-Caveat Lector-
from the March 25, 2003 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0325/p01s04-woiq.html
WORLD AND AMERICA WATCHING DIFFERENT WARS
CNN vs. Al Jazeera: Seeing is often believing
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
CAIRO, EGYPT - The Hamouda family is gathered around the TV, sipping
sugary tea and glued to the pictures of captured US soldiers being
interrogated by Iraqis on the popular Qatar-based satellite station Al
Jazeera.
"What's your name?" A terrified young female POW is asked. "How old are
you?" The camera moves to her feet, which are bloody and bare.
"Yieee!," cheers eldest son Ahmed, knocking over a fake geranium plant as
he shoots up from the couch in excitement. "Show it how it is!"
It is not that they are happy to see suffering, says Hellmy, the father,
somewhat apologetically, as the camera weaves between several bodies. "But
the other side of the story needs to be told."
The gruesome video shown Sunday on Al Jazeera - reaching 35 million
Arab-speakers worldwide, including about 20 percent of the Egyptian
population - will probably never be seen by the average American TV
viewer.
In fact, American audiences are seeing and reading about a different war
than the rest of the world. The news coverage in Europe, the Middle East,
and Asia, reflects and defines the widening perception gap about the
motives for this war. Surveys show that an increasing number of Americans
believe this is a just war, while most of the world's Arabs and Muslims
see it as a war of aggression. Media coverage does not necessarily create
these leanings, say analysts, but it works to cement them.
"The difference in coverage between the US and the rest of the world
helped contribute to the situation that we're in now,'' says Kim Spencer,
president of WorldLink TV, a US satellite channel devoted to airing
foreign news. "Americans have been unable to see how they're perceived."
For example, most Americans, watching CNN, Fox, or the US television
networks, are not seeing as much coverage of injured Iraqi citizens, or
being given more than a glimpse of the antiwar protests now raging in the
Muslim world and beyond.
In the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia, by comparison, the rapid
progress made by US led troops has been played down. And many aspects of
the conflict being highlighted in the US - such as the large number of
Iraqi troops surrendering, the cooperation between US-led forces and
various Gulf states, commentary on America's superior weapons technology,
and the human interest angles on soldier life in the desert - are almost
totally absent from coverage outside the US.
"Sure, the news we get in the Arab world is slanted," admits Hussein Amin,
chair of the department of journalism and mass communication at Cairo's
American University. "In the same way the news received in the US is
biased." The view from Europe
Some analysts note that European press ownership is less concentrated than
its counterparts in the US, and is seen as providing more perspectives
than either the Arab or American outlets. In Frankfurt, for example,
readers have access to 16 different German language newspapers - many of
which present different vantage points, which makes for a more lively and
varied debate.
European journalists also seem to ask different, more skeptical, questions
of this war, often being the ones at White House and Pentagon press
conferences to ask whether the invasion of Iraq has turned up any of the
weapons of mass destruction that used to justify the invasion - even as
their American counterparts repeatedly focus on such questions as whether
Saddam Hussein is alive or dead.
Media watchers say the European press has tended to be more balanced than
the US media in dealing with the war, in part because Europe is so much
closer to the Muslim world. John Schmidt, a former reporter for the
International Herald Tribune, who has just returned from Europe, notes
that in Marseille, France, 30 percent of the population is Muslim. In
Berlin, the biggest minority population is the Turks.
"These are countries in Europe that live cheek by jowl with Islamic
people, they know how deep the dislike for the West can be, they know how
sensitively some of these issues have to be transmitted," says Mr.
Schmidt, who is now an economics writer for the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel.
"There are really two stories unfolding here, one is the war and its
progress and the second one is the progress of world opinion," says Tom
Patterson, a media expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of
Government. "That second dimension is there in the American press, but
it's clearly way underreported."
