American Media
Everywhere
By Baghdad Burning
03 April, 2005
Baghdad Burning
You
wake up in the morning. Brush your teeth. Splash the sleep out of your
eyes and head for the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea and whatever
is available for breakfast.
You wander to the
living room and search for the remote control. It is in its usual place-
stuck inexplicably between the sofa cushions. You turn on the television
and stand there flipping from one channel to the other, looking for
a news brief or something that will sum up what happened during those
six hours you slept. You finally settle on the pleasant face on the
screen- the big hair, bright power suit, capped teeth and colorful talons-
blandly reading the news. The anchoress is Julie Chan. The program is
CBSs The Early Show (Live from Fifth Avenue!).
Guess the nationality
of the viewer above. Three guesses. American? No. Canadian? No. British?
Japanese? Australian? No, no and no. The viewer is Iraqi
or Jordanian
or Lebanese
or Syrian
or Saudi
or Kuwaiti
or
but you get the picture.
Two years ago, the
major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart
bombs and high-tech missiles. Now theres a different sort of war-
or perhaps its just another phase of the same war. Now were
being assailed with American media. Its everywhere all at once.
It began with radio
stations like Voice of America which we could access even before the
war. After the war, there were other radio stations- ones with mechanical
voices that told us to put down our weapons and remain inside our homes,
ones that fed us American news in an Iraqi dialect and ones that just
played music. With satellite access we are constantly listening to American
music and watching American sitcoms and movies. To be fair- its
not just Iraq that is being targeted- its the whole region and
its all being done very cleverly.
Al-Hurra, the purported
channel of freedom, is the American gift to the Arab world. What they
do is show us translated documentaries about certain historical events
(American documentaries) or about movie stars (American stars) or vacation
spots. Throughout this, there are Arab anchors giving us the news (which
is like watching Fox in Arabic). Its news about the Arab world
with the American twist.
Our new national
channels are a joke. One of the most amusing, in a gruesome sort of
way, is Al-Iraqiya. Its said to be American sponsored but the
attitude is decidedly pro-Iran, anti-Sunni. Theres a program where
they parade terrorists on screen for us to see in an attempt
to show us that our National Guard are not only good at raiding homes
and harassing people in the streets. The funny thing about the terrorists
is that the majority of them have Sunni names like Omar
and Othman, etc. They admit to doing things such as having sexual intercourse
in mosques and raping women and the whole show is disgusting. Iraqis
dont believe it because its so obviously produced to support
the American definition of the Iraqi, Sunni, Islamic fanatic that it
is embarrassing. Couldnt the PSYOPS people come up with anything
more subtle?
Then you have the
whole MBC collection. MBC is actually financed by Saudi Arabia, but
based in Dubai, as far as I know. They have several different channels.
It started out with the original MBC which was a mainly Arabic channel
that was harmless enough. It showed some talk shows, debates and Egyptian
movies with an occasional program on music or style.
Then we were introduced
to MBCs Al-Arabia- a news channel which was meant to be the Saudi
antidote to Al-Jazeera. Simultaneously, we were accessing MBCs
Channel 2, which is a channel that shows only English movies and programs.
The programs varied from talk shows like Oprah, to sitcoms like Friends,
Third Rock from the Sun and Seinfeld. Earlier this year, the MBC did
a mystifying thing. They announced that Channel 2 was going to be made
a 24-hour movie channel which would show all sorts of movies- old Clint
Eastwood cowboy movies, and newer movies like A Beautiful Mind,
etc. The programs and sitcoms would be transferred to the new MBC Channel
4.
Personally, I was
pleased with the change at first. Im not big on movies and it
was nice to know our favorite sitcoms and programs would all be accessible
on one channel without the annoyance of two-hour movies. I could turn
on Channel 4 at any time and expect to find something interesting or
humorous that would end within 30-60 minutes.
The first time I
saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didnt occur to me that something was
wrong. I cant remember what the discussion was, but I remember
being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we were getting
60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasnt just 60 Minutes at
night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the evening,
60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show
it was a
constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells
us, So you can watch what *they* watch! *They* apparently
being millions of Americans.
The schedule on
MBCs Channel 4 goes something like this:
9 am CBS
Evening News
9:30 am CBS The Early Show
10:45 am The Days of Our Lives
11:20 am Wheel of Fortune
11:45 am Jeopardy
12:05 pm A re-run of whatever was on the night before
20/20, Inside Edition, etc.
And the programming
continues
Ive been enchanted
with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most
is the fact that the news is so
clean. Its like hospital
food. Its all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned
and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention
to the portions- 2 minutes on womens rights in Afghanistan, 1
minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All
the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person
manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.
About a month ago,
we were treated to an interview on 20/20 with Sabrina Harman- the witch
in some of the Abu Ghraib pictures. You know- the one smiling over faceless,
naked Iraqis piled up to make a human pyramid. Elizabeth Vargus was
doing the interview and the whole show was revolting. They were trying
to portray Sabrina as an innocent who was caught up in military orders
and fear of higher ranking officers. The show went on and on about how
American troops never really got seminars on Geneva Conventions (like
one needs to be taught humanity) and how poor Sabrina was being made
a scapegoat. They showed the restaurant where she worked before the
war and how everyone thought she was such a nice person
who couldnt hurt a fly!
We sat there watching
like we were a part of another world, in another galaxy. Ive always
sensed from the various websites that American mainstream news is far-removed
from reality- I just didnt know how far. Everything is so tame
and simplified. Everyone is so sincere.
Furthermore, I dont
understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The
Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender
its
endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up
lives of others?
I have a suggestion
of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them
in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We
could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity,
the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings,
and- oh yeah- the insurgents. We could watch their house
bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight
of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could
see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent
of $150)
Id not only
watch *that* reality show, Id tape every episode.