Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 21
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend:
The media is among the loudest voices against the spread of “fake news,” but the media is also the greatest culprit, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, director of international communications at a leading Israeli think tank, Israeli correspondent for eJewish Philanthropy, said in his article posted on The Hill.
Often, misreporting stems from media outlets picking up reports by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) or Amnesty International (AI), and printing them without any independent verification as to the accuracy of their claims, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, who is also a regular freelance writer, said in the article.
Reports by NGOs from war-torn areas can be wildly inaccurate because these organizations simply don’t have the expertise or access to facts to make their claims, explains Anne Herzberg, legal advisor to the Israel-based watchdog NGO Monitor.
“In many cases, groups like AI and HRW don’t have a local presence,” the article said. “They rely on claims from local NGOs themselves, and don’t verify this information.”
“It’s like a game of telephone: Local NGO makes a claim,” the author wrote. “AI, HRW or another international NGO picks up that claim and passes it on to the media. The media then reports it.”
“Why are the media not being more careful?,” reads the article. “The halo effect. This is the idea that NGOs are seen as altruistic and without agenda (in other words, they would have no reason to falsely report the facts). But Herzberg says this is not always true.”
Herzberg says NGOs, like any other business, have an end-goal in mind.
For example, an NGO might report a conflict is intensifying or violence increasing to justify their work to funders, according to the article. Similarly, an NGO might have a lobbying agenda, which leads it to report a story in a particular light, the article said.
In mid-January, as part of its World Report on human rights practices, HRW reported on Azerbaijan, according to the article.
“The HRW report makes a country with a constitution that defines the country as a "democratic, legal, secular and unitary republic" – and that has far surpassed most other ex-Soviet republics on matters of human rights – look like South America in the 1970s,” said the author.
In the same terms, a Freedom House report lists North Korea as “partly free” but Azerbaijan as “not free,” which is ridiculous, the article said.
“Free and accurate media is a foundation of a healthy democracy,” reads the article. “If NGOs are attacking democratic countries and US allies, using the unethical tactic of reporting their claims as verified facts (“news”), then something should be done about it.”