For instance, American media outlets may report on the demonstrations in
other countries, particularly if there are violent clashes. But they don't
devote as many resources to covering in depth the growing anti-American
sentiment - even among American allies - or its implications for the
future, says Professor Patterson. Reporter or soldier?
Back in his Cairo living room, the elder Mr. Hamouda flips to CNN for a
moment, over cries of protest from the rest of the family. It is vaguely
possible to make out US troop maneuvers on a grainy green screen. In the
corner there is a small photo of a middle-aged man in an Army jacket.
Nadia, the great-grandmother in the family, wonders aloud who CNN
correspondent Walter Rogers is and what he is doing with the troops. "He
is in bed with them," says an English speaking nephew, laughing at the
well-worn joke, a pun on "embedding," in which the Pentagon allows
journalists to report from within military units. Nadia has no idea what
the boy is talking about. "Turn it back to Al Jazeera," she demands,
adjusting her false teeth, "let's see those bodies again."
Across the globe, in Indonesia, student leader and antiwar activist
Muhammad Hermawan has seen these same pictures on his local channel, which
pirates Al Jazeera's signal and adds simultaneous Indonesian translation.
"The more these pictures are shown, the more people will understand
America's brutal aggression,'' he says. "People will learn, and we'll see
bigger and bigger protests."
Interest in the war has been so high that Indonesia's TV7 began pirating
Al Jazeera's signal shortly before the start of the war. The new station
carries the Arab-language broadcast with simultaneous Indonesian
translation. Though Al Jazeera is only shown from 10 in the evening until
11 in the morning an official at TV7 says the news department is receiving
about 100 calls a day from viewers, up from "almost zero" before the US
invasion began.
The news broadcasts in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation,
have been tamer than the news in the Middle East, focusing on protests
against the war at home, with official statements against the war from
abroad.
But they have also carried some stories sympathetic to US soldiers,
including an interview with Anecita Hudson of Alamogordo, Texas. Mrs.
Hudson says her son, 23-year-old Army Specialist Joseph Hudson, was one of
the prisoners of war shown on Al Jazeera. She said seeing her son captured
was "like a bad dream."
Mrs. Hudson didn't see her son on American news outlets. She spotted him
on a Filipino cable channel she subscribes to. She is originally from the
Philippines.
The pictures of US troops drew condemnation from US Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and other officials. "It seems to me that showing a few
pictures on the screen, not knowing who they are and being communicated by
Al Jazeera, which is not a perfect instrument of communication, obviously
is part of Iraqi propaganda," Mr. Rumsfeld told CBS.
"War is ugly by nature and we did not create these pictures - we are only
there to reflect reality on the ground,"' says Jihad Ali Ballout, Al
Jazeera's media relations head. "Truth is sometimes unpleasant and
gruesome, and I feel distressed when people ask me to dress it up."
Washington watches Al Jazeera
The Bush administration sees Al Jazeera - the cable news channel made
famous for its airing of Osama Bin Laden tapes - as having an
anti-American bias. But, since the seven-year-old Al Jazeera has grown
from six to 24 hours of daily programming and reaches more than 35 million
Arab speakers around the world, including 150,000 in the United States,
Washington seems to be attempting to work more closely with the network.
The Pentagon offered Al Jazeera four choice spots for its reporters to be
embedded with US military units and assigned it a special media liaison
officer and both National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have given extensive interviews to Al Jazeera in
recent days. Al-Arabiya and Abu Dhabi, two other 24-hour Arab-language
stations, have received similar attention from the administration.
Al Jazeera says that it has two of its correspondents "embedded" with US
units - but the units in question are in Kuwait. It has no reporters with
US troops directly participating in the invasion.
Variety breeds objectivity?
Professor Amin in Cairo argues that while watching this war unfold in the
various media outlets is a good example of how bias clearly exists on all
sides, there are nonetheless positive signs that international media are
collectively moving toward becoming more objective, by force of necessity.
