A Cocktail of Falsehood and Intellectual Dishonesty

 Vartan Matiossian

The Istanbul bureau chief of The New York Times, Carlotta Gall, appears to have been in her latest destination long enough to learn and internalize some of the crassest tactics of Turkish denialism.

She could not refrain from turning her dispatch from Baku, “Roots of War: When Armenia Talked Tough, Azerbaijan Took Action” (The New York Times, October 27, 2010), into the usual mix of reporting and opinion that characterizes “journalism” these days. One wonders if she used to do the same when reporting from Chechnya and Afghanistan. In any case, this article will hardly earn her a prize for journalistic fairness. She omitted the point already raised by Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalın in last May, who extended greetings to Azerbaijan on its Republic Day, wishing “more beautiful, brighter and stronger days” in the future as “one nation, two states,” to hammer on its Armenian equivalent “Artsakh is Armenia” (mentioned by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in August) as unofficial spokesperson to Azerbaijan president’s foreign policy adviser Hikmet Hajiyev’s lame justification for Azerbaijan’s aggression: “The final nail in the coffin of the negotiation process was when he said that Nagorno-Karabakh was Armenian.”

One would expect that an experienced journalist would know better than to become a free-of-charge mouthpiece for a dictatorial regime engaged in war aggression and war crimes with the unabashed and unbridled support of its “elder brother.” In such case, she would understand that “one nation, two states” and “Artsakh is Armenia” are the two sides of the same coin. It is not that difficult to understand, and there is not even the need to know Turkish or Armenian for that matter. If Turkey and Azerbaijan see themselves as two Turkic states, Armenia and Artsakh see themselves as two Armenian states.

However, to add insult over injury, Gall has had the gall (pun intended) of disguising her blatantly pro-Azeri stance and invoke an Armenian historian to cover her hack piece with a patina of legitimacy. This is how we find ourselves reading this interesting paragraph filled with falsehood and intellectual dishonesty:

“Tensions escalated this year, analysts say, as Mr. Pashinyan and his defense minister made increasingly populist statements over the territory, announcing plans to make Shusha the regional capital and in August moving the Parliament there. Those steps may ultimately prove to have been major miscalculations.

An American-Armenian historian, Jirair Libaridian, has suggested as much. ‘We became obsessed with our dreams instead of focusing on the possible,’ he wrote in September.

Independent analysts largely see Azerbaijan as the main driver of the war, saying it prepared a major offensive, but add that Mr. Pashinyan pushed the envelope with his populist talk.

‘It’s logical that Azerbaijan wanted to start this, not the Armenians, who merely want the status quo,’ said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe and author of “Black Garden,” a book on Nagorno-Karabakh. ‘But the Armenians also played their part with provocative moves.’”

Falsehood: Neither Pashinyan nor his defense minister announced plans.

Here is our English version of the dispatch of Armenpress on August 11, since the English version published on the website is incomplete (the italics are in the original and the underlining is mine):

“The President of the Republic of Artsakh, Arayik Harutiunian, considers possible the move of the presidential seat from the capital Stepanakert to Shushi. According to ‘Armenpress’ information, the President declared about this during the extraordinary session of the National Assembly.

The President of Artsakh referred to his proposal to move the seat of the National Assembly to the city of Shushi, noting that it is anticipated that the proposal will be discussed and brought into life until 2022.

The National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh had an extraordinary session on August 11 by initiative of the President of the Republic, Arayik Harutiunian.”

The Azerbaijani sources that seem to have nourished Gall’s so-called “reporting” have simply fed her with their typical menu of fake news, since clearly the proposal to move the government center came from the authorities of Artsakh, i.e. the President of the Republic, and not the Prime Minister or the Defense Minister of Armenia (What did the Defense Minister of a democratic country have to do with a civilian matter?). Besides, her tendentious writing makes the unaware reader believe that the Parliament of Armenia was moved to Shushi, since the announcement supposedly came from the Prime Minister of Armenia. Incidentally, the National Assembly of Artsakh had its session in Stepanakert, since the extensive official report on that session of August 11 made no mention of a change in place. 

Intellectual dishonesty: Libaridian's quote is half a sentence taken out of context.

Gall says that “independent analysts largely see” and then paraphrases and quotes the opinion of one analyst. Whether the reporters of The New York Times have started to copy the “people say” model of pushing untruths that has become our 24-7 diet in the United States, it remains to be seen. But here is one glaring example of it. And even if a majority of analysts think the same, who said that they are right? The chorus of parrots repeating “Armenian separatists” in the mainstream media does not make them separatists. They were separatists from the Soviet Union in September 1991, and that is not a sin anymore.

The major example of dishonesty is the quote attributed to historian Jirair Libaridian, who had published in September 1 an article where he made the following statement:

“We have forgotten how we lost the First Republic of Armenia. There was the Turkish-Russian cooperation. There also was the pursuit of the Treaty of Sevres. Then, as now, we became obsessed with our dreams instead of focusing on the possible, and we lost part of what was possible. More, we lost our independence” (the italics are mine).

Libaridian's words were totally unrelated to the narrative pushed by Gall, who needed an opinion written in September by an Armenian historian that validated, chronologically speaking, the falsehood concocted around Shushi in August. (Incidentally, this was the only citation from an Armenian source in a lopsided article of opinion disguised as reporting, which could have had an Azerbaijani signature altogether.) It did not matter that it was a quote from an article written twenty-six days before the war. It did not matter that it was cut in half and taken out of context.

In this time and age, however, you will not escape the eye of anyone who cares for the facts, fact-checker or not.

Even if you happen to cover yourself under the cloak of a newspaper of record.