the
channel
|
11
adcasters?
line has changed war coverage forever… The
trouble is you’re working out live on the air
what’s going on. In a normal programme you
have time to work on something.” But,
Sambrook concluded, the BBC, despite
critiques by some pro-war and some anti-war
listeners, will never put “adrenalin before
accuracy - that is a counsel of despair.”
In reflecting the latest war news, well-
produced radio which ranges far beyond the
battle lines still matters greatly in regions of
the world where TV and the Internet are less
pervasive. One thinks immediately of rural
areas in the Middle East and central Asia, not
least the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran
and Afghanistan and the barren, flat deserts
of the Maghreb where up-to-the-minute, solid
news and analysis are avidly sought. How does
the situation in Iraq affect others? Voice of
America language services have sought
answers to that question, in reportage or
interviews in Bengali, Hindi, and Thai to
anxious relatives of expatriates working in
the Gulf region, in expert analysis of interest
to those in Eritrea and Ethiopia worried that
international donors might turn most of their
attention to war relief, and forget the famine
and potential starvation in the Horn of Africa.
Andy Sennitt of Radio Netherlands says that
people tend to judge what they watch, hear
or read in this media-rich age based on their
pre-conceptions. Objectivity, in this time of
many media choices, appears at first glance
to be increasingly in the eye or ear of the
beholder. Sennitt quotes William Rees-Mogg
of the
Times
of London as observing that your
perception of how the war is going may depend
on which news channel you watch. As Sennitt
puts it, “Nobody who has compared Al Jazeera’s
coverage (stressing Iraqi civilian casualties)
with that of the Fox News Channel (trumpeting
coalition military successes) would have much
trouble agreeing with him.” Clearly, there are
Voice of America (VOA)
Nearly all 53 Voice language services
converted to news and information formats
after President Bush’s announcement of the
first air raid on Baghdad just after dawn on
March 20. VOA reporters were on the
frontlines with U.S. army and marine
contingents in Iraq, with British forces near
Basra, on aircraft carriers in the Gulf and the
Mediterranean Sea, and at U.S. Central
Command headquarters in Qatar, as well as
in Kuwait and a refugee camp on the Iraqi-
J o r d a n i a n
frontier. A VOA
Arabic website,
restored
in
J a n u a r y ,
experienced a
300 percent
surge in visits
during the first 10 days of the war
(voaarabic.com). VOA-TV instituted daily
Newsline
programs to cover the war, including
expert analysis and reports from Iraq, the
White House, the Pentagon and United
Nations. Broadcast hours increased or were
projected to increase in Kurdish (one to four
hours daily), Turkish (one to two hours daily)
and Azerbaijani (one to two hours daily).
Other U.S. government-funded networks
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Free
Iraq in Arabic also had reporters with U.S.
forces and is on the air 12 hours a daily with
news, features, and interviews of specialists
on the politics, culture, and poetry of Iraq. Its
wide-ranging shortwave transmissions are
heard well throughout the country. Radio Sawa,
a predominantly pop music youth-oriented FM
programme which replaced VOA’s Arabic Service
a year ago is broadcast around the clock. Sawa
(which means “together” in Arabic) doubled
its news and information windows to seven
hours daily, including a specially tailored
programme stream to Iraq. Another new 24/7
sharply differing approaches. But what would
a channel or frequency switcher among
international broadcasters find?
Here’s a broad brush description of how
government-funded global networks are
meeting the challenge:
British Broadcasting Corporation
From the very first hour of the war, the World
Service and BBC World television have offered
continuous, rolling coverage for their
estimated 150 million weekly listeners. Their
Middle East reportorial presence was
expanded, with correspondents filing from
Baghdad, northern Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, and
on the frontlines with British and U.S. forces.
A Bush House announcement said the BBC
has 200 staff in the region, including
producers and cameramen.
During the first six days of the conflict, BBC
recorded 60 million page impressions on its
award-winning website, including record
numbers on its
Arabic and
Spanish sites
(bbcarabic.com
a n d
bbcmundo.com).
A BBC World
press release
e s t i m a t e d
television households with access to the service
at well more than 300 million, including links
with new national broadcasters extending its
audience by 68 million households for the war
in Iraq.
Supplementing its distinguished frontline
television reportage, the BBC on April 7
launched a ten-minute public service
programme in Arabic,
Lifeline
. That program,
aired six times daily, links people in the
Middle East and elsewhere who want to record
messages to their relatives and friends
concerned about the crisis.”
The fact that the common man has access to different sources
today means that it’s harder for one source to get away with
showing only one side of the story. You can piece together a
broader, more accurate story yourself. Today, we can better
find the truth (for ourselves) by simply changing channels or
going on the Internet.
Professor Hussein Amin, Cairo University
You really can’t trust any of these
channels, whether it’s Arab or
American or European. They all have
their different slants. We know what it’s
like to not have a free press. I’ll watch
Jazeera a bit, then maybe turn to the
BBC, then maybe watch what’s
happening on CNN.
Hashem Mamouri, 30, an Iraqi exile in
Jordan
Direct from Washington
VOICE of AMERICA
Perhaps we will look back on this
conflict’s early days and conclude that
the Gulf war’s first casualty was not truth,
but understanding. Facts, not least
events, are everywhere. Some things
have changed utterly - above all, the
pace at which we’re being asked to make
sense of the facts.
Tim Rutter,
Los Angeles Times
