2008 Woodie Awards
Journalism in the Middle East
Aaron Fetterman
Issue date: 2/18/08 Section: Opinion
This past week, five of us drove over to SLU to see Ethan Bronner, the deputy foreign editor for The New York Times, soon to be the bureau editor in Jerusalem. Perhaps strange, given that the Times has reduced its newsroom staff by one hundred spots just recently, he stressed the need to understand the world, and perceptions abroad.
Bronner also painted a detailed picture of the Middle East - the focus of St. Lawrence's Contemporary Issues Forum. In many Arab countries, the presses are not free, and getting visas to report there is hard. If they don't like where you've lived - or what you've written - you may not be allowed back. Partly because reporters are controlled in so many places, the newspapers do focus on the places where journalists can report: Israel/Palestine. In Iraq, reporters travel only with heavy security. Two journalists working for The New York Times have died since the start of the war. Iraq was supposed to be the leader in bringing democracy to the Middle East, but according to Bronner, the recent Palestinian and Egyptian elections "went horribly awry," with Hamas' election in Palestine and the Muslim Brotherhood's win in Egypt. Hezbollah is a serious force in Lebanon. In Saudi Arabia, there were "free" elections (women were not allowed to vote), but recent evidence says that the elected bodies have little influence. In Israel, getting out of the Gaza strip may be more costly than staying there. And the wall's construction, terrorism is down in Israel, and the economy there is "booming," especially in the high tech industries.
According to Bronner, part of the problem has been that we assumed, from experience perhaps in Eastern Europe, that given the chance, people in the Middle East would choose democracy and freedom. But that isn't necessarily what people want. Bronner says that "Muslims today live with a keen sense of loss" for the point in time when they had the most advanced culture in the world.
He concluded by saying that "I've been pessimistic about the Middle East since I started, and I haven't been let down."
Bronner also painted a detailed picture of the Middle East - the focus of St. Lawrence's Contemporary Issues Forum. In many Arab countries, the presses are not free, and getting visas to report there is hard. If they don't like where you've lived - or what you've written - you may not be allowed back. Partly because reporters are controlled in so many places, the newspapers do focus on the places where journalists can report: Israel/Palestine. In Iraq, reporters travel only with heavy security. Two journalists working for The New York Times have died since the start of the war. Iraq was supposed to be the leader in bringing democracy to the Middle East, but according to Bronner, the recent Palestinian and Egyptian elections "went horribly awry," with Hamas' election in Palestine and the Muslim Brotherhood's win in Egypt. Hezbollah is a serious force in Lebanon. In Saudi Arabia, there were "free" elections (women were not allowed to vote), but recent evidence says that the elected bodies have little influence. In Israel, getting out of the Gaza strip may be more costly than staying there. And the wall's construction, terrorism is down in Israel, and the economy there is "booming," especially in the high tech industries.
According to Bronner, part of the problem has been that we assumed, from experience perhaps in Eastern Europe, that given the chance, people in the Middle East would choose democracy and freedom. But that isn't necessarily what people want. Bronner says that "Muslims today live with a keen sense of loss" for the point in time when they had the most advanced culture in the world.
He concluded by saying that "I've been pessimistic about the Middle East since I started, and I haven't been let down."
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