Almanar France, June 8, 2016
Translated from French by Tom Winter, June 11, 2016
Two journalists, one from Venezuela and the other from Syria, revealed the manipulations of the Western media in two crises of the Middle East: that of Libya to overthrow the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and that of Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
In the name of a humanitarian mission
Venezuelan Rolando Segura, reporter for Telesur, was in Libya During the events of 2011.
"I was a correspondant in that country and I saw everything with my own eyes. Newspapers and channels were repeating all the time that "a humanitarian intervention" was necessary in this country to protect civilians against the bloody dictator," he said to the Russian Sputnik agency during a forum organized in Moscow, entitled "New era of journalism: farewell to the international media."
And now look: this "humanitarian mission" got transformed into bombings that led to 30,000-100,000 victims, he said.
"These same media, that relentlessly accused Gaddafi of all evils, never uttered a word on the Western bombing of hospitals, schools, residential buildings, water supply systems and electricity," Mr. Segura stressed.
He added that the official Libyan media had been abolished, so that the people of this country could not be informed about what was happening in the country. "So they even took the control over the media space of the country," he recalled.
A campaign planned in advance
A similar scenario was planned for Syria, said the director of the Syrian official news agency Sana.
"Suddenly (when war engulfed Syria, ed), many journalists from other countries came to Syria and began to disseminate information about events that never happened," he said.
"Some channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya immediately began inventing problems and most of the reports were not accurate," added Mr. Dawa, saying it was a campaign mapped out in advance. It was an information war against the Syrian people," stressed Mr. Dawa.
Due to its biased coverage of the Syrian crisis in 2011, the Qatari channel al-Jazeera suffered a large scale defection of its leading journalists. They accused it of obscuring crucial facts. Among other facts that they never covered, was that the Syrian opposition was armed and started by carrying out attacks against the military and the Syrian police.
Western media war
"A similar rhetoric is going on today targeting countries like Russia and Venezuela. US media every day blacken the situation in my country, calling for foreign intervention 'for the good of the Venezuelan people'" said Rolando Segura.
In the face of the 'western media war,' the media that disseminate an alternative perspective on international events should come together to make a united front against "Western media war," he added.
"The statements of Western leaders aimed at blocking the work of media such as RT, Telesur or Sputnik must be taken with all possible seriousness. We must mutually help each other to complicate their task, which is nothing less than an attack on freedom of expression," concluded the expert.*
The forum "New era of journalism: goodbye to the big international media" started in Moscow Monday, June 6. Media experts from 30 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, India, China, Egypt, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, are participating in forums taking place in the agency Russia Today.
The event was opened by a session entitled "The journalist in the post mainstream epoch," where Russian and foreign experts gathered to discuss current media trends and the characteristic media traits to try to penetrate the dynamics of its development.
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Cf. Argentina suspends RT. Other examples can be found...
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