The Other Media
War
By
Omar Barghouti
March 31, 2003
While many media analysts are painstakingly discussing the PR war between
Washington and Baghdad, few have absorbed the watershed that al-Jazeera
has brought to the picture. If Arabs are explicitly considered the main
target group for each side's PR campaign, the American side--the belligerent
side, that is--is losing the revered "hearts and minds" war
far more drastically than it has ever imagined. No small portion of
the credit goes to al-Jazeera's coverage.
It is an old and sour joke
in the Arab World that Arabs tune in to BBC--radio--to learn what is
happening on their own streets. Regrettably, this has always been true.
Arab media--almost all state-run or semi-official until very recently--are
not only shamelessly yellow, they are devastatingly boring and pathetically
inept as well. Not any more. Now, virtually every Arab who cares to
know or understand current events--and has access to satellite TV--watches
al-Jazeera, precisely because it is perceived--quite deservedly--as
the most accurate, pluralistic and professional media outlet to turn
to. For the past eleven days of war, it further consolidated its impressive
dominance as the main source of news for Arabs from the Gulf to the
Atlantic.
When al-Jazeera was born
a few years ago rumours proliferated about its origins, funders, and
secret connections to the Mossad or CIA, ...etc. Part of this malicious
attack was undoubtedly fed by the disgruntled Arab governments who grew
used to their own categorical monopoly on the media. Those despotic
regimes had an early experience of shock and awe after al-Jazeera started
giving voice to all the voiceless Arabs that they have managed to keep
a lid on for decades: opposition politicians, women activists, human-rights
advocates, leftists, Islamists, pan-Arabists, communists, ethnic minorities,
independent journalists and analysts, and representatives of just about
every shade of the political spectrum. But, there are also other factors
that contributed to the air of disbelief surrounding the highly controversial
al-Jazeera coverage: other than the fact that it was established by
one of the most loyal American-protected regimes in the Arab World:
the government of Qatar--not exactly an Arab Sweden in its not-so-luminous
record of human rights and democracy-- al-Jazeera also projected a degree
of excellence, professionalism and objectivity hitherto unheard of in
any Arab or even developing country. A measure of self-hate--to borrow
a term from our Abrahamic cousins--played a role in discarding al-Jazeera
at first as a "foreign agent," a provocateur or simply a transient
phenomenon that was bound to dissipate soon like a summer cloud in the
sky of Baghdad.
Incidentally, al-Jazeera
had another precedent: it introduced millions of Arabs for the very
first time to Israeli politicians and commentators, a tactic that at
first compounded the suspicions and even the open animosity that almost
overwhelmed the young satellite channel. But, as in most taboos, being
perceived as radically defiant, original and mischievous only fanned
the already simmering interest in watching al-Jazeera, secretly, at
times. Its ratings soared, and soon enough most realized that watching
their enemies on television was not like going to bed with them, that
being exposed to "the opinion and the other opinion"--al-Jazeera's
brilliant motto--was not the high treason their governments had led
them to believe, that pluralism only expanded the choices before them,
without forcing them to subscribe to any particular line.
All on its own, al-Jazeera
has arguably been more effective than most Arab liberal and leftists
parties put together in raising the Arab public's awareness about democracy,
human rights, pluralism, activism, repression, international cultures,
politics and even economics, and even the various dimensions of the
all encompassing Israeli occupation--which had been largely dealt with
in the official media in terms of clichés and highly rhetorical
discourse with poor understanding. It was as open a university as it
gets, with no tuition fees, no homework and no patronizing lectures
from above.
After putting its viewers
to what seemed like a crash course in a truly Arab version of glasnost
and perestroika, al-Jazeera created its own virtual reality, not in
the news that it presented, which was as accurate and objective as any,
but in affording the average Arab citizen a space to be free, to hope,
to feel proud of this oasis of distinction surviving in the midst of
a stupendous desert of intellectual stagnation, repression and under-development,
all maintained with a complex fusion of local tyranny and American carrots
and sticks.
In sad comparison, weeks
before the U.S.-led war on Iraq had started, the mainstream American
media meticulously fell into its well-rehearsed place and acted precisely
according to the script written by the "ruling party." Sounds
more like third-world state-run media? Well, it is worse, in fact. At
least in the latter case no one claims it is free, objective or close
to professional. In the former, the arrogance, self-righteousness and
monopoly on "truth" can easily fill a galaxy.
Watching news on Fox, CNN
or any of the major U.S. TV networks has always exacted from the viewer
a degree of mental numbness, and a will to believe in metaphysics. But,
it was at least entertaining, and visually stimulating. Americans have
always shone in making a glitzy show out of lackluster news--which invariably
reduced the world to simplistic terms and sound bytes spoon-fed to the
average American media consumer. But now, after seeing elsewhere what
Mr. Bush and his obliging poodle really had in store for us in their
illegal, unjust and criminal war, watching news on those American channels
has become an exercise in suspending the faculty of reason, abandoning
logic and steering strictly away from any critical thinking altogether.
And with all the dehumanization
of Arabs all over the coverage it is far from entertaining.
Having the advantage of speaking
Arabic--finally, this has become an advantage during my lifetime--I
get to watch al-Jazeera, among many other Arab satellite channels which
present a truly impressive spectrum of opinion, commentary and analysis.
And for once, I am getting far more, better and decisively more accurate
news than those not bestowed with the ability to understand Arabic in
the English-speaking world. Al-Jazeera presents every significant American
or British announcement, as offensive or even racist as sometimes it
might be, with remarkable fairness and objectivity, along with the amalgam
of Arab opinions. Its accuracy during the war on Afghanistan, the ongoing
Palestinian intifada and the unfolding Anglo-American war on Iraq truly
puts to shame any English language television channel, the BBC included.
If American television can
be easily disregarded as a textbook case of obdurate, populistic, one-sided,
sponsor-parroting media, BBC cannot. It has a long tradition in objectivity
and a wider margin of pluralism than its American counterparts. But,
compared to al-Jazeera, BBC comes across as rather narrow-minded, anachronistically
colonial and pitifully "embedded," or, to borrow a term from
a New York peace demonstration: in-bedded.
Americans, and to a lesser
extent Brits, who mostly rely on television coverage for news on the
war are really at a critical disadvantage. They are getting a lot more
government party line and very little free or accurate coverage. They
are bombarded with an average of one to two grand lies a day, coupled
with an assortment of lesser lies to match. In short, they are getting
media that are worthy of the worst banana republic. Maybe they ought
to learn Arabic, or, for that matter, French, German, or Spanish to
see the light.
* Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian
political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human
Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian.
His articles have appeared in the Hartford Courant, Al-Ahram (Cairo),
Z-Magazine among others.
He can be reached at
[email protected]