Objections to AJE Aren’t Really About Lara Logan

Some people’s view of Al-Jazeera in the US seems to me to be bordering on a McCarthy level witch hunt. I see none of these people mentioned that during the protests there was not one report of sexual harassment in Tahrir.

I sometimes really cannot even name that nonsense in many American networks as journalism. The over inflated treats with a paranoid jingoistic narrative is becoming the main trait of US Media. Blatant misrepresentation bordering on news fabrication is and outright deception is becoming de rigueur. It is really sad to see a Democracy hijacked by special interest and dogmatic extreme ideology.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is something called relevance. Yes I would agree that it should be a headline news item if we were short of stories at this specific time in the Arab world, however with the middle east nearly combusting and with thousands dead and 10 of thousands injured it would be really bizarre to make this story as a headliner. I believe that this item has been adequately covered under the theme of media harassment in general, without going into specifics. The real issue in the US at the moment lays elsewhere. There is a group of fanatics within the American establishment trying to rehash the discourse in Europe toward Muslim populations. The contradiction is that the parallel is inexistent. The Muslims in the US are extremely small in numbers and mostly native, and economically well off. It is simply the familiar demagoguery and the customery fear mongering.

Disgraceful, Jillian. Ringing the chimes through Concern Troll to Admit Troll to Moral Equivalency Troll to Outrage Troll to just plain Rage Troll.

Thank God for Jonathan Capehart, who has accurately called out a huge gap — and myopia — in Al Jazeera’s coverage — and no, it is not just the problem of one story as anybody who watches it for any length of time who isn’t in the “progressive” magic circle can tell you.

Honestly, bad faith all around from you once again — can you never concede such a thing as news judgement, and the freedom of the media to cover it without fear or favour?!
For one, the New York Times covered the story of the rape of Jineth Bedoya back in 2000, as did other papers, so it wasn’t the silence of the complicit evil mainstream media that you imagine that fails in its PC duties. For another, the Post even covered the issue too, albeit later. That isn’t to say Bedoya was well served; she wasn’t. But neither is Lara Long in your hands, nor truth in journalism, for that matter.

Happy to write another 3,000 words to explicate just where you “progressives’ go so terribly wrong, and why we have to care.

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/02/jillian-yorks-objections-to-capehart-arent-really-about-media-freedom.html

Are you a machine, John, one of those programs we’re being taught to fear from HBGary (which were actually developed first by Anonymous) that scan and scrape and parse text and find various literalist Fisk-like things to say about it? Or are you a human able to think conceptually?

Nir Rosen is “mentioned 11 times” because of what we like to call *an analogy* and *a parallel*. Do they still teach literary constructions in college these days? (Do they even still teach literature?!) Nir Rosen has a hard-left or “progressive” viewpoint that says the media *should* have a social role and instrumentality for a political movement, therefore he thinks the inverse, that it has one *now* and serves as an instrument or lapdog or “warmonger” to the evil imperialist Amerika. And in the same way, Jillian, with her “progressive” viewpoint, believes the media is an instrument and is either “up to no good” harassing the “Mooslims” and reflecting some “neoliberal” commodifying culture” or, conversely, available to be reformed and become that true instrument of the, um, People’s will that it should be, accurately and resolutely recording not what evil executives or reporters believe to be “the story” with their news judgement, but what a justice NGO now elevated to the Ministry of Truth believes should be a roll-call of injustices, in order to right them.

That’s clear as the underlying substrate of the Rosen story; it’s clear as the underlying substrate of Jillian’s college-absorbed and Internet-infused “progressive” ideology on display here. I just don’t think Marxist critical analysis like that passes for smart analysis. I think it’s facile and lame and shrill. And ultimately it undermines press freedom, which is what Jillian claims she is about.

