Looking for Fair and Balanced News Coverage
When journalist Walid el-Gabry came to the Financial Times’ Manhattan bureau on Sept. 1, 2001, he found a glaring one-sidedness in the U.S. media’s coverage of the Middle East. What happened 10 days later did little to change his perception.
“I don’t think many people here even knew where Afghanistan was, and after the terrorist attacks, the sense of bewilderment was palpable,” he says. “I’ve also seen jingoism in media before … but the excesses in the U.S. media were breathtaking. Add to this the uncritical path taken over the invasion of Iraq, and I felt strongly that mainstream U.S. media had failed its public. It had certainly not lived up to its repute as the Fourth Estate — something I had studied and admired as a student journalist in London.”
El-Gabry joined the New York Media Committee of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AADC) and was “appalled by not only the blatant bias of Middle East coverage but what could only be characterized as racism — particularly in editorials — ranging across low-brow to high-brow publications.”
Despite the concerns of el-Gabry and others, New York’s AADC chapter had little luck persuading the editorial boards of several newspapers to provide more balanced coverage.
Although attempts were made in the past to organize a formal body, nothing really took off. Finally, with several other like-minded journalists, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) was born last year, with el-Gabry as its first president. The organization currently has almost 100 members, representing several countries and religions.
