Stephen Kinzer — The media are misleading the public on Syria

COVERAGE OF the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.…

Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.

This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.…

The Boston Globe — Opinion
The media are misleading the public on Syria

Stephen Kinzer

When I spoke over the phone recently with former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer [see his home page ], it became immediately clear to me this award winning war correspondent doesn't cover Washington, or go on power runs with four star generals or hobnob with Tampa socialites; he's more interested in journalism. Kinzer has spent the bulk of his reporting career, after all, hiding in bushes while being shot at, beaten by police, tear-gassed, bombed from the air, and even jailed while covering over 50 countries in five continents.

After spending over 20 years with the New York Times, mostly as a foreign correspondent, which included tours of duty in Nicaragua as bureau chief (1983-1989), chief of Times' bureau in Germany (1990-1996; Berlin is where he met his wife), and chief of the newly opened bureau in Istanbul, Turkey (1996-2000), he decided to leave the newspaper business in 2006 to teach and devote more time to his real interests in hot spots spanning the globe.

Asked the biggest reason for leaving the Times, Kinzer said that he was unhappy and uncomfortable with the way the American press during the Iraq war was ``cheering up'' the war effort. At least in the early stages of the conflict, Kinzer thought the media coverage was ``one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. We became handmaidens of power. We let Washington set our agenda for us, which I hate.''

The other reason Kinzer left was that he was at the point in his career that he didn't like getting bogged down in having to report on the flavor of the day; he was more interested in writing about what most interested him, which is incompatible with today's journalism. So when he was offered a teaching position at Northwestern University, he thought the stars were perfectly aligned for him to begin a new chapter in his career.…

Before joining the Times as bureau chief in Nicaragua in 1983, Kinzer was a Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe. He ended up writing two books about the region, ``Blood-Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua and co-authored ``Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala'' In 1988, Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America; and in 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded him an honorary doctorate. The University of Scranton additionally awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010.

Kinzer and his wife Marianne, who have a grown daughter, live in Boston, where he now teaches in the Department of International Relations as a visiting professor at Boston University with a specialization in International Journalism, Intercultural Communication, U. S. Foreign Policy, and the politics of Turkey, Iran, Rwanda, and Central America.

Hufington Post Media
Former New York Times War Correspondent Stephen Kinzer Still Hiding Behind Bushes

Bill Lucy