Patrick Cockburn on the limits of combat journalism: In Tripoli two years ago, hotels were filled to capacity with journalists covering Gadhafi’s fall and the triumph of the rebel militias. But state authority still hasn’t been restored there. In the summer of 2013, Libya almost stopped exporting oil because the main ports on the Mediterranean had been seized as a result of a mutiny among militiamen.... Libya’s descent into anarchy was scarcely covered by the international media. They had long since moved on to Syria, and more recently to Egypt. Iraq, home a few years ago to so many foreign news bureaus, has also dropped off the media map, although up to a thousand Iraqis are killed each month, mostly as a result of the bombing of civilian targets.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:58:53 +0000