Lying smell of Snell
Sacrificing professionalism for thumbs up

ANALYTICS  17 November 2022 - 15:35

It has been a widespread trend in our days to encounter journalists in almost every corner of the physical and virtual world. There are, of course, professionals who do their job with dignity by adhering to fundamental principles of journalism – trustworthiness, impartiality, punctuality and so on. But mass media is not free of amateurs disguised as journalists who feed the roots of misinformation.

Lindsey Snell, an American “journalist” can be put at the forefront of the liars that, be it deliberately or unknowingly, mislead the people with partial, unverified and largely biased information. Her activity can be traced clearly on Twitter, where she devotes a lion’s share of her time to libelling those who stand against Armenia and Armenians.

We will talk about her non-stop propaganda against Azerbaijan and Türkiye later. Now let’s see how this “journalist” was proven to be wrong in joyfully celebrating, what she believed was the “sacking” of an American historian Justin McCarthy from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, the United States.

Snell simply doesn’t like Mr McCarthy solely due to his fact-based, fair denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”. So, she tweeted on September 26: “This Armenian genocide denier is a professor of history at the University of Louisville” referring to Mr McCarthy.

The university’s official account replied to her tweet saying the ways have been parted with the historian but did not give further details into the reasons.

The reply from the University of Louisville inspired Snell to tweet again on September 27 to, so to say, share her joy by posting a screenshot from the university’s official website’s empty page once assigned to Mr McCarthy to introduce information about him or claiming that the professor “was fired”.

Snell’s Armenian and pro-Armenian followers burst into joy under her tweet by thanking her, celebrating the news, congratulating the University of Louisville for its “smart decision” and even insulting the historian.

One should have then reminded Snell that the lifespan of a lie is just forty days. As Caliber.Az, we stopped her lie from surviving further after Mr McCarthy revealed the truth in an interview with our reporter.

Mr McCarthy adamantly denied the reports about stepping down from his role at the University of Louisville as a result of his firing.

“I never was fired by my university; I simply retired at age 73. The University of Louisville always supported my right to free speech,” he told Caliber.Az.

“Despite an Armenian campaign to have me fired, the university never took any action against me. As you can see, I still use my e-mail address provided by University.”

Snell and her admirers from the Armenian diaspora immediately took advantage of the vague response from the university, which provided food for a free interpretation of the reasons for the absence of the Professor from the workplace. But, this American "journalist", if she really is, should have recalled the basic principles of her job and reached out to the university for the reasons for such a decision instead of fuelling assumptions and speculations 

In a nutshell, if you believe you a are journalist, similar to what Snell has been doing, probably, for years, you should first collect reliable information to later transform it into news rather than rushing to announce it for the sake of seeing the thumbs up. Snell’s professional background can portray her as a “professional” in her job, but the case with Mr McCarthy clearly testifies to her interest in sacrificing professionalism for evanescent applause.

Snell vs Azerbaijan-Türkiye

A short look through Twitter publications of Snell only (we are not going to expand this article by delving into her videos and documentaries) is enough to establish her as a radical propagandist against Azerbaijan and Türkiye, the two neighbouring nations sharing the same roots.

Her enmity with Türkiye started after she was captured by the Turkish special service while leaving Syria in 2016, where she was previously kidnapped in the city of Aleppo. Back then, Turkish authorities blamed her for attempting to illegally cross the border after the US forces failed to reach her for evacuation. The evacuation request came from Snell after she was reportedly wounded. She was then accused by the Turkish authorities of spearheading CIA tasks in the conflict zone in Syria. Moreover, Snell’s Afghan-descent husband Souleiman Wardack was also detained in Türkiye due to his alleged affiliation with the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ).

Since her “Turkish journey”, Snell is seen almost on every negative topic related to this country – from internal affairs to foreign policy - for using them as a propaganda tool. For instance, Snell was quite inconvenient with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks about Ankara's moral and political support for Azerbaijan during the latter’s 44-day war with Armenia in the Karabakh region in 2020. She believes that Türkiye sponsors “terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and theft of land in Syria” and transferred a batch of those terrorists to Azerbaijan for fighting against Armenian troops in the 2020’s war.

Five days before the start of the 44-day Second Karabakh War, on September 22, Snell allegedly claimed that Turkish-backed Syrian National Army mercenaries from the Hamza Division were being sent to Baku via Turkey, to support Azerbaijani forces. Despite more than two years having passed since the war’s end, no evidence has surfaced so far to back up these allegations of the American journalist.

Furthermore, Snell is still convinced that Karabakh, the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, belongs to Armenia and was “occupied” by the Azerbaijani forces throughout the 44-day war. Today, she rampantly disseminates her propaganda against Azerbaijan through comments, publications, allegations, and second-hand sources to defame the country, including accusations of continuing “aggression” against Armenia, “encroaching” on Armenia’s territory, “destroying” so-called “Armenian heritage” in Karabakh and so on, so forth. What Azerbaijan has been doing in Karabakh and the peace agenda post-2020-war irreversibly denies these claims -restoration, reconstruction, revival; submission of basic principles for peace, calls for border delimitation, mutual recognition of territorial integrities, reaffirming ethnic Armenians in Karabakh as its citizens and more.

In conclusion, we are not going to fill page after page to fully cover Snell’s biased, hatred-based attitude toward Azerbaijan and Türkiye. We think the facts above could be enough to draw her picture. In other words, when personal emotions and memories make part of your job, namely, journalism, which should be impartial and unbiased, you are no more worth being referred to as “reliable” …

Caliber.Az