Journalist unmasks Western media bias against Ethiopia

The Western media are biased in reporting Ethiopia’s current situation via ignoring huge elements and contradicting with themselves within the same reports, said CBS Journalist Hermela Aregawi.

In her recent interview with Bob Schlehuber’s FM radio program ,Hermela noted that one of the most egregious points in terms of the gaps in reporting is that when the western media such as AP, CNN and the New York Times had been reporting on unfounded humanitarian blockade for a month, they were at the same time reporting that the World Food Program (WFP)was sending humanitarian aid trucks.

However, she indicated that nobody reported the fact except UN Ethiopia that hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks have moved into the Tigray State and majority of them did not come back. During that time, she said that TPLF affiliated TV stations broadcast, truckloads of soldiers leaving Tigray State going to the neighboring states of Amhara and Afar where thousands of people were killed.

She added that those are the kind of things that are not being reported by CNN, AP, NewYork Times that are completely being ignored. In fact recently, the New York Times reiterated the fact that the Ethiopian government continues with the “blockade” and completely ignoring the fact that the rebel groups are actually using the aid for purposes of war, she added.

She also said in her interview that the word famine has been weaponized and while the western media and the U.S. government has been warning about famine in that state for almost the entire year, she said that they were ignoring the very thing that could actually lead to famine, that is their acts of obstructing of humanitarian aid.

The journalist also emphasized that the AP and others used a photo of starving kid that was from anonymous source while reporting about famine in Tigray about a month ago and she said that she found out that very disturbing from journalism perspectives because the reporter was not to get a photo that was sourced from that hospital.

Referring to her experience from working with ethincTigray activists for several moments of this war, she stated that she is aware of the ways information gets to places like the AP is through activists, TPLF activists and TPLF officials.

Mentioning that lots of western media directly work with TPLF officials, she stressed that is why there reporting has been so biased and there has been no report on CNN, AP or the New York Times about the month of invasion by TPLF forces in to the Amhara and Afar states where nearly 10 ,000 people died.

“If the people of Tigray and the TPLF leadership really felt like they could not feel to live under this government because it is genocidal in nature, because of their ethnicity or they want to break away, when the central government announced a unilateral ceasefire at the end of June, rather than going in to the direction of independent and stay within the borders of Tigray, the rebel forces would not be pushed into the neighboring state where thousands of people died” as to her.

The Ethiopian Herald October 28/2021