The text below was not written by me but by a fund manager, Dr Eric Woehrling. It may seem to fall outside the subject matter on which I normally post on my blog although it touches on one area I deal with-BBC bias, or in this case, maybe just naiveté and lack of background knowledge, which is only slightly more excusable. But in fact that was not the main point which attracted me to it. What I like is the parallel he draws with events in Ivory Coast which may well have escaped the attention of most individuals-they certainly escaped me- and how he demonstrates why we should question overly simplistic media coverage which often simply portrays President Assad as an evil tyrant and his opponents as good and democratic. It also goes some way to explaining the interest and involvement of Iran and the US in the Syrian situation.
When the BBC’s correspondents got together on radio 4 to review 2011 and predict what would happen in 2012, they were asked to nominate their good news stories. The first and least contested offering was Ivory Coast, where Laurent Gbagbo’s overthrow was described without further ado as a rare thing to celebrate. Even the royal wedding provoked more debate.
La BBC Y-voit-rien
This approach has characterised much of the BBC’s coverage of the conflict. It consistently described Ouattarah as having been “recognised as winner of the election by the international community,” but there was next to no explanation as to what that recognition was based on. Instead, we were given a blow by blow account of the progress of Ouattarah’s troups, supported by their international (mainly French) backers against Gbagbo’s. The fact that this was a good thing was taken for granted. The only thing worth reporting was how fast it was happening.
In many ways, the reporting of Ivory Coast’s civil war was very similar to that of Libya’s. In each case, we knew who the good guys and the bad guys were. The only thing to do was sit on the edge of our seats in suspense, waiting to see who would win. But the situation in Libya was pretty clear; we had ample descriptions of Ghaddafi’s dictatorial and kleptocratic behaviour. Despite that, his regime was given a lot of airtime, so at least we knew how it justified its dubious position.
The reporting in Ivory Coast by contrast left much more in the dark. Why, for example, did so many Ivorians support Gbagbo when he won a free election in 2000 against Robert Guei, the general who replaced the first post-colonial leader Houphouët-Boigny’s successor, Henri Bedié? Many Ivorians attribute Gbagbo's popularity to his attempt to reduce the economic influence of France, Ivory Coast’s former political master, who (as is often the case in Africa) controlled many of the country’s revenue generating activities. Telecoms are dominated by France Telecom, construction by Bouygues, and the country’s main port is owned by the Bolloré group, for example.
It is not disputed that Ouattarah’s military uprising against Gbagbo annexed the north of the Ivory Coast, from the frontier with Burkina Fasso to Bouake, in 2002. One can therefore ask how it was possible for the country to carry out the elections of which the international community declared Ouattarah the victor. Indeed, Ouattarah gained close to 100% of votes in some constituencies in the north, with more people voting for him than were registered as living there. While Gbagbo may have been guilty of similar shenanigans in parts of the country he controlled, this fact at least should have encouraged the BBC to ask whether Ouattarah really was the democrat, or in fact a military strongman, whose troops were suppressing the democratic voice of Ivorians in the North of the country. If France had annexed the South of England during a general election, would the British be happy if the "International Community" told them to "recognise" Nicholas Sarkozy as their prime minister?
But who was backing Ouattarah’s army? Behind that lies the crucial question: cui bono, who benefited from Ouattarah’s victory? One obvious clue can be found in his wife, Dominique Folloroux, not only a French citizen, but an extremely well-connected one. On Wikepedia we find that “Martin Bouygues, head of the Bouygues industrial group, and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of former French president François Mitterrand – were present [at their wedding] as friends of Ouattara,” and (citing an article in Grazia) that Folloroux’s “proximity to Houphouët-Boigny” (Ivory Coast’s first post-colonial ruler remember) “was highly coveted by a bunch of businessmen, the Bouygues, Bolloré and especially the cocoa industry ... They had to go through her to gain access to the old man.”
Folloroux was close to both France and Ivory Coast’s first post-colonial dictator, for whom Ouattarah was a colonel. Far from being the underdogs, he and his wife were part of of Boigny’s inner circle; they are the establishment. As the country’s first independent leader, Boigny was subject to considerable French influence. Why did the BBC never dare even suggest that that the French supported Ouattarah because they saw him as their man, and Gbagbo as an irritating African upstart, who wanted to take away their lucrative post-colonial interests?
