Zahera Harb is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London and previously worked as a journalist in Lebanon. She is the author of Channels of Resistance in Lebanon: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media (2011) and co-editor (with Dina Matar) of Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon (2013), both published by I.B.Tauris.
This book offers interesting perspectives on Western media depictions of the Middle East from a range of Arab countries. The fact that the volume includes chapters on Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Palestine, predominantly by writers and scholars of Arab origins, makes a valuable contribution to existing literature on issues of media representation from and of the Arab world.
Dr Dima Saber, Senior Research Fellow, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research
Published in 2017 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London New York
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Copyright Editorial Selection 2017 Zahera Harb
Copyright Individual Chapters 2017 Mike Berry, Birce Bora, Esmaeil Esfandiary, Shahab Esfandiary, Omar Al-Ghazzi, Naila Hamdy, Zahera Harb, Dina Matar, Fernando Resende, James Rodgers, Haider Al-Safi, Lina Sinjab
The right of Zahera Harb to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by the editor in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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References to websites were correct at the time of writing.
International Media and Journalism Studies 3
ISBN (HB): 978 1 78453 271 0
ISBN (PB): 978 1 78453 272 7
eISBN: 978 1 78672 176 1
ePDF: 978 1 78673 176 0
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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Contents
Zahera Harb
Omar Al-Ghazzi
Dina Matar
Naila Hamdy
Zahera Harb
Mike Berry
Fernando Resende
James Rodgers
Esmaeil Esfandiary and Shahab Esfandiary
Birce Bora
Haider Al-Safi
Lina Sinjab
List of Illustrations
Newspaper article Recrudescem os distrbios na Palestina. The photo shows an English police officer searching an Arab. The caption says: To avoid anti-Jewish and anti-British riots, the Arabs are searched by English soldiers in Jerusalem. Published in the newspaper Folha da Manh
Jews and Arabs in Palestine published in the newspaper Folha da Manh, 25 August 1940.
Acknowledgements
A few weeks after I arrived in the UK from Lebanon for my PhD, the 11 September atrocities took place. I soon realised that the Middle East and Arab world that I knew, grew up in and worked in as a journalist was different from the one I watched and read about in the American and British media. In 2004, the idea to put together a module on reporting the Middle East came about. Professor Terry Threadgold of the Cardiff School of Journalism and Professor Kevin Williams of Swansea University approved the modules rationale and listed it as a taught module in both the Cardiff School of Journalism and the MA Erasmus Mundus at Swansea. In 2007 I, with my Reporting the Middle East module, moved to Nottingham University. From Nottingham I moved to the City, University of London Journalism Department where the Reporting the Middle East module gained a more practical dimension. This book emerged from the module.
All thanks go to both Professors Threadgold and Williams who encouraged and supported me in sharing my own experiences and analysis as a journalist from Lebanon with journalism students. The module grew to include guest speakers journalists and academics, who have worked in or on the region. Many of those who contributed to the module as guest speakers are featured in this book. My gratitude and thanks go to the book contributors for their willingness to participate in, and commitment to, this project. This book is of both an academic and non-academic nature. I want it to appeal to my journalism students first and foremost. I would like to thank all my Reporting the Middle East students over the years. Many of them have made me proud of the journalism they have produced, remembering that history, context and semantics are three aspects they need to consider when reporting the Middle East.
Thanks go to my friends and colleagues in the UK and around the world, who hear and see me repeatedly and passionately speak and post regarding British and American media Orientalist tendencies, about coverage inaccuracies and about how, in many instances, journalism values are lost when it comes to reporting the Middle East, Islam and the Arab world. Special thanks to Dina Matar for her continuous support as a friend and colleague. Many thanks to long-time friend Sadie Clifford who dedicated the time and energy to proofread this book and for her valuable editorial comments. Last, but not least, my thanks go to I.B.Tauris editor Joanna Godfrey for her support and patience.
List of Contributors
Mike Berry is Lecturer at the Cardiff School of Journalism. Mike is co-author of More Bad News from Israel (2011) and Bad News from Israel (2004). He also co-authored PalestineIsrael: Competing Histories (2006).
Birce Bora is a news producer for Al-Jazeera English, based in Doha. She was London correspondent at Turkeys flagship national daily newspaper Hrriyet for over three years before moving to Al-Jazeera. She holds a PhD in Journalism Studies from City, University of London. Her thesis examined the representation of Turkey in British broadsheets between 2007 and 2013.
Esmaeil Esfandiary is a PhD candidate in Communication at Georgia State University. His research focuses on mainstream media representations of Islam and Iran, IranUS information and communication rivalry in the region, and dynamics of USIran relations and the role of media in that regard. His PhD thesis aims at drawing a comprehensive discursive map of American Iran experts based on the range of discourses they construct regarding how to deal with Iran.
Shahab Esfandiary is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Tehrans University of Arts and also a freelance documentary filmmaker. He is the author of Iranian Cinema and Globalization (2012) based on his PhD thesis at the University of Nottingham and has contributed to edited collections such as De-Westernising Film Studies (2012) and Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema (2012). He recently edited a collection of papers in Farsi also titled Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema (2016).
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Lecturer in Journalism Politics and Public Communication at Sheffield University. He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvanias Annenberg School for Communication. His work has appeared in
