Media

The Israeli tabloid daily Maariv carried a story on Thursday exposing what the newspaper purported to be a "secret" plan hatched by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to "pester" Saudi Arabia with a global information campaign that could involve lobbying the U.S. Congress and European parliament, and perhaps even filing lawsuits, all with the intent of exposing the kingdom's "involvement in financing terrorism, the state of human rights ... the status of women and numerous other issues." (Original article in Hebrew here.)

The murder last week of Kurdish journalist and student Zardasht Osman continues to trouble the water in ostensibly stable and secure Kurdistan. On Tuesday, hundreds of university students marched through Erbil, the capital of that semi-autonomous northern region, and fought with security forces at the parliamentary building there, according to the New York Times.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a potential candidate for the Egyptian presidency, released a video on his Facebook page on Saturday urging citizens to join his new National Association for Change. Supporters of political reform in Egypt hope that ElBaradei, 67, challenges 81-year-old incumbent Hosni Mubarak in next year's election, and it seems as though ElBaradei is willing to flirt with the possibility.

My Arabic isn't nifty enough to offer a translation for the video (after the jump), but we'll work on it, and in the meantime, our Arabic-speaking readers should feel free to offer their thoughts in the comments:

I know many of our readers have been waiting anxiously for Marty Peretz's take on the Ramot Shlomo kerfuffle. Wait no longer. I would criticize his argument on its merits, but I can't, because I honestly can't identify his argument. So instead let me pull out my favorite line:

... there are the editorials, the collective voice of the [Washington] Post, which strike an independent voice free of Arabisant cant and America bashing. This is in contrast to the New York Times, which hasn't run an op-ed sympathetic to Israel in ages.

I guess Peretz missed yesterday's New York Times, which carried an op-ed from Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States. I seem to recall it being quite sympathetic.

The award for curious news story of the day goes to this piece from Politico's Josh Gerstein, who reports that a federal magistrate in Washington, D.C., has denied an effort by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization to get Atlantic writer and stubborn, fiery Israel-defender Jeffrey Goldberg to testify on their behalf in a case brought by a Jewish settler.

Forget all the doom and gloom, the United Arab Emirates are going up, up, up! At least, that's what Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media baron and owner of News Corporation believes.

From the National>:

Fox International Channels, a subsidiary of News Corp, is making Abu Dhabi its regional hub for online advertising sales, documentary production and satellite television broadcast.

Murdoch and Fox are betting that the booming wealth of the Gulf states, combined with the enormous Middle Eastern youth population that consume media products produced in the Gulf, will spell big profits for online advertising in the region.

The New America Foundation's "dronology" tag-team of Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann released a new paper on the U.S. drone campaign in northwest Pakistan last week, and the accompanying Web page devoted to tracking all strikes since 2004 is the most exhaustive open source account of the drone war I've yet seen.

The Google Map documenting six years of strikes, sourced from publicly accessible press accounts, is highly useful, but the news value of the new NAF report is Bergen and Tiedemann's conclusion that the rate of civilian deaths from drone attacks is somewhere around 32 percent.

James Rainey, the Los Angeles Times' media critic, waded into the month-old controversy over New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner yesterday, concluding that Bronner should be allowed to remain in his post, despite his son volunteering to join Israel's army, the Israel Defense Forces.

In his piece, Rainey argues that Bronner is a skilled reporter who should be judged on the content of his journalism, not on potential biases and internal thought processes that nobody besides Bronner himself can fully understand.

Rainey makes a good case for judging journalists by their work, but he also sidesteps the most powerful arguments against Bronner's remaining.

Al-Jazeera is one of the big dogs -- if not the biggest -- among Middle East news organizations; that much is clear. But could the Qatar-based satellite television station's enormous influence wind up dooming the Palestinian - Israeli peace process as well? Jeb Koogler and Noah Bonsey, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, seem to think it's possible.

One more word on Bronnergate: Al-Jazeera's Listening Post program did a thoughtful segment on the controversy this weekend. It discusses Bronner's son's service in the Israeli Defense Forces, but it also explores a bigger question: the extent to which Bronner is enmeshed in Israeli society, and how that affects his coverage.

