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Al Jazeera’s Tarek Ayoub, hours before he was killed by a US airstrike |
When the Second Gulf War erupted in 1991, Egyptian TV was almost entirely dependent on CNN coverage of the war. The logo of the American news channel appeared on almost every feed about the war.
For many years Western media had represented the best option for Arab viewers. First, it possessed the necessary resources for high quality news coverage, resources that Arab media lacked. Secondly, it was generally viewed as being free and unconstrained by political considerations. It had gained a reputation of being motivated solely by professional incentives, in which the first and most important objective is to seek and present the truth as it is. This was in contrast to Arab media, which had gained a reputation of being a mere propaganda tool.
Now, with the outbreak of the Third Gulf War, things might be changing, and there is evidence to suggest that Western media might be losing its edge in the Arab world.
Professional Competence
Several Arab satellite channels, notably Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV, El Manar TV and possibly the new member of the MBC group, Arabiyya, have proven to have a high degree of technical and professional ability.
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Arab media gained a reputation of being a propaganda tool.
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Al Jazeera has the largest number of reporters and cameramen in Iraq. Many Arab and Western channels are highly dependent on its feed. The channel is not very popular in the West, and is regarded by many to be anti-American. Its airing of the footage of American dead or captured soldiers antagonized many Americans and Britons. Yet, as one Western TV reporter puts it, the feeling of anger and disgust cannot be allowed to jeopardize the working relationship between Al Jazeera and Western channels, because the latter are in strong need for a good relationship with the Qatar-based news channel. "Obviously we don’t want to use Al Jazeera," said one journalist. "But if it’s Al Jazeera or nothing, we’ll take Al Jazeera."
The professionalism and sophistication attained by Arab satellite channels is not surprising. Firstly, current events, particularly in the Middle East, automatically grant them a comparative advantage. Sharing the same language and culture with Iraqis makes it easier for their reporters to communicate with the people and leaders of Iraq. They were also the natural candidates for playing the role of a communication medium between Arab people and the Iraqi leadership before its demise. This role was lacking in 1991 when the war was essentially covered by CNN, but during the recent conflict the Iraqi regime was determined to use such a medium to mobilize support from an audience that already had powerful sentiments against the invading armies.
The Communication Revolution
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Arab audiences became cynical of traditional propagandistic media.
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But that’s not all. The political, economic and technological developments of the last decade contributed to the progress of these Arab channels. The ambitions of some Arab regimes (or sub-state political organizations in the case of Hizbullah’s Al Manar TV) to become influential regional powers have encouraged them to sponsor satellite news channels that advocate their cause. This is not a new phenomenon. During the so-called Arab Cold War in the 1960s, Nasser and his rivals used radio channels loyal to them to undermine their opponents. The difference however is that the new channels had to achieve a high degree of professional excellence and some reasonable degree of objectivity to attract an Arab audience that had become cynical of traditional propagandistic media while at the same time enjoying access to high quality Western media.
The communication revolution of the late twentieth century was a double-edged sword for Arab regimes willing to have their voices heard through media. On the one hand, it put pressure on them to compete with now widely accessible Western media. Yet on the other hand, it offered them an opportunity to access a very wide audience. With a potential audience of more than 45 million Arabic speaking viewers (the current number of Al Jazeera viewers) it became economically very attractive to invest in such an industry.
Perhaps the best indicator on how influential some Arab media have become is the attitude of the American leadership towards Al Jazeera, the most popular Arab news channel. Joanne Tucker, the managing editor of the new English website of Al Jazeera, said the US government had started to soften its approach towards the channel before the war. Its reporters were offered embedded spots with the American forces. Additionally, influential figures in the military campaign’s headquarters in Qatar have developed a close relationship with the channel’s senior administration. In early March, several Central Command public information officers attended a barbeque at the home of Al Jazeera’s news director.
On the other hand, there remains among the American leadership a strong feeling of bitterness towards the channel, a feeling that must have intensified after the controversial airing of footage of American dead soldiers and POWs. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld launched a heated offensive on Al Jazeera on the same day, claiming that the footage was a violation of the Geneva Conventions on the rights of prisoners of war. Following that, a pair of Al Jazeera Wall Street correspondents had their press credentials abruptly revoked by the New York Stock Exchange, and according to Tucker, both Yahoo and AOL have refused to run ads for Al Jazeera’s new English website. In late March the Arabic and English websites were the subject of an intensive cyber attack.
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Many people view US hostility as further acknowledgment of Al Jazeera’s strength.
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The situation reached a dramatic climax on April 8, when Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi’s Baghdad offices were subjected to a US attack that killed Al Jazeera’s reporter Tariq Ayoub and left the offices in ruins. The US forces were accused of deliberately targeting the news networks although there was no nearby firing from Iraqi forces. The issue remains unresolved, and the Pentagon has been asked to conduct an investigation of the incident. Nevertheless, many people view this hostility as further acknowledgment of Al Jazeera’s strength.
