"In the absence of al Jazeera"

Amjad Nassir has a thought-provoking essay in today's Al Quds Al Arabi, called "In the absence of al Jazeera".  Nassir writes:   

"There are no certain numbers about the victims of the American campaign in Fallujah.
"No pictures and no information except that which trickles in to the eyes and ears of viewers of the Western media which is tightly controlled by the military, which presents the American view of the war, and in which the censorship and direction is not less than that of a totalitarian state.
"Therefore the picture of the American soldier who killed an injured Iraq in one of the mosques of Fallujah has aroused great interest in Arab and world public opinion."

A lot of Americans complain about al Jazeera's coverage of Iraq, and the American military certainly remembers how al Jazeera's coverage of Fallujah transformed the battle in April.   But Nassir's point is that the absence of al Jazeera also has real drawbacks, even from an American point of view:  when some small piece of information - such as the mosque shooting video - appears in a near-vacuum of information, it has far greater impact than if there had been ongoing, full coverage of the conflict.

By this argument, the American heavy-handed determination to win the media war this time thereby created the conditions for the enormous impact of this video. 

Which would be all too typical of the short-sighted American approach to the Arab and Iraqi media, constantly sacrificing the long-term goal of fostering an independent media and democratic political culture to short-term military or political imperatives. 

Fallujah may be an exceptional case, but only in its magnitude.  Since day one of the occupation, the US - and the interim Iraqi government - have shown far more interest in controlling the media (arresting journalists, closing down al Jazeera, etc) than they have in establishing the kind of independent, critical media so essential to any real democracy.   

On that point, it's worth noting a story in al Safir today which reports that Jalal al Mashtah, director general of Iraqi Media Network, resigned yesterday (here's an English account.. in the Turkish press, not in any American newspaper I can find).  In a press conference, he complained about direct interference in the networks, stating that "from the beginning we have faced obstacles and difficulties."  He particularly complained about the Harris Corporation, and the role it granted to a Lebanese and a Kuwaiti company at the expense of local Iraqis, as well as Harris's tight control over funds which were supposed to be at the IMN's disposal (yes, he accuses Harris of stealing Iraqi money).   Mashtah also assigned some of the blame to the Iraqi government, which never devoted sufficient resources to the Iraqi Media Network;  he claims that employees haven't received their salaries for five months.   Even worse, he complained, was the absence of any settled legal infrastructure governing the media, which badly hindered any efforts to formulate a strategy for developing the media. 

Comments

[nur al cubicle]

Heh, that's 'cause it's independent Arab media. The French are next!

Speaking of media wars...TV France 2 broadcast the tragic images of little Mohamed Al Dura cringing behind his dad, Jamal, in Gaza Septembre 2000, and being shot to death by the IDF.

A tiny Israeli news agency, Metula News Agency (Mena), has been claiming at its website for the last two months that the images were staged. France 2 then put on a public showing of the images together with those taken by Reuters to show how far-fetched the claim is. France 2 even went to Gaza and had to get Jamal Al Dura to strip his torso before the cameras to show his the scars of his wounds.

France 2 has sued in court for public defamation.