What This World Needs is Some Really Honest Journalists | Ramzy Baroud

[Tace]

Ramzy Baroud -- World News Trust

June 10, 2015

Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval.

But I cannot remember another time in recent history we needed journalists to shine, to challenge conventional wisdom, to think in terms of contexts, motives, alliances, not ideological, political or financial interests.

From the start, when addressing the issue of the Middle East, the actual entity of “Middle East” is itself highly questionable. It is arbitrary, and can only be understood within proximity to some other entity, Europe, which colonial endeavors imposed such classifications on the rest of the word. Colonial Europe was the center of the globe and everything else was measured in physical and political distance from the dominating continent.

Western interests in the region never waned. In fact, following U.S.-led wars on Iraq (1990-91), a decade-long blockade, followed by a massive war and invasion (2003), the “Middle East” is back at the center of neocolonial activities, colossal western economic interests, strategic and political maneuvering.

To question the term “Middle East” is to become conscious of the colonial history, and the enduringly fierce economic and political competition, which is felt in every fact of life in the region.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/what-this-world-needs-is-some-really-honest-journalists-ramzy-baroud

[leveymg]

1. It's not a lack of talented journalists. It's there are so few paying publications willing to risk

the loss of advertisers and the wrath of corporations and officials.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Amen to that. Even good reporters need to eat once in a while.

The corporate media does not keep reporters with independent, honest viewpoints on news staffs.

[leveymg]

3. I know that quite well from personal experience.

Major newspapers won't hire reporters or editors whose portfolios contain progressive political pieces, even if the publications were op-eds printed in other major newspapers and magazines. Broadcast news is even more intolerant of the Left.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Ditto

I was canned on a pretext from my last newspaper job by a right wing nut of a new editor back in the 1990s. In retrospect, I think he was determined to destroy the paper -- which he succeeded in doing -- because it was a decidedly liberal paper in a liberal county.

[leveymg]

5. Reporters and junior editors are generally far more liberal than their bosses

The ones who survive, self-censor. A lot. They call it "professionalism." And the professionals tend to internalize these cruel life lessons and most protectively curl up with to the Right over time. That's called developing sources. The proper term is careerism, and that's allied with "objectivity" which was mentioned a lot at the allegedly prestigious J-School I attended . . . but, it's hard to blame the survivors for wanting to continue working and justifying what they've made of their own careers.

Even I quote Churchill more than I should.

That's why they invented Scotch, I guess.

[Igel]

6. May I suggest that before he gets bent out of shape over "Middle East"

he first bring the Middle Kingdom to heel. At least it calls itself the "center". Unlike Europe, whatever the OP may claim.

So, let's review, shall we?

The Middle East is in Arabic the Mashriq, meaning, humorously, "the East". Most of N. Africa--which included al-Andalus--is al-Maghrib or, heh-heh, "the West."

The center was Egypt.

Perhaps Mr. Baroud needs to review some 1st year Arabic before he starts pointing out how to call the Middle East "the Middle East" or, in fact, the "East" requires considering Europe as the center of the universe, and saying it's somehow a uniquely European imperialist and colonialist idea. We had al-mashriq and al-mashriq before Beowulf was first put to bark.

So, parroting the Baroud, to be aware of the pernicious habit of calling the countries of Iraq and Lebanon, Israel and Sa'udiyya "the East" and of Morocco and Tunisia "the West" is to remind us of the legacy of Arab expansionism, colonialism that lasted centuries before the militarism was turned back in S. France, far, far from where the Arab push for elbow-room began. Oops. That's rather before even the Crusades. Ugh. Imperialism before the first imperialists? How is that even possible?

In fact, might not the very name for Europe as "the West" be the result of a millennium of Arab conquest and oppression, even genocide, of the peoples that lived there? We got so much more terminology and science that many Muslims insist we recognize them for, I think we should nominate them for this, too.

Why, indeed, would the people who live in Europe decide to not place themselves at the center but in the West? Doesn't that also rather entail that Europe did not see itself as the center? I mean, if there's an east and a west, it's hardly possible that the west is at the center between east and west. Even "central Europe" (contra eastern and western Europe) is part of the West. Sadly, its the Europeans that accepted being marginalized and placed in the West; it's Egypt that bequeathed its linguistic demand that it be deemed the center to the denizens of the West and East.

Oh. Perhaps it's because the "center" for Xians might have been Jerusalem and we've sort of lost track of that in the last few centuries? Or perhaps because we're following Islamic tradition in where we draw the line? I honestly don't know but I suspect that Jerusalem was viewed as the center. Still, there's not just a huge distance between Egypt and Jerusalem, less than 200 miles--just ask the Israelis if there's any doubt about that. Baroud fails to present the complete English paradigm although he must surely know it, all two words of it--and it's offensive that he assumes we're cretins and won't recall the missing word. Nor does he furnish a very similar yet pertinent paradigm that gives the lie to much of his rhetoric. Baroud suddenly becomes Arabic-stupid as soon as his politics gets in the way, even though the word "Maghreb" has been rather well assimilated into English as the western portion of North Africa.

Truly, it is hard to find an honest reporter.

[Blue_Tires]

7. "really honest" journalists in the ME tend to get imprisoned, shot, or 'disappeared'