I’m sure there will be counter-arguments. But a few points about the BBC’s journalistic approach remain notwithstanding, which equally apply to Syria. In a small country which not many of its audience knew about, the detail with which the BBC reported the conflict was less than that applied to other conflicts, particularly in terms of giving a balanced perspective on the claims of both sides. This lack of detail enabled the BBC to present the conflict as one between a democrat and a dictator, in which the international community played the role of idealistic champion of democracy. And it failed to highlight the financial and realpolitikal interests of one particular member of that international community (France) in the outcome of that conflict.
Syria
Almost no foreign journalists are allowed in Syria, yet the BBC seems sure that President Assad is suppressing a democratic movement with affinities to the Tahrir Square revolution in Egypt. James Naughtie, reporting on claims (in the BBC’s Today programme on 2 January 2012) that over 150 anti-government protesters had been killed during the Arab League’s monitors’ visit, said that although the number was impossible to verify, “it was undoubtedly high.” But if it hasn’t been verified (no sources for the number were given in the report), it could well be fictional. What’s the point of saying an unverified number is high? If I claimed I was eleven feet tall, would Naughtie say that that would undoubtedly make me very big? The absence of evidence is seemingly not an obstacle to the formation of very definite opinions on Syria by the Beeb.
For sure, Assad is an old-school dictator, and there will be many Syrians opposing him for genuine democratic reasons. The fact that Assad has hardly allowed any foreign journalists in makes it certain that there is some truth in this story. But is it for all that the whole story?
The BBC has hardly discussed the sectarian dimension of the conflict in Syria, despite there being easily accessible information on the subject. Belgian visitors to Syria for example, writing in the magazine Solidarité Orient, though otherwise sympathetic to the protestors, report that in areas near the opposition stronghold of Homs, Christians and the Muslim minority Alouites (of whom the Assads are members) have been schooled separately from the Sunni majority since the conflict escalated. Both official representatives of Syria’s religious minorities as well as ordinary citizens via their blogs are outspoken in claiming that the anti-Assad revolt is motivated by hard-line Wahabi Sunni forces who are opponents of religious diversity, and in sympathy with the Salafists and the Muslim brotherhood. Part of Assad’s brutality may in fact be a reaction to an equally brutal set of opponents whose sectarian views compare unfavourably with his support of minorities.
Turning to the cui bono question, a very obvious angle deserves fuller investigation. The Shiite Hezbollah movement in Lebanon is currently the only force in the region which has been able to offer any military resistance to Israel. Hezbollah is backed by its fellow Shiites in Iran, but the supply route runs from Iran to Lebanon through Syria. Israel and the USA therefore have a very clear interest in the fall of Assad. So too do some hardline Wahabi Sunnis, whether they are rulers of official governments like Saudi Arabia, or the heads of international terrorist groups like Al Quaeda, which views Hezbollah as its greatest Muslim rival (if a coincidence of interest between the US and Israel on one hand and the Wahabi fundamentalists on the other seems fanciful, remember that the US is the chief protector of the house of Saud, and once funded Osama bin Ladin when he was a guerrilla in Afghanistan).
The BBC’s reporting on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is admirable, both in terms of detail and balance (and Owen Bennett Jones' report on Hezbollah was an outstanding piece of journalism). It’s a pity its approach to Syria completely suspends all the principles which inform its journalism elsewhere in the region.
I don’t question the sincerity or courage of Assad’s democratic opponents. All I am saying is that it may be manipulated by people who are far less salubrious. This is nothing new. Tsar Nicholas II was clearly a very bad man who treated his people appallingly, and many genuine democrats were in the vanguard of the revolution which overthrew him. But few people today think the eventual rule of the Soviet Union by Stalin, which that revolution ushered in, was much to cheer about.
I am a great fan of the BBC, and I look to it to set the standard for reporting of international news. But in Syria - as in the Ivory Coast – the audience’s lack of familiarity with those countries has enabled a partial version of events to be reported, onto which has been projected the same heroic narrative: democracy against dictatorship, with the international community as idealistic supporter of democracy. What is missing is an analysis of the very real political interests which are served by this narrative.
When the BBC’s correspondents got together on radio 4 to review 2011 and predict what would happen in 2012, they were asked to nominate their good news stories. The first and least contested offering was Ivory Coast, where Laurent Gbagbo’s overthrow was described without further ado as a rare thing to celebrate. Even the royal wedding provoked more debate.
