Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=11/08/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01422

TITLE=Arab Media and the War in Iraq

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= This show will run all weekend long

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Arab Media and the War in Iraq. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: Dubai hosted an Arab Media summit last month with the main topic being how the war in Iraq was reported. United Arab Emirates information and culture minister, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, gave a keynote speech. He challenged journalists in the region to strive for objectivity, which he said was missing from the coverage of the war in Iraq. Sheikh Abdullah said that the Arab media ignored Saddam Hussein's record of brutality and aggression and at the same time exaggerated Iraq's military capabilities. He said the Arab media distanced itself from reality and contributed to the misleading of public opinion.

At a speech at the American University in Cairo, the U-S ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, criticized local journalists for "proposing crazy conspiracy theories and other acts of provocation." The Egyptian Press Union denounced Mr. Welch and called on journalists to boycott him. How are the Arab media reporting conflicts in the region? I'll ask my guests. Joining us by telephone from Cairo is the U-S embassy's press attaché and spokesman, Philip Frayne; and from London, Alireza Nourizadeh, director of the Center for Arab-Iranian studies and editor of the center's Arab language newsletter. Here in the studio, we're joined by Ali Al-Ahmed, executive director of the Saudi Institute; and Nimrod Raphaeli, senior analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Host: Phil Frayne, I'd like to ask a question to you first, are you there in Cairo?

Frayne: I'm here in Cairo.

Host: Okay, well, David Welch, the U-S ambassador, in the speech he gave at the American University there, said "I make a distinction between criticism, which is a proper role for the media, and hostility and provocation, which is not." How do you make that distinction and what specifically did the ambassador have to complain about that he felt went over that line?

Frayne: Well, one of the things that the American ambassador here, David Welch, was complaining about was criticism that has no foundation in facts at all, no basis in fact. And he cited as one of the articles that he had read was an editorial that implied that the United States was behind the bombing of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. And nobody has uncovered one iota of evidence to show that Americans might have been behind that bombing. I mean, that bombing went against U-S interests and here was a newspaper claiming that the only purpose of the bombing was to serve U-S interests. So we just felt that went beyond the bounds of objective criticism because it was not based on any kind of factual evidence.

Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, is that an aberration or is that the kind of thing that happens often in the Arab press?

Al-Ahmed: I'd say it happens very often, especially in Egypt, where you have these crazy conspiracies. And many in the Egyptian press used to be paid by Saddam Hussein and other Arab dictators to propagate, their, I can assert one person, this guy Bakri, Mustafa Bakri. He has been writing in his -- now that's one, I think Philip knows about this guy -- crazy ideas about things that don't happen. The guy is reporting from inside Baghdad, supposedly. He has no reporter there, but he is reporting from Baghdad about things that nobody else knows but him about the secret plans of Saddam and how the war unfolded, things that nobody should know about but him. In the Egyptian press, generally, there is so much of that.

Host: Alireza Nourizadeh, are you there in London?

Nourizadeh: Yes, absolutely, I agree with what Ali Al-Ahmed said and what Philip said, but I want to add something to this. Mr. Mustafa Bakri is very well known by everybody for his fabrication of stories, for his praising of Saddam Hussein, but I just see him everywhere, Al-Arabya, Al-Jazeera, all of them. They invite him. They talk to him as if he is somebody who always comes with new ideas about these conspiracy theories. They go as far as accusing the United States of being behind the nine-eleven atrocity. And all of this, unfortunately, it's not limited to Egyptian journalists. We see them all over the place, in Jordan. We see them in the United Arab Emirates. We see them in Qatar. And I never could understand how Qatar's authority -- they do not control these people who are coming to their television and saying something which is absolutely, I mean, there is nonsense and no truth in it. Unfortunately it happens. Today I heard Mr. Jalal Talabani's interview and he said to one of Al-Jazeera's men in Baghdad that "I said something and you are reporting something else. You are reporting what you want to report. I said I am going to visit all the provinces. You are talking about changing boundaries and borders." And you know, this is the way, unfortunately this hatred and animosity towards the United States blinded these people and they keep coming up with stories which are nonsense and [there's] no fact in it.

Host: Nimrod Raphaeli, the idea of a free press is that various press organizations will be checks on one another. When one newspaper prints something, if it's not true, another newspaper will show it up for being false. Does that happen in the Arab world?

Raphaeli: Well, first of all let me say that it is perhaps quite unusual that for the first time in a case of human conflict, the occupying force, in the case of Iraq, has brought about complete freedom of the press. I mean, historically occupation brings censorship and control. Here is a very unusual case where the occupation force says: "You are free to assemble. You are free to express your opinions. You are free to say whatever you want to say with one limited restriction and that is you cannot incite violence." So that in itself sets a precedent of enormous proportion.

Frayne: If I may, Eric.

Host: Yes, Philip Frayne.