Al Jazeera has a whole year to meet the Washington Post’s timetable? That’s the sort of nasty little literalist jab one expects from machine-readers on forums — and I’ll check back next year to see how, um, they’re coming on that. Meanwhile, sorry, but I for one won’t be railroaded into moral equivalency and NGO Truth and Justice Ministry recipes here. The story of an American reporter who is mobbed and raped and rescued by the Egyptian women and the army during tumultous events when the Whole World is Watching is simply of a different news import than the story of an activist who is raped by soldiers — however noble the activist is. The story is persistent because it is emblematic of many dramas — the U.S. role in propping up the dictator; the news channel trying to get the story, the Egyptian revolutionary struggle in the square, the elements of Egypt that are trying to prevail on the side of decency (the army, the women); and the mob injustice one rightly fears. These aren’t cliches or caricatures or racial hatred: they’re the story. The story.

A rape by a U.S. soldier in Africa can feel like it’s “the story” only if you believe the U.S. has a sinister and over-arching neoliberalist imperialist blah blah role to play in the world and the People are valiantly struggling against it everywhere blah blah — but as you can see, I don’t. I see that as a tawdry Pravda reduction of reality for immature minds.

It doesn’t denigrate the story of the activist raped brutally to admit that. I’d like the nightly news to focus on my friends in Belarus in jail; they never do (nor does Jillian). I don’t make up a theory about neoliberal imperialist blah blah policies to explain why Belarus isn’t news. As for Jillian, however, we know the answer: it’s her ideological bent.

As for your machine-parsing for where this or that quote goes, obviously “won’t matter as much” is a summary of her position. And indeed I stand by that analysis. Indeed she is diluting, diluting, diluting — as you are — by trying to cite all the world’s evils on a single plane, so that we can dwarf and minimize what happened to Lara Logan while the Whole World is Watching.

It’s funny, it’s the same thing that Jillian — and you — accuse the media of doing, only in reverse. If you were in charge, that media-reducing process of analyzing the world’s events every day would lead to endless reports that sound like the UN Press Centre or do-gooding NGO reports, with a rape in Kenya on par with a mob assault of a reporter in Egypt because the People’s Will must be reflected through their servant, the media, eh? Especially if it can be harnessed to highlight and skewer evil Amerika, eh?

While the evil capitalist pigs are in charge, they do this inversely, eh? So you reason. As evil imperialists, they front the mob scene in Egypt which is their client state and an adjunct to their evil Israeli policy, and slight the Kenyan rape in a backyard to one of their cell-phone ingredient client states, right Jon? Isn’t that how it goes? Economic determinism, evil capitalism? Did I get the script right, or do I need more adjustments? Prettier production values to hide the tracks?

But since media in fact isn’t that lapdog of imperialism and isn’t the People’s instrument, it reports the news. The news which isn’t disaster porn or humanitarian crisis entertainment commodified for The Man to Hiddenly Persuade with, but is simply the news, with good news judgement. It’s a big story, because it’s a big story, and that’s ok. No blonde heroines being beaten up by evil dark Mooslims as Jillian claims. But a story of an American broadcaster trying to cover unrest in a country whose dictator is being overthrown who has been propped up by the U.S. government, and the mob dynamics accordingly. Something less than what the ideologues imagine; something more than they are willing to let it be on People’s TV. My, it’s hard to accept reality when it doesn’t fit into an ideological template, isn’t it Jon.

The core debate here isn’t about Al Jazeera, for my money, it’s whether TV gets to be an instrumentalist state propaganda device, or not. You inherently believe that it must; I don’t. Since you have a hard-left view that ascribes that social role to television, you think it has to be. You think it’s fine if it is! So you look around the world and try to find what state power (commercial corporations are too evil) is perfecting that instrumentality to your ideological bent. Ah, there’s Al Jazeera (tomorrow you might try the Kremlin’s RTV which also has a lot of content you’d love, and say, I wonder how Cuban TV is developing today?). Al Jazeera, an Arabic state TV with a mission, is then elevated to crusader and hero against the evil imperialist Amerikan broadcaster because it hates Israel and “reports on the news” that the evil commodifiers in Amerika “won’t report on” because of their presumed ideological diktat.

