CRITICS OF MIDDLE EAST COVERAGE ORGANIZE ONLINE

By: Karim Mostafa Both Sides Post Media Criticism, Fire Off E-mails





As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, Arabs and Jews in the United States are using the Internet to respond with varying degrees of disgust and approval at the media coverage.



As editors can attest, e-mail campaigns can quickly inundate their inboxes. And with the volume that accumulates, more than a few messages go unanswered. But these partisan media critics say their work does have an impact.



Four years ago, Ali Abunimah, a researcher at the University of Chicago, started writing letters to National Public Radio (NPR) whenever he heard a broadcast that he thought was biased against Arabs. After a while, he added CNN and several newspapers to his media-monitoring radar.


With his letters accumulating, Abunimah decided to launch a Web site in January 1999. The site, Ali Abunimah's bitter pill, lets users know up-front that its mission is to uncover media myths about the Middle East.


Right now, 300 users a day log on to the site, Abunimah said. One quarter of the hits are based in the Middle East, but the majority come from North America. "The site provides a tool to see how one can criticize the story being told by mass media," Abunimah said.



After Abunimah e-mailed NPR for several months, editors responded. Now Abunimah gets responses from news organizations along with requests to pen editorials for newspapers and to appear on radio shows.


So where does the American media stand in coverage of the Middle East? "It hasn't improved at all," Abunimah said. "On talk radio, I've found a fair hearing. TV is pretty bad. Newspapers have been uniformly bad."


Abunimah claims the U.S. media often adopts Israeli language to describe the conflict. He cited the media's description of Israeli settlements as Jerusalem suburbs as an example.



Editors wrestling with terminology and city names are receiving e-mails from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and CAMERA as well. Both organizations monitor the media for inaccuracies and bias against Israelis and Jews.


Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, has a different take on media bias on Palestine. "We do not believe that these [news] institutions are biased," he said. "They try to do an accurate, fair job of reporting, but it is important to act quickly when stories appear showing ignorance or lack of information. It does not mean it was malicious or intentional, but there are factual errors."


The ADL has created a media section on its own Web site so that people can see what actions the organization has taken. Foxman plans to use the site to post any responses from media outlets as well. "This is not a private conversation between they and we," he said.


Foxman believes his efforts are paying off. The ADL announced last Friday that it has a "working relationship" with CNN and NPR that keeps an open channel of communication with the news outlets.



Meanwhile, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which has been monitoring media since 1982, is also posting media alerts on its site. As of Sept. 25th, CAMERA has a mail-to feature that allows users to e-mail the news organization a copy of the alert that points out media bias.


CAMERA, which has half of its 11 employees monitoring the media, even goes so far as to re-interview people who appeared in the media's stories, said Alex Safian, associate director of the Boston-based non-profit organization. Safian feels that reporters often edit out a lot of information that renders their stories incomplete and inaccurate.


As these watchdogs keep a close eye on American media coverage, they also keep an eye on each other. Upon hearing about ADL's new media section, Abunimah said he'd be watching their site.






Karim Mostafa (kmostafa@editorandpublisher.com) is associate editor for E&P Online.







Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher.