No questions asked; no curiosity – how the media deals with attacks on the art market
One of the most concerning aspects surrounding fake news as it applies to the subject of cultural heritage is the widespread failure of the media to address the issue properly.
While a daily stream of reports chide the international art market as a haven for criminals involved in theft, smuggling and money laundering, vanishingly few journalists ever seem to check the validity of claims being put out by governments, law enforcement, NGOs and others.
In 2022 and 2023, it appeared that we had turned a corner when European Commissioners and senior officials at UNESCO finally accepted that massively inflated claims regarding the value of illicit material being trafficked across the world were simply untrue.
One of the most important papers on the matter at the time was the Cambridge University Press published The illicit trade in antiquities is not the world’s third-largest illicit trade: a critical evaluation of a factoid. Its authors, Drs Neil Brodie and Donna Yates had long been critics of the trade, but had come to agree with the evidence-based arguments promoted by the industry that the claims were false and actually harmed the interests of heritage and culture because they risked encouraging further thefts.
Regulation that has the potential to harm legitimate trade has come into force on the back of false data promoted by those who wish to prevent that trade – the European Union’s new import licensing law 2019/880 is a case in point.
The false impression created by bilateral agreements
The rise of bilateral agreements, particularly between the United States and other countries (at least 35 now relating to cultural heritage) spreads a false impression that countries of origin are able to reclaim artefacts because US law enforcement is doing a great job of finding looted and trafficked pieces. The reality is that these agreements bypass the usual property rights cited under the US Constitution, as well as dispensing with the need for evidence, both of which would protect citizens under normal circumstances. Instead, they effectively wave through a kleptocratic system that allows the state to seize its people’s possessions and use them for soft-power purposes. Then the media, on a global basis, simply parrot the claims of the authorities rather than asking for evidence that the items in question were, indeed, illicit.
This is all bad enough, but the failure of the media to highlight the scandal, even when presented with the evidence, effectively makes it complicit. It’s almost as though reporters are simply reprinting the media releases from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the State Department. No questions asked; no curiosity.
The same unquestioning approach has made gospels out of official reports which simply do not stand up to scrutiny, such as the deeply flawed February 2023 Financial Action Task Force report into money laundering, trafficking and terrorism financing related to art, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the Art and Antiquities Market.
It would be easy to blame the lack of training and resources for the media’s failure to examine these issues more robustly or even carry out basic fact checking. However, as all this has gone on, many leading media outlets have indeed taken a robust approach, but only where articles support the market position and expose the untruths leveled at it.
Articles supporting the market are ‘lost’ on submission
Antiquities Forum knows of numerous instances where articles pitched with every fact supported by detailed footnotes and/or embedded links to primary sources have been ‘lost’ by the commissioning editor – sometimes two or three times – with renewed submissions ultimately ignored or refused without reason. These are articles from expert writers and journalists who have had no problem securing publication with those same titles on other subjects.
At the same time, stories that are patently untrue or unsupported by evidence are published without question – clearly without any fact checking going on.
Comments under articles have been equally ‘mislaid’, ignored or simply censored if they challenge market critics. It seems no one in the media is interested in the widespread abuse of citizens’ rights, including the reversal of the burden of proof – now commonplace – when it comes to ownership, so that your property is considered stolen unless you have the paperwork to prove that it is not. Surely the media should be interested in something as fundamental as the decision to treat people as guilty rather than innocent as a basic standard of civilised society. But apparently not.
As a former member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) that briefs Congress, lawyer Peter Tompa is a noted authority on the law as it applies to cultural heritage. A prominent campaigner among the coin collecting community, senior official of the Global Heritage Alliance and author of the Cultural Property Observer blog, as well as numerous articles in Cultural Property News, he is exactly the sort of expert that the media should be falling over themselves to interview, especially as he is hugely concerned with the attack on citizens’ rights. Instead, as he has just explained, he appears to have been blacklisted.
Market commentator blacklisted
Following a recent article in influential Washington publication The Hill by cultural property lawyer Rick Mr. St. Hilaire – no friend of the market over the years – Tompa found his own comments on the issue barred.
“The Hill Newspaper refused to publish this comment, supposedly because it violates their ‘community standards’,” he explained.
“Also, Mr. St. Hilaire disallows comments on his posts, except for people he is already connected with. So, here it is.” What Tompa explains, but The Hill did not, was that St Hilaire “is associated with an archaeological advocacy group that has received substantial State Department funding as a ‘soft power measure’”.
Among Tompa’s disallowed expert critique of St Hilaire’s comments was the following: “The major issue with his punitive approach is that it seeks to enforce confiscatory foreign laws here and assumes that even common items like historic coins purchased from legitimate markets in Europe are ‘stolen’ if they don’t have a long document trails proving ‘licit’ origins. Due process for American citizens should be the utmost consideration. Not using criminal law to threaten collectors on behalf of foreign governments, particularly authoritarian regimes in the Middle East which declare anything old State property.” Tompa goes on to explain how he then tried another version, complete with citations, but The Hill wouldn’t publish it, either.
“On reflection, perhaps that’s not all that surprising because The Hill has rejected other opinion pieces from me in the past (including the one quoted at the end that was ultimately published by the American Bar Association) and others representing collector interests. Meanwhile, the Antiquities Coalition and others with similar views seem to get what they want published in The Hill Newspaper. In any event, judge for yourself if this post violates ‘community standards’ or if it’s just another case where the views of collectors and the trade are being suppressed by a ‘woke’ press.”
And in a final challenge to The Hill, he adds: “If you are really interested in a conversation you will publish this comment. As archaeologists claim, context is important.”
Whatever the media’s reason for failing this challenge, from a journalistic perspective it makes no sense to duck what is really a sensational story of widespread collusion and apparent corruption at the heart of the State. Does no one want a Pulitzer Prize anymore?
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