Alternative Insight

Forcibly Challenging the Media
An example of why much news must be questioned

---

It's only one article on the Libyan conflict. Nevertheless, the article gains significance by the one-sided and dubious content, whose shabby presentation by one of the largest media sources reveals a dishonesty in relating news. TIME WORLD shows no regard for publishing possible falsehoods, for not verifying facts, and for not recognizing obvious contradictions in a published article. Revelations that deceive readers is as much news as revelations that inform readers - creating suspicions that many similar reports are fabricated. The Time Magazine empire has a huge number of readers. It's time to retime these readers into the real world, and hopefully start a trend that forcibly challenges media empires who improperly report and fabricate news.

The short article, Out of Libya's Shadows: A Source Reveals His Real Identity, by VIVIENNE WALT, Time World, Sept. 01, 2011,
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091496,00.html#ixzz1WlekcYzk

is composed almost entirely of:
Unverified Comments;
Dubious Facts;
Apparent Exaggerations;
Obvious Contradictions.
and is awkwardly, written with a plethora of style, punctuation and grammatical errors.

A similar article (different name, different events, different hero, no proof of anything) by New York Times reporter, Nicholas Kristoff, September 3, 2011 A Libyan Prisoner Lives to Tell His Story contained the same elements that questioned the TIME story - no verification, manufacture of a hero, implausible events, inconsistencies, contradictions and obvious exaggerations. It might be valid, but the NYT story seems more fabricated than theTIME story.

Here is the TIME WORLD article with comments in red.

For months I called him only "Mr. Utah," a reference to the years he lived in Ogden. The nickname helped us communicate in one of the most paranoid countries in the world: Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. (Is it paranoid to take severe precautions when being bombed by NATO?) But this week I picked up the phone, dialed Mr. Utah's number and said: "Hello, Taher!" (Was it that easy to call Libya in August?) The greeting might not sound like much. But in Libya, like much else these days, it is liberating.

When I first met Taher Belhaj, 59, in March, just a few weeks into the revolution, he barely said hello. (Shouldn't the author make some mention to the new reader of how they met?) We stood at our prearranged meeting spot in downtown Tripoli, while he scanned the narrow street, his eyes darting side to side, looking for signs of surveillance, before whispering, "Walk with me." So I did. For an hour, we wandered through the narrow lanes off what was then Green Square, as he whispered the terrifying details (What terrifying details?) of his life in the oil-refinery town of Zawiyah, 30 miles west of the capital. "Mr. Utah" and I continued talking in low tones in a dark corner of a cafe downtown, where I ducked into the toilet several times, in order to scribble notes out of sight from prying eyes. (Note the mysterious tone. What prying eyes?) His account, published on time.com - in which he was named Ahmed - was a rare first-hand (rare?) description of the horrors which regular Libyans (Who are the irregular Libyans?) were experiencing as a result of Gaddafi's violent crackdown against the uprising. (Shouldn't there be a referenced link to the previous article?)

During the week running up to our meeting, Gaddafi's forces had crushed a three-week revolt in Zawiyah, killing scores of people. Belhaj described the ghastly aftermath, where security forces moved through Zawiyah's streets, rounding up thousands of locals - he estimated about 5,000 - (How could he know this number? Has this figure been authenticated?) who the regime believed were rebel fighters or their supporters. Belhaj's account, of course, was drastically different from the reports Gaddafi officials fed foreign journalists while we were under strict lockdown in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel. (What sensible nation permits foreign correspondents, most of whom are antagonist to the regime and could spy, wander the streets of a warring nation?) Our minders twice drove us from Tripoli to Zawiyah to demonstrate that locals were celebrating the defeat of the rebels, who they said were foreign al-Qaeda operatives. (Why doesn't the author review the findings of the delegation?) Under Zawiyah's main square lay the bodies of several rebels shot during the town's final battle.

Desperate to protect his family, "Mr. Utah" made the riskiest move of his life that week. (riskiest?) He sneaked (sneaked?) into Zawiyah's hospital just Gaddafi's forces were rampaging (rampaging?) through the corridors, looking for fighters. There, he smuggled (smuggled?) out his injured son Ayoub, 19, who had been hit in the head with shrapnel from tank fire, when he was caught in the battle crossfire (Belhaj says his son was not himself a fighter). This week, Belhaj finally felt safe enough to allow me to publish those details. He had crept past (crept past, on the floor?) Gaddafi's forces after they were in control of the hospital, he says. "In 15 minutes I smuggled out my son." (Not much detail.)
(No description of why it was a risk, how he sneaked in, why Gaddafi forces had to be rampaging when patients were in bed, how he smuggled his son out and how "Mr. Utah" crept past hospital authorities. We must accept an unsubstantiated report.).

Five months on, he says, he is still anguished over having left behind an injured young man lying in the next bed. "I just could not get a second man out," Belhaj says. (Manufactures a hero without the hero performing a heroic deed.) Within hours, security forces "arrested everybody, the nurses, everybody," he said. "Until now I do not know what happened with them." (How does he know this? Did he see it happen? Why would our hero know what happened to them? Is he usually told everything?)

