Shockingly awful
Arab viewers are becoming increasingly disturbed by media reports of atrocities inflicted on civilians during the US-led war on Iraq as well as at double standards in western reporting, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif
It was meant to be a routine update on the situation in Baghdad on the eight o'clock news last Friday, the ninth day of the war. But Al-Jazeera's correspondent Diyar Al-Omary broke the news that the channel has obtained exclusive footage of the latest attack on civilians, which took place at Al-Shula'a district in Baghdad when a market was hit by what is believed to be either a US Tomahawk or Cruise missile.
The report that followed carried shocking scenes of blood-spattered pavements, the remains of a body and pictures of coffins bearing the names of Mussa Al-Kazem, Hussein Al-Ash'ary and others. There were scenes of men weeping and beating their chests and of women kneeling to kiss the foreheads of those they had lost.
This was "another massacre" carried out by US-led forces in Iraq the Al-Jazeera presenter Rima Salha said. Al-Jazeera, the first television station to air footage of the incident, was soon followed by reports on Abu Dhabi TV, which also broadcast images from the scene.
Broadcast on BBC World and CNN only 15 minutes later, the allied bombing of the Al-Shula'a market was not thought sufficiently important to be put at the top of the news, signalling the differences between Arab and Western media representations of the war.
As the US-led invasion of Iraq enters its third week, there is a growing sense among Arab viewers that they are watching a war different from the one reported on the Western news networks.
Al-Jazeera, along with a barrage of Arab TV satellite stations, such as the one-month-old Al-Arabiyya, Abu Dhabi TV, the Beirut-based LBC/Al-Hayat and Future TV, have helped shape the perceptions of viewers across the Arab world on how the war is progressing. And, while on American and British networks a series of premature claims, such as the taking of Umm Al- Qasr on the second day of fighting, reports of an uprising in Basra and the discovery of a chemical weapons factory near Annajaf, have made the headlines, on Arab stations these claims have been contested by the channels' correspondents, meaning that Arab viewers have sometimes received a very different account of events.
Countless stories have already been written assessing the media coverage of the US-led war on Iraq, looking in particular at the controversial marriage between the media and the military machine in the form of the so-called "embedded reporters" accompanying the coalition troops.
No previous war has been so extensively covered by the world's media, with more than 2,000 reporters being accredited to the US military, and somewhere between 500 and 900 of these being "embedded" with coalition forces and telling the story as the military men direct. The current US-led war against Iraq has also been the first in which Arab viewers have had access to round-the-clock reports of the military campaign from different news sources. And, while it has been well nigh impossible always to separate fact from fiction, given the sheer volume of information being beamed onto TV screens, Arab viewers have already made a choice.
For them, this is an illegal war of aggression, causing some observers to argue that if there has been an emphasis on US and UK channels on allied victories, patriotism and flag-waving, then on Arab channels there has been a corresponding emphasis on coalition losses and civilian deaths, each set of channels playing to their respective audiences.
Within this media landscape what sets Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV apart is the impressive network of correspondents across Iraq and the region that each network has access to. Al-Jazeera, for example, has four correspondents in Baghdad, two in Basra, one in Mosul and one in northern Iraq. Some of these -- such as the channel's top news reporter Tayseer Alouni, who also covered the Afghanistan war -- are experienced in war coverage, and both channels also have embedded journalists with the coalition troops.
Abu Dhabi TV has also been keen to have its in-house military expert comment on joint US-UK military briefings, something lacking on Al-Jazeera, which has opted instead for a political commentator. BBC World has also made extensive use of military analysts, providing commentary on embedded reporters' reports.
To meet accusations that they are taking a pro-Iraqi stance, many Arab channels have tried to give at least equal airtime to US and Iraqi officials. US officials have not been absent from Arab channels, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell giving three interviews in a row to Al-Jazeera, and Abu Dhabi TV and the Egyptian Satellite Channel have been careful to reiterate the US administration's line on the war in the interests of balanced reporting.
