Media and the global war on terrorism

You cant get lost here, there is the Sauna by the Lake, and there is the north mark.

In a small spa-resort in Loka, not too far from Alfred Nobel's birth place and the headquarters of the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors, about 40-50 academics and journalists representing media in the four corners of the world gathered with one topic in mind - Media does not operate in a vacuum.

Let me start from the end result - some agreed at the closing session that journalism has a responsibility towards building "democracy" in post-conflict areas, especially in the age of the global war on terrorism. This very last "session" was an exclusive Sauna treat (photo above), a floating sauna with room for 20 people, a chill out room with a meeting table, white board, projector, sound system, as well as a bar. The sauna is surrounded by frozen water, and of course, there was the hole in the snow........

The lodge where light never goes out

Lets just go back to "building democracy," well, there were many different views.

The NWICO conservatives argued that we should include the UNESCOs "big media debate" of the 1970s in current and future discussions about the medias role, reminding us that the recent mess the US coalition created in the Middle East, have deteriorated the situation of press freedoms around the world.

There were the hopefuls, such as "Peace Journalism" evangelist Jake Lynch, who argue that his module could be applied in the creation of an even newer form of NWICO, underrating the influence of the "pink-floyd-post-modernists," who are in favor of the ideals of citizen-journalism. He pointed out that the arms industry produced more weapons in the last ten years than in the last century as a whole, and that the media cannot undo that, but it also shouldnt promote it.

However, there was a more or less consensus towards the end that the traditional and non-traditional media are more or less defined nowadays by their purely commercial interest, to the very satisfaction of the businesses behind the hegemony of todays media products.

Not so black and white, participants talking the gray line

There were those, and there was Al Jazeera:

The channel's representative, Yosri Fouda (Producer, Top-Secret), talked openly about traveling to a "safe house" of Al Qaeda to interview two of the masterminds of the Sept. 11th attacks. I interviewed Yosri on how he was lead blindfolded into the "safe house", and what were the terms of the unwritten agreement he had with Al Qaeda, and how this meeting was endorsed by several intelligence agencies.

Fouda, one of those behind establishing the BBC Arabic service, said reporting on Al Qaeda is reporting facts to paying customers who want to hear and see such reports. He said his paying customers do not want propaganda, they want the truth, whether it is told by the US President or by the leader of Al Qaeda. This is the very guy that refers to Al Qaeda as a mindset, rather than a real organization.

My little room :)

Seeking reactions, I interviewed Lynch and others. Lynch said Al Jazeera is reporting the fact that Al Qaeda said so and so, not necessarily reporting what Al Qaeda says as facts. The interviews can be found in the Archives of the Swedish Radio, or you can contact me directly.

There were also the Afghani reporters with their insider-relations with the Taleban. One of them was more or less the only source of information for all news agencies on the Taleban movements, and in an interview after the conference, he told me it was impossible to be balanced in a very unbalanced conflict situation. His voice was echoed by many global journalists, and by those I mean, Alumni of the Masters of Global Journalism programme at the Örebro University, like myself.

A monument thanking the scottsmen who built the resort.

So can we claim independence as journalists? Is there such thing as Balanced Journalism? these questions, I think, are obsolete, the answer to both is NO. We can always strive for independent and balanced journalism, but we will always be leaning towards one side or another because we are just not that perfect. So what, shall we spell out the agendas in the open? This is one thing bloggers are quite good at, actually.

Castro on a sunny stockholm day.

So back to work after this conference and the first thing I have to deal with, after the long NATO meeting, is the fact the rightwing Swedish government wants to make history a compulsory subject in Schools.

This history will tell that Sweden did not give a hand to Adolf Hitler, but it allowed his troops to cross over Swedish territory to take over Norway. It will also show that Sweden was the refuge of many Jews that were being prosecuted in Denmark and Germany at the time. The history will also show the horrible, horrible, crimes of the Nazis, and not only them, but also the bad, bad, communists. The reality of today is that the former communist party is now in the parliament, and that the former Nazi party is the biggest party outside the parliament, and is almost sure to win its way to the parliament in 2010. However, it is still considered cool to sport a t-shirt with the face of Che Guevara or Fidel Castro, but it is not OK to wear a Swatstika, at least not publicly.

The history will also show that Sweden did not take part openly in the war on Terrorism, but it has troops in Afghanistan, working with the Norwegian NATO unit, under direct orders from the US Army.

Hey, this is not Beirut, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. This is Östermalm, Stockholm.

"Didn't you know that the printing of the Muhammad Cartoons was a result of the Global War on Terrorism," one of the conference organizers asked. Everyone nodded yes.

Before I conclude, I will give some personal news. I am still on the haunt for apartments, hopefully in Central Stockholm, as the recent apartment project failed, and as Petra decided to move to Norway for work. I have 20 days to find a new place, a near-impossible task, but this is the reality I have to deal with.