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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway. Let's take a listen to CBS News senior foreign correspondent, Charlie D’Agata, talking about Ukraine on Friday.
Charlie D’Agata: This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully too, city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen.
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the kind of media coverage that prompted a recent statement by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association. In the statement, the group wrote, "This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected." We're joined now by Sarah Ellison, staff writer at The Washington Post. Sarah, it's great to have you here.
Sarah Ellison: Thank you so much for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I have to say I have been feeling a similarity that I felt when the coverage of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, you had commentators like Wolf Blitzer saying things like, "Oh, this doesn't look like an American city, it looks like Mogadishu or Port-au-Prince," thinking, "Huh, you're saying a lot of things there, sir." I think I have felt similarly wanting to capture that horror of what's happening in Ukraine, but not diminish that it's also horrible when it happens to Black and brown people.
Sarah Ellison: Absolutely. There's no question that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the closest that we have come in our lifetime to a world war. In that regard, it is very different from other conflicts, but it is not notable and shocking because one area is civilized and the other is not. I think that's the thing that we have heard commentators really stepping in the past week because people are trying to say how shocking this conflict is.
It's obviously getting wall-to-wall coverage for all sorts of very good reasons, but what a lot of people are saying and a lot of communities are hearing is that this matters more because these people are civilized, they're white. One news commentator said that these are Christians. It's really bringing up a casual racism, frankly, that when we were talking to experts that came up again and again, that this is a pervasive problem in conflict coverage.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Look, this is a complicated situation. I think your point about there are geopolitical reasons why this particular conflict is different. I guess there also seems to be something valuable about noting that our own emotive and effective attachments might, in fact, be responding to these issues of race and Europeanness, and our own perceptions of civilization. It's just, I think, we have to say it that way.
Sarah Ellison: Yes. I think that what is happening is these are commentators and sometimes in case people have been up all night, and they're trying to bring some context to what is happening, explain to people why it's so shocking, the way people are doing that is to say this is-- Literally, we've seen pieces where politicians or journalists will say, "They're so much like us." That's what's so shocking is to see refugees with blonde hair and iPhones, and all these other trappings. When you say, "They're just like us," you're obviously commenting from a very particular perspective that doesn't apply when white news people are talking about Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria.
I do think that we're stepping in it unwittingly, but it's really revealing a lot about our frame. The experts that we spoke to said that this coverage resorts to old orientalist concepts of civilization that suggest that war is a natural phenomenon in places outside of Europe or America. The Middle East, in particular, is the place where war takes place because of a lack of civilization rather than unjust geopolitical power distribution or foreign intervention or some other reason.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, let me ask this question. What difference does it make?
Sarah Ellison: I think it's incredibly important, and our own reporting has indicated that this can have real-world implications. This treatment where people are dehumanized in other countries but found very affecting in other European countries, it mirrors something that-- We have reports of Black Africans trying to get out of the Ukraine into Poland and being pushed to the back of the line, and white Ukrainians are being allowed out first.
I think, at least our reporting indicates, that these are the things when people hear these messages again and again, not only is it incredibly harmful for the communities in other countries that are not white and that are not favored in terms of these stories, but you see a real-world mirroring of a double standard.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I think your point about sometimes when correspondents. they're standing in a war zone, they're not reading from a script, they're actually speaking extemporaneously trying to bring insight, I have such empathy for the ways that we can make all kinds of errors in that moment, but I am wondering if there are best practices ways of thinking about how we reduce the harm that we can do in the errors that, as humans, we're going to make.
Sarah Ellison: It's a really good point. I spoke with a media expert who talked about some of this is getting better. By this, I mean exactly what we're talking about. In past conflicts, it was much more blatant. One of the things that is happening is that slowly, newsrooms are hiring a more diverse group of staffers. One of the women that I spoke to is a Syrian-American journalist who reported on Iraq and reported on the war in Syria. That person is going to bring a very different perspective than I would, somebody who grew up in Pennsylvania and has no experience in these countries.
I think that diversifying staff and having-- This is what we talk about. People say this all the time. Our newsroom needs to reflect the world it's reporting on. That's particularly true in moments like this. That's one solution. I also have a lot of sympathy for people who are up 72 hours and trying to report lucidly on a situation like this, but it is our responsibility to try to be better.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As much as indeed there has been wall-to-wall coverage in radio, on television, this is a war that's also being covered in social media in real-time. Your point that the people of Ukraine are connected. They're holding their iPhones. They're recording. As compelling as that can be, I also am concerned about the ways that we may need some tools to ensure that what we're seeing, what we believe, we understand about the circumstances are in fact accurate. Any advice for our listeners as they're thinking about how to navigate and understand whether what they're seeing is accurate or either mis or disinformation?
Sarah Ellison: That's such a big issue and problem and a whole other can of worms. I think that newsrooms now-- I know we are doing this, The Washington Post, and I know other places as well are investing a huge amount in video verification systems and trying to make sure what we're seeing is actually real. There's another problem though, which is what I call the fog of war reporting, which is that you have information that is coming out, and no one can really verify. Even "official sources" are confused about what's going on.
This exhibited itself very clearly in the famous Snake Island standoff, where you had a small group of Ukrainian soldiers standing against the Russian army that was demanding that they lay down their arms, and they famously told the Russians to go F themselves and were reported as all having perished. President Zelenskyy told us that. It turns out days later we find that not only are they alive, but they eventually did have to surrender, and are now being held by the Russians. That's information that no one knew at the outset, and we were relying on official reports. I would say that for viewers taking things with a grain of salt is the first step, but also know to not fall for the viral moment.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah Ellison is staff writer at The Washington Post. Sarah, thanks for joining us.
Sarah Ellison: Thank you so much for having me.
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