THE MEDIA
A different view of Gulf conflict
By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 3/19/2003
The Free Speech TV satellite network has pre-empted its regular
programming to focus on what a spokeswoman, Linda Mamoun, calls ''the
crimes against humanity the United States will perpetuate, and the
opposition to it.''
With the advent of war, WorldLink TV plans to expand its show ''Mosaic,''
which features broadcasts from 16 Middle East networks.
In response to President Bush's speech on Monday night, TomPaine.com, a
website that calls itself ''a public interest journal,'' commissioned a
scathing piece headlined ''Credibility Bomb.'' And the liberal media
watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) has just issued
a report accusing the major networks of silencing voices of dissent.
While most Americans will follow news from Iraq through the lens of the
mainstream news outlets, some alternative media organizations are gearing
up to provide a very different view of the conflict.
Often ideological, with minimal budgets and small staffs, these
organizations give voice to nontraditional or far-left perspectives that
don't usually make it onto the Sunday morning talk shows or into the
op-ed columns.
''Our mission is to diversify mainstream public discourse,'' says John
Moyers, TomPaine.com's editor in chief.
''This station is really about the voices of the unheard,'' adds a
WorldLink spokeswoman, Jennifer Spoerri.
WorldLink TV, formed three years ago in San Rafael, Calif., is now
available to about 20 million satellite TV homes. Every day, ''Mosaic''
producers Jamal Dajani (a Palestinian) and David Michealis (an Israeli)
compile, edit, and translate broadcasts from more than a dozen Middle
East nations into a half-hour news digest that is very different from
standard American fare.
The programs ''are a mixture of independent and state-controlled,''
Dajani says. But, he adds, they ''give the American viewer an opportunity
to watch what 280 million viewers in 22 countries are watching'' in the
Middle East.
With war looming, ''Mosaic'' is expanding to at least an hour each day
and plans to take live feeds from Arab journalists inside Iraq. ''The
view is totally different [from that of US newscasts],'' Dajani says.
''For one thing, you don't have the pundits.''
Free Speech TV, based in Boulder, Colo., is available via satellite in 11
million homes, and it can be seen on local cable-access channels in a
number of communities, including Cambridge and Somerville. Its
programming usually focuses on subjects ranging from human rights to
sexuality. But now it is turning to all antiwar programming.
''We've been providing live coverage of demonstrations . . . throughout
the world,'' Mamoun says. The network is collecting material from
reporters around the globe, including Iraq. ''We're definitely going to
be airing regular reports inside Iraq,'' Mamoun says. And they may not
resemble the news as brought to you by Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings.
TomPaine.com gets about 5 million Internet visitors each year and may be
best known for the ''op ads'' it takes out in The New York Times. While
Moyers (son of Bill Moyers) calls himself ''a capital `L' liberal,'' he
adds, ''The ideology we would like to claim is a public-interest
ideology'' that reflects segments of society -- from the nonprofit sector
to environmentalists -- often marginalized in public discourse. With
conflict nearly certain, Moyers is clearing the deck for relevant content
-- posting interviews, for example, with two US diplomats who recently
resigned over Bush's Iraq policy,
One organization that focuses on voices ignored by the media is the New
York-based FAIR, which has an annual budget of about $700,000. In a
recent survey that examined sources in stories about Iraq on the ABC,
CBS, NBC, and PBS nightly newscasts during a two-week period, FAIR
concluded that coverage was dominated by a lineup of US officials who
rarely uttered a discouraging word about White House invasion plans.
FAIR will continue to monitor the US press for knee-jerk jingoism, says a
FAIR analyst, Rachel Coen, who accuses the media of a ''lack of critical
distance'' from the Bush administration.
''The problems we see in peacetime,'' Coen says, ''become exacerbated in
wartime.''
Mark Jurkowitz's The Media column appears on Wednesdays.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 3/19/2003.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/078/living/A_different_view_of_Gulf_conflict-.shtml
