Friday, June 25, 2004

BEIRUT: A London-based group striving for fairer coverage of Arab issues in the British media says violence perpetrated by Arab organizations or individuals in the Middle East is often reported without explanation of the root causes, leading to an unbalanced version of a story.

"While not excusing the killing of civilians, much of the violence in the Middle East is currently due to the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, and general US interference in the region under the pretext of the 'war on terror," said Sharif Nashashibi, director of Arab Media Watch (AMW).

"Without understanding this, there is no context in reporting violent incidents in the region, which is a failure of journalism," Nashashibi told The Daily Star from London.

Nashashibi said analysis of the root causes of violence is "pivotal to ending or alleviating" it.

AMW is the only group that focuses on bias and misunderstanding of Arab issues in the British media. Its members monitor and review the British media daily, looking for articles containing incorrect information on events regarding Arab issues, negative stereotypes of Arabs and op-eds perceived as biased against Arabs.

They then send "action alerts" via e-mail to around 450 subscribers. These alerts are also received by various pro-Arab groups in the UK, urging them to write to the media to protest such articles or to thank media institutions for writing "fairly" on Arab issues.

A negative portrayal of Arabs in the British media reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s, but improved during the 1990s, according to Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding (CAABU).

The hijacking of civilian planes by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) that began in 1968, the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at

the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the influx of wealthy Arabs to London in the 1970s gave a distorted image of Arabs in the British media.

"The PFLP activities stained the entire Arab community, especially as Arabs weren't really humanized. They were treated as one large group," said Doyle, whose organization, set up after the 1967 war, is the oldest one promoting Arab causes in the UK.

Cartoons depicting Arabs as terrorists, woman-haters who beat their wives, and lazy oil-rich sheikhs became very common during that period.

"If you compare the coverage of the 1960s and 70s with that of the 90s, we find that in the 90s there was an acceptance that some of those stereotypes were inaccurate and misleading," said Doyle. "But we started having a rebirth of the violent image of Arabs after Sept. 11, just as we were beginning to win the argument."

When AMW started out in 2000, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was the only Arab issue reported in the British media. Since then, the group has been run entirely by volunteers despite the developments in the region over the last four years; including the Iraq war and occupation, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda attacks against Western targets, US threats against Syria, increased violence in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and so on.

"It is tough to keep up with the ever-increasing developments in the region, but nonetheless we are succeeding," said Nashashibi.

"People of all backgrounds who, despite having full-time jobs and families, have shown amazing dedication in the pursuit of the goal of fairer coverage of Arab issues in British media," said Ala Khazendar, another AMW member.

AMW members said funding would enable the group to hire employees to cover all the media outlets, allowing them to issue action alerts quickly.

"Our efforts would be greatly bolstered by the necessary funding to employ full-time staff alongside our volunteers," said Nashashibi.

To gain credibility, AMW tackled the perceived bias in the British media regarding Arab issues in two different ways: dealing with the facts and being consistent.

"The first involves avoiding empty, emotional declarations and concentrating on the numbers, the maps, the United Nations resolutions, international law, irrefutable events of history, and logical arguments," said Khazendar, a research assistant at Cambridge University.

AMW's website - www.arabmediawatch.com - provides a wealth of background information to ensure that the people mobilized are better informed.

Such information includes UN resolutions related to the Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts, maps related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and articles on refugees, weapons, oil, depleted uranium, water and others.

The second approach AMW has adopted, according to the group's members, is consistency.

"Consistency means that we cannot defend and expound the Arab view when Arabs are the victims ... but shy away from confronting Arab failings (oppressive political regimes, backward social constraints, occasional stupid anti-semitic declarations or articles)," Khazendar said.

AMW does not only target broadsheet newspapers; it also monitors and sends letters to tabloids to reach as many people as possible.

"While no broadsheet newspaper has a daily circulation exceeding 1 million copies, that of the The Sun is around 3 million copies per day, while The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror distribute about 2 million copies each, so (the) influence of the tabliods in shaping public opinion is significant," said Khazendar.

Despite the lack of funding and the absence of an official office, AMW has gained a good reputation among pro-Arab lobby groups in the UK.

"They certainly helped," said Doyle. "They certainly made an impact and really have galvanized the Arab community to write to the media."

Major AMW successes

In March 2004, all the BBC Newsnight's program producers began including the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem to the total number of settlers in the Occupied Territories.

In January 2004, AMW was instrumental in galvanizing pressure against Robert Kilroy-Silk's anti Arab comments, which eventually resulted in his resignation from the BBC.

The BBC and the Economist last year stopped using the term "security fence" in referring to the separation wall Israel is building around the West Bank.

In January 2003, the Independent Television Commission cleared journalist John Pilger of charges of bias leveled against him by pro-Israel individuals for his documentary "Palestine is Still the Issue," after the support he received (553 letters) outweighed complaints (116 letters).

The Metro tabloid stopped using an "Israel" dateline for events in the Occupied Territories starting in November 2003, and replaced it with the datelines "West Bank" or the "Gaza Strip."

In 2002, AMW investigated the selective approach that the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), headed by a former Israeli intelligence officer, has adopted in its translations of Arabic newspapers to show Arabs in a negative light. It provided its findings to British and Arab journalists.

In January, an AMW director filed a charge to the Press Complaints Commission against the Economist, which refused to publish his letter correcting inaccurate information the newspaper put out on a Hizbullah missile attack that killed an Israeli on the Lebanese side of the border, not on the Israeli side as was wrongly mentioned. The Economist was eventually obliged to publish the correction, in March.

By Cilina Nasser Daily Star staff

© The Daily Star 2004