Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width

The media coverage of the popular revolts in the Middle East has been pretty in-depth up to now with all the major news outlets covering every aspect of the unravelling political landscape. Or have they?

I would contend that far from analysing the breaking stories they have instead favoured an approach akin to sports commentary where the correspondents report what they see with little thought given to analysis. The main culprits here have been TV and radio with some of the more serious newspapers taking a slightly more academic approach to their examination of the events.

Having been in the UK for much of the time I have been subjected to observing things through the prism of BBC News and Sky News with the occasional referral to CNN, Al-Jazeera and Russia Today among other sources. As for radio I have listened mostly to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.

Let's deal with the TV stations first and in reverse order. The first order of business is to be clear that Russia Today is not a news channel. It is a mouthpiece for sources close to the Kremlin to further Russian interests by points-scoring from any and every adversary. On one bulletin last week whilst highlighting the suppression of anti-government protesters in Libya the rolling ticker at the bottom of the screen was delivering the single message that the security services were using British made crowd control "machines" on the streets. This intrigued me until I eventually twigged that they were really talking about "vehicles" and obviously the copy had been translated directly from Russian language in which the word машина (mashyina) is commonly used. Anyway it was interesting to note how the Russians were spotlighting the possible lineage of the police vehicles but there was no mention of the MiG, Sukhoi and Mil aircraft raining death from the skies which all coincidentally share a common origin. Russia. Go figure.

Al-Jazeera was quite interesting as they have a rather no-holds-barred approach to their reporting. They tell it like it is, warts and all, but do tend to get a little ahead of themselves in reporting speculation and rumour with little or no verification. Having said that the quality of studio expert has been excellent with plenty of texture and context added to unfolding events. I would have watched more of Al-Jazeera but they do tend to focus on single events for a bit too long to the extent that if you are looking for a rolling news update you can sometimes be disappointed.

CNN has huffed and puffed and made out that its coverage is serious and highbrow but once we get beneath the skin we have a fairly safe and uncontentious package to deal with. In its defence CNN is pretty unlikely to announce a story until it is double-, treble-, quadruple-, and quintuple-checked. This is commendable in many ways but it also means that CNN is most often the network which is last out with the story.

Sky News has come a long, long way since it started out but it is still the TV equivalent of The Sun newspaper. It's all about headlines and dramatic statements but once you get beyond that the content is flabby and superficial with a general lack of journalistic talent and a total lack of meaningful analysis. The studio experts are maybe experts at being studio experts but they add very little to the understanding of what has been unfolding.

BBC News has thrown an inordinate amount of journalistic power at the Middle East in the last weeks to such an extent that there have been complaints of overkill by some licence-fee payers. It was noted by one complainant that near the end of the demonstrations in Egypt there were no less than 14 TV and radio correspondents representing the BBC in that country at the same time. I would hold that this is no bad thing as, until the Libyan uprisings started, the anti-Mubarak phenomenon was certainly the biggest story of the year and if a news network does not have a duty to report the news comprehensively then what duty does it really have?

The BBC coverage has been light years ahead of CNN and Sky and whilst Al-Jazeera has made a good effort I must come down in favour of Auntie Beeb. As mentioned before Russia Today is not a news channel so it does not deserve a rating here at all.

But where all the networks have missed the boat is in the almost complete absence of contextualisation and analysis in the wider sense. There has been an almost complete lack of understanding of the role of Pan-Arabism and the assertion therein that the Arabs are one nation from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

The previous existence or attempts to exist of the United Arab Republic, the United Arab States, the Federation of Arab Republics, the Arab Islamic Republic and the United States of North Africa demonstrates a complete and utter lack of understanding of the historical common thread that runs through the Arab world. That so many attempts have been made or mooted to unite Arab states is a clear indication that there is a lot more to the idea of Pan-Arabism than merely the hangover from Nasser's years in Egypt. Virtually every country in the Arab world has been involved in one or more of these schemes and it has been more the chauvinistic attitude of individual ruling cliques that has caused the lack of any success in this direction as opposed to any will of the people.

Leaders such as the late Hafez al-Assad of Syria embraced Pan-Arabism but profoundly on their own terms. The list of pragmatic Pan-Arabists is almost endless but chauvinism under the guise of protecting national interests always rules the day — or at least it has up till now. These events in the Middle East have been prompted and undertaken by the underclass in society to whom Pan-Arabism is a far more important component than it was to their erstwhile rulers. The Arab League has been one more international talk shop up to this point but that may change if we see some real people power in the region.

And what of the Ba'athists? It is as if they do not exist anymore. But they do. The regime in Syria which has ruled under Emergency Law since 1963 is led by "the leading party of society and state" — the Ba'ath Party. There are Ba'athists sprinkled throughout the region in different guises and strengths. I am not suggesting that this is a renaissance period for the Ba'athists (that would be ironic as "renaissance" is what Ba'ath means!) but they should be considered from the point of view of analysts, even if to be dismissed. But some would say that today's Ba'athists are those best prepared to benefit from mayhem in the Arab world and much more so than Islamic extremists who have been caught entirely on the hop.

This is the stuff that the news networks should be researching and telling the viewing and listening public about. It is not at all as sexy as Ashley Cole shooting someone with an air rifle or who wore what at the Oscars ceremony but
could certainly have much more of an impact on all of our lives in the coming weeks, months and years as the oil price heads inexorably upwards with each new piece of uncontextualised drama reaching the airwaves from the Middle East.

We surely deserve better in what we are fed as news by the networks out there and in the UK we are not too badly off compared to some countries believe you me, but evidently in the words of the two tailors of 60s-70s sitcom fame, we should "never mind the quality, feel the width!"