Split wide open

The coverage of events in West Asia and North Africa by Western media outlets over the last few months confirms that media in the West believes what it wants to believe despite facts that point to the contrary. Based on how the events have been covered, what jargons have been used and how much airtime or newsprint has been spent on the coverage, some observations are inescapable and point to the deeply ingrained bias of Western media.

To begin with, let’s take a look at the coverage of the events leading to the uprisings. While comparing the coverage by Al Jazeera and Western media outlets, it is evident that the latter had completely and conveniently ignored the seething anger in the region. It is therefore completely misleading to think that Western media outlets have been worried about the repressive regimes in the past too. If you look at the amount of time and newsprint spent by these outlets over the last five years in this region, it is evident that barring a few reports on the repression and other violations of human rights, the media has largely focused on soft stories coming out of these countries.

Take, for example, The Guardian,  one of Britain’s most respected newspapers. When Ben Ali fled Tunisia, the tone and tenor of The Guardian’s reportage and editorials changed. Expressions like “a brutal dictator and his venal family,” a “police state” and “torture and human rights violations” started pouring in slowly, but subtly. But what is disturbing is that The Guardian’s righteous anger towards this “vicious dictator” and its concerns about “the poor people living in the clutch of his police state” came too late in the day.  The data provided by The Guardian itself reveals that last year, Tunisia was one of their least reported nations – 114th out of a possible 194 – with merely 18 “content items” in 2010. And the cumulative count of all the news items published on Tunisia in all the British broadsheets over the last three years comes to merely 3,500. That is all. Let us focus on the other side of Atlantic as well.

The media in the US has taken a different trajectory following 9/11 and has turned visibly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab. Stereotyping is common and news is often selected to play to  the gallery. Notably, these media outlets have a pro-Israel bias that is evident in any analysis that follows. When the Egyptian uprisings broke out some commentators such as Bill O’ Reilly and Glen Beck invoked fear and loathing and gave it a spin to suggest that these popular revolts will turn Egypt into an Islamic theocracy like Iran, which will not be in the interest of either Israel or America. The Muslim Brotherhood was maligned and people just stopped short of calling it another version of Al-Qaeda.

In June 2009, following the presidential elections in Iran, the initial days saw lots of protests from the supporters of the losing candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The protestors turned violent and the regime ordered a crackdown. Around 100 odd people died, including members of police forces. Conveniently, Iran was featured in as many as 742 articles in the major American broadsheets. However, in April 2008 when an attempted general strike in Egypt saw hundreds of thousands of anti-regime protestors clashing with the police, with lots of causalities, not surprisingly, Egypt made an appearance in as less as 28 articles in all. Interestingly, not a single journalist cared to mention the name of the city that was the centre of the unrest—in this case Mahalla. In fact, for the first few weeks, there were no foreign correspondents reporting from there. Although regional Arabic dailies were giving it adequate space.

Let’s focus on the choice of lexicon. Starting with BBC, it was easy to see a rather self-righteous sounding “Egypt in Crisis” dominating their web-pages as well as TV screens. Compare it with Al Jazeera which was more forthcoming with the headline “Egyptian Revolution” which matched the actual situation on the ground. As the situation worsened, BBC joined rank with the people and appeared to celebrate the ousting of Mubarak, at least ostensibly. However, it was impossible to ignore a special slot that BBC had created to gauge the reactions emanating from Israel.

 Nobody asked why only the reaction of Israelis mattered and not, for example, Iranians or Lebanese or, for that matter, Indians. On the other hand, other print outlets, and most notably the ones from Rupert Murdoch’s stable indulged in fear-mongering and dismissed the Muslim Brotherhood without discussion.

The Times appeared to be happy with the ousting but kept on harping the refrain of “outside intervention” till Mubarak’s goose was cooked. The Daily Mail was blunt: “Forget the Facebook idealist”, it lectured, “it’s the Brotherhood the West should fear.” As discussed, The Guardian was not far behind and discussed the possible “Taliban treatment”.On the other hand, Al Jazeera’s English coverage was first rate and included extensive research, live footages, a rainbow of opinions and forecasts.

It also did one remarkable thing, that apart from the Slate magazine, none of the media house is known to do. It asked its correspondents to come out with their respective ideological inclinations so that listeners and readers could put their analysis in perspective.