As he told the "good" Gustav words have tremendous power, which if used with "care" can not only change a thought, but create and channel it in a certain direction, it goes without saying that this power must know how to handle, is not something you improvise in certain (or?) and why sorcerer's apprentices, modern and non-studying day and night as well as possibly change the cards on the table, to use a lighter term.
Wars are a glaring example, logically enough, and makes no exception, and God forbid, the extermination of the Palestinian conflict for survival became the only democracy in the Middle East. One of the tools of defense against this manipulation of the hearts and minds, as the good Santa (and others), is figuring out how to propagate evil and what media and prefers to use, and certainly a good way of spreading this incessant propaganda is the modern language. Words. He's probably right
old Galeano says that when we used to listen to and repeat the voice of the success (or power).
This article appeared in Le monde diplomatique March 2007 offering an example of how language information may be biased.
distorted words in the Middle East
Joris Luyendijk *
understand the what, where, when, who and how, after listening to any of the parties as to why, taking care to separate adequately the fact opinion ... It is not all that recognize quality journalism? And what the commercials promise of CNN, Fox News or Al Jazeera, if not objectivity? "We report, you decide 'we report the facts, you decide. Yet, after working five years as a correspondent in the Middle East, my conclusion is pessimistic: Western journalists can not precisely describe, much less objectively, the Arab world or the Middle East.
While following the letter of the rules of journalism, paints a profoundly distorted in the region. The main problem concerns the use of words: those that employ journalists for the public mean nothing European or American, or are simply biased. The best examples of these unknown terms are the words "occupation" and "dictatorship". Ignore the nature of a dictatorship is not only the preserve of the intellectuals or the general public.
When I was a correspondent, I received a rebuke from the chief editor of times: why get a visa to Iraq of Saddam Hussein called for so long? And because I was not yet gone to Libya? "Like, there is a visa? Insists, "And what about the demand made by a famous investigative journalist who sought the address of the Jordanian intelligence services ... Or about that amount that he wanted the receipts of all persons who had paid for my trip to Iraq during the former dictator ...
Still, the editor, the reporter of the news or the accounting officer followed the news closely. They read newspapers and watched television. But time at which the newspapers or television these explain what is really a dictatorship? The book I published last summer explains the fear, mistrust, brainwashing, corruption and destruction of the personal resources of self-love. The publisher is involved personally and has read it several times. He returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair full of enthusiasm: the book had spoken to a fellow Egyptian who was interested, I was about to break into the Arab world! He was bright, until the day he was explained that there was a contradiction in terms: a dictatorship can allow the publication of a book that has for its theme the heinous nature of this dictatorship? Even after having digested a hundred pages devoted to the culture of fear on which leverage the police states, the word "dictatorship" had been for him an abstract concept.
The word "occupation" may itself be meaningless to Western readers and viewers? Such a vacuum would explain why you multiply the pressures on the Palestinian Authority because it proves to "do everything possible to combat violence" when you do not hardly ever asks the Israeli government spokesman if "do enough against the occupation." No one doubts that the citizen in the West know what the terrorist threat, not least because policy makers constantly remind him. But those who explain to Western audiences the terror that lurks behind the word "occupation"? Whatever the year to which it refers, the number of Palestinian civilians killed as a result of the Israeli occupation is at least three times higher than that of Israeli civilians killed as a result of the attacks. But the correspondents and Western commentators, who evoke the "bloody suicide bombings," never speak of the "bloody occupation."
If the daily horrors of employment Israeli remain largely invisible, the 'information' coming from the dictatorship comes instead to newspapers and television Western. It then presents a second problem: When journalists describe the events, they use the term democracy. They use words such as 'parliament' or 'court', said the "President Mubarak 'instead of' the dictator Mubarak," and speak of the National Democratic Party when it is neither "democratic" nor a "party." They cite a scholar of the Arab world, but forget to add that it is controlled and monitored by the secret services. When they appear on the TV screen of angry young men burning a Danish flag in a police state, they call this a "manifestation" and not a media operation.
The disconcerting is that the correspondents who are in the Middle East know what it means jobs and a dictatorship. Work and live in Arab countries and the Palestinian territories, have friends, colleagues and family members who can not rely on any rule of law. These friends, these colleagues, these families are not citizens but subjects with almost no defense, and they know it. But how Western audiences may know, really know, how a similar system? How could it when the vocabulary suggests that democracies and the detective work were almost similar, with a parliament, a president and even the "election"?
The "hawk" of Israel, the Palestinians 'extremist' Some words do not say nothing for ordinary people. Other evoke different things from what you meant. Inherently misleading words: a few minutes of zapping on the satellite channels is enough to prove it. We must say 'Israel', the 'Zionist entity, "the" occupied Palestine "? 'Intifada', 'new Holocaust' or 'struggle for independence "? This strip of land is "disputed" or "occupied", and must be "given" or "made"? It is a "concession" when Israel fulfills a commitment contained in a treaty signed? Are called 'negotiations' between those Israelis and Palestinians, and if so, what is the scope of the Palestinians know that the word 'negotiation' implies mutual concessions between two parties more or less equal? There are no neutral words. What vocabulary take, then? Not easy to write an agency like this: "Today in Judea and Samaria / the Palestinian territories / occupied territories / the disputed territories / territories liberated, three innocent Palestinian / Muslim terrorists / were previously eliminated / brutally murdered / killed by the Zionist enemy / Israeli occupation troops / by Israeli Defense Forces. " Or, on Iraq: "Today, the Zionist crusader / American occupation troops / coalition forces attacked the bases of the Muslim resistance / terrorists / terrorist cell."
Western culture is optimistic: when you focus a problem, please propose a solution at the same time. But how to get out of this bedlam language, except perhaps more openly acknowledge the inevitable bias and filters of all journalistic work, and put an end to deception of the slogans, the result of marketing? We report the facts, you decide, all right. But we decide what you see and how. However, there is a category of words for which the Western media could do better.
Why a jew who claim the land that was given by God is an "ultra-nationalist," while a Muslim who does the same reasoning is a "fundamentalist"? Why an Arab dictator who chooses a policy different from that of Western "anti-Western," while the label is never applied in the other direction?
Imagine an American leader called "a radical anti-Arab"? An Israeli political
manager who believes that only violence can protect its people is called a "hawk." Have you ever heard of a "Hawk" Palestinian? No, it is an "extremist" or a "terrorist."
Israeli leaders who believe in dialogue are "doves."
However, a Palestinian who choose the same road is called "moderate" that suggests that, despite the violence hotels in the heart of every Palestinian, that has arrived, thanks be to Allah, to "moderate" its profound nature. And while Hamas "hates" Israel, no Israeli leader or party has never "hated" the Palestinians, even when their leaders take advantage of their government positions to preach the expulsions. Unless this is ethnic cleansing? Or an "involuntary removal"? Or a 'transfer'?
notes:
* Dutch journalist, author of Presque humains. Images du Proche-Orient (in Dutch, Podium, Amsterdam, 2006).
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