Frayne: One of the things I used to ask Egyptians during the war when they kept writing in the newspapers that the Iraqi people want this, or the Iraqi people don't want this. I kept saying "Well why don't you talk to the Iraqi people and find out what they want instead of always speaking on behalf of them." And finally some newspapers did spend correspondents up to Iraq and interviewed Iraqis and we started to get a more balanced picture. But for a long time, the Egyptians were writing on behalf of the Iraqis without actually talking to Iraqis. And there were Iraqis in Cairo they could have spoken to.

Host: Well, Nimrod Raphaeli, on that point, and that ties into the question of, do journalists in the region challenge one another, challenge the facts put forward by their colleagues?

Raphaeli: Well, there is some -- once in a while there are some articles which challenge the misleading statements by other journalists. I'll mention one case, yesterday the United Arab Emirates institute for research issued a statement criticizing the Arab press for misleading information and for taking pleasure in the death of Iraqis as a result of acts of terrorism. The editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, which is a major newspaper in London -- a Saudi paper, but that would be a good paper, quite independent -- mentioned the statement by the American ambassador in Egypt and said, "He brings with him three billion dollars a year to Egypt. At the minimum, he should be free to say what he wants to say." So there is some give and take between journalists, except there are some papers in Syria, for example, which are quite monolithic and you don't expect them to criticize anyone. Here they constantly harp on the theme that Iraqis need legitimate freedom, which doesn't exist in Syria itself.

Host: Well, Ali Al-Ahmed, the question that Nimrod Raphaeli brings up of the criticism from the United Arab Emirates that the Arab satellite channels in particular have been taking pleasure, if you will, from difficulties in Iraq and from people getting killed. You've been following those stations. What's your sense of it?

Raphaeli: I followed Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabya, I don't pick it up here, but Al-Jazeera is really, honest-to-God, they are taking pleasure in the death of Iraqis. And this is an amazing thing for an Arab to take pleasure in the death of another. At the same time they portray those people who bomb mostly civilians, as heroes and resistance, the victims, children and women and civilians who have died, they are portrayed as if they were discarded items. The way the language is written in Arabic -- it's very, very clear to me the way they portray those civilians. And this is not only disturbing. It's criminal in my opinion. What I think Sheik Al Nahyan said is beautiful and I like the way he's talking and I like what the institute of the United Arab Emirates said. But Abu Dhabi television during the war had an Egyptian, supposedly a military analyst, who was distorting the facts from the beginning. It was a fun time for me to watch what this guy was saying because it was, most of it, hot air because, like Philip said from Cairo, they were talking and the Arab media, especially Al-Jazeera and the other satellite stations have been talking instead of the Iraqis. They are saying what the Iraqis should do. They are not reporting what the Iraqis are saying. And this is bad. It must change.

Host: Alireza Nourizadeh, what do you think about that?

Nourizadeh: Yes. May I just add to that that during Saddam's era, Al-Jazeera and other television [stations], they never talked about the Iraqi opposition. Once in a while, if they interviewed one of them, they were challenging them. They were trying to relate them to the United States as if they are puppets of the C-I-A and others. Now, these days, these people look at the council in Iraq and the majority of the members of this council spend their lives, you know, years and years struggling with this bloody regime, Saddam's atrocities. And some of them were victims of torture and imprisonment for years and years. Now they look at them and they call them, you know, puppet of United States, puppet of Mr. Paul Bremer. And you know, it's sickening, as Ali Al-Ahmed said, what the United Arab Emirati minister said is absolutely true. But I think they should also, you know, carry some sort of control on their television, what they are saying. I mean, I was watching Al Arabia, and I was shocked at the way they were reporting the killing of innocent people in Mosul and innocent people in Baghdad. And why don't they show anything positive about Iraqi's lives? I mean, look at this Ramadan in Iraq. It's totally different. The people are free to go out to worship God and to go to the holy places and nobody is stopping them, even in the middle of the night. And look at all these prayers. Look at all these buildings around and employment and all of that. They never report these things. The only thing they report: "The American is an occupying force and the Iraqi people are against occupation and they encourage -- what is incitement? Incitement to killing is something which we are watching. And when Al-Quds Al-Arabi comes out -- this newspaper and praising them as "Abtal Al-Moqawama" [or] "heroes of resistance". And, you know, you just can't stop feeling bad, feeling sick. What these people are doing, this is, this is the danger. They are brainwashing the children with the hatred of the United States and with the hatred of civilization, with the hatred of freedom and democracy. Democracy means "bad" [to them], means "occupation."

Host: Nimrod Raphaeli, let me bring you in on that question. Do you think that the media have been engaged in something that goes across the line from criticism into something that could be described as incitement to violence?

Raphaeli: I think if you listen to Al-Jazeera, you can't really escape that impression that they take great pleasure in reporting acts of sabotage. But the way it is reported is the following: They would say, "a bomb exploded under an American vehicle. Eyewitnesses" -- there will always be eyewitnesses regardless of where the event has taken place -- "have reported the number of soldiers killed and injured." If the event happened in the middle of the night, in the center of the desert, Al-Jazeera would have an "eyewitness" to report the number of casualties, dead and killed. And that's the kind of reporting, very biased. It goes on and on and on. Therefore many Iraqi --

Host: Well, there isn't anything biased necessarily in reporting that a bomb went off and soldiers were killed.

