The Economist Performs Absolutions?

In an article dated November 10, The Economist wonders about the true nature of Meles Zenawi – it asks if he is the “bon vivant who provided sterling service as a member of the Commission for Africa”…or “is he essentially a rebel leader, who will happily toy with democracy in order to stay in power?” But by November 10 the answer to this question was clear. By then Meles Zenawi’s goons had killed about 100 people on the streets of Addis Ababa (since June) and had arrested well over 20,000 people. The EU election observers had said the election was a failure. Parliamentary rules had changed. The rights of immunity for MPs had been lifted. The leaders of the opposition had been rounded up. Indiscriminate killings and rounding up of civilians was rife. The free media was curtailed. Meles Zenawi had declared opposition to him was a treasonous act. In short, Meles Zenawi through his actions had already answered The Economist’s question long before it was raised.

Despite these atrocities, The Economist chooses to bounce the reader between what it considers are Meles’s pros (which are based on the west’s view of what Meles has accomplished) and cons (which are based on the actions Meles undertook to quell the internal dissatisfaction with him). The reader is made to reserve judgment, but the last paragraph of this article goes even further. In its conclusion the article shocks Ethiopians and anyone who follows events in Ethiopia. It states:

"Many, perhaps most, Ethiopians and many foreign observers argue that, despite the government's recent bloody brutality, Mr. Zenawi is still the best man to keep Ethiopia on a path to development.”

Using this simple sentence in its conclusion The Economist tries to absolve Meles by telling the reader that despite all the brutality, most Ethiopians still hold him in high regard. This statement can only leave the unsuspecting reader wondering what miracles this man must have performed to have such grand sins absolved by the very people he is brutalizing. It convinces the reader that he too must accept (at least not oppose) Meles Zenawi in the interest of the greater good that Ethiopians and others expect from him. The reader is asked to hop on to the bandwagon of support; albeit one that only exists in the writer’s mind.

In the past many of us have wondered how it is that Meles is able to spin the west’s media. It is now clear that the western media actually goes out of its way to use sophisticated propaganda to protect its poster child and his sponsors against the growing movement by Ethiopians to expose Meles and his regime.

It is not only The Economist that engages in disseminating such information about Meles. The BBC, for instance, makes it a point to include a paragraph towards the conclusion of its news pieces that state Meles’s party has won majority seats in parilament without including the fact that these results were not accepted by the opposition, many Ethiopians or for that matter the EU observers - giving the impression that the Meles regime has majority support inside the country (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). It highly publicizes the mass releases but not the mass arrests. On Nov 9, BBC posted that people in Addis are going back to work in defiance of opposition calls without mentioning the constant bullying and threats from Meles to force city residents to get back to work. The BBC has even failed to mention the sizable demonstration out side its building by Ethiopians in Britain protesting its biased reporting in October. Such reporting is by no means objective and neither can it be regarded as an honest error of reporting. It is clearly designed to portray Meles (and by extension his western patrons) in as good a light as possible despite his actions (and the west's inaction) .

What makes these forms of propaganda very dangerous is that they are not out right lies, but closely tailored to the truth and come from sources that many believe to be objective. Further, the questions in Ethiopia at this time are questions of basic human rights that can not be excused whether or not there is majority support inside the country or from the west. We believe that this is not lost on the media sources that continue to publish Meles’s actions as some type of a temporary aberration. There seems to be an engrained interest to see him through the current crisis at whatever cost.