This is piece I wrote and which appeared in The Khaleej Times, Dubai, in 2005. -----------
Journalism under fire By Eugene Correia In his commentary, Journalism sans investigations, on August 9, Mohammed A.R. Galadari dwells on a talk show that examined the failings of the US media in the run-up to the Iraq war. Leading newspapers such as The New York Times, and The Washington Post have owned their mistakes and have, short of an apology, asked its readers for forgiveness. The lessons of the war are probably well-learnt by the media organizations. But there is no guarantee that the news media would not trip again. The way the media treated the campaign for war has been the subject of discussions in journalism forums and in media watchdog organizations. Its good that Western nations such as America and Canada and few European countries, particularly Great Britain, have media monitoring agencies watchdogs watching watchdogs. The medias role as a watchdog has come under critical examination in recent years. The Iraq war aside, the news media, especially in US and Canada, has been exposed for journalistic sins by its staff. Galadari maintains that if journalists had engaged themselves in investigations that uncovered Watergate and sent President Richard Nixon out of office, they would have unearthed many more Watergates. What one of the panelists on the talk show said, we are too lazy, is largely correct. As a correlating fact, the competition among journalists has also resulted in both excellent exposes of government wrongdoing and journalistic voyeurism. The Jayson Blair case at The New York Times is a classic example of what job pressure can do to an individual. Plagiarism in journalism is as old as the hills. However, in recent times the dirty act of using another authors material, in large part or wholly, without acknowledgement has hit the pits. The examples of the resignation of Patricia Smith at The Boston Globe, the Stephen Glass issue at The New Republic, and the faulty Vietnam reporting on CNN have made the journalism world come crumbling down. Journalism is now paying dearly for the sins of some of its noted practicioners. Galadari points out that besides laziness on the part of journalists the other significant factor in the dearth of investigative stories is the concentration of media in the hands of big companies. In a cover story, The Nation, an US magazine, detailed the holdings of ten multinationals AOL-Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsman, AT &T, Liberty Media who control a large portion of the media business. Writer Mark Crispin Miller noted, The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go always with a few exceptions the oervall Leviathn itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head. When the talk is about media cartel it sort of immediately invites comparisons to the oil cartel or the drug cartel. Maybe, the media cartel does not work on the same lines as the oil and drug cartels, in the sense the last two control the consumer markets. Journalists themselves maybe bit players in the media business but the nefarious work of some of their colleagues have tremendously affected the image of what was once considered a noble craft. Though Galadari does not give names, he says that, like the west, there are big-level companies who have created their own empires in the east by media ownerships. He seems unhappy over such a situation. If such a situation exists in the Arab world or, more closely, in the UAE could only be known through independent research or through investigate journalism by magazines or the electronic media. In a 1998 article, The Boston Globe said, There is more honesty in journalism about screw-ups, in part because journalists know that the public distrusts them. There is also more pressure in news organizations to draw a crowd. Media companies increasingly evaluate their journalism by the lanace sheet, a simple fact of life in the world where news is gathered inside large corporations traded on an increasingly impatient Wall Street. The competition between newspapers, especially dailies, in metropolitan cities of the US, Canada and Great Britain is fierce. In Dubai itself, Galadaris paper, The Khaleej Times, run advertisements that proclaim that its circulation is audited, and it is the largest-read newspaper. Considering the political nature of the UAE, there is not much scope for investigative journalism that would look into the functioning of the government. In this context, I refer to a piece that appeared in the Arab News of August 12 written by Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed. He took says that if there was no Watergate exposure, Nixon would have continued to occupy the White House. But his main beef is the expulsion of Al-Jazeera from Baghdad. He states, America is simply applying the adage, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Meaning, while in the Middle East, do as the other powers in the ME do: Shut them down. Of course, the result is that the stations stock shot up as spectacularly as Enrons went down. The climate for investigative journalism in some of the Gulf countries is oppressive, just as summer heat. Dubai may appear very liberal compared to other Middle East countries, but I am not aware of to what extent the UAE is tolerant in regard to freedom of expression. As a Canadian of Indian origin, I have followed closely the debate over letting Al-Jazeera into Canadian homes. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has given the Arabic channel permission to broadcast. But the CRTC told Fox News in 2000 that it could only broadcast in Canada if it offered 15 per cent of Canadian content. The Fox News application will come up again for a decision shortly. One thing for sure, the CRTC will closely watch Al-Jazeera for any failings that could deem its news presentation as propaganda, as alleged by the US. But for now, Canadian-Muslims and the supporters of Al-Jazeera must be happy to know that they could watch the channel from the comfort of their homes. ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news
