{"id":9448,"date":"2014-06-16T13:37:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T13:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=9448"},"modified":"2014-06-16T13:37:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T13:37:47","slug":"coverage-of-isis-in-iraq-plagued-by-rumors-and-misreporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/coverage-of-isis-in-iraq-plagued-by-rumors-and-misreporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Coverage of ISIS in Iraq plagued by rumors and misreporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chaos, incitement and sectarian instigation\u2026 that is the prevailing situation of Arab and Iraqi media outlets covering the explosive situation in Iraq these days. Despite the lack of live coverage from the battlefields and from regions hit by the crisis, many rumors and false information have been spread in opposing directions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Baghdad<\/strong>– Half of any war is a rumor; this theory is being put into daily practice by Iraqi satellite channels from across the political spectrum, whether they are government proponents or opponents, religious or partisan, nationalist or sectarian.<\/p>\n

The recent events in Mosul exposed most Iraqi media outlets and all Arab satellite channels. Despite the lack of live coverage from the battlefields and from regions hit by the crisis, many rumor and false information have been spread in opposing directions. Everyone became a [Joseph] Goebbels; some channels circulated rumors about cities falling quickly after Mosul and news that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was approaching Baghdad. Some even went as far as saying that militants were on the outskirts of the Green Zone, raising fears among residents of the capital.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, pro-government channels broadcast celebrations and patriotic songs in support of the armed forces, along with breaking news about the army regaining control over Salah ad-Din and some parts of Mosul. Instead of playing a role in fighting rumors, Iraqi channels actually spread news and rumors with sectarian instigation as the goal.<\/p>\n

The coverage of foreign and Arab satellite channels was not any better. Most of these channels broadcast selected scenes of crowds on a highway, claiming they were Iraqi army soldiers fleeing Mosul, but they turned out to be fugitives freed from Badush prison [when militants stormed it].<\/p>\n

Offices of al-Arabiya, al-Arabiya al-Hadath and ANB channels in Iraq witnessed mass resignations yesterday, as many employees protested what they called \u201cthese channels\u2019 policy toward the Iraqi people and their support for the ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

All channels committed mistakes and acted in an unprofessional manner. However, security forces shocked everyone when they warned only certain media outlets from \u201cbroadcasting rumors threatening internal security.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, security forces warned a number of Arab and Iraqi channels of the consequences of \u201cpromoting false information without checking with official security sources.\u201d Al-Arabiya, al-Arabiya al-Hadath, BBC Arabic, and al-Sharqiya received direct notices from security forces threatening to shut down their local offices if they continued to spread \u201crumors and false information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iraqi government also blocked some news websites, including those of al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera, a step that followed the Communications Ministry\u2019s decision to block social media sites and YouTube last Thursday \u201cfor security reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his part, the Iraqi armed forces spokesman, Lieutenant General Qasim Ata urged media outlets \u201cto accurately report information,\u201d threatening to \u201ctake measures to deal with any matter [that threatens] citizens,\u201d in reference to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki\u2019s request that security agencies monitor satellite channels and media outlets that criticize the security forces.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant General Ata slammed BBC Arabic for covering events \u201cbased on unofficial sources.\u201d His comments followed a quarrel between Walid al-Hili, a leader of al-Dawa Party, and Egyptian military expert Safwat al-Zayat during a talk show on the channel. Zayat had commented on the reasons for \u201cthe army\u2019s collapse,\u201d and al-Hili replied by asking if \u201cthe guest is an ISIS member?\u201d adding, \u201care you hosting a military expert or an ISIS member?\u201d<\/p>\n

While Alta promised to \u201corganize media tours for all outlets to visit the battlefields in some regions to learn the truth\u201d and to present a daily briefing on the situation, local, Arab and international media organizations are still facing a shortage of real information amid a lack of photos and videos from the war zones.<\/p>\n

Within this framework, the Society for Defending Press Freedom in Iraq urged security forces not to overstep their authority and to respect journalistic freedoms. \u201cThe current events reflect chaos and an unfortunate selectiveness in the warning of certain media outlets. Some channels received warnings and others have not, even though all channels were spreading rumors instead of reporting true information,\u201d Yasser al-Salem, the society\u2019s executive director said.<\/p>\n

According to Salem, some satellite channels with certain political affiliations \u201cdeployed all efforts to display what happened as a Sunni revolution centered in closed Sunni districts, and broadcast reports from inside Mosul showing life going back to normal after the withdrawal of the Iraqi army, in contrast with escalating tensions in Baghdad following Ayatollah Sayed Ali al-Sistatni\u2019s call for efficient jihad,\u201d so \u201cthese channels received warnings.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201csemi-official satellite channels and those affiliated with Shia parties incited people to take up arms to support security sources, and broadcast tens of false news reports without receiving any warning from media and communication authorities or security forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past few days, anti-government satellite channels and media outlets shed light on the collapse of the Iraqi army, and exploited the situation to slam the government while ignoring actions taken by the ISIS which formed military courts and distributed communiqu\u00e9s threatening to deprive Mosul\u2019s residents of their personal freedoms.<\/p>\n

These channels ignored their responsibilities and their mission to stand by security forces to fight terrorism.<\/p>\n

Source: Mostafa Nasser, Al Akhbar<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chaos, incitement and sectarian instigation\u2026 that is the prevailing situation of Arab and Iraqi media outlets covering the explosive situation in Iraq these days. Despite the lack of live coverage from the battlefields and from regions hit by the crisis, many rumors and false information have been spread in opposing directions. Baghdad– Half of any …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50,905,768,163],"class_list":["post-9448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-islamic-research","tag-iraq-2","tag-isis","tag-media","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9450,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions\/9450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}