What has the news coverage of the Chechen conflict and the Moscow theater hostage situation been like in the news media in Arab/Muslim countries? Have they been painting either side as heroes/villains? Terrorists? Human rights abusers? Committers of justifiable, if regrettable acts of violence?
What historical/political/sociological perspective can you offer as to why news coverage has been the way it has? Please differentiate among countries/regions as you feel appropriate.
(And on a related note, I asked this a few months back and got no responses: what, if any, news sources in English do you recommend for balanced reporting on the Middle East?)
N.B.: I’m posting in this forum rather than IMHO in GD because the folks who are likely to have informed responses on this issue tend to hang out in GD.
Chechyna I honestly don’t know - I’ve managed to avoid all the papers this week except for the business pages.
For a digest/syndication of lots of news from publications around the region, try http://www.zawya.com - it looks like just business news but isn’t, they have a lot of politics and general stuff as well.
Hunt around and find the list of papers they syndicate from - many of those (Jordan Star, Arab News, etc) also have online versions.
http://www.gulfnews.com and http://www.khaleejtimes.com are the main English newspapers in the UAE - they will give you a good idea of how stuff is reported here, yes there is obviously lots of pro-Muslim bias.
For an unbiased source frankly you will have to step outside the region - many governments here just will not allow the Israeli point of view in their publications, or on TV (likewise Israel banned CNN IIRC so I doubt their papers are any much more impartial, but I may be wrong). I would recommend http://news.bbc.co.uk because they have no political agenda, they have native correspondents in every country, it’s free and the way they link to archive and background stories is really helpful.
Small hijack here - “Israel” did not “ban” CNN. I believe a cable distributer dropped them in favor of Fox (in response to complaints from the public).
Complicated story. I shall try later on to supply some characterizations. The general thrust, although coverage -depending on source- is not very heavy. Palestine grabs the lion’s share, predictably.
Give me a bit, I shall try to.
BBC. Economist. Le Monde, generally has decent North African coverage as well as classical ME.
Following up Istara, I would note that the English language coverage is of a different character than Arabic - one should draw only hesitant conclusions based on the two.
In addition, let me cite al-Bawaba as an online news source. There is also Arabnews, a Saudi source.
Finally, I think I should follow this OP up with something on al-Jazeerah. Unfortunate recent developments.
Well, unfortunately I have to stick primarily to English, with maybe some supplements in French if I find any. (Spanish and Russian probably won’t be so useful for this purpose, I guess.)
If you could generalize about how coverage in Arabic or other area languages is different than French/English, that would be very helpful.