Except when it doesn’t. Except when it can’t even record the news of an event when the Whole World is Watching. When it’s ideological birds, set misleadingly free to make it appear as if they can cover everything from Darfurians to Politkovskaya freely, finally in fact come home to roost, because it’s not free. It’s not free, because while it’s political and ideological mission is to expose some despotic Arab regimes opportunistically and strategically, it won’t stare hard enough to expose despotism in some individual Arabs in some individual scene where they might have to take responsibility for their actions, and where one can’t keep faulting the evil Amerikan Imperialist TV for every sin.

It’s not laziness on Capeheart’s part to write twice on this incident. He’s absolutely right and he’s totally pitch-perfect on this one. He’s gotten it. It’s emblematic of the whole. And as I said, anyone who watches Al Jazeera for a time finds that bias rivulating throughout. Yes, they cover this or that and therefore “punch their ticket”. But they frame it as moral equivalency (as you do) to make it seem that whatever evil de jour they might literally cover, say a Darfur scene, is somehow matched up to evil Amerika’s fault, to something equally evil that evil Amerika committed, too (they learned that from Kremlin RTV lol). The net effect, as your friend Morozov might say, is to steer us to a cynical belief that we need the transnational geek squad with their perfect analysis to do the driving for us.

We can’t “all agree” on anything here. That’s because I believe your position not to be different, but different *and immoral*. It’s wrong to make the media an instrument of a revolutionary struggle. I don’t believe in the ideology of revolutionary struggle that you do in any event. I urge you to at least have the decency to admit that’s your ideology and that’s your goal. At least Nir Rosen has made that clear for us. I don’t mind socialists; what I mind are dishonest, stealth socialists. Nir Rosen could objectify and hate Lara Logan because she was a “warmonger” in his silly, cramped Pravda-like cartoon view of the world. He is now being crucified on the altar of feminism and political correctness regarding statements on sexual assaults, but what stands back of that later problem was his original Pravda caricature viewpoint — which shares more in common with the feminist PC police than either would care to admit.

Al Jazeera should be denied a license because of instrumentality, not content. It is a state-owned broadcaster with a known propagandistic mission, carrying out that mission to a “T”. If the BBC (which we can also easily see on those same city-owned public channels as RTV used to be on before no one could be found to be willing to pay for it, not even the Kremlin) were to come into the U.S. broadcasting space as owned by the British government, I think the licensers might also ask the same questions if all the BBC did was reflect the instrumentalist policies of the Labour government, or for that matter, even the current coalition between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Does this mean that in my view TV in the U.S. is a free and unadulterated medium that is never tainted by power or property? Of course not. But at least we have pluralism. We have Jon Stewart or we have Fox TV or we have CBS. Al Jazeera isn’t adding to choice; it’s trying to “level the field” in the direction of the “progressive” instrumentality of Stewart or Amy Goodmann, which is to say it is not levelled, but tilted. Do the guardians of the television waves look at “lines” like that in making judgements? Sure they do, and that’s ok, as they are looking at the mix that results in the public interest ultimately. Al Jazeera is a naked, instrumentalist political agenda — like yours — that has merely learned how to wrap itself in cool production values and the same slick moral equivalency method as RTF. That’s all. We don’t need to bless that as some sort of crusade for media freedom — it’s not, because they can’t even cover the news freely when it occurs on the square in Egypt.

I hope you’re joking by your notion of the ‘”Live Viewers’ Companion’ to all the news channels, so we can measure what’s been discussed.” You’re joking, right comrade? You actually think some perfectly politically-correct little angel-demon on your soldier can be devised by…somebody (er, maybe the Harvard Berkman Center?!) to perform that “unbiased” roll. And no, we aren’t subject to Google — at least not yet. And yes, viewers sift through the media diet and

I suggest until Jillian grows up and gets her job at the FCC and creates the Viewers’ Companion you use your Internet browser as a filter to reconfirm your political biases and bookmark your Al Jazeera and your Amy Goodmann and I’d recommend RTV knowing of your beliefs and tastes.

Never get confused by the facts, Jon.

Jon,

I have no idea what binds you to Ms. York, and why you feel the need to rush to her defense. But she’s a big girl, and doesn’t need attack dogs and loyal pups to guard her — at least, I don’t think she does.

