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June 30, 2004
Further to the disaster, on Media and Incomprehension
A well-done article on the Arabic media on this - I only caught parts on al-Arabiyah that morning but this analysis strikes me as on target:
Nagm is a cautious man, and his "if there is a ceremony" spoke volumes. By Sunday, the escalation of violence and the persistence of rumors that the handover might be moved up had journalists here and in Baghdad ready for fast-breaking news. But the timing of the handover -- which took place Monday, two days ahead of schedule and without warning or advance notice -- not only took al-Arabiya by surprise, it left the network scrambling for "visuals." No one, it seems, had bothered to call the Arabic-language channel that says it has the largest viewership in Iraq. Their cameras were not even in the room when Iraq was reborn as a sovereign nation (or "so-called sovereign" in the local parlance).
"I don't know what they were thinking -- they didn't tell anybody," said Abdul Kader Kharobi, an assignment editor at al-Arabiya, a few hours after the transfer at 10:26 a.m. local time. There was no frustration in his voice, just disgust and a lot of weary irony. The Americans have been all but incompetent in manufacturing images, he said, and yet what does it matter? After Abu Ghraib, and after what he believes was a sham investigation into the March 18 killing of two al-Arabiya journalists in Baghdad by U.S. soldiers, who believes the Americans anyway?
Emphasis added.
Again and again, needless stumbles.
"It doesn't look promising," he said. "Like some people in a bunker doing something illegal."
Later, it was announced that Bremer had left, but it took time to get images of the man (whose "reign" was widely criticized by Arab media as a failure) touching terra firma in Iraq for the last time in his trademark boots and suit. Richard Nixon, skulking out of Washington after his resignation, looked more exultant.
The paucity of images on Arab television, and lag time during the first hours after the handover, contributed to a sense that the American part of this moment was a bit furtive and sad. Al-Arabiya, which spent the day interviewing notable political and cultural leaders, often split its screen, returning again and again to a tape loop of Bremer, at the handover, looking exhausted and almost dazed. For much of the afternoon, Arab leaders talked over him, plunging into all the problems the new nation faces, the violence, the debts inherited by the new government, the question of the interim government's legitimacy. They talked, and Bremer listened, or so the juxtaposition of images seemed to say. A neat reversal of who dictates to whom, and perhaps a last dig at a man sometimes referred to on Arab television as a "dictator."
and
The most striking aspect of Monday's coverage -- besides the fact that channels al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera were left on the outside of an event that one might have expected the Americans to spoon-feed them -- is how quickly everyone moved on. Although an al-Arabiya journalist, doing man-in-the-street questions, asked a group of Iraqis, "Is this a government of stooges to the United States?" there wasn't a lot of obsessing about the meaning of the actual transfer. Rather, the handover itself was nudged to the side, and the conversation turned to the future: money, police, safety, foreign affairs, the future of Saddam Hussein (taking possession of, and prosecuting him, may be the first items of business attempted by the new government).
I still do not understand the childish peevishness of the present American govenrment in regards to the Arab Sats. Yes, they are hostile to you, but this is not Soviet TV, this is not State TV, the Arab Sats are more or less genuinely free - some limits exists due to their home bases, but then their home bases are tiny insignificant and comfortable countries - but most of their reporting is "market driven" for all the idiotic gnashing of teeth in America regarding Jihadi propaganda (which the Arab Sats are not). They respond to what their viewers tastes are - largely speaking.
For that, one has to talk to them - excluding them, not talkiing to them merely means one's own voice is not heard at all, and one talks to oneself in an echo chamber. That appears to be the sole concern of the present Administration, and it is dangerous. It is indeed true there is no convincing much of the prospective audience of the goodness of one's overall aims, above all when policy re Israel is so Sharon-centered, but damage control is often about limiting the down side, not turning a bad event into a good event.
(all from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13301-2004Jun28.html)
Posted by The Lounsbury at June 30, 2004 02:19 PM
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Jan-Jul 2004
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