La BBC Y-voit-rien
This approach has characterised much of the BBC’s coverage of the conflict. It consistently described Ouattarah as having been “recognised as winner of the election by the international community,” but there was next to no explanation as to what that recognition was based on. Instead, we were given a blow by blow account of the progress of Ouattarah’s troups, supported by their international (mainly French) backers against Gbagbo’s. The fact that this was a good thing was taken for granted. The only thing worth reporting was how fast it was happening.
In many ways, the reporting of Ivory Coast’s civil war was very similar to that of Libya’s. In each case, we knew who the good guys and the bad guys were. The only thing to do was sit on the edge of our seats in suspense, waiting to see who would win. But the situation in Libya was pretty clear; we had ample descriptions of Ghaddafi’s dictatorial and kleptocratic behaviour. Despite that, his regime was given a lot of airtime, so at least we knew how it justified its dubious position.
The reporting in Ivory Coast by contrast left much more in the dark. Why, for example, did so many Ivorians support Gbagbo when he won a free election in 2000 against Robert Guei, the general who replaced the first post-colonial leader Houphouët-Boigny’s successor, Henri Bedié? Many Ivorians attribute Gbagbo's popularity to his attempt to reduce the economic influence of France, Ivory Coast’s former political master, who (as is often the case in Africa) controlled many of the country’s revenue generating activities. Telecoms are dominated by France Telecom, construction by Bouygues, and the country’s main port is owned by the Bolloré group, for example.
It is not disputed that Ouattarah’s military uprising against Gbagbo annexed the north of the Ivory Coast, from the frontier with Burkina Fasso to Bouake, in 2002. One can therefore ask how it was possible for the country to carry out the elections of which the international community declared Ouattarah the victor. Indeed, Ouattarah gained close to 100% of votes in some constituencies in the north, with more people voting for him than were registered as living there. While Gbagbo may have been guilty of similar shenanigans in parts of the country he controlled, this fact at least should have encouraged the BBC to ask whether Ouattarah really was the democrat, or in fact a military strongman, whose troops were suppressing the democratic voice of Ivorians in the North of the country. If France had annexed the South of England during a general election, would the British be happy if the "International Community" told them to "recognise" Nicholas Sarkozy as their prime minister?
But who was backing Ouattarah’s army? Behind that lies the crucial question: cui bono, who benefited from Ouattarah’s victory? One obvious clue can be found in his wife, Dominique Folloroux, not only a French citizen, but an extremely well-connected one. On Wikepedia we find that “Martin Bouygues, head of the Bouygues industrial group, and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of former French president François Mitterrand – were present [at their wedding] as friends of Ouattara,” and (citing an article in Grazia) that Folloroux’s “proximity to Houphouët-Boigny” (Ivory Coast’s first post-colonial ruler remember) “was highly coveted by a bunch of businessmen, the Bouygues, Bolloré and especially the cocoa industry ... They had to go through her to gain access to the old man.”
Folloroux was close to both France and Ivory Coast’s first post-colonial dictator, for whom Ouattarah was a colonel. Far from being the underdogs, he and his wife were part of of Boigny’s inner circle; they are the establishment. As the country’s first independent leader, Boigny was subject to considerable French influence. Why did the BBC never dare even suggest that that the French supported Ouattarah because they saw him as their man, and Gbagbo as an irritating African upstart, who wanted to take away their lucrative post-colonial interests?
I’m sure there will be counter-arguments. But a few points about the BBC’s journalistic approach remain notwithstanding, which equally apply to Syria. In a small country which not many of its audience knew about, the detail with which the BBC reported the conflict was less than that applied to other conflicts, particularly in terms of giving a balanced perspective on the claims of both sides. This lack of detail enabled the BBC to present the conflict as one between a democrat and a dictator, in which the international community played the role of idealistic champion of democracy. And it failed to highlight the financial and realpolitikal interests of one particular member of that international community (France) in the outcome of that conflict.
Syria
Almost no foreign journalists are allowed in Syria, yet the BBC seems sure that President Assad is suppressing a democratic movement with affinities to the Tahrir Square revolution in Egypt. James Naughtie, reporting on claims (in the BBC’s Today programme on 2 January 2012) that over 150 anti-government protesters had been killed during the Arab League’s monitors’ visit, said that although the number was impossible to verify, “it was undoubtedly high.” But if it hasn’t been verified (no sources for the number were given in the report), it could well be fictional. What’s the point of saying an unverified number is high? If I claimed I was eleven feet tall, would Naughtie say that that would undoubtedly make me very big? The absence of evidence is seemingly not an obstacle to the formation of very definite opinions on Syria by the Beeb.
