It's oh so quiet: The Yemen and British Media Silence
In a media age characterised by globalisation, the increasing prominence of citizen journalism and stories being selected for their ability to conform to news values (Galtung and Ruge, Brighton and Foye) it is perhaps surprising that a conflict resulting in a wide scale humanitarian crisis, which arguably feeds our morbid curiosity for learning of human suffering, has been largely ignored by the Western Neo Liberal media.
According to the UN, over 10,000 people have been killed in the Yemeni conflict so far. Whilst the United States has been accused of providing Saudi Arabia with a ‘blank cheque’ to tackle the issue of the Houthi (Shia) rebels, channeling funds into the offence in the Yemen; the UK also has blood on its hands. The lucrative arms trade that has been created between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia is estimated to have been worth at least £3.3 billion in the first year of the conflict alone. Further, Amnesty International provided former defence secretary Michael Fallon with evidence that UK licensed cluster bombs were being dropped on Yemeni civilians. What’s more, the Riyadh have access to twice the number of British made war planes than the RAF does. In January 2016, Cameron stated that Britain played no direct involvement in the warfare, stating the country plays no part in a Saudi led coalition. Yet there is involvement, albeit it indirect.
A UNICEF report found that six children have been killed or maimed everyday since the conflict begun.
British media moguls, or what Curran dubs ‘Press Barons’ are thus reluctant to cover the wide scale humanitarian crisis in the Yemen as it would reveal, to the masses, the complicity of the British in such horrific war crimes; the unwavering support for the Saudis means we are effectively at war.
But this war doesn’t fit in with the ideological agenda of the British establishment; it does not provide them with an opportunity to present themselves as heroes or imperialistic saviours of those who find themselves under autocratic rule. Whilst many acts of warfare provide the government with an opportunity to demonstrate the triumphs of Western Democracy; just look how we ‘saved’ Iraqis from Saddam, the conflict in the Yemen does not fit neatly into this narrative. As Jones stated, in his seminal work, ‘The Establishment’, all of Murdoch’s 179 publications demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the Iraq war, even when the war on terror fell out of public favour, reflecting the close relationship between the media and the political elite. This war in Yemen, however, is one the press choose to ignore as, aside from its complex roots in the Arab Spring, there is no way to manipulate British involvement so as to depict it in a positive and just light.
