BY GETAHUN LEGESSE
ADDIS ABABA – Though TPLF is dead and buried, major Western media, in particular The New York Times, concertedly operate its lie factory on an industrial and global scale unleashing torrent of disinformation about ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘genocide’ and similar claims on Ethiopia, a renowned scholar said.
In his recent social media op-ed, a political science professor at California State University Alemayehu (Al) Geberemariam stated that the New York Times and the other legacy old guard corporate media have lost their journalistic and ethical compasses.
Foremost, Western Journalism on Ethiopia is the politicization and weaponization of journalism for the purpose of demonization, denigration, destabilization, demoralization, and dehumanization of the Ethiopian people and their government, the academician stated.
In its February 29, 2021edition, the New York Times stated that it has obtained an internal United States government report that claimed Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray.
Alemayehu indicated that is it possible the “internal document” is a propaganda piece prepared by supporters of the TPLF and passed on to Susan Rice, who in turn ‘leaked’ it to the New York Times under the official seal of the State Department to give it a veneer of authority and respectability.
“Why didn’t the State Department present the alleged report to or confront the Ethiopian Government with the findings of the “internal report”, particularly after Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the U.S. Fitsum Arega challenged the Times to see the proof of ethnic cleaning?”
The scholar further stated that Western journalism is reporting which undermines and trashes Ethiopian sovereignty, independence, image and reputation and maliciously shaping a negative narrative to create adverse global public opinion against Ethiopia. The media are also conflating a variety of false information and disinformation on Ethiopia to confuse global public opinion.
The western media are depicting and portraying the TPLF as the “good guys” despite overwhelming evidence of the fact that the TPLF engineered the ethnically motivated Maikadra Massacres on November 9, 2020 which resulted in nearly a thousand dead and destruction of critical infrastructure. The media present the Ethiopian government and people who seek to hold the TPLF criminals as the “bad guys”.
According to the scholar, the intensified lie campaign of the Western media aims to negatively influence Western public opinion about Ethiopia, psychologically terrorize the elites in Ethiopia and erode public support for the government of PM Abiy Ahmed thereby forcing regime change.
Noting that trust in the legacy American media continues to plummet in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, Alemayehu said that the monopoly of the Western legacy media is gone. Certainly, Americans have many alternatives to mainstream news media and could not care less what the legacy papers say.
“If we can get a handful of informed, dedicated and relentless Ethiopians to chip away at the New York Times and the Western Goliath legacy media, we could demonstrate to the world they are nothing but, literally, paper tigers,” he remarked.
The Ethiopian Herald 13 April 2021
