ISIS destroyed Jonah's tomb and other historical sites

[Channel72]

Characterizing Salafis as a minority is a bit disingenuous; yes they're a minority in terms of Islam as a whole, but they represent a significant percentage of the population in the Gulf states.

But yeah, the Saudis bankrolling these idiots is a major problem. I find it interesting how so many contemporary problems in this world could be solved by a massive switch to alternative energy.

[Thanas]

Well Thanas, there are basically government-controlled Southern Syria and uncontrolled North. And...

In November 2013, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated: "ISIS is the strongest group in Northern Syria—100%—and anyone who tells you anything else is lying."

The fact that the media were fucking blind to it is just a symptom - they closed their eyes to jihad before and will do it again. The narrative of brave rebels (not violent islamist cutthroats) versus evil govt is just much easier to sell.

Oh god, here we go again with the "the evil west wants to sponsor juhad" bullshit.

[K. A. Pital]

Well Thanas, there are basically government-controlled Southern Syria and uncontrolled North. And...

In November 2013, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated: "ISIS is the strongest group in Northern Syria—100%—and anyone who tells you anything else is lying."

The fact that the media were fucking blind to it is just a symptom - they closed their eyes to jihad before and will do it again. The narrative of brave rebels (not violent islamist cutthroats) versus evil govt is just much easier to sell.

Oh god, here we go again with the "the evil west wants to sponsor juhad" bullshit.

Not evil, just greedy, fucked up, terminally stupid and blind.

Enough?

[Thanas]

Whatever floats your boat, man.

[K. A. Pital]

It is not 'whatever floats my boat' but a simple observation: when the media were told to run a campaign against Baathist or Naserist secular dictatorships in the Middle East, they did so with complete ignorance of the islamists (if anything, the dead bodies of Tunisia's and Libya's secularists were marginally mentioned at best and downright erased into nothingness at worse!).

In Syria the media completely ignored the fact that people in Al-Quaeda, and later Al-Nusra and IS were the most credible and strongest faction, because it was based on radical Sunni islam, had wide appeal to the formerly disenfranchised, lots of boots on the ground and good funding from the best friends in KSA and Qatar.

You dislike it? Tell me, where were the IS and other islamists in the CNN and BBC newsreels about Syrian civil war in 2012? 2013?

[Thanas]

It is not 'whatever floats my boat' but a simple observation: when the media were told to run a campaign against Baathist or Naserist secular dictatorships in the Middle East, they did so with complete ignorance of the islamists (if anything, the dead bodies of Tunisia's and Libya's secularists were marginally mentioned at best and downright erased into nothingness at worse!).

The mere fact that you think the media can be told to run a campaign shows how far off course you really are.

[Siege]

You dislike it? Tell me, where were the IS and other islamists in the CNN and BBC newsreels about Syrian civil war in 2012? 2013?

A quick search clearly demonstrates that the BBC wrote a variety of articles about islamists in Syria in 2012 and 2013. I can't be bothered to look for TV reports, but I distinctly recall watching many and increasingly alarming news items about the growing influence of the islamists within Syria too.

So the BBC at least did not in fact ignore the notable islamist element to the Syrian uprising, and indeed reported multiple times that al-Nusra / al-Qaeda / Islamic Front / Islamic State were getting stronger, long before they took over northern Iraq. I don't personally watch CNN so perhaps you're right about them, but certainly you're mistaken about the BBC.

[Thanas]

He is also mistaken about pretty much every reputable German news source.

[K. A. Pital]

The mere fact that you think the media can be told to run a campaign shows how far off course you really are.

Do not think I forgot 2003 and the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', Thanas.

I distinctly recall watching many and increasingly alarming news items about the growing influence of the islamists within Syria too.

Maybe I am too biased, but the sudden shift and complete dissappearance of 'Assad bad, Assad must die' news simultaneously with the rise in ISIS success news sort of made me wonder. I know that the article you linked to on Al-Nusra, for example, was not rolled on BBC in a regular fashion the same way anti-government newsreels were. I mean... the coverage was not neutral. I should do a search on media keyword mentions frequency, actually. Could be a nice study.

[Metahive]

I do remember Der Spiegel writing about sizable parts of the Syrian resistance being a bunch of reactionary islamists with radical agendas and the difficulties of where to direct the anti-Nasser aid as a result quite clearly and that was summer last year. I remember it because I read it while en route to Bonn in a train to a very important moment in my life.

[Channel72]

What non-Americans/Europeans often just don't get about the West is that the government actually has very little control of the media. (You could even say it's the other way around, to a certain extent.) All you need to do is look at the biggest news organization in the US (FoxNews) to see how much they rail against the Obama Adminstration for just about everything. Plus, every journalist's wet dream is to become the next David Frost - so there's a quasi-antagonistic relationship between the government and media at best. (Although, depending on the organization, a media company may choose to whitewash the present administration in order to gain access to key politicians for interviews.)

