example of his company’s work, taking credit for achieving ‘significant breakthroughs on public engagement, media narratives and funding’ for the White Helmets (www.bond.org.uk/data/files/Bond_conference_2014/campaign_showcase.pdf).
- 17.
- 18.
See the Companies House listing at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08825761.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
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Hammond, P., Al Nahed, S., McCormack, T. (2019). Advocacy Journalism, the Politics of Humanitarian Intervention and the Syrian War. In: Shaw, I.S., Selvarajah, S. (eds) Reporting Human Rights, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10719-2_3
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