Media. What is it good for?

A brilliant unattributed rant in OffGuardian today, lambasting the British journalist Carole Cadwalladr for the intemperate and insensitive rhetoric she recently tweeted at the Russian government. According to her, the posting of a portrait of an alleged Russian spy alongside the hashtag #FreeMariaButina is an act of war against the West. “It’s a troll war, but it’s still war. It’s what war looks like now.”

Setting aside the question of whether it’s possible to troll your own Facebook page, as well as the impact declaring war in response to social media posts might have on free speech, the writer proceeded to remind Ms Cadwalladr of what war really looks like. It looks like this (particularly disturbing images omitted).

What the writer neglected to do was remind us of what real war with Russia might look like in every city on the globe.

In the Western mainstream media true war correspondents are largely a thing of the past. Journalists no longer get to see how war looks up close. To them it looks like ‘unnamed official sources’, the slick PR campaigns of pro-Western belligerents and glittering industry award nights for reporters who toe the official line. That’s the only explanation for how they can consistently stoke aggression and confrontation the world over despite the gruesome consequences it has brought to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Libya; as well as countless other recipients of ‘shock and awe’ and ‘collateral damage’.

I wince when I see sports reporters writing of ‘war’ and ‘carnage’ on the playing field. But they’re supposed to be excitable and stupid, right? It would be nice if those who write about foreign affairs would learn to be as careful with their language as some of their colleagues who write about sex offences have become. Because what they might ‘trigger’ could be even nastier.