There isn’t any paranoia in why I write, but just some blunt and plain-spoken truths about the appalling pall of collectivist and “progressive” ideologies plastered over everything that comes out on this blog and others in the same circle. It really needs to be challenged. What always astounds me about you young folks today is how rigidly ideological and close-minded you are, how fearful you are of debate, how horribly doctrinaire you are, and yet how awfully glib and over-confident you are in what you say. Do you ever look at yourselves?

Ad hominem attacks? Oh, come now, Mr. Civilities. There’s really no such thing — and not that ad hominem attacks in fact aren’t legal under the Constitution, anyway. And really, ad hominem attacks are claiming people are “paranoid” just because they are critical and think conceptually about the larger context. I also want to welcome you to the Newly Acquired Conscience Club, as we missed you some chapters ago when some of Jillian’s less paper-trained pets were savaging me. As for engaging on token points, sorry, but there just aren’t any token points I can concede in a single thing that Jillian is writing. I just don’t play nice with those sorts of niceties when I see this sort of situation, an ideology amplified that is in fact really a threat to freedom of the media. And I don’t see why I should be confined in some strait-jacket of PC debating techniques — you sure aren’t.

I don’t have to look for any next generation of ideologues, it’s right here in front of me.

Oh, sure you get it, you’re just disparaging this journalist Lara Logan to try to diminish the sting of Al Jazeer’s lapses.

So no, Jonathan, like Jillian you’re trying to dilute and diminish the story here and its impact by trying to turn it into some sort of world popularity contest.

Maybe Lara Logan wasn’t known outside the U.S., but surely CBS is. She’s not just some woman molested in the street, and it’s silly to try to dumb the story down and make it otherwise. She’s a newscaster at a globally-known television station from the country whose government spent billions propping up the dictator all these years. She’s walking on to a square not just for a night on the town, but because there are globally-important demonstrations taking place there of momentous occasion toppling a dictator and starting a new democracy. She’s covering a story so that the people in this country where the government propped up the dictator *can learn the facts of the situation and perhaps change their minds about what might be happening there*.

I watched Al Jazeera again last night, this time on the Libyan story. The newscasters with their acquired British accents are really awful, you know? That is, there’s the veneer of BBC-like objectivity, but they keep going off script to rant and goad. Under the guise of asking “penetrating” questions, undergraduate-style, they bully and harass even sympathetic guests and sources trying to get them to say “the line”. They’re like the young Spartacus League kids at the college book table. Insetad of just *letting the story be told* they constantly interrupt, put words in people’s mouths, ask leading questions and try to get them to “focus on the line”. It’s not the story as it exists, but the line as they see it should be defined by. It’s really very politicized and biased TV, as biased as a Glenn Beck show — but Glenn Beck at least frames his rants within a talk-show format, and Al Jazeera’s anchors are supposed to be news casters.

Al Jazeera is not the BBC.

As for CBS, it’s not about narcissism, it’s about conceding who the world’s actors are and not being infantile about it. You know, when NTV’s Elena Masyuk was kidnapped and held by Chechens or Russian journalists from ITAR-TASS were killed in the Chechen war, I as a regional specialist didn’t say “Oh, good, they got it coming to them, those warmongers”. I didn’t say “Oh, they should have expected this, they need better security.” or “Oh, why are we obsessing about this woman’s kidnapping or that woman’s murder when every day, the Russian army massacres hundreds.” I didn’t do that because to do so would be part of a facile and biased take on the situation that refused to concede the role of the media, even state media, and the basic function of a journalist, which should be protected as a profession. It just seems obvious to me that you have to worry about protection of journalists as a special case because otherwise, there’s no coverage at all of all the other issues to be concerned about.

It doesn’t mean that Evil Amerikan Imperializm is striking again and everybody must give way, but it doesn’t mean its flipside, either, which is we have to somehow diminish the role of a global power with a role in this country.

Um, Al Jazeera seeks no less a role for itself. That you can’t seem to concede. So what is this really about? Are you carrying water for a state television seeking market share and trying to diminish the brand of another station?

