March mideast media madness

Contents
The Egyptian Israel media bias watcher
Al Jazeera’s Jewish anchor – quits
South African sponsored reconciliation radio

The Egyptian Israel media bias watcher
Adel Darwish wants to change the way Israel is covered in the British media. (h/t ETBuzz)

A new organization seeking to promote accurate and responsible media coverage of Israel in the UK is to be launched in London on Friday.By holding journalists accountable to the principles created by the industry, Just Journalism says it is aiming to promote responsible journalism and fairness in reporting on Israel.

Founded by a group of young professionals with backgrounds in the media, law, public relations and academia who are concerned with the influence of the media and their lack of accountability, the new organization will analyze and monitor press and broadcast coverage of Israel to ensure it adheres to core journalistic principles.

Just Journalism is an independent organization funded by private individuals and led by Egyptian-born journalist and Middle East commentator Adel Darwish.

This is even more surprising.

Darwish brings over 40 years of reporting experience on the region to the group. He was a senior reporter at the Independent for over 10 years and has worked on an array of other newspapers including The Daily Telegraph and The Times. The author of four books, he is a frequent commentator on BBC and Sky News, as well as major Arabic-language, American and Canadian television networks.

He worked for the Independent!

I looked up Darwish, and it turns out that he has a website. I poked around a little bit and found that he isn’t what I expected. Clearly I’d have disagreements with Mr. Darwish, but he writes this:

‘We will only recognise Israel,’ Arabs say, ‘when it returns all occupied Arab land.’ Such health warning attached to the Peace Plan could be for populist demagogic reasons, or, as many believe born of of traditional hostility to the Jewish state. The condition neverthless deflects popular anger, and possible revolt, away from Arab autocratic regimes.Peace packages, by their very nature, are usually subjected to endless the haggling by the Middle Eastern souk mentality. Nearly all Arab officials still reject a public handshake with Israeli officials. The Arabs should develop their Plan innto a Middle Eastern Road Map, of building confidence blocks. It will be slow, and nothing like the dramatic impact of Sadat’s 1977 bold visit to Jerusalem; but modest steps taken, will still be forward on the road to peace and certainly more positive than the current static situation that breeds hatred and wastes valuable resources on arms.

Of course, Arab confidence building measures have been absent in Middle East peace-making. I’m glad to see that there’s someone out there who agrees.

Al Jazeera’s Jewish anchor – quits

A little more than two years ago Al Jazeera English hired an American to be its anchor. In November 2006, Washington Post profiled former Nightline reporter David Marash, who had been hired by the Qatar based station.

In February, Marash, a lifelong broadcast newsman, became the Washington-based anchor of Al Jazeera English (AJE), the English-language spinoff of the Arabic TV news network. When AJE begins its first globe-spanning broadcast today, Marash will be its most prominent American face.Embedded in “why,” however, are two other questions: How can an American work for an operation affiliated with al-Jazeera, which achieved notoriety — and to some, infamy — by airing video communiques from Osama bin Laden, images of dead American soldiers and routine denunciations of the United States? Moreover, how could Marash, who is Jewish, work for an organization that has provided a platform for Holocaust denial and hate speech against Israel, Zionism and Judaism?

But Marash — affable, burly and possessed of gloriously resonant voice — seems almost delighted to be on the defensive. His short, glib answer: He was out of a job.

The Post’s reporter, Paul Farhi, then goes on to describe Al Jazeera , not as a terrorist propagandists, but as a bold new startup.

In some respects, Al Jazeera English will be worlds apart from its established, decade-old sibling. Al-Jazeera focuses primarily on news of the Middle East, for an audience of mostly Arabic-speaking Muslims. AJE will have broader horizons, aiming to draw a billion-plus English speakers from Madagascar to Maine — for Muslims, yes, but also for anyone else who wants another perspective on the day’s news.In other words, AJE — based in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar — is hoping to become the first non-Western source to challenge the global info-supremacy of CNN and the BBC. This, although it’s not yet available over broadcast frequencies in the United States.

Finally, Farhi gets to the problems with Al Jazeera, at least as claimed by “conservatives.”

Cliff Kincaid, who edits the conservative Accuracy in Media Report, points to troubling connections: Al-Jazeera journalist Tayseer Allouni last year was convicted in Spain of collaborating with al-Qaeda; and al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay. (Al-Jazeera says the two men are innocent.)”We haven’t seen any evidence that tells us that [AJE] will be significantly different than al-Jazeera in Arabic,” Kincaid says. “It’s sponsored by the same people, paid for by the same people and has the same editorial philosophy.”

Kincaid all but says Marash is a dupe: “The emir has plenty of Arab oil dollars to buy anyone he wants. They need Western media faces to give them credibility.”

It really shouldn’t be Kincaid’s call, it’s something Farhi could have observed himself. Later he does quote Steven Stalinsky from MEMRI, which he describes as “moderate.”

(On its Web site, MEMRI catalogues al-Jazeera’s news coverage into several telling categories, such as “Anti-Semitism,” “Conspiracy Theories,” “Suicide (Martyrdom) Operations,” “Holocaust Denial.”)

However, at the time, David Marash claimed to know better.

“Al-Jazeera is one of the most positive and significant cultural events in the Arab world in centuries,” he declares. Unlike state-controlled media throughout the Arab world, he says, al-Jazeera regularly broadcasts dissent and opposing points of view, providing “the broadest spectrum of argument” that many Arab viewers have seen.”Do they broadcast hate speech?” he asks. “Yes, they do. Is it put in context and is it discussed as hate speech? Yes, it is. Hate speech is part of the dialogue of the Middle East. To censor or to exclude it would be to lose all credibility” among al-Jazeera’s viewers, he says.

Well now, nearly two years after the taking the job (noted elsewhere too), David Marash has quit Al Jazeera.

Former “Nightline” reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a “reflexive adversarial editorial stance” against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

“Given the global feelings about the Bush administration, it’s not surprising,” Marash said.

Nice soundbite David. It really helps boost your objectivity quotient. Maybe Al Arabiya or Press TV have openings.

South African sponsored reconciliation radio

AP reports on a new radio station based in Ramallah and Jerusalem sponsored by a Jewish South African businessman intended to bridge gaps between Israelis and Palestinians.

But now RAM-FM, owned by Jewish businessman Issy Kirsh in South Africa, has greater ambitions. Modeled after a South African station that provided a venue for reconciliation after apartheid, RAM-FM wants to create a safe place for Israelis and Palestinians to talk, and make money in the process.

It’s Almost Supernatural points out that Mr. Kirsh has been vilified by South Africa’s Muslim lobby. He also points out that the station on which Ram FM is based has some pretty strong words about Israel in its editorial content. (He limits the critique to opinions on 702, not the news.)

I hope it’s not an exact model of 702. Yusuf Abramjee, the 702 station manager, (and group head of news and programming for Primedia Broadcasting) is far from a neutral and objective observer when it comes to the Middle East. He has penned a number of anti-Israel articles including one which concluded in no uncertain terms that Israel is an apartheid state and should be condemned.

Crosspoted on Soccer Dad.