The other day I mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's latest outburst against al-Jazeera, and suggested that people should rethink their assumptions about the Arab media's role in Iraq. Today, the BBC has this related report:
The latest bombings and bloodshed in Baghdad have meant that violence in Iraq has once again been dominating the bulletins on Arab satellite television stations. The fact that Iraqi civilians are the main victims of the attacks is increasingly being stressed in reports, interviews and comments.
This has raised questions in some parts of the Arab media about the legitimacy of the groups carrying out the attacks, although the blame for the upsurge in violence is still mainly being placed on the Americans.
The coverage of the violence in Iraq by Arab satellite television stations has undergone a perceptible change in recent months. Al Jazeera - often accused by the Americans of stirring anti-US feeling - has adopted less of an "Us and Them" approach. The militants are no longer referred to as the "resistance" but as gunmen or suicide bombers.
Eyewitnesses are shown denouncing them as "terrorists" - condemnations that are echoed by a parade of Iraqi officials and religious authorities. One recent attack drew this comment from the al-Jazeera reporter: "Most of the time it's civilians who pay the price for the violence that has cost thousands of their lives".
Al-Jazeera's main rival, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya, has also shown little sympathy for the bombers - a recent report, instead, painted a favourable picture of British soldiers patrolling Basra.
Both channels have now been attacked by the militants, both physically and verbally. A senior al-Arabiya correspondent in Iraq was lucky to survive a shooting last weekend claimed by one militant group, while a statement this week on an Islamist website purportedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group accused al-Jazeera of toeing the American line.
I would only add that this isn't quite as new as the report makes it out to be, and the Arab media's coverage has long been more multifaceted, but it is good that the Western media is beginning to notice this.
Don't know if you caught this, but a few days ago the English Al-Jazeera site had a headline up, something like "Al-Zarqawi, Rumsfeld Attack Al-Jazeera." That cracked me up.
Posted by: lorri | June 24, 2005 at 11:11 AM