Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, France 24, Press TV, Reuters, AFP e.t.c. The role of News and media in our lives has probably never been as important as now. 24/7 updated and online. One can ask the purpose of this need of in being informed? Is it simply a habit that we are used to? What do we do with all the information that we gather from media on a daily bases? We exist through others and want to feel the pains of those who are in difficult situations. Solidarity and compassion may be our common denominator wherever we might happen to be. The risk is though always there that people end up getting indifferent when they are confronted with too much biased and negative news every day.
There is nothing called objective journalism per se. We are all subjective in our assessments of different scenarios depending on which media that we have been exposed to. The analysis and historical background is mostly missing when sensational journalism is the agenda. Making news of “no news” is another phenomenon. The tabloid pictures of the young British couple have been dominating news media across the western world in the last week or so because they happen to be from the royal family. Who really cares about that incident? Not us here in Eritrea anyways.
We always confront naked pictures, veiled or unveiled faces, people wearing burka or nikab but the prophet being mocked in an American video and the Danish cartoons are always distasteful. I have never understood the purpose of provoking “the Muslim or Arab world” as if they have their own world. The predictability of the outcome after such provocations makes the advocates’ of “the sacred freedom of speech and press” as ridiculous as ever. Every media outlet is biased and has its own interest to defend depending on who finances it. Media is after all about propaganda to win the heart and minds of the masses that in most cases are the asses, unfortunately.
“The Arab spring” was hugely covered by all sorts of media and some people overstate the impact of “social Medias” in facilitating the ingredients for the “revolution”. I am not a fan of “revolutions” being televised and do not believe Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen went through “true revolutions. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the western world being the sponsors of these uprisings make the whole thing questionable. Qatar finances Al Jazeera, the British government BBC and all other Medias are either state owned or corrupted corporate owners like Murdoch own them.
The future in the countries, that have toppled the old guys, is very much uncertain even if not too many people miss Mubarak, Ali and so on. Syria is in the middle of a civil war now and the so called “opposition” is not ready to negotiate with the incumbent president whom they say, should resign immediately. This is a very arrogant and costly approach to the conflict. Assad is not an innocent guy for sure but negotiating even with the devil could sometimes be the only option out of the quagmire.
2 kommentarer:
I do agree with the statement that the mainstream news is very biased, and often focuses on weird things. Regarding the arab spring, all the major newschanells are simply following the agenda of The U.S and its european allies. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain are not covered much, while all the focus has been at for example libya and syria. When one sees to which countries are the allies of the U.S, and which are the enemies, the whole agenda becomes embarrassingly obvious. Since the protests broke out all the focus has been at the wests enemies, or uncomfortable regimes. All of it simply has to do with power politics, the west are trying to install friendly regimes in countries that are perceived hostile.
The current cover of Syria in the media is extremely manipulated. For example in Sweden the state television is extremely symphatetic to the "opposition" while anyone who says anything that could be interpreted as symphatetic to Al Assas, is moore or less labeled a maniac. Personally I dought that a majority of the syrian population do want to go through years of civil war in order to achieve a regime change. There isn't even really any evidence that a majority of the population are even anti Assad. And it is also rather questionable that the whole western media sees it as totally legitimate to portray a bunch of islmamist fighters, many of them foreign, as freedom fighters. Al Assad regime is without a sought questionable, but the opposition fighters have equally, if not moore questionable agendas.
Countries sovereignty should be respected, and I do hope that the hell that some countries in the arab world have gone through does not spread anymore. Am feeling lucky to be in, what might be, one of the safest places in the "arab world" right now.
Mr. Eddine of Marrakech
It sounds as if you have arrived to Marocco just at the right time.It is more exciting with reforms than with so called "revolutions".
I am not sure whether it is worth all the prices that some countries have paid in terms of death and destruction of a nation.
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