Media Critiques
Media Conference Aims to Answer Bias Debate
By Rami Eljundi
May 20, 2005, 15:29

Journalists themselves distinguish between being objective and being neutral.Foreign correspondents agreed that they could be objective, but no one claimed to be neutral.

More than 400 professionals from the commercial news media, government-owned networks and the alternative press showed up for three-day media conference at the University of Texas in Austin in late April.

“I was objective covering the Serb side during the war in Bosnia, but not neutral,” said Roger Cohen, columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

Nathan Guttman, a reporter for Haaretz, the left leaning Tel Aviv daily, said objectivity dependes upon putting facts in context. But he questioned, “Who knows what is the right context? How can you get to the right context without sounding biased?”

Individual experiences tend to be seen in the context of the whole society in many languages and cultures. “In English, ethics and morals count as two separate words. However, in Arabic we have one word ‘Al-Akhlaq,’ which combines the meanings of the words: values, ethics and morals,” said Samir Khader, a senior producer for Al-Jazeera News Network, based in Qatar. “The same applies to being objective and neutral.” “People have no sense of the complexity of issues,” said Karin Wilkins, a University of Texas professor. The radical separation between the personal and societal context exists mostly the industrialized West. Elsewhere Wilkins said the questions blend together: “Who is responsible of a conflict? Who is responsible for its solution?”

Panelists said the public is confused over who is to blame for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When a suicide attack occurs in Israel, television news directors interrupt regular programming. Graphic photos cover the front pages of magazines and newspapers with headlines that read: “Horror!” “Carnage!” “Anger!”

“You can not come back to regular programming after an attack in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa,” Guttman said. “The emotional impact is very strong in shaping the context of the news. The Palestinian intifada has changed Israeli society on a personal level, and we get a lot of calls if we try to cover the Palestinian side.”

Guttman said the public pressures Haaretz for an “emotional” response to events. He might have said “ethnocentric” response. He said, “When you say Israeli troops intend to invade the West Bank in response to a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, it is different from when you say that a suicide attack has taken place in Tel Aviv in response to Israel’s continuous occupation and confiscation of Palestinian lands.”

So, the public influences what becomes the interpretative context and what is considered balanced. Thomas Haskell, a historian, wrote a book, titled “Objectivity Is Not Neutrality.”

He said, “Authentic objectivity has simply nothing to do with the television newscaster’s mechanical gesture of allocating the same number of seconds to both sides of a question or [with] editorially splitting the difference between them, irrespective of their perceived merits.”

In Arabic-speaking countries, local TV stations are usually run by the government. The public often learns about what is happening in neighboring countries from media sources outside from the Arab world, such as the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and Voice of America.

“Not anymore, [not since] the airwaves in the Arab world were invaded in November 1996 by a new satellite news network called Al-Jazeera,” Khader said. Al-Jazeera like CNN changed the structure of the news media. His own network opened the door for privately run networks like Al-Arabiya and Abu Dhabi.

From his point of view, American news networks serve their own audience, and European news networks serve their own audiences. Arab news networks do the same, he said.

Media scholars make a similar point: The news tends to glorify current leaders and justify government policies. The critics contend that the news serves the promotional and propaganda interests of the those who own or pay for the media.

Despite Bush administration officials who accuse Al-Jazeera of bias, the network is the leading news service in the region. To the contrary, Khader argued, “Propaganda is dangerous for journalism. It is a culture of bias!”

Recognizing that only a fine line separates journalism and propaganda, he suggested that Al-Jazeera’s remedy is for the public to take responsibility by looking at what is reported in common by different biased media and not simply accept a conveniently biased report that is culturally self-centered. To comment about this story or contact the author, please visit World Internet News' public forum section.

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