111
What is the Purpose of Journalism if War Crimes Are Not Allowed to be Published?
(www.pressenza.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
111 points (91.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43826 readers
851 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I often see news reports being quite careful and describing what appears in detailed evidence documenting murder by the military as 'apparent' war crimes.
I would argue that the credible accusation of war crimes, that is, with evidence available, requires a full investigation and trial full stop. If no trial occurs, and nobody sues for defamation, the papers can say whatever they feel confident enough to say. Except WikiLeaks...
In Australia there was the interesting defamation case recently with a civil court finding that the soldier who brought the defamation case had no case and did in fact commit war crimes in Afghanistan. He has not been charged with a crime. What does this say about impunity for war criminals? In contrast, Australian military whistleblower David McBride had to plead guilty last month for releasing evidence of war crimes and their cover-up by military leadership to a journalist with the state-broadcaster, the ABC. In both cases though, the news organisations publishing the news articles are seen to be in the right by the government and courts. (Although the ABC did get raided just a couple of months after Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, the journalist was not charged.)