Author's Podcast 1 February, 2006 - American News is Comedy 2 February, 2006 - A Uniformly Uninformed Citizenry 7 February, 2006 - ... Nor Any Drop to Drink 8 February, 2006 - Reader Comments 10 February, 2006 - Lead by Example: OUR STORY 15 February, 2006 - Kidnap & Ransom: Perspective 23 February, 2006 - Kidnap & Ransom: Conclusion

Kidnap & Ransom: Conclusion - Rod Amis's final post in the Contagious Festival concludes his reporting on kidnap-and-ransom and wraps up his review of American journalism.

.

23 February 2006: In this concluding post of this entry in the Huffington Post Contagious Festival, there are two objectives:

1. To complete contextualizing reporting here on the Kidnap-and-Ransom (K&R) phenomenon as a tool for financing international terrorism and narco-terrorism, and;
2. To look at what-should-be one final glaring reason for why more contextualized stories are not part of the American journalistic landscape.

KIDNAP & RANSOM: Conclusion

One of the most riveting K&R stories to take place in France ended tragically as we filed our last post two weeks ago. Ilan Halimi, a twenty-three year old shop clerk whose release negotiations went on for twenty-four grueling days, was murdered by his abductors. The case made headlines all over France, recently rocked by violent riots from its immigrant communities, because Halimi was Jewish and his death had the ear-marks of an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Halimi's story illustrates how this tactic of intimidation and extortion is everyday news internationally, has impact beyond the borders of the individual incidents but also how often - because of lack in depth in reporting - the K&R story is not contextualized by journalists. While resonating as far away as Israel, and being reported in Ha'aretz, it was another story that got scant coverage here in the United States.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, 18 February, 2006, nine workers for Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria - three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thais, one Briton and one Filipino - were kidnapped in the Niger Delta region of that country. The militants who have taken responsibility for this kidnapping, who call themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, have been delivering their demands via e-mails to journalists. The Movement has released victims in the past in exchange for undisclosed sums of money but this time their demands call for the release of two local leaders as well as monetary "compensation for pollution."

As noted in the previous post, Nigeria is among many countries where K&R is regularly used to finance insurgency.

The argument could be made that, though K&R is an every day practice and always in the news if one cares to look for it, it is an "under reported" story in the sense that the dots are never connected. The fact is that individual incidents are reported but there is never reference to previous incidents, for the most part, by the same actors. In fact, actors such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the Revolutionary Peoples Army of Colombia (FARC) and Hezbollah, to name only a few of the most notorious actors, have regularly and repeatedly used K&R as a major source for financing their operations and intimidating their enemies and local populations. In the case of Hezbollah, it is documented that their operations are not only in the Middle East, for example, but also in South American. Nonetheless, one cannot find a single news story in the American press in any of the mediums employed that provides a comprehensive list of the actors, the "organizations," that regularly employ these tactics and the countries in which they primarily operate. In short, no context.

Before proceeding, one piece of Good News on this topic, which should encourage those among us seeking the release of journalist Jill Carroll. It was announced this past week, from Iraq, that Jordanian embassy driver Mahmoud Saedat was released by his captors in that country after being held since 20 December, 2005.

The multiplicity of K&R incidents, if we step back from the headlines for a moment - which are more often desensitizing than informative - and look at the phenomenon, speak to two important lessons:

1. K&R is a successful tool for terrorists, increasing rather than decreasing on the international stage because it not only provides publicity (a terrorist operation can only, by definition, be considered a suggest if it makes the news) but also because it spreads fear in the affected communities.
2. As has already been reported in these posts, while private security companies, insurance companies and terrorists alike have found K&R a "cash-cow," it has been the bane of the general population. The number of individual occupations in which one can be involved and be a target of a K&R incident has expanded over the years from merely foreign representatives of corporations and governmental workers to include chauffeurs, translators, shopkeepers and journalists, among others.

Thus, K&R incidents are not being thwarted, they are on the rise.

If taken only from the perspective of international security, this is not good news.

These latter facts bear out the thesis of this report: the issue of kidnap-and-ransom is an under-reported story in the American press in the sense that its scale and scope and those involved in both the industry and the phenomenon get little ink or air time or Web space.

Finally, when seeking to put this story in context, if we use the measures of deaths incurred, rise or fall in episodes and governmental coordination in responses, it is difficult not to reach the conclusion that efforts to stem the tide of the K&R phenomenon have been abysmal failures. And that's the real story.

White Men (and a few White Women) in Suits

This project was begun announcing that it would be an attempt to provide a critique of American journalism, what it was doing right or wrong and why it is held in such low esteem. It was meant to be an attempt to explore why the focus on ente rtainment among the media conglomerates had reduced American journalism from being chronicle to comical.

Besides the oft-cited instance of a focus on the business side (the Knightfall citation,) and the scandals (Miller, Woodward, et alia) there were also the questions of usefulness, the parroting of each other and celebrity journalism where American journalism has become more about the celebrity journalist than the story itself.

But there is one glaring fact of American journalism and American news rooms that is a special pet peeve of this reporter I have saved until this conclusion: the near-total lack of diversity.

It is difficult in the extreme, as has been lamented for as long as I've been involved in this business, to go to any news room - be it print, broadcast or Internet - and not see mostly White men and a few White women - in suits. When one discovers people of other backgrounds, it is always remarkable. And this, considering the diversity of the country and the audience, is a serious flaw.

The subjects and the objects of American journalism reflect the make-up of the journalistic practitioners themselves, much to its detriment. In that sense, the so-called citizen journalism of the Blogosphere, in my view, presents a much more accurate picture not only of the national fabric but also of the concerns it take to be important and informative. Throughout this project, I've attempted to link you to some of those members of the Blogosphere who' I've found impressive in that regard.

For example, at my own magazine, in its current edition, our lead story is an examination of the growth of Arab blogging by Jordanian writer Natasha Tynes. The work of Natalie Davis at All Facts and Opinions is top notch and accurate. But you won't find women like these in your "average" American newsroom.

As long as this state of affairs is maintained, you won't find the stories pitched to editors or the editors sympathetic to such stories on the landscape of American journalism.

In an earlier post, I slammed Christiane Amanpour about a piece of reporting she did on a story we both covered. As a counterweight, I'd like to conclude with a bit of praise for her.

In a panel she participated in concerned with the reasons the American press did such a godawful job of reporting the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Ms. Amanpour pointed out that even within an organization like CNN there was a marked difference between the news coverage provided by its domestic (U.S. only) division and CNN International. The way the stories were covered, she asserted, was simply not the same.

As I asserted in the earlier mention, if two people (or groups) are covering the same story but reaching different conclusions, one of them has to be incorrect. By implication, Ms. Amanpour was making the same statement in this latter instance.

One cannot but think, I'd suggest, that what all-too-often passes for news in American journalism can only be considered "the party line." We all know it. That is why we all consider American News a Joke and switch from the news channels to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Thanks for your support of this project.

Go to First Post - AMERICAN NEWS IS COMEDY

Go to the Second Post - A Uniformly Uninformed Citizenry

Go to the Third Post - ... Nor Any Drop to Drink

Go to the Fourth Post - Reader Comments

Go to the Fifth Post - Lead by Example: OUR STORY

Go to Sixth Post - Kidnap & Ransom: Perspective

© 2006, Rod Amis.
E-mail your comments to rod@g21.net.