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Toeing the line

Jul 14, 2010 Editorial

In Guyana relations between the media, especially the press, and the administration have been testy for quite a while. This is not an unusual situation in even the emblematic democratic states given the historical development of the press as the watchdog for the people against the Leviathan. In the US for instance, President Obama has publicly declared that Fox News acts as if it’s the opposition – and treats it as such. Practically every previous US administration has expressed similar sentiments at one time or another about their particular media bête noir. There is one area of the US administration during the last half a century, however, where the media makes sure it toes the official line: relations with Israel. This stance was highlighted a month ago, when veteran US White House reporter, Helen Thomas was fired by her employer – the giant Hearst corporation – for using what they considered inappropriate language about the Israel/Palestinian situation. Asked by a Jewish rabbi at a Jewish-American Heritage Month celebration, held at the White House – “Any comments on Israel?” – she blurted, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” She elaborated that the Palestinians are “occupied” and that the Jews should “Go home” — to Germany, Poland, America and “everywhere else.” Even though she later apologised for her comment, she had to go. A week ago, there was an even more blatant example of this anomalous media behaviour. Octavia Nasr, a 20-year veteran award-winning senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs of CNN, was unceremoniously fired after daring to tweet the following: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Now Fadlallah was a Shiite Grand Ayatollah, in the opinion of AP, “one of Shiite Islam’s highest and most revered religious authorities with a following that stretched beyond Lebanon’s borders to Iraq, the Gulf and as far away as central Asia.” But as a member of Hezbollah, deemed a “terrorist” group by the US administration, was automatically a “terrorist”. Nasr quickly apologised for her comment and explained the context of her twitter post: “I deeply regret” she wrote. “It was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I’m sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah’s life’s work. That’s not the case at all. Here’s what I should have conveyed more fully: I used the words ‘respect’ and ‘sad’ because to me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of ‘honor killing.’ He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.” This was not enough: Nasr had to go. The irony was that Nasr’s comments were implicitly endorsed by the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy. In a piece entitled “The Passing of Decent Men,” Ambassador Guy wrote that he was one of the people whom she enjoyed meeting most and with whom she was most impressed; that he was “a true man of religion, leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith”; that “Lebanon is a lesser place the day after his absence”; and that “the world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths.” Even more tellingly, US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to whose Dawa Party Fadlallah was the religious guide, uncharacteristically left Iraq to attend Fadlallah’s funeral. One US analyst bitterly remarked that when one reporter expressed her appreciation of Fadlallah, that’s treachery, “but when the United States spends nearly a trillion dollars, loses over 4,000 of its own troops and over 100,000 Iraqis to establish a new government largely dominated by that same “terrorist’s” avowed acolytes — that’s victory.” The reason for the US media’s reflexive support for the “official” line where Israel is involved boils down to the influence of the Jewish lobby both on the administration and the media. With US-style democracy as our lodestar maybe soon we too may have lobbyists having our government and media singing from the same hymnbook.

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