a scam. How come no matter where it starts it always ends. This is intercepted. I'm German Scahill coming to you from the offices of the intercept in New York City and this is episode 102 of intercepted. Hey everyone I'm back well sort of next week I will be back to fully hosting the show but for today I want to apologize to the listeners of this program for being absent these past few weeks and I wanted to share with you why I was gone we recently had an unfortunate medical emergency in my family and I had to be there to support a loved one in a tough situation I have spent the past weeks in and out of a hospital and being an advocate I do not wish upon anyone to be subjected to the bureaucracy of us health care the fights just to get adequate care the battles with insurance companies and medical institutions can just suck the life out of you these past few weeks I have seen so clearly how off. Well it is to find yourself at the mercy of our health care system anyone who ends up in a hospital needs a full time advocate to make sure that they get decent care they need someone to keep the bureaucracy at bay while they focus on their health and their recovery sometimes they need to be there just to make sure a patient gets to use the bathroom or gets their correct medication it shouldn't be this way in the United States or anywhere else in my family we're fortunate to have decent insurance employer based insurance even relatively routine hospital situations are potentially bankrupting events for millions of people in this country particularly those with bad insurance plans or inadequate insurance the bills you receive when medical disaster hits are harrowing just determining what's in network or out of network and trying to limit the financial impact that's a full time job for someone and often that job is left to the patient who already is suffering or you're just going to get hit with massive bills a few weeks later in coming episodes I want to delve into some of these issues at greater length and depth but our system is a total disgrace even if you have great doctors and nurses and support staff in the hospital it's a constant battle and it requires having a full time advocate in your corner and that you're bad I was so fortunate that I was able to do that and to be there for my loved one I'm fortunate that my employer supported me taking this time many Americans don't have that choice and they're left to fend for themselves in the battles with the health care bureaucracy while simultaneously trying to survive and endure whatever medical misfortune landed them in the hospital our system has an immediate ricochet impact that damages families places extreme stress on children spouses extended family my heart goes out to anyone who suffers a medical emergency in this country and to their loved ones and family members having an accident or an unforeseen medical emergency should not immediately result in the financial and bureaucratic nightmare that it so often does the scandal has to end. I want to thank all of my colleagues who have stepped up these past weeks on this show particularly my hardworking producers I also want to thank Betsy Reed and Ryan Graham for steering the ship through episodes 100 and $101.00 next week we're going to be back to normal for today's show I handed the controls over to my producers and they put together a strong episode looking at the civilian death toll in the battle against ISIS the uprising in Hong Kong and the court battles over women's reproductive health thank you all for your patience these weeks and I'll be back with you all next week now on with the show. Hey this is Elise Wayne associate producer on the show I defeated the Caliphate ISIS and now we have thousands of prisoners of war ISIS fighters that are prisoners of war and we're asking the countries from which they came Scott from Europe we're asking them to take back these prisoners of war in a surprise Sunday night statement the White House announced that Turkey will be allowed to quote move forward with its long planned operation into northern Syria the statement also took credit for defeating ISIS and announced that quote Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past 2 years a disastrous series of events I hope the president will rethink this I think the president is doing exactly what he wants to because he has made from the get go very clear to really somebody there's a campaign promise to end wars and other countries and abandon our allies that's a campaign promise and in the people that got the Caliphate destroyed by so this was explosive Donald Trump is being accused across the aisle of abandoning and betraying the Kurds in northern Syria leaving the area more destabilized and facing the threat of an ISIS resurgence Here's Trump defending his position. There safety Well if you look at some of the Kurds as you know that was that's a natural enemy of of Turkey. Specifically as I said I mean they have natural enemies they've been fighting each other for somebody said today hundreds of years ago in one historian said they've been fighting for hundreds of years meanwhile in neighboring Iraq weeks of anti-government protests were met with violence from security forces that left more than $100.00 dead and thousands more injured. The u.s. Has played a long and brutal role in the destabilization of both Iraq and Syria it's critical now that we don't fall again into immediate historical revision. And it's critical that the media is diligent in holding this government to account and in large part that hasn't happened in the continuing war against ISIS a new report from air wars has confirmed what we sensed was true that coverage of civilian harm was found to be largely absent during keep periods of the conflict air wars as a nonprofit organization and they've become a key resource and monitoring civilian deaths they commissioned our next guest to investigate how media handled reporting of civilian harm in this major conflict against the so-called Islamic state a conflict that remains far from over the author of that report Alexei O'Brien joins me now. Alexa O'Brien welcome back to intercept it thanks for having me so I wanted to begin by asking you about this investigation for air wars the report is called u.s. Media coverage of civilian harm in the war against so-called Islamic state so just give an introduction to that study and what kinds of questions you were looking to answer so it was approached me about 8 or 9 months ago and they had had anecdotal evidence because obviously they monitor international