...Is Eva Bartlett credible? Quora
Eva Bartlett's border crossing journalism showed at long last the people’s perspective of the Syrian war against terrorism. Bartlett talks figures and proportions, and expands your desk research with facts that she documented as a witness on site. Her stark observations have upset an entire media industry. But she engages in dialogue, and she documents her observations in detail; a stress test for integrity and coherence. Bartlett is outspoken about social injustice and inaccurate media. Her engagement and candor can be seen as a bonus.
A heretic or partisan journalist will be challenged and has to work harder. Taking a position means you welcome the scrutiny of critics and it enables a reader to find opposition and do more effective fact checking. Bartlett has exposed a tradition of lazy research and poor journalism in prominent mainstream-media, but now she seems to be subjected to a smear campaign for lack of a better argument. Observe her fact finding ability and analysis, while she politely shatters a bastion of pretentiousness.
A heretic or partisan journalist will be challenged and has to work harder. Taking a position means you welcome the scrutiny of critics and it enables a reader to find opposition and do more effective fact checking. Bartlett has exposed a tradition of lazy research and poor journalism in prominent mainstream-media, but now she seems to be subjected to a smear campaign for lack of a better argument. Observe her fact finding ability and analysis, while she politely shatters a bastion of pretentiousness.
Compare this well-documented single engine press mosquito to a corporate newscaster from CNN where fact-checking is often entirely absent, as the news is served as it was delivered by media affiliates or special interest groups - often through an uneducated mouthpiece or an establishment associate. (Who knew for instance Mrs. Amanpour’s married a government PR-man? That Anderson Cooper was affiliated to the CIA? That Murdoch himself has a stake in occupied Golan - co-owning mining firm Genie. Who’d thought state agencies took a deceptive role qr.ae/TUTNE7.)
Mind you, a free press is free to ignore the truth. A free market does not guarantee a balanced and relevant flow of information to the public especially if the public is the product. Or when most media share the same (co-)owners. Our corporate media have often parrotted the War party (Neocons), and their co-owners in the military-industrial complex. That is how the Iraq war could be waged on faulty intelligence and little debate, according to regretful WashPo and CBS journalists (2004). That is not a thing of the past apparently.
Bartlett’s on-site reports have countered the prevailing media narrative which has been leaning on assumptions, hearsay and crafted myth. Her determination to go off-limits to document the facts, and her measured nuanced choice of words seem to reveal a passion for truth. What is credible or not credible was explained by Bartlett herself when she scoured a media colleague for ‘'Building conclusions on allegations citing dubious and unknown sources, time and again.. One, two times maybe, but every time? Not Credible."
I’d say, hats off for a courageous investigator who has turned on the light on an issue littered with deception, perhaps as complex as the Vietnam war was in the time of ‘the Pentagon papers’ (1971).
