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The total conflict between the federal government and the regional state administration of Tigray has given us the opportunity to reflect on the prejudices and blinders that emerge in the practice of journalism. The military campaign that began on November 4 after forces from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the Northern Command of the federal army has deservedly received great attention. There has been extensive media coverage of the military clashes, including aerial bombardments and targeted attacks against civilians and the displacement of civilians. However, many of the comments in the Western media about both the TPLF and the federal government exhibit significant bias, partisanship, and utter inaccuracy. Journalists writing on the subject have exaggerated at best, concocted at worst, to denigrate the federal government, while doing everything they can to cast their TPLF opponent in a positive light.
The standard line used by Western media such as Reuters, BBC, VOA, DW was that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Africa’s youngest leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched a military offensive against his own people in the Tigray region. in a clear framework typical of “good versus evil”. The ‘evil’ side personified in a single figure of Abiy Ahmed. “Your country is, at the very least, on the brink of civil war. Why have you chosen military force to resolve your dispute with Tigray? asked Andrew Mueller of The Foreign Desk, the current affairs program of the online radio station Monocle 24. This would have been a fair question if Tigray’s leadership had been an innocent player and a blameless body. By decoupling the events from the broader issues related to the conflict and disregarding the provocations the TPLF has been mounting against the federal government for the past two years, the western media chose to focus on the prime minister, taking his liberty. of labeling and demonizing him as “the Nobel Peace Prize Winner turned belligerent warrior”, while portraying TPLF as an innocent victim, often insidiously.
The media has overlooked the steps TPLF has been taking to sabotage Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government in ways that damage the economy and the transition process, although a cursory glance suggests that. At the very least, that claim by the federal administration to justify the offensive as fighting to counter continued sabotage should have had fair coverage. Yet journalists, for some reasons, chose to reflect only the TPLF story, unknowingly revitalized by so-called academics who have collected “facts” that were not actually made to be with them.
Most of the media overlooked the causes of the long-standing and latent tensions between the federal government and the TPLF that emerged with the arrival of Abiy Ahmed. The alleged analysts have used exaggerated rhetoric to describe the situation in the country, without even bothering to show an appearance of neutrality and non-partisanship. “We are not on the brink of a civil war, Ethiopia is in the middle of a civil war,” said Kjetil Tronvoll, director of the Oslo Analytica think tank and professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjørknes University in Oslo, Norway.
The Norwegian academic who never bothered to hide his blatantly pro-TPLF position has been interviewed up to once a week about his predictions. For example, he told the VOA that “The conflict between the federal authorities and TPLF could be the last straw.” “There is the potential for a serious and serious weakening of the central authorities in Ethiopia. It is an extremely serious situation and I think it is very difficult to see things return to normal as they were before the conflict. The divisions are too deep for that. “
The observation, although limited and flawed, is cited by many media outlets. The entire country that fell into civil war ignored the facts in favor of hyperbole. So much so that the US ambassador to Ethiopia, Michael Raynor, responded by saying that “the rest of the country is actually pretty quiet right now; there is no indication that anyone has taken comparable action elsewhere and, in fact, quite the opposite.
But the Western media wasn’t just trying to make the prime minister look like a villain who sparked the conflict on his own. But they have also been paying tribute to the battle-hardened TPLF leaders and predicting the group’s victory, selecting sources, fishing, and utilizing the narrative devices of the frames. Borrowing similar words from each other, they spoke about TPLF’s rich experience in battle that could guarantee a more apparent victorious outcome for TPLF. For example, the deputy director of Reuter’s East Africa office, Maggie Fick, who signed an article “Battle-Resistant Tigray Returns to the Spotlight When Ethiopia Conflict Flares Up,” made a host of claims ranging against the situation on the ground. He quoted “Ethiopia expert” Alex de Waal as saying that Abiy may have underestimated the abilities of Tigray’s leaders in both politics and war. “The Tufts University academic recalled the words of Tsadkan Gebretensae, a Tigrayan who once commanded the Ethiopian army against Eritrea, in a conversation with him:” War is primarily an intellectual activity, “he wrote.
Mary Harper, the BBC’s Africa editor, told The Foreign Desk, the current affairs show on Monocle 24, spoke at length and said that “Tigrayans don’t make up a large percentage of the Ethiopian population, but when you think of war, they fought in the 1980s and early 1990s to evict the former dictatorial ruler Mengistu Hailemariam, they are a group of people who are battle hardened, they are used to fighting. Since they also dominated the government from 1991 until the rise of Abiy Ahmed in 2018, they have military resources, they have military knowledge, the older generation is part of the military culture, they will be a rival to the federal government forces in terms of their battle-hardened mentality. It will not be an easy force to deal with.
The famous London-based business daily, the Financial Times, even titled one of their articles as “Tigray Crisis: ‘They Know How To Fight And They Can Fight’ To The End.” He was attributed to a certain Samahagn Genet, a 17-year-old former soldier who handled bombs in the Ethiopian army during the war with Eritrea.
Of course, subsequent events have shown that those projects were far from reality. The TPLF leadership was far from the invisible force represented by journalists, as the federal forces had defeated the group and taken over the major cities of Tigray, including Mekelle, in a short period of time. TPLF forces are defeated and disorganized on the battlefield, although to this day journalists and so-called analysts continue to ponder that TPLF leaders returned to the mountains to launch a guerrilla war against the federal government. . Whether that’s happening or not, there isn’t much evidence that the line is being pushed.
Incidents like this, of course, would strengthen the already existing seeds of doubt about the veracity of the Western press among Ethiopians about their own country, as described by a Twitter user, Biruk Terrefe, who said that “the grotesquely simplified partial results, misinformed by renowned media and armchair analysts / “experts”, makes me question everything I thought I knew about other spaces / conflicts / countries “.
What has become clear from this advocacy is how media organizations, even some of them well-intentioned, could take sides in the complex conflict and, in some cases, foster even greater polarization in the country’s political system. Eager to defend the “underdog”, the information has begun to blend with opposition to the ruling regime, and does not represent their views and facts as seen from it. Nicole Stremlau in her book, Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa says that journalists who present the strongest opposition pieces in the media are often seen by international organizations as the bearers of democracy and many have become experts in manipulating organizations and obtaining undeserved support. “The discourse of human rights groups has been adopted and reinterpreted by many journalists, but in practice, only some share their priorities. In addition to listening to less obvious spaces, it requires a more nuanced understanding of the complex roles journalists play in the nation-building process rather than what is normally defined for them, ”Nicole writes.
But this also emphasizes how important it is for Ethiopians to have their own media in the battle to tell their own stories accurately and to re-appropriate their own public sphere. It is necessary to establish and support local media institutions to spread news about the events that affect the country and counteract the stereotypes and prejudices that prevail in the western press. Above all, the government must lift the repressive political situation so that citizens have serious internal debates and criticism. And it is also necessary to invest in media literacy to combat the misinformation and myths that confuse and mislead public debate.
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