An excellent place to start browsing is at Journalismnet, where you can get an immediate sampling of late-breaking Mideast stories as reported from around the world. It’s at www.journalismnet.com/newsfeeds/mideast
On one particular day, I found links to Mideast reports from the Norway Post, the Hindustan Times and New Zealand’s Scoop.
Over at the Israeldaily Web site– www.israeldaily.com — there were articles from many North American papers, along with links to pieces from Internet-based magazines, such as Salon and the Moscow Times, The Times of India and China’s Xinhua News Agency. One of the headlines: “Vietnamese Veterans Condemn Israel’s Military Aggression.”
And if you prefer to skim through world media on your own, you can easily find an easy-to-navigate listing at www.journalismnet.com/news
Because of the media’s potential to influence world opinion about the Mideast conflict, both sides have established media monitoring agencies. HonestReporting.com “monitors the international media for biased reports against Israel” at www.honestreporting.com It also presents “awards” to highlight positive portrayals of Israel. Winners include The Atlantic Monthly, Toronto’s National Post and columnist Charles Krauthammer.
Palestine Media Watch — http://pmwatch.org/pmw — solicits volunteers to monitor and “protest the American media’s gross professional breach in covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”
In addition to examples of reports PMW believes illustrate that North America’s media are skewed in favor of Israel, there is a section on letter-writing tips: “Avoid referring to supporters of Israel and the occupation as ‘Jews,’ ‘the Jewish lobby,’ or ‘Jewish groups.’ … Instead, use terms like ‘pro-Israel, pro-occupation activists,’ or ‘the pro Israel lobby.’ Doing so makes clear that you don’t mean to attack Jews in general, and it also helps drive home the point that the pro-occupation groups don’t speak for all Jews.”
One particularly heated discussion in the media is over the use of such words as “terrorists” or “militants,” especially after Sept. 11. In April, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer opened a new debate when he began to use the phrase “homicide bombers” rather than “suicide bombers.”
“These are not suicide bombings,” Fleisher explained. “These are not people who just kill themselves. These are people who deliberately go to murder others, with no regard to the values of their own life. These are murderers.” His comments are at www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2002/ 04/20020412-1.html
The Fox News Channel — www.foxnews.com — and the New York Post — www.nypost.com — are both using “homicide bomber,” but most media have not switched. A recent Associated Press story on this controversy — http://shlk.com/61 — quotes Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He says “homicide bomber” does not convey that the individual died in the attack. “To just switch the term, even though it is a homicide, does not resolve the challenge of being as specific as necessary.”
Although many Arab English-language news Web sites are online — at http://media.fares.net — Western readers are at a disadvantage when trying to understand how the conflict is being reported to speakers of Arabic. The Middle East Media Research Institute — http://memri.org — translates articles, reports and speeches from Arabic into English. Lately the institute made headlines when it publicized that the Saudi ambassador to Britain had composed a poem about suicide bombers. Ghazi Algosaibi’s “The Martyrs” had been published in the London Arabic daily, Al-Hayat. Earlier this year, the institute revealed that the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh had reported stories about blood libels directed at Jews. The accusations in the articles were later retracted after they were reported worldwide.