The article “Pompeo says Saudi-led coalition is trying to reduce Yemen’s civilian casualties” written by “Jennifer Hansler” discusses how Saudi-led coalition is interfering in Yemen’s civil war. The author represented Saudi Arabia and UAE as the savers that only care about reducing the harm and the pain of the civilians. She ignored the other side of the story and only took into consideration the American point of view.
In this article the author argues for Saudi’s intervention in Yemeni war. This war is a civil war in Yemen, which supposed to be a war between groups within the same country. so why is Saudi Arabia interfering and even bombing and why is America giving funds to the Saudi-led coalition? The author claimed that Saudi Arabia is just trying to help the civilians but the other side of the story was hidden and the context was stripped. In reality, Saudi Arabia was not just helping the civilians, it has formed a coalition to overthrow the Houthis in Yemen. Moreover, it is a Saudi-Iranian conflict; Iran is supporting the Houthis and Saudi wants to defeat them. Furthermore, the author conveniently ignores the Sunni-Shia conflict in the region. Saudi Arabia as a majority Sunni country, does not support the Shia Houthis. Additionally, the author discussed the bomb on a Yemeni school bus but ignored that Saudi Arabia had blocked all Yemen’s ports which led to a high risk of famine among Yemen’s civilians. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been targeting civilians specifically, Akram (2017) reports: “According to the Yemen Data Project out of 15,489 attacks, only 5,883 (around one-third of all attacks) were directed at military or security targets, and 294 were targeted at political or tribal figures”. To conclude, the author left out information that is quite important.
Furthermore, this news story is influenced by the mindset and background of the American politics, as is shown by the language that the author uses. She writes that Saudi wants to “limit” the civilian death, as if a certain number of deaths is okay. The author uses a language that dehumanized the victims. In addition, Saudi Arabia wants to reduce the harm to the civilians. But it cannot reduce the “harm” done to a woman who lost her child, or to the children who lost their homes. It is questionable how the Saudi-led coalition bombing will help these people. Thus, this article reports on the harm to civilians and their pain but at the same time it normalizes the suffering of people. Moreover, the author insists that Saudi is taking “demonstrable” action to minimize civilian death, which means that their actions are shown to be true or to exist. It is unclear what steps they are taking to help the civilians and the journalist did not interview a Yemeni civilian to show that these actions are demonstrable. The State Department wants to “achieve a negotiated end to this fighting”” (Hansler, 2018), however they didn’t make clear who will negotiate with whom, and it is not logical how the American wants to do the negotiation on the behalf of the Yemenis in their own civil war. To sum up, through the language the author uses, the article reflects a strongly one sided perspective.
Additionally, the headline “Pompeo says Saudi-led coalition is trying to reduce Yemen’s civilian casualties” presents the Saudi-led coalition as the lifesaver that is trying to help people in need without wanting anything in return. this headline aims at influencing the reader because the people who read only the headline will assume that Saudi Arabia is just interfering to help the civilians and by reading that an “Official says” they will assume that this information is true. The writer waits until the 7th paragraph to explain the Civil war and its causes, even though this is the most important information in order for the reader to understand the story. Although, the first paragraph shows how Saudi-led coalition helps the civilians: “the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure” (Hansler, 2018)”. This control of placement of information can mislead the reader into having an inaccurate view of the whole picture. In addition, in the last paragraph the author quotes the words of a “spokesperson”. The author tries to give authority to his words but by quoting the words of some unknown official, it is not a trustworthy person.