"The fact that the common man has access to different sources today means
that its harder for one source to get away with showing only one side of
the story. You can piece together a broader, more accurate story
yourself," he says.
There is some awareness in the Hamouda living room that Arab broadcasters
may also spread propaganda.
In 1967, four days after Israel had won the war against Egypt, Egyptian
radio was still declaring victory, recalls Hellmy Hamouda. "I was in the
Suez Canal at the time and I had seen some of the war with my own eyes,"
he says, "I had a hunch that radio was not telling the truth."
"Today, we can find the better truth by simply changing channels or going
on the Internet," says Hamouda. He then flips back to Al Jazeera at the
demand of grandma Nadia, "If we want to."
" Special correspondent Dan Murphy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and staff writer
Alexandra Marks in New York contributed to this report.
---------------- corrrobrating article follows:
When The Coalition Kills And CNN Lies
PREFACE:
Tonight in Auckland, NZ on the TV news for the independent TV
station, they said CNN was lying about war coverage, and only spent
about 13 seconds on when the missile went into a market place, plus
isn't showing all the dead bodies and carnage. We are also getting
stuff in the daily paper from the http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://news.independent.co.uk from Robert Fisk and also the Aussie
John Pilger. Plus good reports from NZ journalists at the scene.
Well thank goodness for the net, so Americans and Brits can get the
truth on the situation. I sure hope nobody knocks out the net,
things could get worse, and they may get away with it, if no one
knows. - Nicky
------------------- http://www.rense.com/general36/kills.htm
When The Coalition Kills And CNN Lies
By Firas Al-Atraqchi Scoop - New Zealand 3-27-3
The images of carnage and severed bodies are quite telling. On Wednesday,
coalition fighter jets bombed what they claimed were missile launchers
located 'near' civilian areas in Baghdad. Instead, they hit a bustling
marketplace in the heart of Baghdad.
The BBC's Rageh Omar was one of the first western journalists to reach the
area: "I saw human remains, bits of severed hands, bits of skull. Al-Shaab
is a residential district. I saw people in apartment blocks throwing out
their belongings attempting to leave. It was a scene of confusion as
emergency services tried to rush to the scene.Our correspondents were
unable to find an obvious military target in the area."
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2888429.stm)
Al Jazeera also made it to the scene and was able to film dead bodies
being removed from the rubble, some dismembered, others covered entirely
in dust and blood.
Images that were broadcast into the homes of more than 50 million Arabs in
the Middle East and around the world.
CNN would not budge. They refused to acknowledge that such civilian deaths
had occurred. Instead, they persisted in one of their banner headlines
that "Iraqi civilians are being killed by Iraqis, not coalition".
They didn't show footage.
Al Jazeera reports that some 40 civilians have been killed with 300
wounded.
No such report from CNN. Instead, we are privy to regurgitated reports
from 'embedded' journalists.
Finally, by the afternoon CNN dedicated a whole four seconds of coverage
to the marketplace massacre.
Nevertheless, Al Jazeera continues to bring the impact of coalition
'precision' bombing on Iraqi civilians. An Al Jazeera crew in Basra filmed
women and children being brought into a Basra hospital for treatment. Most
were covered in blood. One child had his shoulder severed. This is the
uprising the coalition has been talking about.
(Someone is irked by Al Jazeera. The Al Jazeera website has come under
heavy hacker and denial of service attacks and effectively shut down.
There are unconfirmed reports at this time that certain agencies may have
been involved in the Al Jazeera attacks)
These images are incensing Arab public opinion, turning Arab populations
against their leaders, and directly threatening U.S. and U.K. interests in
the region.
For their part, the Pentagon says: "Any casualty that occurs, any death
that occurs, is a direct result of Saddam Hussein's policies".
The Iraqis who once opposed Saddam, but have now vowed to oppose the
coalition forces might disagree.
###
Firas Al-Atraqchi can be contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0303/S00253.htm
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