Arab Media Watch

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AMW media interactions: 29 September - 5 October 2008

Arab Media Watch: Press Releases

During the week of 29 September - 5 October 2008, Arab Media Watch published a monitoring study entitled "The British Media & Israel's Capital." An ITN journalist emailed AMW saying: "Thanks for this...very interesting."

The Guardian and Economist quoted AMW adviser Nadim Shehadi in articles on Lebanon / Syria; Syria Today published an article by AMW adviser Rime Allaf about pan-Arabism and the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; and AMW member Brenda Heard wrote an article on BBC coverage of a car bomb in Syria.

AMW helped the BBC with contacts for a documentary on Israel / Palestine; and award-winning investigative journalist John Pilger emailed AMW seeking our help with a forthcoming documentary on war and the media.

Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne said he would be "honoured and thrilled" to be a speaker at AMW's next fundraising dinner.

AMW published an article by Greg Philo of the Glasgow University Media Group about British media coverage of issues such as Israel / Palestine; AMW also published an article on Canadian media attempts to silence criticism of Israel.

AMW liaised with the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Channel 4, BBC, London Paper, Glasgow University Media Group, Arab News Broadcasting, Press TV, Verso Books, and the Palestinian and Saudi embassies.

A reckoning in Gaza

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

Simon Block on why he chose to write about Thomas Hurndall, the British student shot by the IDF.

8 October 2008
The Guardian

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

By Jonathan Cook, author of Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).

8 October 2008

No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel's bestseller list - and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel's biggest taboo.

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

By Carel Moiseiwitsch and Gordon Murray
7 October 2008

In June 2007, the Palestine Media Collective produced a newspaper parody of The Vancouver Sun that satirized the anti-Palestinian bias of CanWest, the largest media conglomerate in Canada. One example was an article entitled "Study Shows Truth Biased Against Israel" by Cyn Sorsheep. Six months later, CanWest launched a lawsuit against those who "conspired" to produce and distribute the parody.

Demeaning democracy

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

6 October 2008

Watching the US presidential election from the Arab region is a confusing vocation. At one level, American democracy is an impressive, vibrant, often stunning phenomenon that permits any citizen - certified idiots and genuine geniuses alike - to seek and assume public office, and control the destiny of society. It produces some of the most monumental errors and costly adventures in world history, in the military and economic fields, but it also contains the mechanisms for its own self-correction, reconfiguration, improvement and re-birth - as we witness these days in the economic arena.

At another level, America also provides a powerful argument against a totally open, unregulated democratic system, because it allows the volatile and sometimes infantile emotional psyche of a bare majority of citizens to determine the exercise of immense power.

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

By Atef Alshaer
6 October 2008
Electronic Intifada

It is inspirational to find Palestine richly meditated in poetry. Two new poetry collections provide a robust testament to that and to the eternal durability of poetry as a synthetic medium of expression and a concise reservoir of evocative communication, harboring meaning, signification, resonance and music. One collection is by the Palestinian-American poet Sharif S. Elmusa, Flawed Landscape, and the other is made of selected works by various poets edited by Remi Kanazi, Poets for Palestine. When poetry is concerned with such a historically and culturally grounded issue as Palestine, one expects unusual richness, for the context of that issue entails a range of elements that provides the poet with substantial materials for substantial meditation. Indeed, this is what one encounters in these two collections: richness of vision and an engaging style.

Solidarity lessons from 1973

Arab Media Watch: Analysis

Memories of pan-Arab unity during the 1973 October War remain strong even 35 years after the event, writes Rime Allaf, Arab Media Watch adviser and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Syria Today
October 2008

Arab Media Watch: Press Releases

During the week of 22-28 September 2008, the Guardian published a commentary by AMW adviser Ghada Karmi about Israel / Palestine.

A reporter with a national daily British newspaper who wrote a profile of Tzipi Livni including an interviewee arranged by AMW thanked us for our help.

A senior figure at the Daily Mirror expressed an interest in meeting with AMW.

Press TV interviewed AMW adviser Guy Gabriel.

AMW announced the forthcoming launch of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, whose editors include AMW adviser Dina Matar.

AMW organised a talk by Mona Saudi, launched her book "Forty Years in Sculpture," and arranged for British Satellite News to interview her.

AMW liaised with the BBC, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Daily Express, ABC News, Arab News Broadcasting and the Palestinian Embassy.

Arab Media Watch: Press Releases

On 2 October 2008, the Economist quoted Arab Media Watch adviser Nadim Shehadi in an article on Lebanon / Syria entitled "Jihadist blowback?"

More news, less views

AMW Media Studies 2008

The article below, by Greg Philo of the Glasgow University Media Group, was originally sent to the Guardian for its comments page.

"It shows how public debate on political issues is narrowed on the most influential media because of the absence of critical voices - whether the issue is the financial crisis or world conflicts such as in Israel/Palestine," he wrote. "New polling evidence from YouGov and the GUMG suggests that this is not at all what the public wants. The article was rejected by the Guardian on the grounds that 'it would be read as a piece of old lefty whingeing about bias'."