The news reflects the views of the organization stating it, as a result, the reader should always take into consideration the origin of the news. Most of the information in this article were provided by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who is an American politician, which means it only includes the perspective of an American person. On the other hand, the Yemeni perspective was left out. The reporter failed to explain how the Yemen civilians are suffering or what they want to say about their own civil war. Excluding the other perspective may change the situation to favor one side. The author includes the claims of the American military officials in all his article, and nearly all he said was based on their claims. The second page is full of statements made by the “official”. For example, these statements include: “We will continue to work closely with the Saudi- led coalition to ensure Saudi Arabia and the UAE maintain support for UN-led efforts to end the civil war in Yemen…” Pompeo said, (Hansler, 2018)” . Moreover, the claims of the American military manufacture the news and produce propagandistic statement. In other words, “media outlets typically state as fact what are nothing more than official assertions, and then append on to the end of the paragraph the rote phrase “officials say” (Greenwald, 2012). They want to manipulate public opinion, and shape it in a way that comfort the people holding power. The whole article is designed by the claims of officials, which transforms the free press into political channels. Even though it is a news story about Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, an American connection must exist. Otherwise stated, “The American filter in the media’s coverage of international news, the notion of relevance to the United States, is very important” (Moeller, 1999). Americans tend to believe or feel closer to the information coming from an American source, even when the story is about Arab countries the press includes the American point of view.
Furthermore, the media gives the information required for the public to participate in political activity. They do not provide the full story and wait for the public opinion; instead they deliver the right kind of information so the public can think the way they want to. In this article the full story was not offered; we did not hear the opinion of the other political side. In other words, “Democracy is staged with the help of media that works as propaganda machines” (Chomsky,2017). It is not a simple process; the media doesn’t simply deliver the information in hand. Media firms aren’t free press, they are owned by huge corporations. You will rarely see a news that contradict with the people in power’s opinion. The media is influenced by governments, in this article The information given are from the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Therefore, it delivers the information needed for the public to follow the people holding power.
Additionally, it is believed that the camera is the most objective tool to picture a moment. Most People used to and still sometimes ignore the fact that the photo is highly influenced by the photographer; it reflects his belief and culture. In other words, “the belief that “the camera never lies” betrays the fact that someone chose what, when, where, why, and how to photograph” (Share, n.d). The first photo in this article is a dramatic picture showing the war in Yemen. The photo is dark and out of focus, and it is taken from a far distance. It is a dramatic way to show war, we don’t even know if this is in Yemen or not, but this is the typical way to show the disastrous war. It freezes the moment of a bomb, to represent how bad the civil war is and to show that Saudi Arabia and UAE are helping the civilians out of this catastrophe mess. Contrarily, the videos are clickable, you can’t watch them on the same page of the article. Usually people won’t click and watch the video and maybe that is what the author wants to, because this is a bad news about Saudi-led coalition. But they had to report this news, a massacre of children on a school bus has to be reported. They already removed enough information, they can’t remove this one too. they ignored the fact that there is plenty of other mistakes (first paragraph of my paper) and if we look closer on the way they narrated this news, we can notice that they tried to explain that this was a mistake and Saudi is better now and that America won’t let it happen again. As if bombing and killing innocent children is a normal “mistake”.
In conclusion, this article reflects a strongly one sided perspective and narrates the story in a way that manipulate the public. In addition, the author talks about the suffering and harm to civilians, while normalizing it at the same time.
References:
Akram, S. (2017, december 29). It’s time to get real about the death toll in Yemen. The New Arab. Retrieved from
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2017/12/29/its-time-to-get-real-about-yemens-death-toll
Al Jazeera English (2017). Noam Chomsky, The 5 filter of tne mass media machine. Available
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M
Greenwald, G. (2012, June 17). “Officials say” journalism. Salon. Retrieved from
https://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/officials_say_journalism/
Hansler, J. (2018, september 2018). Pompeo says Saudi-led coalition is trying to reduce Yemen’s civilian casualties. CNN politics. Retrieved from
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/12/politics/pompeo-yemen-ndaa/index.html?no-st=1538302134
Moeller, S. (1999). Four Habits Of International News Reporting. In compassion fatigue. London: Routledge. Retrieved from
https://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF_GII/four_habits_of_news_reporting.pdf
Share, J. (n.d). camera always lies: breaking the myth fo journalistic objectivity. Retrieved from
Maria Issa, Media & Society 