The 2003/Weapons of Mass Destruction Iraq-War cheerleading nonsense was actually an interesting exception, where the mainstream media (at least the mainstream US/UK media) pretty much unanimously rallied behind the Bush administration. But that's because we were still sore and shocked over 9/11 (because that shit isn't supposed to happen on America soil, you know) so everyone got stupid.

[Thanas]

The mere fact that you think the media can be told to run a campaign shows how far off course you really are.

Do not think I forgot 2003 and the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', Thanas.

Yeah and as I recall most non-USA media actually called BS on that.

[Block]

Well, Channel72, I'd say it was the mainstream TV media. The Washington Post and NYT were pretty ambivalent at best and those are/were two of the biggest media voices in the country.

[Broomstick]

Don't forget - the Washington Post once brought down a US President. Granted that was 40 years ago, but while some media outlets are lapdogs not all of them are. That quasi-sacred US Constitution that preserves things many think crazy like widespread gun ownership also enshrines freedom of the press. It's not always respected as much as we'd like but the US government really doesn't have control over the media.

[madd0ct0r]

Maybe I am too biased, but the sudden shift and complete dissappearance of 'Assad bad, Assad must die' news simultaneously with the rise in ISIS success news sort of made me wonder. I know that the article you linked to on Al-Nusra, for example, was not rolled on BBC in a regular fashion the same way anti-government newsreels were. I mean... the coverage was not neutral. I should do a search on media keyword mentions frequency, actually. Could be a nice study.

stupidly simplified, and online search may or may not correlate with propoganda term frequency in the media but here's a start: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... ist&cmpt=q

ISIL and Daash had very little traffic.

[K. A. Pital]

Just a quick comparison of the searches for "Syrian islamists" and "Syrian rebels" is quite telling
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... sts&cmpt=q

[madd0ct0r]

that's not telling at all. At least for the version I see, all it shows is Syrian Rebels were in the news quite a bit for a while and that no one has ever felt the need to google syrian islamists.

[K. A. Pital]

no one has ever felt the need to google syrian islamists

In the absence of sufficient media coverage, is this not what one would expect? People will not google syrian islamists because they are not told that these exist; that they pose sufficient danger - not just to Syria, but to the greater ME region (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan).

I mean, the fact that Syria's uprising has led to some of the formerly most tolerant and diverse ME cities becoming Sharia madness theme parks were not given wide coverage until the very recent events. Maybe that was unintented, but I seriously cannot fathom that people would wilfully ignore what makes a perfect news topic: murders of not just Alawites but also Shiites, Christians, persecution and flight of one of Ar-Raqqah's largest minorities...

This was in 2013.

[Siege]

Maybe I am too biased, but the sudden shift and complete dissappearance of 'Assad bad, Assad must die' news simultaneously with the rise in ISIS success news sort of made me wonder.

As a faction's size, influence and impact on the conflict grows, so will its media exposure. That is perfectly natural. Of course the reporting in the early phases of the conflict when Assad looked poised to crush the rebels emphasizes other things than it does now Islamic State controls huge portions of Syria and Iraq. As the war develops and power shifts media coverage of who's fighting and what's happening will change too. That's simply a reflection of the fact that different things are happening at different times. And as demonstrated even very early in the conflict there's clearly reporting on the fanatically islamist component to the rebellion.

My point is: the media, or more specifically the BBC, did not in fact ignore that al-Qaeda et al were a component of the rebellion. The BBC may not have fully foreseen just how strong that component was or would end up being, but if that's your beef then I would say that they are journalists, not soothsayers.

[K. A. Pital]

The example I gave above (Ar-Raqqah) is what I consider wrong: the killing and persecution of all kinds of 'enemies of Islam' - pro-government secularists, Alawites, Christians, Shiites, mass expulsions, flight of thousands of secularists south and the transformation of a formerly tolerant city into a Sharia stronghold went almost unnoticed.

Do a search for the word Raqqah on BBC. You will be surprised to find only two mentions. Meanwhile (and I admit that Russia's reporting was completely pro-government all the way) the Russian media demonstrated beheadings, crucifixions and other nasty things that happened in Raqqah during its control by islamist rebels (first a unified front of several groups, and later entirely subjugated by the IS branch in the province). Which went through most of 2013.

Raqqah is a large town: there are hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. It also became one of the important islamist strongholds. And yet, it is almost absent from reports.

Next time Raqqah is mentioned on BBC is this very month, more than a year after the islamists captured town and installed a reign of terror there. It is simply referred to as 'islamist stronghold', near which Foley may have been shot.

[madd0ct0r]

no one has ever felt the need to google syrian islamists

In the absence of sufficient media coverage, is this not what one would expect? People will not google syrian islamists because they are not told that these exist; that they pose sufficient danger - not just to Syria, but to the greater ME region (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan).

I mean, the fact that Syria's uprising has led to some of the formerly most tolerant and diverse ME cities becoming Sharia madness theme parks were not given wide coverage until the very recent events. Maybe that was unintented, but I seriously cannot fathom that people would wilfully ignore what makes a perfect news topic: murders of not just Alawites but also Shiites, Christians, persecution and flight of one of Ar-Raqqah's largest minorities...

