VULTURES ‘Journalism is a Public Good: GLOBAL TENDENCES IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA DEVELOPMENT’

VULTURES ‘Journalism is a Public Good: GLOBAL TENDENCES IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA DEVELOPMENT; UNESCO GLOBAL REPORT‘ 2021/2022

Irina Mirochnik

Vultures“Journalism is a Public Good: GLOBAL TENDENCES IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA DEVELOPMENT;” UNESCO GLOBAL REPORT 2021/2022

       I have always been convinced that freedom of expression lies in the freedom to discuss facts. Modern journalism has gone purely into opinions and no one cares about the fact as such anymore, discussing emotions and rewarding the “best” in the category of “journalism” but … for propaganda.

And the difference between propaganda and journalism is very subtle. The only difference is that propaganda leaves facts behind for the needlessness of imposing purely opinions on the population. 

     One need only look at ALL media resources to realise their dizzying decline and the distrust of readers and viewers in what yesterday could still be considered journalism.

     What I will talk about next is driven by an ache for the profession and a complete rejection of it as it exists. 

         I have been silent for three days and just watched the events unfold.

I signed a petition demanding that Nikon condemn the award given by Associate Press for Photographer of the Year. And as of today, 2 April, over 110,000 decent people have signed this petition. It amazes me that only 110,000, and not a million at least, who have retained an understanding of such fundamental concepts as humanism and the fight against evil at its core, which destroys us humans….

        I have written and spoken in my podcasts for several years about the complete collapse of journalism, especially in the Associated Press, which does not shy away from hiring outright theorists as freelancers, given the fact that its office was located in Gaza in the same building as the Hamas headquarters. And all these “correspondents” do, what they have been doing all these years, is to promote all the anti-Israel propaganda. 

      The result is now being bloodily expectorated to the whole world today, which has sided with evil in its fear of the latter. Impotent politicians, with their tolerant attitude towards the executioners, have become accomplices to the crimes, shifting the arrows of responsibility to those trying to defend themselves….

     And we are about the total degradation of journalism and its criteria, journalism serving these impotent politicians …. But in the case of the freelance photographers in Gaza who went on a trip with Hamas on 7 October, the notion that the product of their day-to-day work should be treated as mere routine reporting is a perversion of any notion of honest or ethical journalism.

        Vulture journalists taking part in horrific events on the side of murderers are murderers. And then we see on social media the joyful discussion and relishing of the details of dehumanisation of people from these executioners with cameras. And this animalistic joy of mocking people makes it unbearable. 

       I stare at the face of the girl whose name the world learned after she was killed by terrorists on 7 October 2023.  Shani Luk’s name has now “resonated” and her family wants the world to remember this girl as lively and cheerful. And so alive and cheerful were the 1,200 who were unlucky on that ill-fated morning in Izrala. And one wishes the world could see all the faces of the hostages (and those still alive, those already dead)…. 

      But something is wrong with the world and it laments the consequences of murder, accepting the lies of the killers and siding with those who are proud of the evil done….

         I stare into Shani Luk‘s face and for some reason I see another photograph that won the Pulitzer Prize “for feature photography in 1994.” 

 On 26 March 1993, The New York Times published a photograph by Kevin Carter. The caption for the photograph was as follows: “A little girl, exhausted by hunger, collapsed without strength on her way to a feeding centre in Ayodhya. A vulture was waiting nearby.”

The photograph became known to the world as “The Vulture and the Girl” and “Famine in Sudan“… I somehow see not one but two vultures in this photograph. The second was the photographer himself, doing his job and quietly leaving a little Sudanese boy to die a starving death, as it turned out in time.…

       It is likely that “accessory to murder” prevented Kevin Carter from living a peaceful life and he took his own life, suffering carbon monoxide poisoning on 27 July 1994 at the age of 33…

      “But in the case of the freelance photographers in Gaza who went on the road with Hamas on 7 October, the notion that the product of their day-to-day work should be treated as mere routine reporting is a perversion of any notion of honest or ethical journalism,” writes Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). And one couldn’t agree with him more.

       Ali Mahmoud, who filmed the 7 October killings in Israel, the author of the AP Photo of the Year Award, should be arrested and tried as a Hamas accomplice. And certainly this scumbag with a camera in his hands will not kill himself, because he is proud of what his brothers in the fight against Israel-hating Israel have done, and of himself.

In fact, he was doing his job, just as the terrorists with chest-mounted video cameras were doing theirs. This is the final judgement of a profession that chooses murderers and hands out its rewards to them. The simple “fact” that there are people who think such photography should be “proclaimed” shows how low our “civilisation” has fallen….

