Framing the Narrative of ISIS’s Attack on Palmyra
The latest development in Syria’s Civil War has the world holding its breath: ISIS has again conquered Palmyra and its surrounding area, including important oil fields and the UNESCO World Heritage site that is the ancient city of Palmyra. This has sparked a flood of reporting attempting to contextualise and interpret this disconcerting event. Strangely, the approach German media has on the subject is vastly different from English and American reporting.
Where German headlines evoke a sense of immediate threat to Palmyra’s ancient ruins, English speaking newspapers tend to focus more on the battle itself. Where the first shows almost exclusively wistful pictures of pillars bathed in sunlight, the latter mostly shows gritty photos of military artillery, soldiers, and ruined cities. The difference in focus is especially apparent in the articles themselves. Although both offer in depth analysis on the strategic importance of Palmyra for ISIS and the emerging threats, German media frames its narrative so that the main emphasis remains on the ruins. English articles see Palmyra’s ancient city merely as a footnote of interest in a conflict largely centred on oil, strategic humiliation of military enemies and grave danger to civilians remaining in Palmyra’s modern day city.
While both ways of looking at the conflict may be valid, it does seem strange that German news outlets use fear of Palmyra’s destruction, together with pictures of its endangered beauty, almost as a clickbait to seduce us into caring about the Syrian Civil War — especially since the English speaking world clearly employs that strategy to a much lesser extent. What is the reasoning behind this? Have German readers become particularly indifferent to the flood of pictures of human suffering, so picturesque ruins give an enticing angle to a tired-out story? Why would English journalists assume that their readers would not need to be coaxed in this way? International media has been criticised before for their prioritising ancient cultural treasures over the suffering of actual, living civilians in the conflict around Palmyra. It seems German journalists have decided to do absolutely nothing about that.