For sure, Assad is an old-school dictator, and there will be many Syrians opposing him for genuine democratic reasons. The fact that Assad has hardly allowed any foreign journalists in makes it certain that there is some truth in this story. But is it for all that the whole story?
The BBC has hardly discussed the sectarian dimension of the conflict in Syria, despite there being easily accessible information on the subject. Belgian visitors to Syria for example, writing in the magazine Solidarité Orient, though otherwise sympathetic to the protestors, report that in areas near the opposition stronghold of Homs, Christians and the Muslim minority Alouites (of whom the Assads are members) have been schooled separately from the Sunni majority since the conflict escalated. Both official representatives of Syria’s religious minorities as well as ordinary citizens via their blogs are outspoken in claiming that the anti-Assad revolt is motivated by hard-line Wahabi Sunni forces who are opponents of religious diversity, and in sympathy with the Salafists and the Muslim brotherhood. Part of Assad’s brutality may in fact be a reaction to an equally brutal set of opponents whose sectarian views compare unfavourably with his support of minorities.
Turning to the cui bono question, a very obvious angle deserves fuller investigation. The Shiite Hezbollah movement in Lebanon is currently the only force in the region which has been able to offer any military resistance to Israel. Hezbollah is backed by its fellow Shiites in Iran, but the supply route runs from Iran to Lebanon through Syria. Israel and the USA therefore have a very clear interest in the fall of Assad. So too do some hardline Wahabi Sunnis, whether they are rulers of official governments like Saudi Arabia, or the heads of international terrorist groups like Al Quaeda, which views Hezbollah as its greatest Muslim rival (if a coincidence of interest between the US and Israel on one hand and the Wahabi fundamentalists on the other seems fanciful, remember that the US is the chief protector of the house of Saud, and once funded Osama bin Ladin when he was a guerrilla in Afghanistan).
The BBC’s reporting on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is admirable, both in terms of detail and balance (and Owen Bennett Jones' report on Hezbollah was an outstanding piece of journalism). It’s a pity its approach to Syria completely suspends all the principles which inform its journalism elsewhere in the region.
I don’t question the sincerity or courage of Assad’s democratic opponents. All I am saying is that it may be manipulated by people who are far less salubrious. This is nothing new. Tsar Nicholas II was clearly a very bad man who treated his people appallingly, and many genuine democrats were in the vanguard of the revolution which overthrew him. But few people today think the eventual rule of the Soviet Union by Stalin, which that revolution ushered in, was much to cheer about.
I am a great fan of the BBC, and I look to it to set the standard for reporting of international news. But in Syria - as in the Ivory Coast – the audience’s lack of familiarity with those countries has enabled a partial version of events to be reported, onto which has been projected the same heroic narrative: democracy against dictatorship, with the international community as idealistic supporter of democracy. What is missing is an analysis of the very real political interests which are served by this narrative.
Russia Today carried an interview with one William Engdahl who sought to explain the current Mid-East situation in terms of controlling China's access to oil.
I've no idea whether it was correct but it certainly seemed logical.
Unfortunately the BBC is increasingly of the "good v bad" style of reporting. Would that life were so simple.Presumably this is why the BBC is becoming increasingly discredited as a source for news.
@ of o
Posted by: MickC | 27 September 2012 at 10:01 AM
The BBC is a state enforced dictatorship - oppressed United Kingdom residents pay for it on pain of exhorbitant fines or arrest and imprisonment at the hands of state police.
Democracy? What democracy? Where? Britain is a pan-institutional dictatorship, as is the rest of the West.
Electing a dictatorship every five years is the antithesis of democracy - or hadn't you realised?
Posted by: Terry | 27 September 2012 at 12:19 PM
Thank you, Terry. I had also noticed with some concern the often biased and selective BBC reporting of these events in Libya, Syria and so on. It's interesting to watch how similar events are portrayed on RTS, for comparison, although I'm not suggesting this is more accurate - but it does encourage you to 'process' the messages from the BBC with a little more care. On a related point - the prevalance of 'lazy journalism' is also a concern, with the BBC and others latching on to & squeezing every drop from easy stories that come along relating to, for example, media personalities. As a result, events that are of much greater importance (incompetence of public officials, corruption and the like) often simply get dropped and forgotten about, only for us to find out the real detail of the scandal years later, when it should have been thoroughly investigated at the time.
Posted by: Robert | 27 September 2012 at 01:02 PM
Terry: Sadly you are right.
Posted by: Terry Smith | 27 September 2012 at 04:52 PM