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Sunday, November 19, 2006

So says an op-ed in today's Boston Globe written by a faculty member of the American University in Cairo, Lawrence Pintak: America's media bubble

...US foreign policy is being reflected through a blinding array of prisms. Yet America continues to pursue an analogue communications strategy in a digital age.

Just look at the satellite landscape. Here in the Middle East, we can watch more than 300 channels, from Hezbollah's al-Manar (labeled a terrorist organization by the United States) to Fox News (which, to borrow Fox's favorite line, "some people say" is the moral equivalent). Turkey, India, Singapore -- wherever you look overseas, all-news satellite channels are de rigueur. Tri lingual France 24 launches in a few weeks to bring "French values" to global coverage. China has a channel. Russia Today will soon broadcast in Arabic. Latin America now has a continent-wide all-news channel. Africans are also talking about one. And then, of course, there's the Internet.

The perspective of these channels is different. So is the spin. The American election was a big story here in the Middle East, but cheering Democrats shared the screen with gut-wrenching images of blood-drenched Palestinian children torn to shreds by Israel tank shells as they lay asleep in their beds. More of those "birth pangs of a new Middle East" that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked about last summer. Americans may be talking change, but Arabs, watching those scenes repeat endlessly through the day, saw business as usual...

I'm pretty sure there was a time when American-style educational institutions were meant to bring the American educational style and perspective to the Middle East, not give a venue for Americans to be proselytized by the Middle Eastern viewpoint.

Two words for Rupert Murdoch: FOX Arabic.

3 Comments

This guy ought to take a look at Al-Jazeera! Or at the whole of Arab media.

The opinion piece is a bit scattered. It looks to me that Mr. Pintak doesn't like the US, and wrote an opinion piece around that. To compare Fox News to al-Manar is absurd. AL-Manar is directly funded and owned by the terrorist group Hezbollah. Nothing like that can be said of Fox News

He obviously wanted to say a lot more but had to tone it down for publication.

"which, to borrow Fox's favorite line, "some people say" is the moral equivalent" is weasel-words for *him* saying it.

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