For over a year now, some international media outlets have been boldly taking sides with the terrorist TPLF group. Involved in a smear campaign against Ethiopia, the media houses have been pulling out all the stops to bewilder the international community with cooked-up stories.
Notwithstanding the fact that the terrorist TPLF group perpetrated atrocities and ransacked belongings of civilians residing in the Amhara and Afar states, the lowrated media outlets kept on taking no notice of the war crimes. In point of fact, a diverse range of media outlets has been puzzling the international community with imaginary stories working hand-in-glove with their financers, paid activists, and supporters of the terrorist group. Since recently, media outlets made an effort to spread imaginary stories on purpose in furtherance of fashioning instability across Addis Ababa. Sad as it may sound, under the pretense of informing the international community on Ethiopia’s circumstances, they have been perplexing the global community with misleading information. In actual fact, it has been quite a while since the global media and their paymasters waged information warfare against Ethiopia.
The spread of fake news and misinformation have been meant to put pressure on Ethiopia into capitulating to the interests of the west. Albeit the media outlets have been mainly preoccupied with concealing the havoc, plundering, sexual assault, and other acts in violation of law surfacing in the Amhara and Afar states, they failed to achieve the intended destination almost immediately through the coordinated efforts of Ethiopians at home and abroad. To everyone’s dismay, since the law enforcement operation began, the so-called international media outlets have given their cold shoulder to journalism ethics and standards.
They every so often make get themselves involved in white lies, propaganda, and provocation. Aside from partaking in fueling the conflict and creating skepticism among people and government, quite a lot of media outlets have brought to light disinformation with a view to bringing into being unsteadiness all over the country.
As most of the time, the group has been getting itself fully wrapped up in misleading the international community. Unfortunately, some Western media still put into effect partisan reporting and positively portray the rebellious group rather than searching for the unvarnished truth.
They have been as well openly taking sides with the terrorist TPLF group to meet the political interests of their paymasters. Dejectedly, the global community has also been tricked into pressuring the Ethiopian government by the terrorist group, paid activists, and the inappropriately named media outlets. The international media outlets have been collaborating with the group to create instability all over the country.
Regarding the issue, in an exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Press Agency Bekele Woldemichael one of the diaspora community members said the U.S. and some Western-led media have always sought to achieve their ulterior motives by appointing gangsters over the African continent. He went on to note that some nations like Afghan, Libya, and Syria were devastated by the U.S. and some western media orchestrated cruel acts.
They also would like to repeat the same on Ethiopia which would help them garner a big opportunity to obtain political leverage in the African continent. Bekele further noted that the U.S. and some western media do not always allow legitimate government elected by the majority.
That is why they put maximum pressure on the Ethiopian government and its people by supporting terrorist TPLF to back. Once regarding the current conflict in Ethiopia, the Photo Journalist Jemal Countess said none of the western media outlets have disseminated balanced news reports about the real situation of the country.
Many of the western media outlets have been ignoring the reality on the ground and keep reporting the false propaganda of the TPLF group feeding false information to the international community. “I have observed in person that there are hundreds of thousand people living in school that has been re-purposed to house thousands of people.
They have been victims of the TPLF terrorist group and people are very angry that the TPLF has displaced them, continued killing innocent civilians, rape looted their properties, and keep terrorizing them even after the declaration of ceasefire.” According to him, these media are against anybody who is an independent thinker, or people who they don’t prove of.
The war is all about their wish to bring TPLF back to power. But the fact is that the majority of Ethiopians will never give chance to the terrorist group to rule anymore after 27 years of authoritarian and brutally oppressive. The TPLF has admitted that they attacked the northern command but the western media has ignored the admission of the TPLF as they started the war, Jemal said.
The western media want to back up the rebel narratives standing behind the TPLF by feeding propaganda of the TPLF to the international community; he said adding that all those false propaganda are perpetrated against the rest of Ethiopians and silencing the voice of those people who were suffered during the attack. The massacre and the attack on the northern command are premeditated which is part of marching to Addis Ababa to topple the elected government.
On the subject of the issue, Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the United States said although the terrorist TPLF clique has been waging a new round of offensive to Amhara and Afar states and obstructing humanitarian access to Tigray, the West has not yet dared to condemn the group’s belligerence.
In a press conference he gave recently, Ambassador Fitsum Arega stated that TPLF capitalized on the decision of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and allied forces not to advance to Tigray and expanded the conflict into the two neighboring states.
Apart from committing heinous crimes against the civilian population in Amhara and Afar, the terrorist enterprise also blocked the operational land route and hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid to Tigray. “The West, particularly the U.S., UK, WFP, and others have turned a blind eye to TPLF’s aggression and are not willing to denounce it despite the fact that they have ample evidence of the raid. ” It is evident that from the beginning, the TPLF has been hindering the delivery of humanitarian assistance by kidnapping aid trucks entering Tigray and looting warehouses.” Ambassador Fitsum further noted that if the West was really concerned about human rights, they would not have chosen to remain silent in the face of such abuses.
The criminal faction is still falsely accusing the Ethiopian government and trying to gain the attention of the international community. “False allegations are part of TPLF’s longstanding deceiving propaganda.” Despite all these challenges, the federal government is still trying to deliver aid to the Tigray state, he emphasized. As Africans do not have Pan African media outlets in the continent, they have been paying the price and battling with fake news over and over again.
In an exclusive interview with The , Anteneh Tsegaye (Ph.D.) assistant professor at Addis Ababa University, School of Journalism and Communication said, “There is an urgent demand for Africa to have its own media for the purpose of face negotiation, rebranding itself and connecting Africa together in all core endeavors of the spirit and dimensions of Africanism.
It’s high time for Africa to take an inward-looking perspective for prosperity and voicing ‘dealing with African issues in an African way.” He said, “The interference of the former colonizers of Africa in terms of injecting western political ideologies did not help Africa to move forward to brand its pleasant face to the world and engage itself in development efforts in an African way. Rather, Africa is considered synonymous with a continent of famine, war, drought, and conflict. This mischaracterization of Africa should be stopped by Africans’ engagement to avert the causes, taking inward-looking perspective to deal with African issues.” he opined. No doubt, media is power and it is a cohesive apparatus to glue society, culture, and the continent of Africa together.
Healthy interaction among these parties is important in political and socio-economic discourse among citizens on a given political map.
As a tool of mass communication, media is pivotal to entertaining contending political ideologies and at the same time working for continental integration and social cohesion in the same.
It is also a vital machine in enlightening societies and in the attempt to create a democratic culture and peaceful social co-existence in the continent.
BY ADDISALEM MULAT
The Ethiopian 15 February 2022
