Will The Muslim Countries Ever Have An HonestReporting Of Their Own?

At least not yet.

Back in March 2006, quoting from a piece in HonestReporting, I wrote a post about the problem of finding objective, unbiased journalists to report on the Middle East in general--and on the Israel/Palestinian conflict in particular:

as Honest Reporting notes, the extent of the biased reliance on fixers just widens and deepens:

the Jerusalem Post reported that two of the largest wire services ― Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Associated Press (AP) ― have employed journalists with inappropriately close ties to the Palestinian Authority. Majida al-Batsh was a Palestinian affairs correspondent for AFP for many years, while simultaneously being on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority as a reporter for the PA's official organ, Al-Ayyam.

If this is not evidence enough of impropriety at AFP, last year Batsh announced she would actually run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. The Post reports:

Her colleagues claim that shortly before she joined the race [for PA president], Batsh resigned from the news agency, saying she wanted to devote her time to the election campaign. However, they add, this did not prevent her from seeking the agency's help in her campaign.

"One day she showed up and asked to use the fax machine to send some documents," reports one coworker. "The agency did not object."

Batsh isn't the only AFP reporter receiving a PA salary on the side:

One of the agency's correspondents in the Gaza Strip is Adel Zanoun, who also happens to be the chief reporter in the area for the PA's Voice of Palestine radio station.

The AFP bureau chief in Jerusalem, Patrick Anidjar, refuses to discuss the issue, saying, "I don't understand why you have to have the name of our correspondents." Pressed to give a specific answer, he says: "I don't want our correspondents' names to go into print. I don't want to answer the question. What is this, a police investigation?"

Meanwhile, Muhammad Daraghmeh ― who turns out near-daily reports from Ramallah or Jerusalem for the Associated Press ― also works for the PA's Al-Ayyam, according to the Jerusalem Post (and a pro-Palestinian site).

Now Khaled Abu Toameh writes that journalists writing about the Middle East are even less subtle--some of the Middle East journalists are taking bribes:

The current popular uprisings sweeping through the Arab world have revealed the fact that many journalists have been receiving funds from Arab dictators.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his sons are said to have bankrolled dozens of Arab journalists in return for turning a blind eye to what the Libyan regime was doing to its people. The list of beneficiaries included newspaper editors, reporters and columnists from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Gulf and the Palestinian territories.

Senior Arab journalists living in London and Paris also said to have been on the Libyan regime's payroll.

Gaddafi and his sons are not the only ones who have been bribing journalists in the Arab world. The regime of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and several oil-rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia have for decades offered bribes to Arab journalists.

This explains why many Arab journalists have refrained from reporting anything that reflected negatively on their paymasters.

Instead of reporting on the grievances of Arabs living under dictatorships, these journalists often engaged in heaping praise on Arab regimes and criticizing only one country: Israel.

Apparently the same unrest in the Middle East that uncovered some of the bribing, might end it too:

The uprisings in the Arab world could finally put an end to the phenomenon of bribing journalists. In an encouraging sign, a large number of Egyptian journalists have waged an "intifada" against editors and reporters who served as mouthpieces for Mubarak in return for money and other favors.

In Tunisia, the new government has already removed journalists who served as organs for deposed President Zine al-Abidin bin Ali from their jobs.

I suppose this is promising, but is this the result of a sincere desire for objective, unbiased news--or is it just a reaction against those journalists who serve as the mouthpieces for the hated regimes. When the people don't have a problem with the regime, will they still insist on objective reporting, or will they no longer care?

Technorati Tag: Media Bias.