Soon after Powell's interviews, Al-Jazeera hosted Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al- Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, who attacked Powell's arguments. Similarly, Abu Dhabi TV hosted Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, who also attacked Powell.
The coverage provided by the Arab channels has often been in marked contrast to that provided by both CNN and BBC World, where there has sometimes been a sense that reporters were trying to present drama rather than news. In addition, some of the BBC's embedded reporters have offered highly speculative accounts of what is happening in the field, their tone being supportive of the coalition forces, to Arab ears sounding highly partisan.
At the end of the first week of fighting, for example, when reporters on the Arab channels were indicating that the war was not going as planned, Paul Adams, BBC correspondent at As-Silyia Central Command, was still insisting that "nobody here feels that it -- the war -- is going 'off-script' and everything is going as planned," reporting that "there is a steady advance on Baghdad" and belittling Iraqi resistance. Arab reporters, by contrast, at the same time were offering a corrective version to this account, already saying that the US-led campaign was not going as planned.
There have also been cases of flagrant double standards in reporting the war, as, for example, when BBC World warns its viewers before presenting Baghdad- based reporters' stories that "their movements are restricted and their reports are monitored by the Iraqi authorities". A similar warning is not given when presenting stories filed by embedded reporters with the coalition forces, whose stories are also monitored, this time by western military censors.
Al-Jazeera has stressed this point, with presenter Gamal Rayan last week warning the channel's viewers that a report by Amr Al-Kahki, Al-Jazeera's embedded reporter with the US troops in Umm Al-Qasr, "had been subject to censorship from US military censors".
Such censorship may have meant that there have been few stories on the western networks reflecting a loss of morale among the coalition troops. Al-Jazeera has managed to run such a story.
During the first week of the war, main stories focussed on the military operations and on the looming humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The Arab channels began to show reports on the humanitarian situation in Iraq, including stories on how refugee camps on the Iraqi- Jordanian border, constructed in the expectation of refugees fleeing Iraq once hostilities started, have remained empty, as Iraqis are going back to Baghdad from Amman and Syria in their thousands.
The BBC has ignored this story, showing instead a report on the arrival of the British aid ship Sir Galahad at the Iraqi port of Umm Al-Qasr, which was kept at the top of the news for a full day last week. Absent from the report was any mention of the fact that the ship, according to the British newspaper the Independent, was not just carrying humanitarian aid: it was also stockpiled with military equipment.
Following the Sir Galahad's arrival, the BBC aired pictures of UK soldiers distributing aid to the inhabitants of Safwan, a town on the Iraq-Kuwait border. This looked like a 'photo-opportunity' -- an attempt to portray the coalition soldiers in a positive light, as they forced smiles and talked to the locals in a language they did not understand. There was a further shot of a UK soldier playing a recorded greeting in broken Arabic, as Iraqi civilians stared uncomprehendingly at him.
By contrast with the BBC, the Lebanese channel Future TV has carried very good coverage of the humanitarian aspects of the conflict, showing Iraqis speaking their minds freely.
There has also been the question of omission in Western reporting of the conflict. BBC World, for example, made no mention of British troops firing at a food-storage unit in Basra, which Al-Jazeera immediately reported. Similarly, the BBC and Al-Jazeera have given contradictory accounts of Iraqi civilians fleeing Basra. While the BBC reported that the civilians were fleeing the city in order to escape fighting, Al-Jazeera reported that the movements in population had been caused by people from Azubayer, a town near Basra, seeking refuge in Basra. Far from leaving the city, Al- Jazeera reported, people were in fact trying to enter it.
Finally, Al-Jazeera in the first week of the war came under fire from British officials for its decision to air a 30-second clip of two dead British soldiers. However, neither BBC World nor CNN have balked at showing images of captured Iraqi soldiers or civilians on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs and their heads bowed before invading US soldiers.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 3 - 9 April 2003 (Issue No. 632)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/632/sc19.htm