Credibility
According to some political and media observers, the war that was presented on CNN was a war with lower casualties on both sides than the real war taking place. Of course, the true numbers cannot be confirmed at this point in time, however the declarations of Coalition leaders were frequently discredited, especially during the early stages of war. Having aligned themselves with their national leaders and presenting their statements as being the “truth,” or at least closer to the truth than the Iraqi version - which in several incidents turned out to be more accurate - American and British media had their own credibility negatively affected alongside their military spokesmen.
In the first couple of days of the war, most Western media neglected Iraqi claims regarding Umm Qasr and adopted the Coalition’s version of the story, stating that American and British troops had full control over the port. It was later revealed that Umm Qasr did not capitulate until the fourth or fifth day of the war.
Giving a misleading impression of truthfulness to the Coalition leaders’ declarations can be attributed to the fact that a significant part of the Western media’s sources during the war came from reporters who were either embedded with the troops or located in the military headquarters of the Coalition. These reporters got their information primarily from American and British military personnel. Whether other correspondents located in Iraqi-controlled areas did not have access to Iraqi statements or whether they did have such access but the editorial decision makers disregarded it, is not clear. At best, it would mean that they did not have enough sources - whether voluntarily or involuntarily - which is a professional shortcoming. At worst, it would mean that the editors were being motivated by sheer bias.
American and British media were also criticized for how they presented the war in such a way as to give the impression that it was a “clean” war. A lot of emphasis was placed on the humanitarian aid facilitated by Coalition forces in “freed” areas. On the other hand, they treated Iraqi civilian losses and the misery brought upon them by American and British bombs and missiles with notable negligence. Instead, they gave a lot of weight to their military leader’s declarations about the “precision” of their weapons. During the war, the scene of Iraqi civilians stating that they were happy to get rid of Saddam’s regime was more common on CNN than the image of mothers crying in front of their dead children’s bodies, although in reality the second scene was more frequent.
Conveying the impression of a low cost war served the double purpose of presenting it as a war “for” the Iraqi people, and at the same time one that is conducted with minimal loss for both parties to the conflict. The message was: this war is worth fighting because its benefits exceed its costs - a message the political leadership of the USA and the UK badly needed people to believe in, given the amount of opposition those leaders had been faced with, both internationally and at home. Of course the unfolding events after April 9, with Iraqis rejoicing at the fall of Saddam’s regime, gave credit - deserved or not - to Anglo-American claims that the Iraqi people would welcome the invading troops to get rid of the Baa’th dictatorship. Assessing the reliability of this claim is beyond the scope of this article. As far as this article is concerned, the question is whether or not the media accurately conveyed the events of the war moment by moment as they unfolded. Speculations on how the Iraqi people actually feel should not be given the authority of facts.
But why is American media sacrificing its reputation of being free and independent?
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Why is American media sacrificing its reputation of being free and independent?.
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The answer lies in the structure of the relationship between the media and the governing elite. Throughout the past two decades, there has been an increasing concentration of media tools in the hands of a few corporations through a series of mergers. Today, nine or ten huge media corporations control the press, TV channels, the publishing industry, the movie industry and even the music industry. In the fierce competition that governs them, these corporations adopted an editorial policy that serves their need for financial and political power by being inline with the interests of the political and economic elite. The result was a network of powerful businessmen and politicians promoting their interests through giant media corporations (which increasingly became PR institutions) influencing public opinion.
According to the book “Into the Buzzsaw,” a compilation of leading journalists’ testimonies on “The Myth of Free Press” (the book’s sub title) by Kristina Borjesson, this coalition of the powerful would not allow the press to criticize or get too close to what the convictions of the elite (forming 2 - 3% of the society). The book also examines how this power structure has resulted in the vain attitude of the American media in the aftermath of 9/11. It acted more like the spokesperson of the government rather than a “fourth authority.” There was no serious examination of the reasons for the events (or at least, no such examination was allowed to reach a wide audience) and no questioning of the value of going to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.
No one can claim that Arab news channels are totally objective, but the war in Iraq indicated that Western media was not being any less subjective in its coverage. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the performance of the Coalition’s media, and particularly the American media, was governed to a large extent by the political agenda of its governments.
In a vote cast on the website of El Quds El Arabi, a London-based Arabic newspaper, asking “Which of the following satellite channels give the most competent and objective coverage of the war?” Al Jazeera won 47.5% of the votes. The second was Al Manar TV (35.6%), followed by CNN (10%). The list included other Arab and Western channels, like BBC, Abu Dhabi TV, Arabiyya, etc. The vote cannot reflect a fair and objective answer to the question, because most voters are probably Arabs or Arabic readers, whose sympathies are likely to lie with Arab media and against Western media. Nevertheless, it gives an indication of how successful some Arab satellite channels have been in covering the war; if not with more skillfulness than their Westerns competitors, then at least not very far behind, as was the case in the Second Gulf War and before. |