A few weeks later, after I had returned home, my telephone rang and a familiar voice said, "Hi, it's Mr. Utah." He had slipped out of Libya into Tunisia, transporting his injured son in his car in a frantic search for medical treatment for the teenager. (It's several weeks after his son has been shot in the brain and he is finally seeking treatment? Does this sound reasonable?) At the time, he believed it was too dangerous to say how he had escaped Libya. This week, Belhaj said he had found an official he knew working for Gaddafi's border-control service, who supported the rebels (How did he locate this person?) and who secretly waved (Why secretly? How does one secretly wave?) through his car with his injured son inside. Red Cross doctors in Tunis operated on Ayoub once, (Do surgeons operate on anyone, including foreign patients from war zones, and several weeks after injury?) according to Belhaj, but his son will require one more operation to repair his skull. As yet, the family cannot afford the treatment. (Since refugees from the battle zones were entering Tunisia without prevention, isn't Mr. Utah's report obviously exaggerated?)

Belhaj found himself unable to return to Zawiyah until last week, mainly because his son was too weak to travel, and he himself ran too great a risk of arrest. (Why did he run a risk of arrest? He hasn't indicated performing any known anti-government acts, for which he could be accused, nor has it been shown that the Libyan government was pursuing him.) He sat out the war in Tunisia, (Why talk with someone who sat out the war? Why not talk with someone who saw the war?) one of countless thousands of Libyans who fled across the border during the conflict. (Don't the thousands, who came from battle zones, contradict previous assertions that a rebel supporter was needed to allow him to go to Tunisia?) He says he regularly ferried medical supplies from Tunis to Libyans trapped along the border. (From where did he obtain the medical supplies? How did he do this if the border was well guarded and he needed to be with his wounded son? He portrays himself as a hero without proving it.)

For Belhaj - who was 19 when Gaddafi came to power - the revolt has shattered not only a dictatorship which he says he has always reviled. It has also allowed Libyans to rejoin the world, he says, after years of being shunned abroad. "It didn't matter who I met, the moment they heard I was Libyan they treated me with suspicion," says Belhaj, who lived in Utah for seven years during the 1980s. ( More victimization and self-defining heroism.) "We were victimized by Gaddafi, and we also paid a heavy price for it." (Heavy price? Wouldn't the public who were interested in and knew of Libya assume that any Libyan outside of Libya is a defector?)

Last week, with the National Transitional Council finally having won the war, Belhaj finally drove his son home to Zawiyah - and to a new daughter, born to Belhaj shortly after he fled. (His wife is pregnant and he leaves her.) The family house is pocked with battle scars, and the windows have been smashed. (More victimization and self-defining heroism. Are there any pictures of the damage and knowledge of who did the damage?) "We need building materials. There is too little food here. There is no medicine," he says. But, he says, he does not care. (More victimization and self-defining heroism. If he doesn't care, why is he talking about it?) Returning to a Libya without Gaddafi is "like breathing fresh air. I cannot describe the feeling. It is like a big, big relief," he says. "We need some time to organize ourselves. But we are getting our lives back together."

Aren't there a multitude of aggressive, provocative and moving stories to be told of Moammar Gadhafi's dictatorial, conspiratorial and punishing treatment of the Libyan people? If this rather harmless and unconvincing TIME report is considered a responsible report of Gadhafi's Libya, then there isn't much to tell, and other reports must have been have exaggerated.

The awkward writing, including punctuation and grammatical errors, emphasize a lack of attention to writing and editing the article. Just some notes, a few of many.

"The greeting might not sound like much. But in Libya, like much else these days, it is liberating." Is this English?
"just Gaddafi's forces were rampaging" Word 'as' was omitted in text after word 'just.'
"Five months on, he says, he is still anguished over having left behind an injured young man lying in the next bed."
Shouldn't 'on' be 'later?' Still is redundant. Shouldn't 'anguished over' be 'anguished by'?
"and he himself ran too great a risk," 'Himself' is redundant.
"regularly ferried medical supplies' Ferry without water is not a proper choice of a word.
"He had slipped out of Libya into Tunisia, transporting his injured son in his car." Awkward change of tense in same sentence, 'had slipped,' and 'transporting.' Proper is 'and transported.'
"when he was caught in the battle crossfire" Since he is referring to a place and not the time, 'when' should be 'where.'
"Says" is three times redundant in the last paragraph.

A coda from three news reports.

"He says he was tortured by the CIA and accused of links with al-Qaeda, but Tripoli’s new military commander, Abdulhakim Belhadj, insists that he is no extremist or enemy of the United States." The U.S. accuses others of torture and tortures. (Note that Mr. Utah has the same family name as the present Tripoli military commander, Abdul Hakeem Belhaj, who fought against the United States in Afghanistan and is suspected of having been allied with Al-Qaeda)

"A recently disclosed diplomatic cable shows that a top United Nations human rights official warned the United States government five years ago that he had received information indicating that Iraqi reports of American troops executing a family were true. Five of the victims, the official said, were children 5 years old or younger, and four were women." The U.S. accuses others of extrajudicial killing and does worse.

"Gadhafi's departure has also led to the opening of the archive of the capital's infamous Abu Salim Prison, site of a 1996 massacre that left at least 1,200 political prisoners dead. Their bodies have never been located."
Apparently Abdulhakim Belhadj survived. Maybe the prisoners escaped, or all weren't killed? On September 8, 1971, an uprising by prison inmates occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. State police and national guard troops seized the prison; within five days the officers killed thirty-three prisoners and ten hostages.

alternativeinsight
september 4, 2011

HOME PAGE     MAIN PAGE
 
alternativeinsight@earthlink.net