One of the normal ways of getting at questions of whether a bias exists in a media source is to see whether and how certain issues are covered. Condi Rice's recent talks in Egypt offer an interesting test case of whether there is an anti-American bias in the Arab media. Al Jazeera, especially, has pushed the Hizb al Ghad / Ayman Nour story hard, covering the case heavily and criticizing Mubarak for the crackdown (far more so than the "pro-American" al Arabiya). Rice claims to have raised the issue with the Egyptians and to have communicated that the United States takes it very seriously. If al Jazeera and other Arab media ignored Rice's statements, this might be taken as evidence of an anti-American bias - ignoring news which would reflect positively on America with Arab public opinion. So what did they do?
Well, this is the very first line of al Jazeera's story yesterday on Rice's visit: "American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice expressed her country's concern about the arrest of the leader of the Egyptian opposition party Hizb al Ghad Ayman Nour and requested a resolution of the situation as soon as possible."
Al Quds al Arabi, probaby the newspaper most hostile to American foreign policy in the region, ran this headline: "Rice asks Egypt to lead reforms in the region and to quickly release the opposition leader Ayman Nour." The first sentence of the story: "American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice expressed on Tuesday her extreme concern at Egypt's imprisonment of opposition leader Ayman Nour, and said that she wanted a solution to the problem in the fastest time."
This doesn't of course prove that Al Jazeera or al Quds al Arabi are pro-American, or even that they aren't anti-American... no single data point could really prove anything like that. Interesting, though, and suggestive.
(by the way, don't miss the detailed and extremely interesting overview of how the Egyptian media has covered the Hizb al Ghad / Ayman Nour issue over at the Arabist Network)
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