This was in 2013.

Are you sure it's not becuase islamist is an akwardly constructed word that's pretty damn unlikely to turn up in a natural language search?
I mean if you exchange 'rebel' for guerilla (which is still a much more common word then islamist) you can cut the results right down too: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... bel&cmpt=q

When you first posted the graph, I was expecting to see the frequency of "syrian rebel" to decline and the "syrain islamist" to increase in proportion to each other, as evidence for your story that the propoganda has switched direction. Showing no-one googles syrian islamist alone shows nothing

[Siege]

Stas, I'm willing to accept that Western media may have been slow to pick up on the sheer scale of the Syrian islamists' horribleness*, and may have missed specific instances of it, but I do not accept 'this city wasn't frequently mentioned' as proof that Western media were willfully blind to atrocities, much less did so in order to further some nefarious narrative.

Western media regularly report on the awful things the rebels do, and have for quite some time. I see no proof that blind eyes were turned, nor evidence of an organized pro-rebel propaganda campaign.

* Reporting on Syia is made no easier, I should add, by the fact that the islamists don't particularly like (Western) journalists. This in addition to the usual challenges associated with reporting a multi-sided civil war.

[Channel72]

Stas, assuming your arguments about term-frequency in media reports are correct, (ignoring the fact that "islamist" is not commonly used in English; in fact, I only started using it because I picked it up from your posts!) all that shows is that Western journalism is not always competent/capable of picking up on the most useful narratives - not that Western journalists (all of them!?) have some kind of directive from the Whitehouse.

I mean seriously, do you seriously think Fox News - the most popular network in the US - has a directive from the Whitehouse? (I guess the Whitehouse is like: Okay Fox, you can keep shitting all over Obama every single day, and going on about how Obamacare is the work of Satan - but please don't mention those Syrian Islamic fundamentalists! They're part of our evil plan to fuck up the Mideast!)

Hint: the only thing media companies are beholden to are their advertisers. Media companies will publish/broadcast whatever narrative they think will garner the most viewers and reel in the most ads. Yay Capitalism.

[K. A. Pital]

Stas, I'm willing to accept that Western media may have been slow to pick up on the sheer scale of the Syrian islamists' horribleness*, and may have missed specific instances of it, but I do not accept 'this city wasn't frequently mentioned' as proof that Western media were willfully blind to atrocities, much less did so in order to further some nefarious narrative.

I don't think there was a nefarious narrative, but to miss the expulsion of dozens of thousands of people? Remember that the topic at the time was the chemical weapons use in Ghouta. And whether or not to attack Syria (or rather, its government) with NATO forces. Meanwhile the Raqqah events were kind of... obscured, I don't know how to put it otherwise.

Reporting on Syia is made no easier, I should add, by the fact that the islamists don't particularly like (Western) journalists. This in addition to the usual challenges associated with reporting a multi-sided civil war.

That is a very valid point, I admit. But the current endless newsreels about IS aren't based on having access to the towns controlled by them either.

I mean seriously, do you seriously think Fox News - the most popular network in the US - has a directive from the Whitehouse?

No. I think there is a system of self-censorship, where the journalists tend to ignore topics that may give them trouble with their superiors. If a narrative has been already formed in the media, then events that disrupt the narrative will be overlooked. This happens to other nations' media all the time too. For example, the 'US captured Iraq to keep oil and stay in ME forever' narrative was a long-playing one in the Russian media. Its quiet demise was tied to the fact that too many events started disrupting the narrative. So while there isn't a nefarious plot, the media usually (1) pick a narrative (2) go with it (3) ignore facts that don't fit. And point one - they usually pick the narrative of the government when it comes to foreign policy. Not always, not everywhere. But they usually do.

Also you are correct to point out the partisan nature of the media. I have another test. We all know the right wing US parties love the word 'jihadist'. In fact, it has become a quite popular term for them to describe armed islamist movements in the Middle East and fundie terrorists. So I ran a small check on Google trends again:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... ria&cmpt=q

And like that:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... els&cmpt=q

Why aren't American conservatives running 'Syrian jihadists behead Christians!' news articles in the media they control? Because, well, it does seem to be true this time. And was for a while...

[Darmalus]

Why aren't American conservatives running 'Syrian jihadists behead Christians!' news articles in the media they control? Because, well, it does seem to be true this time. And was for a while...

What were they running instead?

Remember, the news media is an industry that manufactures viewers to sell to advertisers. The audience is not the customer, they are the product and the manufacturing process is, essentially, story telling. Presumably stories abut things that actually happen, but still stories. One of the rules of story telling is you don't break the flow of the narrative.

So, if something more interesting was going on, or they didn't think that Syrian rebels beheading Christians would get as many eyeballs on advertisements, they'd stick with what they were already talking about. This is also one of the reasons for poor follow-up reporting, you bore the audience (and lose revenue) bringing up old stories that are already "over".