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Coverage of Terrorism
Stories the Media Decide Not to Tell
An Arab American assesses coverage from his dual perspective.
By Abdelmagid Mazen
Iam a man of falafel and apple pie;
five prayers a day and a Mozart;
reading from right and left of a
page, and political spectra—a Muslim,
a Middle Eastern, an Egyptian and an
Arab. The four descriptors overlap but
are never identical, and they melt into
a dynamic deep within me that nourishes
the very meaning of my being an
American. I am not a journalist nor do
I play one on TV. But my fantasy about
a healthy interaction with the media is
ongoing.
The talk is that we, in the United
States, could do better in our propaganda
war on terrorism. Three facts are
clear to me: Propaganda and persuasive
efforts require different postures;
media are at the frontline of these
efforts, and the overwhelming majority
of the 1.3 billion Muslims, who are
at the center of both these efforts, oppose
terrorism. Yet, we are not doing
so well in getting our message through.
How come?
That is when my fantasy kicks in. It
usually starts with an innocent “what
if” or two. What if televisions were like
side mirrors of cars? If they were, we’d
see a cautioning strip: “Objects and
issues on this screen are actually much
different than they appear.” And what
if from time to time viewers were allowed
to reach into the teleprompter
to change the anchor’s script or press
the cursor and insert a missing viewpoint
or two into the story? What if TV
viewers could be seen applauding in
admiration for a piece well done, or
heard whispering gently: “Snap out of
it, please.”
Someone once defined moral dilemma
as not paying equal attention to
the humanity and equal worth of people
who are at a distance. I believe that our
efforts to inform during this crisis are
more likely to succeed when we are
willing to look wider and deeper into
the current reporting on the crisis.
This applies to media I hear and see
coming from all the lands to which my
roots, trunk and branches extend.
On my New England rooftop sit two
adjacent satellite dishes, one feeding
my television from Western media, the
other from Arab satellites, including Al-
Jazeera (The Peninsula). Currently,
many in the media attribute Al-Jazeera’s
success to a competitive advantage.
The network had early access to Taliban
sources and to the tapes of bin Laden.
This thinking, while correct, is also
truncated and could harm the media
and efforts to reposition our image in
the Middle East and related worlds.
I attribute my increasing attention
to Al-Jazeera, the Egyptian Satellite
Channel, and others to the thick description
reporters use to portray and
interpret events as well as to their ability
to disrobe the comforts of their
normal angle on issues and bring forth
those of others. For me, the questions
Al-Jazeera raises in reporting news
reach beyond the predictable, and answers
are often embedded in the complexities
of our times. The best in Western
news reporting does the same, but
too much of it is less thickly layered, its
content lessened. Time constraints are
partly to blame but, frankly, when it
comes to reporting about the Middle
East or the third world, the U.S. media
are often caught in the seductive practice
of seeking excellent answers to
very truncated questions.
In crafting questions and seeking
answers, grades of excellence and exquisiteness
apply. Once I heard a master
violinmaker in Stradivarius’s hometown
say something that applies to
how I think of news and analysis: “The
challenge for me,” this violinmaker said,
“is to have my hands do what my eyes
want to see. [Because] this doesn’t
always happen…. I have to be honest
with myself. I have to recognize my
mistakes. And when I do this, I feel, I
know, I am doing my best work.”
Whenever I interact with media, I
find myself searching for the angles
and degree of thickness with which
stories are told. Often, I search for that
pinch of exquisiteness with which a
story is spiced; naturally, the yield
ranges from the delicious to the bland.
For me, and for people rooted similarly,
Al-Jazeera transmits news and
translates its meaning across cultures.
Are the reporters of Al-Jazeera’s and
other Arab media heavy-handed in directing
their microphones and cameras
at times? Indeed. Do I find myself
disagreeing with several views expressed
on the Arab channel, from the
political to the religious? Yes, and Al-
Jazeera did air explicit criticism of its
biased reporting for the Taliban by
Sayyaf, a prominent leader of the Northern
Alliance that now controls Kabul.
But Al-Jazeera does something else
that suits how my human antennae
work. When I watch, my eyes move in
brain speed; first, deep from the central
figure of the story to people sitting
in the café in the background; then
wider to span kids in the streets, their
clothes and quality of shoes, if any; up
to the second floor of the short building
behind, to the teenage girl in the
window and the undeliberate glance
of the boy mechanic below; then into
the family room to the scant table, if
any, and the small kitchen behind; to
the worn shoes under beds, near a few
watermelons and copper pots, where
homemade bread can be kept fresh; to
what this family had or didn’t have for
dinner the night before and when they
last saw, much less tasted, meat; to the
issues in their family disputes, besides
money; then back to words of the central
figure extracted with aching simplicity
into an extended microphone.
These thick images take me deep into
lives and help me develop context for
understanding.
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 55