military conflicts that the coverage in the u.s. Had been spotty and so the questions that they presented to me were what empirical has u.s. Media coverage of the subject of civilian harm in Iraq and Syria been like and then why let's just give an overview from this report just how many civilian deaths we're actually talking about according to your report local civilians allege that up 229000 were killed right and 7000 are around 7000 have been estimated by air wars to be credible and the u.s. Government is only confirming 1000 right 102 So what's going on there what journalists told me like in the course of interviews for this particular report is and speaking to subject matter experts is there's a particular methodology that the u.s. Military uses to corroborate civilian casualties that result from international actions and essentially one of that is reporting by credible news sources and so if there isn't you know enough coverage of civilian harm the military essentially has a harder time confirming things and so therefore that's another sort of key point of why media coverage of this issue is important one of the more specific examples that you give of there not being any coverage of civilian harm was actually in January and February of 2017 and that's when Donald Trump was elected so talk about that moment in media history Yes So we actually studied. All the articles of the 5 major u.s. Newspapers during 2 key 6 month periods in the war so why would there be no coverage you know especially during one of the. Starkest periods of combat and you know qualitatively talking to other journalists I mean some of the reasons given were the fact that you know Donald Trump took office in January of 217. Trump do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States the office of president of the United States and so that's you know one potential reason why the coverage was as it was journalists reflected to me in interviews as well that they found that the tiny space given to civilian harm was actually you know shrinking because of the unlimited bandwidth the president has and takes up in the us media news cycle so it may be interesting for people who are not working in media to understand how reporting is done overall on civilian harm me one of the sort of big ideas that struck me in the course of doing these 2 major studies one on the newspapers and other on Pentagon press briefings than talking to you know tens of journalists about it who cover this issue specifically for the you know the major papers of record the broadcast channels except is how in a certain sense we're conducting a airpower dominated conflict and the coverage is also somewhat airpower to meaning to say it's remote so it's a very remote type of coverage I don't mean to at all diminish the incredible work that has been done on civilian harm and we've outlined journalists who despite all of the challenges have been able to cover this issue but those efforts are largely siloed and fragmented and they were largely self driven so you know one of the great things about this project for me is I got to talk to still. Many veteran war correspondents and they felt that the accountability beat was missing the kind of accountability beat that is more than body counts some of them even referred to how the body count issue is somewhat problematic because it doesn't truly convey to the American public the real cost of war you know I got the sense that when we're talking about civilian harm we're actually talking about those who died because there's not a lot of quantitative data on things like amputations you know birth defects those suffering from p.t.s.d. From the conflicts you know those are ongoing kind of costs of war that that really have escaped this yeah I would ask people questions about why things were being covered and one of the presumptions by editors is that well the public isn't really interested in it and that's also there's a pushback that was also given on that some people suggested that part of the reason why the public is sort of. Used is because the coverage itself has to impart a level of humanity for it to be interesting one of the interesting sort of suggestions about how to better improve civilian on coverage was covering war from the perspective of women you know and which is obviously a very central component of military studies or people women in war I think that with regards to just the question that you asked with the void of coverage people might not care or let's say about civilian harmlessly you have an American citizen who doesn't care about it the problem with that particular posture though from this perspective is that the void actually can be manipulated by u.s. Adversaries too so when you don't cover an issue when the media itself isn't fully able to engage on the ground to witness things you start to have an opportunity for adversaries to exploit that space you also you know potentially could have the military distorts it as well so it's very hard to sort of know what's actually happening you know and the other thing that is maybe unique to this conflict is that the Islamic state had its own propaganda arm they were putting out videos they were putting out content and they were targeting journalists specifically right you know we had these kind of grotesque brutal murders of you know James Foley for example and when that happened it was almost like a switch got flipped. If you watch cable news during that time talking about you know other media savvy like we've never seen before so how is ISIS combining vicious murders with social media savvy like we've never seen before saying that they're coming imminently into the United States and also reporting overnight by a little bit you want to get out there with ISIS advice is given to every American that will support new details this morning about James Holmes captors actually there was a hysteria around ISIS that I think speaks directly to maybe there was burnout from the general population I'll push back on that it should in this sense but I think what you're raising is an is a is a certainly a prominent view but speaking to your characterization of news media coverage and propaganda from ISIS what's interesting is it comes back to this idea of ground troops right and being able to have the media. That sort of what is real and not images that what's real but also to set up clarity around making good judgments about how to deal with a at an adversary and you know non state actor who is committing war crimes so one of the most interesting interviews I had were with broadcast