Is the media telling the truth about Iraq? Do you have an opinion on this issue? How does the nature, quality, and content of media coverage of the Iraq war ultimately impact the lives of people in Iraq, the Middle East and around the planet?
In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate. Please join us for a live discussion on Wednesday at 22:00–24:00 GMT (6–8pm EDT).
Here’s the plan: Reuters will be hosting a panel discussion which will be videocast and audio cast via this link: http://reuters.com/IraqNewsmakers.
Several members of the Global Voices community will be live-blogging the event: Middle East/North Africa Editor Haitham Sabbah, Iraq contributor Salam Adil, Iraqi-Australian blogger who now lives in the U.S., Fayrouz Hancock, Omar of Iraq the Model blogging from Baghdad, and Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar (who will be present in the room in New York).
Panelists in the room will include CBS’s Lara Logan, independent Iraqi photo journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Reuters’ Iraq Bureau Chief Alastair MacDonald, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, Chief of Strategic Communication, Combined Arms Center, U.S. Army, and others.
We will have a live IRC chat which you can join (via the link above or on Freenode at #globalvoices. Read here for more instructions for getting on IRC, or you can use the client on the Reuters event site.). I will be present in the room as “IRC ambassador,” representing your questions and comments in the room and making sure that the panelists address as many as possible.
If you have views in advance, you can start sharing them now in several ways: - Write a comment on this post. - Write your views on your own blog and trackback to this post. - When you find blog posts and articles related to this issue that you want to share please tag them “gv-iraq” in Technorati or del.icio.us.
More links and background:
The ongoing debate about media coverage of Iraq has flared up again recently in the U.S. Last month Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asked: Have the media declared war on the war? Others think the Bush Administration has declared war on the media. Lara Logan of CBS recently did an interview on CNN in which she responded to critics who think she and her fellow journalists covering Iraq are biased against U.S. efforts there. Her response angered supporters of the U.S. Iraq policy. (Click here to watch the video clip on YouTube.) The experience of kidnapped journalist Jill Caroll also highlights the risks journalists face in covering Iraq.
In the U.S., the right-wing thinks the U.S. media is biased against the war, and the left-wing thinks the U.S. media was too unthinkingly supportive of the war. There is a real question about whether the war would have happened or unfolded differently if the press had reported different facts. In 2003 a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that an American person’s support for the war had a strong correlation to what media organizations they relied on for their news. After the war started, analysts point out that depending on whether you were American, European, or Middle Eastern, you got a very different view of the war through your media.
Some U.S. media organizations have concluded that their prewar coverage may not have been vigorous enough. The New York Times said in its mea culpa of May 2004: “we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.” Such conclusions are unacceptable to those who think the Times was too biased against the war in the first place.
We’d really like to bring your opinions on these issues to a global audience beyond normal blog-readers through this online and offline forum. If you aren’t available to participate in the live online discussion on Wednesday, don’t worry. The Reuters web team will archive the video and make shorter highlights and quotes available as well. We’re also hoping to have a transcript of the IRC discussion. We will summarize, quote, and link to your reactions and opinions here on Global Voices in the days following the event. We’re looking forward to some lively comments threads and trackbacks!
FINAL NOTE: Global Voices participation in this Reuters’ Iraq Newsmaker event is an experiment in figuring out how to create positive interaction between mainstream media and bloggers – with the goal of bringing voices from citizens’ media to a wider audience. For more information about our relationship with Reuters, please see our FAQ.
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[...] Great project underway at Global Voices Online: In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate. [...]
Asking the Blogosphere: Is the media telling the real story on Iraq?
Let’s have good news from Iraq, please. No! Not possible? Why?
Rebecca MacKinnon - Global Voices: How does the nature, quality, and content of media coverage of the Iraq war ultimately impact the lives of people in Iraq, the Middle East and a…
Barone on the press and its proclivities
He absolutely nails it.
[...] [...]
Is the “mainstream” media telling the real story on Iraq? I don’t think so. If they were, they would tell you that:
1. Corporate America identifies it’s national interests (a euphemistic term) in the natural resources of Iraq;
2. To have these national interests in their possession would need the co-operation of the top man in government, usually a corrupt dictator, which was Saddam Hussein;
3. But with Hussein biting the hand that feeds him — he was put there by America (ie, by planning to switch from dollar to euro), Corporate America had to have him removed;
4. the CIA found it difficult to have him assassinated (they did that easily with Allende);
5. So Corporate America, via Cheney, Rumsfeld and the figurehead GWBush came out with the flimsy WMDs story as an excuse, which they later renamed as “the war on terrorism”;
6. Israel, through Mossad, helped them along the way with the Trade Center Twin Tower collapse (seeing that they shared the same objective, with the Arab world as Israel’s enemy, it would help them to have the mightiest military power have the Arabs as a common enemy);
7. America invades the non-threatening sovereign nation of Iraq in order to assure that they have in their control, that nation’s major natural resource;
8. but Iraq is no threat to the world except America’s national interests.