Making news out of Yemen this week: Huthi rebels in the country's north have returned a prisoner of war to Saudi Arabia, and Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told investigators that he trained with other English-speaking Al-Qaeda terrorists-to-be in the country.

Not making news out of Yemen this week: American aid to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis displaced by the Huthi rebellion.

Update, 8:16 a.m. (from Gregg): Opposition Web sites are reporting (فارسی) a massive security presence in the streets: rows of riot police, some seven or eight deep, lining the streets along the route of the pro-government rally. Opposition groups are trying to organize rallies, but it sounds like (so far) they haven't been able to gather en masse. 

RAHANA, an Iranian activist site, is reporting dozens of arrests in Sadeghieh Square and other locations throughout Tehran. Sadeghieh Square is about one kilometer from Azadi Square, where the pro-government demonstrators assembled.

The New York Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, thinks Ethan Bronner should be reassigned from the paper's Jerusalem bureau for the duration of his son's service in the IDF. He bases his recommendation mostly on avoiding the appearance of bias -- rather than any actual bias in Bronner's reporting.

The paper's editor, Bill Keller, disagrees:

It is, in addition to those things, a sign of respect for readers who care about the region and who follow the news from there with minds at least partially open. You seem to think that you... can tell the difference between reality and appearances, but our readers can't. I disagree.

Not to turn this into a media criticism blog, but I agree with Hoyt -- and with Evan, who wrote about Bronner last month.

This blogger's guide to writing about Egypt (h/t Marc Lynch)  is hilarious, and spot-on, and worth a read. Between this and Christian Bleuer's guide to bad Afghanistan writing, it has been a good month for takedowns of lazy foreign correspondents.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is in for a year of rough economic news, but at least he got a good photo op (عربي) with the Egyptian football team after their African Cup of Nations win, right? Hosni and the Pharaohs. There's a joke in there somewhere. (You can also see Gamal Mubarak standing in the back of the photo.)

Al-Ahram doesn't miss an opportunity to take a shot at the Algerians: It faults the Algerian media for publishing "fabricated news" about the Egyptian team.

Electronic Intifada, a Chicago-based news and opinion Web site that covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, believes it may have indirect confirmation that the son of New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner was "recently inducted" into Israel's army, the Israel Defense Forces.

Electronic Intifada received a tip about Bronner's son -- similar to one which surfaced on the Internet months ago -- over the weekend and sent an e-mail to the Times inquiring about the tip and whether Bronner believed that, if true, it would be a conflict of interest.

Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira, in a bit of brusque, failed PR, responded with this:

Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner's son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner's coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.

Here's something you don't see very often: Al-Ahram, the state-run Egyptian newspaper, published an article yesterday (عربي) praising Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli Mossad.

The slightly bizarre article -- written by Ashraf Abu al-Hawl, the former head of Al-Ahram's Gaza bureau -- calls Dagan the "Superman" of Israel. It commends him for working to undermine Iran's nuclear program, and for opposing Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Syrian government.

The Israeli state comptroller's office says the country is still doing a poor job in Arabic-language public relations (hasbara), according to a new report.

We haven't read the full document, because it's currently available only in Hebrew, which neither of us speak. But news reports say the comptroller slams the Israeli government for a lack of Arabic-speaking spokespeople, and for poorly-run Arabic-language radio stations broadcasting to the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon.

Al-Jazeera's Listening Post program did a good segment on the underwhelming media coverage of Yemen. Video's after the jump.

I'm in it -- part of the reason I'm posting it! -- but I also think it's a pretty thorough treatment of where Western reporters have gone wrong on the Yemen story: the relentless focus on terrorism, the ignorance of Yemen's socioeconomic problems, and -- above all -- the endless references to "Osama bin Laden's ancestral home," a meaningless fact which Brian O'Neill rightly described as the cardinal sin of Yemen writing.

Update: Exum responded to me by e-mail, but I don't have permission to use it yet. However, I think it is safe (and important) to tell readers this: Exum did not advise the Obama campaign on Afghan issues. That renders moot most of my concerns regarding conflicts of interest and re-judging Exum's writings in context. More to come later.