journalists and what they reflected was throughout the whole conflict because. There's a decline of foreign bureaus across the board and broadcasters in particular they rely on vertical video so their whole kind of concept of what's happening is also coming out of social media and so this whole information space the air wars came up in the vital role the Air Force plays like in the media environment with regards to this issue is that it's able to credibly that these reports coming out of the battlefield you know which is otherwise chaos Well I'm a mean that was the issue was when they would do any segment on ISIS you know inherently You need a visual and so the video that they were showing was not from someone on the ground it was the ISIS provided tapes of them in the trucks you know waving the black flag and I think that that then was dehumanizing to an entire population it's really really really interesting No I think you're raising a good point I didn't do an analysis of like ISIS propaganda and it's apparent so it's hard for me to sort of reflect you know in my confidential interviews with people at the broadcast networks there's a great line that's you know cited in your report at one point the floor editors were like walking up and down going we have we haven't covered Syria you know and oh my God we need to cover Syria other people are covering Syria so there was definitely a missed opportunity but hopefully lessons learned for you know what broadcasters can do and also what they have to prepare for because these air power dominate conflicts are not going to go away and so the information environment is going to increasingly become much more difficult to assess without understanding the possibility of propaganda deception except especially with visual images so talk about the reliance on open source information during this time yeah journalists really reflected how much they relied on organizations like air wars and just open source information to properly report so even field reporters. Who were regarded by almost everyone that we spoke to as key to war porting and specifically civilian harm reporting even when they're in the region they don't necessarily get to be on the battlefield so they're also reporting sometimes remotely in the region too and what they were line is open source information and so training like one of the recommendations that the report suggests is that media organizations get training in how to collect and vet you know information open source information how to properly analyze it and in terms of like just what open source is doing to news media itself and more reporting because of this reliance on digital and on vertical video and all these kinds of trends and changes that are happening in newsroom especially in broadcast and you could see it to some degree at the papers of record it's really important that reporters also feel that they have a place to get trained in things like security with regard to sources in hostile territory I can't tell you how many journalists especially freelancers said to me they have seen unethical behavior on the part of reporters you know reporters do need to understand how to handle people who have been traumatized by war people who are victims of rape people who've had their families killed you can't just sort of jump in the area and then stick a microphone or a tape recorder in somebody's face and ask them a bunch of questions like sometimes you really need the resources to sort of develop relationships with communities or with sources to sort of give a broader picture that would be interesting to the American public as well in March of this year Trump revoked a Obama era disclosure requirement the New York Times headline read Trump revokes Obama era rule on disclosing civilian casualties from u.s. Air strikes outside war zones your report now focused on war zones Iraq and Syria but respond to this issue even more off the books strikes that are happening in the dark across a undeclared global battlefield. You know the the problem with that particular revocation is if you don't have a news media who's able to sort a hand out that issue it becomes even more dangerous I'm going to be really honest with you I think that the. Deeply problematic issues that you or Jeremy have you know raised in the course of Certainly Jeremy's work or your raising in this particular interview are absolutely critical and key it's a larger discussion also about how to handle at this point in the game not the day after 911 but where we are now how to handle the kinds of threats that the u.s. Does face or u.s. Interests or allies do face from extremists Well you mentioned at one point in the report that the u.s. Government was doing a better job at self reporting incidents the military is very much you know interested in engaging on this issue the military has always wanted to manage the message in war because obviously that's part of their you know controlling the information space I don't think it's evil that the u.s. Military tries to manage the message it's harder though when it comes to the u.s. Military being accountable to the public and also to the international community with regards to laws of war and the like with regards to Article 2 and the revocation of reporting on CIA and strikes I feel like that's a very much a policy issue this president seems to take a very particular view of his powers under Article 2 and certainly that's a much bigger discussion bull you know there's a lot happening under Trump be Washington d.c. Should show it's distracting everyone from you know these are the more quiet issues that there were talking about at the same time as impeachment probes are happening I do believe that there's a frenzy going on Trump does create a vortex of attention and he's a demagogue and that the problem with demagogues in liberal democracy is they don't have any ideas they're only idea is love from the people and you know this is been something that's been around since the beginning of politics and that's why Trump is very dangerous as a president. You know I've had to sort of break I mean anybody who knows me since certainly since covering Manning I've definitely voiced my opinion on things but I think though it as a whole you know maintaining an analytic temperament is really important too and rigor in one's work is really important to the credibility of one's work and it's really hard to do that with this president so as it relates to this particular issue with and I speak for myself I don't speak for air wars as it relates to this specific issue I