But instead, the news we get is:
1. We have identified the Terrorist and it is Iraq (with no evidence whatsoever that links them with the Trade Center Tower collapse);
2. Along the way, they blurred Arabs and Islamists, lumping all of them under the T-word;
3. Americans are still searching for WMDs.
Why is the mainstream media not reporting the facts? Because they have been threatened not to. They have been told that if they value their life or their source of income, they should steer clear away from reporting what is not officially sanctioned by the American government’s propaganda machinery.
You will find this information on the Internet, via the non-mainstream media, no-hands-tied-behind-their-backs independent reporters and leaked memos. It’s the bloggers who see these (and sees thru the propaganda), and they create one voice against the mainstream media’s biased reporting on Iraq.
SPEAKING AS AN AMERICAN AND A VIETNAM VETERAN , SOMEONE WHO WAS BROUGHT UP TO RESPECT THIS COUNTRY AND ITS LEADERS WHETHER RIGHT OR WRONG IN THE CURRENT POLITICAL VENUE, AS ONLY TIME WILL TELL THE TALE IN HISTORY AS TO THEIR BEING RIGHT OR WRONG IN THEIR DECISION MAKING EFFORTS. I FEEL THAT I CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT THE ONLY THING THAT FEELS LIKE “VIETNAM ALL OVER AGAIN” IN THIS CURRENT CONFLICT IS THE TYPICAL LEFT WING BIASED NEWS REPROTING, THE SAME UN AMERICAN PROPAGANDA THAT THEY (BEING THE SAME PEOPLE THAT RAN THE NEWS THEN ARE RUNNING IT NOW, AT LEAST IN THE REALM OF LEFT WING THOUGHT PROCESS) USED THEN ARE STILL USING IT NOW, THE ONLY THING THAT HAS CHANGED IS THE ARENA OF CONFLICT AND THE SOLDIERS NAMES. THEY ARE STILL OVER THERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR COUNTRY, NO THEIR NOT FIGHTING IN THEIR COUNTRY BUT THE ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR COUNTRY AS IN TEHY CHOOSE TO BE IN THE MILITARY OF THIS UNITED STATES AND DID SO VOLUNTARILY, WITH FORE THOUGHT AND ACTION ON THAT THOUGHT. YES MANY OF THEM WISH THEY WERE NOT THERE, BUT THEY WENT ANYWAY, THE MEDIA TALKS ABOUT MORALE AND THE SOLDIERS THAT ARE COMPLINING ABOUT BEING INVOLVED IN AN ILLEGAL WAR, WELL WHERE ARE THEY , FUNNY THING i DONT SEE THESE MASS’S OF COMPLAINERS GETTING OFF BACK HERE IN THE STATES AND HOLDING NEWS CONFERENCES TO MAKE THEIR COMPLAINTS KNOW IN THE PUBLIC EYE, ITS BECAUSEITS ANOTHER IN A LONG LINE OF POLITICAL INVENTINONS OF THE LEFT WING LIBERAL RUN MEDIA TO CONTROL THE MASS’S THROUGH THEIR OWN AGENDA AND THE USE OF PROPOGANDA VIA THEIR NEWSPAPRES AND RADIO AND TV STATIONS. ANOTHER VIETNAM, LOOK IN THE MIRROR, BEFORE YOU BLURT OUT SUCH FOOLISHNESS.
My God! In which world do the american people live? “Fight for their country”? “left wing liberal media”? hey, for decades the american people has been living in a dream where they think they are a nation of “Rambos”, “Superheroes”…All their culture (movies, books, Tvs) shows that USA alwyas has an enemy, and they are the nice guys against the bad guys. And they truly believe that their children go to the battlefield fighting for freedom, for their country, for the american way of life. I don’t think so….All those words about left wing, war on terror..is only a matter of those boys and girls are fighting for the big companies interests…economic interests. For years the politicians have been sending kids to death to attend their purposes, making them believe they are fighting for a honorable cause. Please folks, return to reality. Your kids are dying in Iraq and you are completly blind. There’s no honor in dying for falsities and lies.
STATE OF THE NATION
Haliburton is for certain
as evil as a corporation can be.
Making more billions buying and selling
the destrucion of foreign countries.
That Dick Cheney is really so zany
wanting a world power of one.
Strong and free, dumb as can be
imposing democracy at the end of a gun.
And Condi Rice is oh so nice
a token for the minority.
As for George Bush Jr., it is only a rumour
that he cares for the poor and unfree.
Those damn extremist in the middle east, need a force to balance them, i can only see US armed forces as the one, who can do it to neutralise the treats, I see them as treats, as they are the one who will kill innocent peoples on the street, kill families for revenge, or kill the civilians and citizens of a particular country, in more accurate terms, they are the terrorist.
One day if one island republic offended the terrorist group, they will not hesitate to kill everyone on the island, including children, women and babies, similiar to what they will like to do to US citizens or Chinese workers in Pakistan.
