Taking some inspiration from Philip Seib’s the Al Jazeera Effect, the proposal is to examine the media in the Middle East through the lens of the Bahrain protests of February / March 2011. Within Bahrain, the local national media presented a biased one-sided version of events, portraying the protestors as terrorists and the royal family as the saviours. Pure propaganda spin. The neighbouring Qatar based Al Jazeera however presented a much more objective perspective of the forceful excessive crackdown on peaceful protestors by an oppressive regime, that is until their own government sent in military forces to assist in the crackdown. Then everything went very quiet in relation to Bahrain on AL Jazeera. Old vs new approaches to journalism. Then you have social media. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as personal blogs were largely used as tools in the organization of the initial protests. Then you have the fascinating angle of other outside interests in Bahrain, namely Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which reported or failed to report on the events as they unfolded, with particular biases. Saudi don’t want protests of their own, so they suppressed the news. Iran however seek to claim Bahrain or align themselves with the protestors. Then you have an even more interesting spin through the American and British media who also have high stakes in the country through the U.S. Fifth Fleet based there and the fact that Bahrain was under British rule until as late as the 1970s. Other counties around the world also reported in different ways the events occurring here. Freedom of speech / expression is being trampled on here.
CriticalRemix.com
Dr. Owen Gallagher, SFHEA
