Thursday, May 30, 2013

labeling Arabic newpspaers in Western media

From Yago:  "According to the pro-Israeli BBC, Al-Ahkar is pro-Syrian.

I know you have written about this before regarding the New York Times but I thought you would be interested to know

Monday, December 17, 2012

Al-Akhbar newspaper

"the pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar reported". This is how Al-Akhbar is identified in the New York Times today. Now, it is known that I don't agree with Al-Akhbar's editorial line on Syria but this is quite inaccurate. If you go to Al-Akhbar Arabic webpage, there is an picture of a Syrian dissident and call for his release from Syrian regime jail. Al-Akhbar has been banned from Syrian government offices for more than a year now, and several of its correspondents have been kicked out of Syria. There has been criticisms published against the Syrian regime in Al-Akhbar (not as much as I would like, of course) but this characterization is not really accurate especially when it is written by people who don't read Arabic and who are not in a position to judge anyway. But that is not why I am commenting: do you know that newspapers that are owned by Saudi princes (Al-Hayat and Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat) are identified in the Times as "pan-Arab" papers? This shows you that even labels are politicized in the Times."