     We haven’t yet begun to talk about the level of anti-Semitism in the U.S., the support of thugs and the blackmail of these, electing representatives to the legislature from voters who support terrorists. 

     So far, the statistics of the polls conducted by PEW research confirm such obvious assumptions about Israel’s war with Hamas, and also speak well of our government, which launched into the country after 11 September 2001, this hostile population protesting and blackmailing us and the same government with their votes of support on their terms. Actually, terrorists always start with blackmail. For now, just the numbers from the poll : 

      “Half of Muslims in America (49%) believe Hamas has a “good” reason to attack Israel, while a majority (54%) also reject the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself. against an Islamic terrorist organisation.

     Unlike the vast majority of Americans of all ages and backgrounds, Muslims are the only group, less than half of whom agree that the killings, rapes and kidnappings on 7 October were wrong.

     One in five Muslims in America (21%) were willing to admit they supported the October 7 massacre. Nearly one in three said they were unsure whether it was right to burn Jewish families alive in their homes.

Only 5% of Muslims in America believe Israel’s military campaign against Hamas is acceptable, while 68% of Muslims believe Israel’s attacks on Islamic terrorists are unacceptable.

(https://www.pewresearch.org/…/views-of-the-israel…/)

     The statistics are eloquent and scary in their numbers, which simply and without emotion reveal the heart of the problem. But even more appalling are the words of support for the very journalism that has the encouragement of the AP awards.  For example, Ron Kampeas, Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, also defended the award, writing that “reporters and photographers who risk exposing atrocities deserve recognition …. because they risk exposing atrocities…”.

     Quite right, the prize-winning photograph is the atrocity itself in the flesh. Here again the vultures are present: both with machine guns and cameras. 

“Perhaps in today’s journalistic culture, many who work in the liberal corporate press agree with Kampeas. But his comment doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Those who joined the orgy of atrocities on 7 October were taking no chances. At best, and if you accept their claim that they had no idea what was going to happen that day, they were simply joining a bloodthirsty mob carrying out pogroms.

And given that those who committed these crimes were themselves taking photos and video with Go-Pro cameras provided to them by Hamas, realising that we need these photos to provide evidence of these events is unintelligible. At any rate, the photographers sought to celebrate these crimes in much the same way that many Nazis photographed the Jewish men, women and children they murdered during the Holocaust,” Jonathan S. Tobin continues. 

The impunity of evil and the tolerance of evil and the lack of a proper response to blackmail ends in a complete victory for the blackmailers, who are perfectly capable of using our laws to fight against us. 

This is a great insight into the current world where the victim of gang rape and murder and her executioners have become “superstars”. I have no doubt that such a brutal image would never have been a winner had the victim not been Jewish – anti-Semitism in its eternal and unsavoury form….

      Last Saturday, a crowd of thousands called for the extermination of Jews in the heart of New York City, in Union Square. Someone filmed the whole thing and the comments ripped the world of virtual passions. 

     On Sunday, when the Christian world celebrated Easter, Hamas lovers spat in the face of all New York Catholics by holding their coven at St Patrick’s Cathedral, the city’s main Catholic church, during Easter Mass….. 

      Our tolerant world of useful idiots swallowed that too. And no one remembered the young victim of Hamas, whose name is Shani Luk…..

     The petition demanding that Nikon condemn the Associated Press award for photo of the year continued to be signed…

03-04-2024

 Irina Mirochnik: PhD, Board Member of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, President of the Flexible Packaging Association of Ukraine and representative of the SAVE FOOD initiative UN in Ukraine, Advisory Board Member White Ribbon Ukraine, Member of the Supervisory Board of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, included in the list of 100 Business Ambassadors of Ukraine

PERSONAL AWARDS / TITLES ( Irina Mirochnik):  2004 – Diploma of the Ministry of Industrial Policy of Ukraine; 2009 – The title of “Honored Worker of Industry of Ukraine”; 2011 – Gratitude of the Chairman of the Kyiv City Council; 2014 – “Person of the year” nomination “Industrialist of the Year”; 2015 – Badge “For Merit” from the Federation of Employers of Ukraine; 2016 – Badge of Honor “For services to the chemical industry of Ukraine”; 2016 – “Person of the year” nomination “Industrialist of the Year”; 2018 – Order of Merit(Ukraine), 3rd class; 2019 – Award “Woman of the III Millennium”.

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