Much better news sources? *Really* Jonathan? That don’t cover a big story like this, where an American broadcaster is mobbed by 20 men and saved by women and the army? You’d realy have to be in the most cramped Marxist contortion, writing a term paper for Professor Spivak, to try to reduce this story to merely one more incident in the rich tapesty of the People’s Struggle.

Again, what’s always so annoying about you “progressives” is that instead of just stating plainly that you’re for military powers or theocratic powers or socialist powers abroad that apparently you find more attractive than your own democratic liberal government at home, and instead of just saying that you really hate rich white women who work for corporate news stations you find culturally reprehensible, you try to ascribe some feature to the U.S. that is in your imagination — one day its hubris; another day its narcissism; yet another it is the commodification of disaster porn. At least Nir Rosen was honest!

If you like television run by states with political agendas that leave out major news stories, that’s fine, say so, but don’t pretend its some brave new form of media. It’s not.

Jon,

1. I notice that Nir Rosen isn’t a disgrace for you when he calls Lara Logan a “warmonger” merely because she was a reporter for CBS, which is presumably for him an imperialist warmonging arm of the warmongering state of Amerika. Can you concede that, or is that a bridge too far for you?

2. Summarizing somebody’s words and putting them into quotes isn’t some false attribution of them, Jon, but thanks for playing pit bull on that one, I’m sure Jillian as she is travelling really appreciates it. In fact, the entire notion that you can accuse someone of plagiarism and wrongful attribution *on the Internet these days, where it is so easy to check original texts and their datestamps* is absurd. Nobody is trying to misrepresent your precious Jillian. Rather, it’s about urging accountability from her for her positions.

3. Ugh, I see what you did there. By downgrading this to a “grope” from a “rape” (or at least an unspecific “sexual assault”) you get to do what Nir Rosen did, but without the language problem. Honestly, it’s low. Lara Logan does not have to be penetrated to declare what happened as a rape. It’s not a legal term but the legal specifics of “sexual assault” are bad enough. It doesn’t change the story at all if she is merely “groped” or “sexually manhandled” and not “penetrated” by these 20 men. It’s still appalling. It’s still a story. It’s still important. And you are slyly trying to undermine it, and that’s wrong. Really, I personally have no need to play Marxist feminist here, definitely. I don’t need to upgrade the assault to make it more lurid. It’s bad enough AND it’s still a story — a story that should have been covered because it was emblematic of a number of things as I’ve said.

4. The idea that there is a “handful” of Al Jazeera watchers is another tendentious barb. There are loads of them. Um, go on the Internet. Click on it. Or get the app. Watch it. It doesn’t have to come to you in “TV form” complete with ads for cereal to be a source among many sources in a media diet. “Searching it out’ makes it seem as if the U.S. government is jamming its signals like the Soviet Union jammed Radio Liberty (and hysterics like Frank Rich have made that comparison). You just have to click, John. You just have to click. Stop dramatizing it.

I’m sorry, Catherine, you’re seriously deluded. CBS is pretty well unknown in the Middle East, for the simple reason that it isn’t available on Nilesat or Arabsat. No one here could watch it even if they wanted to. If some Al Jazeera reporter was molested in Times Square, would that be big news on CBS? The United States is a declining power with delusions of grandeur, rather like Britain in the 1950s. Live with it.

Phew. Why didn’t you just make that argument at the outset?
I don’t think I’m the only person who has trouble listening when I feel insulted.
But with your example, I see your point.

Of course, had it happened in Madison, charges would have been filed with the police, and an investigation would have been undertaken, and the story would grown. I can understand — though not defend without more facts — Al Jazeera’s reticence journalistically: she had already left the country, and they appear to pride themselves on not carrying for secondhand news.

As I suggested above: there could well be deeper narratives here. I notice there was no coverage of Lara Logan in the now-liberated Al-Ahram Weekly English edition, and nor was their any coverage of Qaradawi’s Tahrir Square sermon. These are interesting facts which I will verify with folks in Egypt, though overall, I still don’t have enough to draw a conclusion.