Since bombs began falling on Iraq, Americans have been paying attention to the news in levels rivaling that of the Sept. 11 aftermath.
In the first five days of the war, the ratings for America’s 24-hour news networks hit the ceiling. Viewership for Fox News Network rose 379 percent over the same week in the previous year. CNN attracted 393 percent more viewers.
While Ed Board will never argue that a greater number of Americans tuning into international events is a bad thing, we would like to encourage you now to diversify the sources from which you get your news. Scanning over daily copies of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times will greatly supplement your understanding of events in the Middle East.
While American journalism places heavy emphasis on objectivity, finding it on broadcast news since war broke out is about as hard as determining whether or not Saddam Hussein was actually present in his last television appearance. As CNN scrolls images of American soldiers accompanied by patriotic music and Fox hands over its airwaves to soldiers sending messages back home, American broadcasts are distinctly reporting for the American side. Balanced news reports with a bit of interpretation thrown in aren’t necessarily a bad thing as long as the philosophical slant is made clear. Since the war broke out, Fox News has been very open about its own conservative leanings.
Europeans have been dealing with this type of news reporting for years. Scanning the Web sites of a few top European news sources will provide perspectives on the war that you’d be hard pressed to find in America’s mass media. The BBC in England, while subject to the same tendency to lean towards supporting coalition troops, provides more thorough coverage of the British and Australian actions in the war than we receive from our American-focused media. Also, the Web logs maintained by their embedded correspondents allow for more personal reporting than what can be broadcast on-air.
We can’t stop hearing about Qatar-based al-Jazeerah, the 24-hour news diamond of the Middle East. While the network has received some criticism for being pro-Arab, as a network based in an Arab country reporting news for an Arab audience, it is no more biased than Fox News. Since the outbreak of war, they’ve launched an English language Web site (http://english.aljazeerah.net).
To see more of the war reported from a fair, but distinctly Middle Eastern perspective, also take a look at the Web sites of Israel’s Ha’aretz (http://www.haaretzdaily.com) and Egypt’s English-language al-Ahram Weekly (http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/).
We all become news junkies during war time – why not diversify your stash?