Raphaeli: No. It's biased (because) they don't know if there was anybody killed. Really the number of soldiers that were killed and injured is a speculation on their part that a bomb exploded, therefore, there must be some injuries and dead among the soldiers. We don't know. Sometimes a bomb explodes on the side of the road and nothing happens.

Al-Ahmed: Even when they bombed that water supply pipe, they showed it as a resistance act -- the water for the Iraqi people.

Nourizadeh: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid [editor of Asharq Al-Awsat] mentioned this. I remember, in one of his articles, he mentioned, where were the representatives of Al-Jazeera and some other television when that bomb went off in the Middle of the desert? And they were reporting that the Americans were lying. The Americans can not keep the facts from the people. It's a democracy, so the next day the parents of the soldier who has been killed or injured would go to the minister of defense and demand to know about their son. So it's not like other countries, where thousands of people got killed in the Iran and Iraq war and nobody knew about them until an official statement was issued ten years later. You see it is different. You really can't hide the facts.

Host: Let me ask Philip Frayne a question here, which is that this issue of control has been raised, which is why not put some control on journalists who are doing these things? How do you encourage responsibility among journalists without going over into something that could be described as censorship?

Frayne: Well, we're not interested in censoring anybody. We're trying to instill in them some kind of journalistic ethics. I mean, with freedom, freedom of expression comes responsibility. And unfortunately I think we're dealing with a phenomenon here where Arab media and Arabs in general are very angry at the United States, primarily over our support for Israel over the years. And they let that anger color their journalism. They let it color their opinions. We're just trying to instill what we consider to be taken for granted, which is that a journalist should seek the truth and not let his personal anger or personal emotions color what he's reporting on.

Host: Well, Ali Al-Ahmed, how is this effort which was put forward at the Arab media summit to encourage Arab journalists to focus on verifiable objective facts as opposed to conspiracy theories and things like that, is that making progress?

Al-Ahmed: I think there is some progress, however there are major things here we need in the Arab world. Number one, we need professionals. Most of the press who write the news are not professionals. Mostly they are people who are angry and they want to write something. They are mostly ideological people who want to view, to express their opinion through media and so on. The second problem is the state control of the Arab media. All the media in the Arab world today are owned or paid for by a state, one or another. They are not free-market media today in the Arab world. When we have free-market media, then maybe we won't feel obliged to push one agenda over the other.

Host: Nimrod Raphaeli.

Raphaeli: For example, the people in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi. This is a newspaper which was pro-Saddam all the years. And it doesn't accept advertisements. Now how does a paper today survive without advertisements if somebody doesn't pay for the cost of publishing the paper.

Host: Are you saying ---

Raphaeli: Now, I just want to say in the case of Al-Jazeera, one of the first facts that emerged as a result of the war in Iraq is that the director of Al-Jazeera was in the pay of Saddam Hussein. And he got fired as a matter of fact. I mean, he was receiving two-hundred-thousand-dollars from Saddam Hussein. So I mean, there was bias built in, in the system as a result of these people being in the pay of Saddam Hussein. Now we learned this day that the C-I-A has confiscated all the weapons of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence, including the names of all the officers in the Mukhabarat and all those who are paid, how much they are paid and in what bank accounts. I think there a lot of journalists today who are having sleepless nights.

Host: Alireza Nourizadeh, at the Arab media summit there was also a lot of criticism of the Western media for having biases of its own and is it possible for Western media to encourage a responsible objective press when there are criticisms of the objectivity of Western media at times?

Nourizadeh: Sure, sure. I have no doubt, but when I read the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, I don't see anything written with a bias or with intention to justify or clarify some -- they do clarify but they don't justify the American action. But of course, there was Fox channel, which everybody criticized, but what we have in the Middle East is tons of Fox channels. If you have only one in the United States, you have four Iranian channels: Al-Ahram, Sahar [Universal Network] . all of that. They are reporting as if they are the mouthpiece of Saddam Hussein, the way they are reporting the events in Iraq. The day before yesterday when two Iranian reporters were freed, they went back to Iran and they said -- they made fifty hour-long films about the American conspiracy with the Baath party. They said, "This war was nothing. This was just a game. The Americans and the Batthists, you know, they came to some sort of agreement with each other that the Americans would occupy Iraq and let them go free." So you know, this sort of reporting we are seeing. And they call it unbiased. While in America still you have Fox news of course, which, while I don't like it very much, but then you have C-N-N, you have A-B-C, you have other channels, you have other newspapers which they reported very well the full matters and I always enjoyed reading them.

Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, we only have about fifteen seconds left. Is there hope that as media outlets grow in the Middle East as they get to be more and more, that they'll start to challenge the facts being put forward by their competitors?

Al-Ahmed: I think when we have less state control we might see that. Market forces like [we have] in the United States prove that freedom brings creativity.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word for today. I'd like to thank my guests: Philip Frayne of the U-S embassy in Cairo; Alireza Nourizadeh of the Center for Arab Iranian Studies; Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi institute and Nimrod Raphaeli of the Middle East media research institute. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.