Florian Zollmann







The Yemen and Crimean interventions in the ideological prisms of the 'liberal' Anglo-American press

In their classic works, The political economy of human rights (first published in 1979) and Manufacturing consent (first published in 1988), Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky compared news media coverage of state violence conducted by so-called 'enemy' countries of the West (such as the former Soviet Union, Poland, North Vietnam, Cambodia and the former Republic of Yugoslavia) with coverage of comparable state violence by the US or 'friendly' client-states (such as Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Turkey and Indonesia). Herman and Chomsky (2008: 34) concluded that the news media 'consistently portray[s] people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy'. These findings, they argued, result from dichotomised media selection choices: casualties of state violence are only worthy to be covered by the news media if victimisation meets 'the test of utility to elite interests' (ibid: 31). As a result, Western states and their 'clients' are shielded from public scrutiny, whereas so-called 'enemy' states are shamed until they are forced to integrate into the dominant order.

A paired example in which the news media reproduced such reporting patterns can be seen in Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen in 2015 and Russia's intervention in the Crimea in 2014

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References

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Note on the contributor

Florian Zollmann is a lecturer in Media and Director of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies at Liverpool Hope University. He holds a PhD in Journalism from the University of Lincoln. His PhD thesis assesses US, UK and German press coverage of US/Coalition 'counter-insurgency' operations in Iraq. Florian is currently contracted to write a monograph on international news coverage of human rights issues during a range of contemporary conflicts for the international publisher Peter Lang. Additionally, he is conducting research on the ethical implications of propaganda and surveillance in liberal democracies and press-state relations in the 21st-century news media environment. Florian's research has been published in international academic journals and edited collections. With Richard Lance Keeble and John Tulloch, he jointly edited Peace journalism, war and conflict resolution (Peter Lang, 2010). Florian is a board member of the Institute of Communication Ethics and the Orwell Society. He is writing a bi-monthly report on media affairs for the German ecumenical magazine, Publik-Forum, and a monthly op-ed column for the Latin American multimedia platform, teleSUR.