European-Middle Eastern Relations in the Media Age

But let us take a closer look at Arab media? While I know of only few solid content
analysis of Arab media, my impression is that after 9/11 Arab media developed their
own qualities as well as biases when covering foreign news, especially concerning
regional conflicts. For years, I was the advisor of the German-Arab media dialogue
bringing Arab journalists together, and I recall that already in the late 1990s many
Arab journalists, not only American or British, started to approach the new Arab
satellite broadcasting media with a mixture of great respect and severe criticism.
There is no doubt that transnational Arab television provides the world with images of
Palestinian or Iraqi victims that went previously unnoticed by Western media. It is
equally obvious that Al-Jazeera, out of all the Arab news networks, has been the most
willing to integrate "the other opinion." Israeli, American and many other voices are
heard on the network. In contrast, the leading American television network Fox News
showed no original interviews with Arab politicians during the Iraq War of 2003.
Also, I see no sign that mainstream Arab TV is falling into the trap of identifying
Europe and the US as one and creating a coherent view of an enemy called “the
West”. That is the case with many Islamists, but not with mainstream media.