Those maniac i mentioned, do not fight like a man, face to face with you, they will shoot a bullet at your back, hide behind the crowd, use children as human shield, dress up like a black robe women, tried to kill everyone holding american passport, fanatically sick in their mind, strongly believe that they are fighting a holy war, that killing every infidels will make them going to heaven, like a cult members, who are willing to sacrifice their life at a blow of whistle.
In China, if they tried to bomb the police station, they don’t get lock up in nice places like Guntanamo bay with beds and toilet bowl, and gets media attention or sympathy, like what they get in the west. they just dissappear.
This whole vicious hate cycle started from the middle east war of the 1970’s when jews defeated the arabs nations, unable to fight a coventional war like a man, the extremist started to hijack flights, kill civilians, plant bombs and hate mongering. This fanatics maniacs call themselves jihad holy war soldiers but they are actually mentally sick cult followers. After rounds of earthquake, tsunami and bombs, these fanatics still strongly believe that they are the chosen ones by heavens and the only way to get there & end their suffering as human beings is to kill the infidels.
These are the same groups of stereotype people who wear the white robe, smash the glasses of playboy magazine office in indonesia, ( while allow a man to keep three or more wifes with age of 8-16 years old, I don’t know what they do in their private room, but the girls finally get pregnant, must be something immoral ? )
The same stereotype also kill innocent monks in southern thailand, kidnap the rich in philippines, kill foreign workers in pakistan, bomb the mosque go-ers in iraq, smash hindu temples, drive the plane to WTC on 11/9, kill the police in Urumuqi in china, and dreaming of building an empire span from indonesia to kosovo.
oh, forgot to mention that, before they dissappear in China, they were kept in chinese version of guantanamo bay too. You know how is it like.
three hundreds kids were killed in Beslan school hostage, many more was murdered in Chechnya, the same thing is happening in southern Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, India, all in the name of jihad holy war.
Don’t forget the bali bombing, who on earth is sick enough in their mind to kill innocient civilians just because they are westerners ? who will not hesitate to bomb disco and bars ? who on earth is sick enough to kill school children and teachers ? what kind of man will seized hostages in the Moscow theatre ? target at civilians ? or the mosque go-ers in iraq ? world civilization and peace is not going anywhere with this type of mentally sick maniacs living among us.
The urgency to clean up this maniacs in their door steps and in their hide outs in iraq or any prt of the world, is such an urgent issue that all other issue mentioned here and above becomes not important anymore.
United effort needed to combat terrorism
(China Daily) Updated:2005-07-25 09:51
Evidence of a link between the fatal explosions in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and those in London since July 7 is lacking.
But the short interval between the incidents alerts us to a new upsurge in acts of terror, and reminds us of our collective vulnerability when terror attacks.
We send our deepest condolences to those killed or wounded in the deadly attacks. We denounce the evil-doers, whoever they are, whatever excuse they have, in the harshest words our language offers.
Terrorism is a heinous crime against humanity. Its extremely damaging potential lies in the fact that we never know when is the wrong time, or where is the wrong place to be.
As with the carnage in Sharm el-Sheikh, it is not yet known what the intended target was. All we know is that the victims include not only Egyptians but also foreign nationals who happened to be there.
Who, apart from the terrorists themselves, could have ever anticipated the popular destination for holidaymakers, venue for major international conventions and host of the historic Middle East peace talks five months ago, would become a killing ground in the small hours of an otherwise peaceful morning?
The international nature of the casualty list is a fresh reminder that no country and its citizens can claim immunity from the threat of terror in our increasingly globalized world.
Terrorists’ repeated success in sowing fear and panic makes us appear helpless before those shooting from the dark.
We will be helpless if we do not jointly act, or we attempt to confront the threat single-handedly.
As long as terrorists can find havens in any corner of the world, the web of terror will keep regenerating after any setback. We have learnt this from the gains and losses of the world’s anti-terror campaign after the September 11 attacks.
But are we capable of weaving an all-inclusive safety net for collective defence? That is a question all countries and their leaders should ask themselves.
The post September 11 war on terror has uncovered the conspicuous limits of individual countries’ initiatives. A lack of consensus on defining terrorism, as well as countries’ diverging agendas, for instance, has sometimes rendered strategies for combating terrorism ineffective.
The United Nations may well be the sole body capable of managing a meaningful joint defence. A divided UN will be a lame duck. Unless all member countries unite, speak with one voice and act in concert, no promises of peace will bear fruit.
When the UN was conceived, it carried humanity’s aspirations for development in a peaceful environment. These dreams remain unchanged.
Reform of the UN is necessary not because any specific nation should have a louder voice on the Security Council, but because it should be more efficient when facing today’s challenges, among which is terrorism.
It is hoped this session of the UN General Assembly will finally iron out disagreements on the definition of terrorism and pass a practical and comprehensive programme of action to deal with it.
It will prove detrimental to all if its agenda of reforms continues to be hijacked by the private interests of any one country.
[...] From Global Voices - In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate. Please join us for a live discussion on Wednesday at 22:00–24:00 GMT (6–8pm EDT). [...]