Press Release

WAR AND INFORMATION
The role of journalism in conflict reporting
On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, an online event analyses together with leading figures in the field how the role of journalism in conflict reporting has evolved from the First Gulf War to the present day .

Rome, 30 April 2021 - The First Gulf War in 1991 radically changed the way information is reported from the theatres of conflict and war. The spectacularisation of that time - the 'green' night in Baghdad in the CNN pictures - was followed by the systematisation of embedded information: journalists and news operators always following the occupying armies or stationed in military bases.

Information increasingly 'piloted' from above, which anaesthetises the suffering of those who, in the various conflicts, suffer the bombs and missiles. Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, are just a few of the places where the intersection of war and information tends to yield to bellicose propaganda and to narrate fabricated truths.

A tendency that, in recent years, has however been countered by a nascent panorama of independent journalism that has seen a new generation of professionals change the rules of embedded journalism and venture into the theatres of conflict independently, in an attempt to restore a more authentic point of view that is untethered to the power dynamics that revolve around the information system.

Thirty years ago, at the end of the First Gulf War, the Italian pacifist association Un Ponte Per (UPP), which later became an NGO, was founded. In these years of disguised wars, embellished with adjectives such as 'humanitarian wars', 'peace operations' or 'democracy', Un Ponte Per has also chosen to recount the war from the only possible point of view: that of the victims. The truth of events told by refugees, by those who have lost loved ones to bombing or armed reprisals, by those who have had to abandon their homes and their affections to seek a chance of survival elsewhere.

These are disturbing truths, which highlight the hypocrisies and interests of those who unleash wars and then do not want to see the consequences on their own shores and in their own cities.

The criminalisation of independent news operators is there for all to see: they disturb the dominant narrative because they make the faces and voices of the victims visible.

We will talk about all this on 3 May - World Press Freedom Day - starting at 6pm live on Facebook from the Un Ponte Per page, together with our guests: Giuliano Battiston, freelancer and director "Lettera22", Michele Giorgio, correspondent of Il Manifesto from Jerusalem, Sara Lucaroni, freelence contributor of L'Espresso and L'Avvenire, Sara Manisera, freelance reporter and Fada collective,Nancy Porsia, freelancer, consultant and researcher, Cecilia Rinaldini, foreign correspondent of Giornale Radio RAI. With them also Alfio Nicotra, co-president of Un Ponte Per, and Angela Mona, member of the National Committee.

Link to the event: https://fb.me/e/1jQQpQai2

The initiative is part of the cycle of online meetings organised by Un Ponte Per on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.