Media draws its own battle lines

Two soldiers kidnapped and two countries rocked.

Is that all it takes to trigger a war that’s seen the body bag count go up as hundreds of innocent men, women and children are killed, hundreds of thousands evacuated, the countryside in smoke, the economy in shatters, thousands more uprooted, a million dreams dashed and a million and more scarred for life?
At the time of writing this, it’s been 10 days of blitzkrieg by the Israelis and there seems to be no signs of a let up as bombs and rockets rain down on Lebanon and Gaza and rockets smash into Nazareth leaving a trail of death and destruction. A massive ground invasion of south Lebanon by Israel is now imminent, just six years after Israel ended its occupation of the area.
And amidst the sound of bombs exploding and the screams of the dying, the only deafening silence that can be heard is that of timid world leaders refusing to be drawn into taking a united stand and, in one voice, calling for a ceasefire.
But life, for politicians, is cheap. They live from term to term. Each one has its own agenda, his convictions and they play the terms of endearment game to prolong their own term in power.
US President Bush, who “shoots” first and asks questions later, is convinced the fault lies with the Hezbollah. While G-8 summit leaders in Saint Petersburg were trying to find a solution on how best to end the war, Bush already had the answer to the problem! Chomping on a piece of bread and calling for a diet Coke, America’s Commander-in-Chief said: “What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over!” QED. No shit! Talk of famous last words!
Truth is sacred, or so they say. Then why is it that as one scans the millions of words and sheds a silent tear at the heart-wrenching pictures in the print and electronic media, we find the media too has its own agenda? That it has drawn its own battle lines depending on which part of the woods you’re covering/analysing the story from? Who do you believe? And where is the truth?
The global print and electronic media is full of its own versions. You make your own judgement and draw your own conclusion by reading not just the paper you subscribe to, but as many as you can lay your hands on. Even then there’s no guarantee you’ll uncover the truth that now lies buried beneath the mounting rubble.
Nothing sells newspapers like a raging war. It’s headlines news. It’s a running cover story. But what about the coverage?
There are so many angles to a story that needs to be covered and lines to be toed. For journalists on the news desk and in the war zones, it’s a minefield. They may think one thing but write something else because the newspaper’s stand could be entirely different from what they believe is the truth.
In a June 29 editorial headlined “Hamas Provokes a Fight” The New York Times said that the “responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas” adding that “an Israeli military response was inevitable.” But other dailies around the globe had a different take on it.
So how has the print media in the UAE been covering the Israel-Lebanon war? Did it lose out to the idiot box? Did it go that extra mile to cover the year’s biggest story? Did it depend on just slapping in foreign wire copies and pictures? Or did it feel the presence of its own team was required?
Sitting in judgement is never easy, especially if you belong to the media. In fact it’s never done. While the brief was to draw my own conclusion, I took it a step further. I talked to a few readers of Gulf News, 7Days, Khaleej Times, Emirates Today, Gulf Today and the the Emirates Evening Post — the six UAE daily English newspapers that readers feed on.
What did they think of the coverage?
Most Arab expats were unanimous that Gulf News was head and shoulders above the rest. “The best print coverage in English is Gulf News. They have dedicated several pages to the war every day, provided a good analysis of the crisis and also made space for opinions of people in the region,” they said.  But the same expat readers also liked the treatment of Al Khaleej which too has “dedicated several pages to covering all aspects in terms of news and analysis.”
Not surprisingly. All of them preferred surfing the channels for news since, in their opinion, “newspapers give old news.” Most, if not all the readers, knew which channel to switch to for news of the war. If it wasn’t Al Jazeera, then it was either Al Arabiya or Future, with the last being singled out for its extensive footage and Al Jazeera for its debates. For English, it was CNN and Euronews. Beep, beep! What ever happened to BBC?
And our take on the coverage? I’d rate Gulf News first, followed by 7Days. Any which way I looked at it, the two made my day, every day. The selections of stories, the editing of pictures, the arresting headlines, the layouts, the grace to offer their columns to different voices, the analysis by veteran political pundits, the readers’ write-in columns, all have gone into giving its readers a well-rounded and balanced view of the war and draw their own conclusions.
In fact, Gulf News and Emirates Today are the only two newspapers that have thought it fit to send their own reporter to the warfront while most others have preferred to make do with wire feeds.  And that’s where the difference lies. Having your own reporter on the ground, telling the story as they see it, and not as some foreign reporter does, makes a world of difference to readers. It shows you care. It shows it’s not all about the bottom line.
For picking the right angles and appropriate pictures to go with it for the front page, full marks to 7Days. And if pictures say a thousand words then Gulf News is way ahead of the pack with its almost daily double spreads of moving pictures from blood-soaked Lebanon.
Even blog writers, some of who have been banging away under candlelight in power-deprived parts of Lebanon, have made their way into these two newspapers and a bit into Emirates Today.
This is not to say that the other four have not been giving the bloody war the coverage it deserves. They have. But there’s just not enough of it.