- Some commentators have compared the invasion of Ukraine to crises in other countries.
- In one case, a CBS reporter said Ukraine was “civilized” compared to countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Groups such as the Association of Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists have urged reporters to check their implicit biases.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the sadly familiar sight of thousands of people fleeing violence – a sight seen mainly in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East and Africa over the past few decades.
However, for some watching the unfolding of the recent crisis, chaos reporting has shown a double standard.
The remarks made by CBS foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata over the weekend were an example that provoked repulsion from other reporters and political figures. In a live segment from Kyiv, D’Agata said that Ukraine is a “relatively civilized, relatively European” place, unlike countries like Iraq or Afghanistan.
– Imran Sidiki (@imraansiddiqi) February 26, 2022
“But this is not a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, where conflicts have been raging for decades,” he said. “You know, it’s a relatively civilized, relatively European – and I have to choose those words carefully – city where you wouldn’t expect it or hope it will.”
Observers – including the Association of Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists – noted that D’Agata and others’ remarks. media reporters comparison the crisis in Ukraine for others in the Middle East did not meet journalistic standards and implied implicit biases.
“AMEJA condemns and categorically rejects Orientalist and racist suggestions that any population or country is ‘uncivilized’ or carries economic factors that make it worthy of conflict,” the statement said. “This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism to normalize tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America. He dehumanizes and makes their experience of war somehow normal and expected.
D’Agata on Saturday apologize for his remark.
“I spoke in a way that I’m sorry about, and I’m sorry about that,” he said in an excerpt. D’Agata said he was trying to convey that Ukraine, unlike other countries, had not seen “this scale of war” in recent years.
Mahdis Keshawarz, a member of the AMEJA board, told Insider that the group’s statement was not intended to divert the plight of Ukrainians, but instead to hold journalists accountable for biased comments.
“This is an attempt to hold journalists accountable, to do their job properly and to raise the bar on how to report. And this is the main thing, because it is a bad service to the Ukrainian people, with whom we are in full solidarity, and it is a bad service to countless other people who are at borders elsewhere in the world, including Poland, but not Ukrainians or have the luxury of being Europeans, “said Keshawartz.
She added that it was an attempt to “shed light on and mirror these editions” to say: “Listen, your staff is from the Middle East. You have access to people, and if you don’t, you have to diversify your editorial staff, but you also have to really look at your own biases and what’s going on here, and then do your job right. “
It is not only reporters who make xenophobic remarks in the face of this crisis. The New York Times reported that on Friday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said his country would join the growing list of European nations opening doors to fleeing Ukrainians. However, while talking to reporters, Petkov stressed the differences between these refugees compared to previous ones.
He said these migrants were “Europeans” and “not the refugees we are used to”, adding that they were “intelligent” and “educated” and unlikely to spread terrorism.
“Currently, there is no European country that is afraid of the current wave of refugees,” Petkov said.
Keshawartz said repeated wars in the Middle East over the past few decades have reduced sensitivity to the crisis there.
“We have been dehumanized to the point that we are not civilized,” she said, adding that the remarks came even from reporters who had spent years covering and living in the Middle East but still did not see the region as a civic place. .
“The second is that I think it has become an implicit bias, and people are assuming that we are violent in nature and therefore used to it,” Keshawartz added. “It’s just something that is part of the fabric of our nations or the fabric of our societies. And this is just a fallacy, but what shows, which is very deeply disturbing, is that this mentality is so widespread in these editions that these articles and these statements and this kind of comment make it unverified. “