There is no freedom in the world like the freedom of an American journalist to say whatever he or she wants. The only criterion for self-censorship is that the report he or she files be mostly true. Absent of actual malice, one can even be wrong in one�s dispatch, and still not be guilty of libel. In America, truth is an absolute defense against libel and has been so for more than 200 years.
Now that doesn�t mean that there can�t be fallout from bad reporting. The Nation Review Online published a list of boneheaded predictions about Iraq II written by avowed Bush-haters that will be used by some on the right (read Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and everybody at the Fox News Channel, to name a few) to hammer their reputation for years. And all that�s fair, I suppose. Freedom of expression is not that same as freedom from criticism. If you say something stupid � like say Trent Lott did � you deserve blowback.
That�s the way America is. Actions have consequences. And I�m cool with that too.
But that�s not the way it is everywhere. In the world of the state-run or state-sanctioned media, reporters, editors and producers have an overt agenda to slant the news in a way that furthers their or their master�s ends. Pravda � �truth� in Russian � rarely printed any truth ever.
As we all have seen recently, a number of the Arab media outlets � Al Jazeera and others � have been broadcasting the statements of the Iraqi Ministry of Information as complete and unvarnished truth, while ignoring the vast reportage coming from embedded reporters of every nationality traveling with the troops. These media outlets have been spoon feeding the most ridiculous propaganda to the Arab Street, who in turn, believed it right up until the time that the statue of Saddam fell on April 9th. They were lead to believe that Iraqi forces would slaughter the Americans and Brits by the thousands on the way to a glorious victory over the infidels.
Then came the letdown. From a standing start in Kuwait, the Americans and the Brits captured Baghdad in three weeks. The Arab Street was flabbergasted. How could this be? We watched the news and there was no hint of this impending disaster. �It must have been treason,� one Egyptian shopkeeper said to a British reporter.
And in a sense, he�s right. The Arab media have engaged in an organized campaign to attack American and �Zionist� interest to the point that they have deliberately misled their readers or viewers. Today, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) ran a piece written by Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, editor of the London-based Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat lambasting much of the Arab press for this practice. In part, he says:
But when we examine the Arab media, [we find] that little has changed since the previous century. It seems as if today's wars are no different than those of forty years ago. At that time, the Arab media jumped ahead of the Arab armies by making false predictions. They assumed that publishing a headline about downing 100 Israeli warplanes in the war of 1967 would build self-confidence and may even come true in the future. However, those who doze off and wake up in front of Arab TV will not forgive the [Arab] media [for] its lies when the smoke clears up and the truth is seen in full."
"I know that adopting an impartial stand in the [Arab] media world is akin to suicide, because there are many who push the media into extremes, and take 'nationalistic' positions, and maintain that whoever thinks differently is committing treason against the [national] cause. [They maintain] that lying for the sake of the cause is moral and honorable. The Arab media [of today], in these hard times, is slowly turning into the 1967 media; at that time, radio announcers, analysts, and journalists exaggerated acts of courage and covered up defeats, which - historically - became a mockery."
"The Arab media today, with its clear inclination towards exaggerations and false promises of victory, is feeding the public stories that have nothing to do with the real events in the field. Hence, it is replicating the old media, despite the fact that it is broadcasting in color and using electronic technologies�"
"Before the beginning of the [1991 Gulf War], Arabs who supported the Iraqi regime came up with floods of promises that it would be a great war, a second Vietnam, and that tens of thousands of the invaders would return in body bags, and that the Gulf would become a sea of blood. We were deluged with reports about the support of the international street [for Iraq], but soon the whole thing ended with the signing of the Safwan Agreement, in which Iraq surrendered completely, to the surprise of millions�"
"The media, in its reports, should not preempt the propaganda of ministries of information... The best service that [the Arab media] can provide to the public is the truth. This way it will save its reputation that was tarnished in the past, to the point that it became the twin-sister of the inferior political regimes."
This acknowledgement from a prominent newspaper editor, gets to the heart of why Americans are deeply distrustful of Arab culture in general and Arab nations in particular: everything that the Arab Street uses to form its opinions about everything is so biased that it has almost no connection with the rational world. New Yorkers were horrified to hear that the attacks on the World trade Center on 9/11 were being reported in the Arab World as being perpetrated by either a) the Bush administration or b) Israel. We knew the truth. We saw it live on cable. How could they � the Arab Street � not acknowledge that there are people that hate the US so much that they would do exactly the same thing that the so-called martyrs on the West Bank do with such frighteningly regularity?
It was easy. They have been fed a long and steady diet of misinformation and outright lies by their media outlets, with each being more outspoken than the last in their hatred of America and Israel. However, what Mr. Al Rashed just penned, may be the beginning of the end of that sort of treason against the truth. I would like to think that eyes will be opened and the truth in its various forms will be revealed. And that spectacularly erroneous �news� from biased reporters, editors and producers have the same sort of blowback there as here.
11 April 03 dpny
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