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=> which war are YOU watching?

which war are YOU watching?

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Friday, January 21 2005, 8:41:34 (CET) from 201.129.168.175 - dsl-201-129-168-175.prod-infinitum.com.mx Mexico - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

Iraq: The War in Media Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.com “There were two wars going on in Iraq — one was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propaganda techniques” — thus begins a trailer for the documentary “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception.” This documentary is being much discussed these days in the world media as it deals primarily with the media’s role in covering war and the transparency that should be a part of the coverage. One is left wondering, however, where the truth really is. Danny Schechter, the documentary’s director, said that during the war in Iraq he found few real choices of news in spite of the many available channels and the number of reporters on the spot. He then decided to assume the role of an embedded viewer in his own living room, watching and comparing how different media organizations covered the war. According to him, it was soon very obvious that different countries were seeing different wars. What the American public saw on TV was one version of the war, whether accurate or not is still up for debate though Schechter believes it reflects a cry for democracy. In the documentary, Schechter’s position is that the American media dealt with the war as it deals with big sports events — with a 48-hour pre-war countdown. The news channels turned war coverage into “militainment” as it took the role of entertainer, making glitzy, lengthy, catchy headlines and sound bites that turned it all into a major business. To Schechter, it was apparent that the media had deceived the people into cozying up to war and accepting the “embedded” reporters’ versions of events. The film deals not only with the American media but also — at least from the trailer — with Arab correspondents supposedly working for Al-Jazeera whose logo was plainly visible. And then the obvious questions for us to ask: How reliable is the Arab media? How much accuracy did it strive for and did it deceive the public into accepting its version as the only and the accurate one? Did the Arab media rely on public opinion and public outrage in order to form certain opinions? Studies have shown that about 70 percent of Gulf Arabs get their news from satellite TV. How much of what they receive is correct is a question worth considering and investigating. During the Iraq war, there were two versions of the news — one on American channels and the other on Arabic channels. The Arab public was enraged by the war and sympathetic with the Iraqi people and the Arab TV coverage certainly fueled the anger at the aggressors. It is also true that attacks on Arab journalists increased the Arab street’s anger at, and distrust of, the Americans and their coverage. Both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya broadcast scenes of the war that Western viewers never saw. Maybe this is the reason for Schechter’s comment that different countries saw different wars. Colin Powell complained that Al-Jazeera’s coverage concentrated on scenes of death and destruction whereas the American channels were tied to a more formal and, by its very nature, a more censored, carefully controlled view of the same events. The Arabic channels seemed to pride themselves on showing a realistic picture of the war though on a number of other vital and important issues, their realism and accuracy leaves much to be desired. Nonetheless the Iraq war did give a golden opportunity to Arabic satellite channels to show another face of the war and most of the time, they did a good job. For the most part, the Arab public relied on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya; the vast majority completely ignored the US-sponsored Arabic TV channel, Al-Hurra, and Radio Sawa. The US has often accused the Arabic channels of being selective in their news coverage, a charge that could also be made with equal accuracy against the US media. In both cases of course the aim is to attract an audience of viewers and those viewers, for the most part, want to hear support for their beliefs and their ideas. Not many will regularly watch a channel which tells them, no matter how diplomatically, that their ideas and beliefs may be wrong or should be re-evaluated and perhaps changed. To be fair to other media sources, the anti-war marches that took place all over the world showed that people knew where to get their news and also how to make up their minds. In a conference dealing with the Arabic media in Abu Dhabi, a researcher wondered how an Arab reporter could be expected to maintain his objectivity in the face of aggression against his country. A valid point indeed. The researcher also pointed out that in most cases, the Arabic media lacks the transparency that the Western media enjoys and, as far as he is concerned, that accounts for the presence on Arabic satellite channels of so many “entertainment programs” which simply fill up time. An official spokesperson for Al-Jazeera said that the word “credibility” was a very elastic one and that there was no absolute credibility in any of the world’s media outlets. He added that a news source could be objective in relating events within a war zone and subjective when reporting events outside that zone — citing as his example the American media’s coverage of the war in Iraq. The same can be said about Arabic coverage of the same war in comparison to Arabic coverage of domestic events and occurrences. Perhaps in the middle of this candid and very welcome discussion by American filmmakers such as Michael Moore and Danny Schechter about the right of the individual to the truth, we might, on our side, ask our media to refrain from taking advantage of people’s emotions and actually portraying accurately the happenings on the Arab street. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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