CEC Newsletter Summer-Autumn 2006 Middle Easternitis

MIDDLE EASTERNITIS

It's always interesting to have a critical look at the mainstream news media to see what we are expected to believe. The attitudes underlying the news are more revealing than the 'stories'. Read the message, examine the messsenger and think about who is sending the messages, and why.

The late Palestininan intellectual Edward Said in his book 'Power, Politics and Culture' identified six basic themes in the United States media coverage of the Middle East:

1. "The pervasive presence of generally Middle Eastern, more particularly Arab and/or Islamic terrorism, Arab or Islamic terrorist states and groups. 'Terrorism' is most often characterised as congenital, not as having any foundation in grievances, prior violence, or continuing conflicts.
2. The rise of Islamic and Muslim fundamentalism, usually but not always Shi'i, associated with such names as Khomeini, Quaddafi, Hizballa, as well as, to coin a phrase, 'the return of Islam'.
3. The Middle East as a place whose violent and incomprehensible events are routinely referred back to a past full of 'ancient' tribal, religious or ethnic hatreds.
4. The Middle East as a contested site in which 'our' side is represented by the civilised and democratic West, the United States, and Israel. Sometimes Turkey is included here, sometimes not.
5. The Middle East as the location of the re-emergence of a virulent quasi- European (ie Nazi) type of anti-Semitism.
6. The Middle East as the hatching ground of the gratuitous evils of the PLO . . . the basic message is that, if they exist at all, the Palestinians are both marginal and entirely to blame for their misfortunes."

If you watch the Channel Nine news, listen to the radio or read the daily newspapers with these themes in mind, and you'll see they also inform the media in this country.

The Australian media's reporting of local events adds another theme to Said's list:

7. Muslim people in Australia as a threat to the so-called Australian way of life.

Mainstream media takes its cues from government. The major parties both push anti-Muslim and anti Middle-Eastern themes. Like Menzies's reds under the bed, it satisfies the need for a bogeyman to stop us paying attention to issues like the nobbling of workers, the abandonment of the poor and environmental demolition.

Alternative media isn't hard to find. Green Left Weekly has a website. There's an online magazine called Z-net which has a totally different perspective from the Daily Telegraph. The on-line magazine New Matilda is an Australian journal offering alternative views to News Limited. There are plenty of books in the library and bookshops which offer various versions of historial context to current events.

-Clare