Letters to the Editor
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Identifying the 'infonanny'
Mr. Kamiya, in only three pages you offer a fine and subtle analysis of "Why the Media Failed." I particularly appreciated your reminder that "the mass media is a quasi-official institution, an info-nanny, that is held responsible for maintaining a kind of national consensus."
Another letter writer stated you were echoing Chomsky; perhaps a bit, but that is the point, isn't it. The problem you identify is largely that the media dismisses Chomsky (along with his examination of the media) as a radical, not in any way part of the 'national consensus.' (Indeed, I've wondered if he's even been declared too radical by the liberal/progressive media.)
The substance of reporting becomes censored, and so too does the media's own ability to critique its own reporting, for the very idea of critiquing the media remains outside the 'national consensus.' Certainly, discussing corporate ownership of the media is off limits, for other reasons as well.
So thank you heartily for bringing theory into practice and thought into journalism.
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Toothless? Bloody, toothless, I'd say...
...Because the result was not a clean/surgical/logical experience. It was a bloody, incomprehensible one, like a bloody, toothless mouth. Of course, those in the press responsible for this "oversight" have not received so much as a cut lip for all of their "cowardliness." Maybe a taste of the front lines would put some manliness in to the press (root word of pressure?) - the kind of manliness that includes responsibility and honorability.
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Needed: More Experts and Local Reporters
Kamiya's comments about the failure of the US medias' coverage of the Iraq war and the Middle East are right on. From early 2000 through mid 2003 I lived and worked in the West Bank and have since worked and traveled in Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, and Jordan. Kamiya's analysis matches with my observations of the media during the course of my travels and work.
I remember one very telling exchange I overheard between two journalists at the beginning of the current Intifada that I believe exemplifies much of what is wrong with much of the media's coverage of Middle East affairs. This exchange took place near the City Inn checkpoint on the edge of Ramallah where daily clashes between Israeli soldiers and stone throwing Palestinians (and later gunmen) occured every day for the first months of the Intifada. The exchange went something like this:
Journalist 1 (J1) talking to Journalist 2 (J2)
J1 - Hey, what's going on?
J2 - More of the same, Palestinians throwing stones, Israeli's shooting back.
J1 - Do you get all of this?
J2 - Not really, every day its the same thing. You would think they would have gone home by now.
J1 - Yeah, so you've been here before?
J2 - Every day since I arrive earlier this week, but I still don't completely understand what's happening. How about you?
J1 - No, I just arrived in yesterday. How long are you going to stay?
J2 - I was actually just about to leave, you want to come and grab a beer with me at my hotel in Jerusalem?
J1 - Sure, but I can't stay long because I have to write back to my paper about all of this.
And these are the people who are supposed to help us understand what is going on! I understand that not every journalist can be an expert in Middle East/Israeli-Palestinian politics. However, all too often it seems that the media in the West assumes that people with no experience in the Middle East can produce intelligent insightful articles about the region. The unfortunate truth is that with rare exceptions they can't. Major media outlets would never be so presumptuous as to send someone with no background on an issue to cover important stories related to that topic in the US or Europe, but for some reason they do this in the Middle East.
Major media outlets also don't place staff on the ground in important Middle East locations. All of the networks have Jerusalem or Tel Aviv based staff, but not a single one has staff based in Ramallah or Gaza. (Israeli regulations on foreign media personnel are partially responsible for this situation.) Without staff in these locations understanding the complexity of Palestinian political and social life is impossible. This imbalance in where journalists are located also leads directly to imbalances in what is covered. Many people have commented about the media's tendency to cover Israeli deaths more than Palestinian deaths and atribute this tendency to bias. Bias might be partly to blame, but I believe the fact that a journalist can reach the site of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in a matter of minutes where as it might take all day to get to Nablus through checkpoints is a larger cause of this imbalence.
In Beirut there are also few major media representatives present. Damascus may be an important front in the "war on terror", but there still aren't many journalists working for major news sources living there. Understanding the complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the nuance of Lebanese factionalism, Syria's role in the Middle East, the history of Sunni-Shia relations, etc. takes work. Unfortunatley, media outlets seem to believes that we can understand the region based on reports put together by people who don't speak Arabic and have only spent a few days in the Middle East. We can't.
If we want to avoid the failures of the past few years what we need are more experts and more on the ground presence. Only after journalists start to build relationships with locals and come to understand the cultures and politics of particular countries will we start to see throughtful, educational, and clear analysis from the Middle East.
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Maybe the media should stop buying news
It's not about money it's about lack of any motivation, coupled with a desire to see some agenda no matter the consequences. One of the world's worst kept secrets is the fact that AP, Reuters and the BBC routinely hire local Arabs as stringers to pay other locals to 'bring' them news in the West Bank. There is today, a BBS reporter who's gone missing in Gaza under extremely odd circumstances, e.g. he was living there with the Palestinians now as if by magic his former roomates have kidnapped him only to never disclose their terms. Now it turns out, in the BBC's case, they spent about $600,000 in attempt to quash government reports disclosing this circle of news purchasing. Well I'm not a professional journalist lord knows but I'm pretty sure that's not in the canon of ethics.