Author: Daria Popova

This week’s readings have shed some light on the topic that admittedly has only occupied the periphery of my attention spotlight before. I found the New Yorker article particularly helpful in tracing the timeline of the war for its straightforward chronological structure and historical summary combined with telling a few specific stories of people on the ground. Having mostly been exposed to records of the Afghan War from the 80s due to the participation of the Soviet troops, I got to learn a lot about the uncertainty of the new war, or the twenty tumultuous years that locals call the American War.

Aside from reckoning with the fine line between foreign missions and occupying forces, the common thread of intelligence failures and civilian death tolls came up multiple times. 

In his NYT investigation, Azmat Khan reveals the deceiving nature of “a precise war waged with all-seeing drones”. This image was sold to the American public and the world, convincing everybody of the protection this extraordinary technology would offer to regular civilians thrown into the war of someone else’s volition. In this heavily reliant on technology military operation, it wasn’t the bombs who malfunctioned, but people making the call. Khan documents numerous instances of sidestepping of required procedures and pushing decision-making down the chain of command. In some cases it was confirmation bias, in others – fatal misunderstanding of a cultural divide (labeling the quietness of Ramadan fasting as “no civilian presence”). 

The absence of further investigations and disciplinary action for most such cases to me really reinforces the point on the possibility of justice from last week’s readings. Under the conditions of a war, how can we expect anybody to keep promises and abide by regulations imposed either by their own agencies or the international humanitarian law postulating the rules of military conduct? How can they account for unforeseeable decisions made in a split second and the flawed human element?

The dreariest revelation of the article was perhaps the impossibility of accounting for all civilian deaths. As Anand Gopal writes, “the vast majority of incidents involved one or two deaths—anonymous lives that were never reported on, never recorded by official organizations, and therefore never counted as part of the war’s civilian toll.” In a world where civilian deaths serve as a measure of the war’s deadliness and tend to determine the amount of media attention an event gets, how can we do justice to all the silent suffering and unknown victims? 

The New York Times opinion video revealed at least 490 people missing and murdered on Taliban’s revenge spree of former American allies. While it’s more than enough to prove that they betrayed their amnesty pledge and lied to the face of international reporters, it’s obvious that this number is far from painting a full picture. With relatives afraid of speaking up in fear of retribution and revenge killers still rampaging, it’s hard to estimate how many stories may be forever lost.

“A stone thrown into a pond – the ripples will spread”

The past 566 days and counting since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, February 24 2022 – a date now forever carved into consciousness of the European continent, have brought about dozens of thousands of deaths, left millions displaced and echoed around the globe as a wake-up call, one blaring with air-raid sirens. Allan Little’s in his report for the BBC conjures up an image of this war as a conflict of polarities, a grand confrontation of two irreconcilable forces. In one corner of the boxing ring stands the 1945 Yalta agreement reliant on “spheres of influence” against the 1975 Helsinki Final Act centered around independent sovereign states in the opposite corner, it’s authoritarian regimes pitted against democracies. A sort of you-win-or-you-lose with elusive peace negotiations dwindling on the horizon as a war of attrition looms over. In this binary perspective, it’s the human factor that adds dimension.

The amplitude of emotions experienced and the range of coping strategies, poignantly compiled by This American Life episode and Lindsey Hilsum’s letters, is what really struck a chord with me this week. There is no way of capturing a tragedy in sheer death toll numbers, but rather its harrowingly nagging effect on everyday lives is what’s better suited for documenting the unbearable. From cooking over a burning wooden log and predicting shelling from birds’ behavior to finding the strength to joke and smile at your neighbor while in a besieged city, human adaptability and resilience in the face of the greatest atrocities known to mankind that preserve any chance at hope. As much as a cry for the dead, it’s a mourning for the living who have to coexist with what they’ve witnessed. 

The podcast really exemplified to me the quandary of telling uncomfortable stories. The personal account of Munachi, a young Nigerian medical student in the Ukrainian city of Lviv who suddenly found himself as a refugee, though he denies the word, on a content that didn’t want him. Revealing how racism in Eastern Europe intersects with the new reality of wartime shed light on the stories of those who don’t usually make it to the headlines. Inevitably, I found myself asking if the inclusion of this story undermined the Ukrainian struggle in any way.

The other question brought up by this week’s readings (or rather listenings) was the possibility of prosecuting war crimes. In light of ICC issuing an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin earlier this year, a new debate on the effectiveness of international tribunals and the potential impunity of the main perpetrators was incited. While lower-rank criminals are more likely to receive a verdict, this sparks a conversation on the distribution of responsibility between low-grade executors and high-rank officials in the aftermath of a war. Is there justice if the main culprits are off the hook? Whether it’s worth trying to prosecute clerks in an attempt to reach to the top of the iceberg or whether it only does a disservice of creating an illusion of due process with no real substance? I’m looking to learn more about international law and answer those questions for myself.

This week’s article by Sulzberger centers around the notion of independent journalism and questions whether it is possible, at its core, to attain full objectivity when covering the tumultuous events of the modern day. We are urged to reexamine the very norms and practices of reporting at the time when American news credibility is reaching its all time low, which according to Jeff Gerth’s reports is a trend intertwined with society’s increased polarization. Having acknowledged the shifting role of media from a handful of outlets dictating the national agenda to an unmediated surge of internet content crafted for niche audiences and catering directly to their identities and passions, Sulzberger urges us to push back against unreliable journalism and strive for the objective and the impartial in this impossible pursuit. To this end, he lays out the four principles of independence in practice: prioritize the process over outcome, follow the facts, cover the uncertainty, and navigate criticism. Though great in theory, the set of rules proves to be too idealistic once pitted against reality.

Can journalists control their own biases and blind spots? A more diverse room and a more independent newsroom are often seen as mutually exclusive propositions. Do journalists from underrepresented backgrounds bring in new perspectives or are deeply biased? The fact that nobody comes as a clean slate casts doubt on the extent to which objectivity is feasible. Familiarity with the topic can give a sharper eye for nuance and a healthier dose of skepticism, but at the same time runs the risk of imbuing one’s reporting with personal preconceptions. It’s unclear whether the audience’s benefit from the former would outweigh the harm of the latter.

How do we differentiate between true independence and the perception of independence? In his piece, Sulzberger disparages what he calls “a pantomime of fairness”, more often than not manifested through “both-sidesism”, or false equivalence, where lazy journalists resort to equating opinions for the sake of coming across as impartial, clearly ignoring the fact that the sides are not equally credible. What are the practices that can be put into place to assess one’s writing against this pitfall?

Should news organizations publish information that might be misused? Covering all the facts and conveying ambiguity is often met with criticism when reporting deals with vulnerable communities and reveals a piece of information that can be used to perpetuate their marginalization. The duty to cover every group with utmost respect, nuance and sensitivity should come at no surprise, but it’s also true that no such group can be homogenous and therefore agree on how they should be presented. Under the same category of existential questions falls the debate around “platforming”, namely voicing the opinions of those who are considered dangerous by one group or another. How do we navigate the fine line between estimating the potential impact the reporting might have and censoring oneself?