Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s veteran Middle East editor, as soon as supplied a deceptively easy method for surviving the ethical challenges of battle reporting. A journalist, he stated, may be each impartial and candid. In a area the place fact is commonly held hostage by governments, militias and armies of citizen journalists, Bowen’s method reads much less like skilled recommendation and extra like a code of honour.
Bowen isn’t any passing correspondent. Audiences throughout the Arab world have watched him cowl the Lebanese wars, the Israeli invasion of Beirut, the Gulf battle, the conflict in Bosnia, and the battle in Gaza. He has been banned by Israel and denied entry to Iran — an unintended endorsement of his insistence on seeing issues for himself. When he says that neutrality and candour usually are not luxuries, however expensive commitments, he speaks from many years of expertise.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Bowen mirrored on the constraints he confronted in the previous Yugoslavia. Compared with Gaza, he stated, these restrictions ‘felt like paradise’. Then got here the road that distils his total profession: ‘If you’re not making an attempt to inform the reality, what’s the purpose?’
Bowen mirrored on the constraints he confronted in the previous Yugoslavia. Compared with Gaza, he stated, these restrictions ‘felt like paradise’. Then got here the road that distils his total profession: ‘If you’re not making an attempt to inform the reality, what’s the purpose?’
In a lot of the Arab world, the thought of neutrality is a fable, not knowledgeable commonplace. State media prioritises loyalty over accuracy. Party media calls for alignment over information. Private media calls for silence above all else. A journalist navigating this terrain is just not rewarded for neutrality or candour; he’s punished for each.
In this context, Bowen’s equation turns into an moral luxurious, even an act of non-public danger. Yet it stays beneficial exactly as a result of it reminds Arab journalists that the reality doesn’t belong to governments, political events or financiers. Candour is just not a betrayal of neutrality; it’s neutrality in a world drowning in propaganda.
The deeper tragedy is that many Arab newsrooms don’t ask their journalists to be impartial; they ask them to be obedient. They don’t want witnesses; they need individuals to behave as prosecutors. Truth turns into regardless of the authority of the day declares it to be. Therefore, the disaster is just not the absence of neutrality, however the criminalisation of candour.
Arab journalism didn’t fail as a result of it was weak. It failed as a result of it deserted its authentic objective of holding energy to account. A press that doesn’t query turns into an administrative appendage. A journalist who can’t inform the reality turns into complicit in deception.
Bowen’s method exposes the ethical fragility of the area’s media panorama. It poses a terrifyingly easy query: Can you inform the reality with out trembling? And are you able to stay impartial with out betraying your conscience? Many masks fall at that threshold.
Early in the Gaza conflict, senior diplomats informed Bowen that permitting him — or Christiane Amanpour — into the Strip may ease the diplomatic disaster. The implication is chilling: the presence of two uncompromising journalists might alter political outcomes. In the Arab world, nevertheless, the presence of 1 such journalist often alters just one factor: their profession trajectory, and never for the higher.
Bowen typically says that the true hazard lies not in the bodily danger, however in “what they don’t want you to see”. This might function a subtitle for your entire historical past of Arab media.
Ultimately, this isn’t a comparability between a British correspondent and his Arab counterparts. Rather, it’s a reminder that, at its core, journalism is just not a occupation, however a conscience. Conscience doesn’t function on authorities budgets or donor contracts. It doesn’t negotiate. Without candour, the press turns into a celebration bulletin. Without neutrality, the press turns into a propaganda leaflet. The slender strip between the 2 is the place Bowen stands — the place journalism nonetheless resembles what it was meant to be.
Bowen isn’t any saint, and the BBC isn’t any temple of purity. The company has lengthy been criticised for its proximity to political energy, from Iraq to Gaza. But Bowen stays a helpful instance in an age starved of them.
Truth turns into regardless of the authority of the day declares it to be. Therefore, the disaster is just not the absence of neutrality, however the criminalisation of candour.
Today, Arab journalists face three partitions: the state, the social gathering and the financier. But essentially the most suffocating barrier is inside: concern. They concern shedding their jobs, angering ministers, upsetting funders and being dragged via orchestrated smear campaigns. This concern makes Bowen’s method appear inconceivable. Yet its worth lies in reminding journalists that give up is just not future and that the reality dies solely after they cease making an attempt to inform it.
Neutrality and candour usually are not opposing selections. They are two sides of the identical coin — the coin of journalism that has not but been counterfeited. In a area the place fact has been trampled underfoot by these in energy, the journalist who insists on talking out performs an act of resistance. This is a type of resistance that requires no weapon, solely a conscience that refuses to be purchased..
The views expressed in this text belong to the writer and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Middle East Monitor.
