Analysis of local/regional Media (UAE and GCC Countries)
Introduction
The countries within the Middle East as well as the United Arab Emirates entails one of the most culturally and politically intricate regions across the globe. This is characterized by the rich and diverse cultural history that drives the modern day Middle East into struggling to balance the challenges of western culture and the modernization with traditional and religious values. The challenges occur as a result of the diversity within the region where the media plays a crucial in portraying the issues within the society and politics. The coverage of significant issues such as conflicts between Palestine and Israel gives the media a crucial role in covering the instances. These aspects have brought about the development of Alhurra Television a satellite network that aims at reaching out to countries within the Middle East.
The development of the Alhurra translates to The Free One through offering unlimited airplay on the current affairs taking place in the region. It offers a variety of programs with the aim of giving its audience insights over how Americans live. The importance of media in this region brings about censorship by many regimes with Al-Jazeera remaining as the only independent media network with independence. During times of war, the media in the Middle Eastern region applies propaganda in various sectors through coverage of destruction, deaths of people, just to mention but a few. These propaganda issues emanated as a result of control of information by the military as well as in other techniques in order to facilitate portraying of a particular image of the wars in the region.
Propaganda in coverage of the Middle East wars, media networks from the United States and the U.K. concentrated on broadcasting issues such as military actions, challenges facing the troops and many more. On the other hand, Al-Jazeera, which enjoys independence, concentrated on broadcasting the horrifying activities of the civilians. Additionally, propaganda was applied through the distinct positions of the officials involved in the war. Consequently, propaganda is prevalent through coverage from the United States or the United Kingdom in that, their coverage of wars that occur in the Middle East only justifies the wars in the cases of international opposition or illegality of the situation. This type of coverage only focuses on questioning the where about of Saddam Hussein or finding the location of weapons of mass destruction. However, this coverage shuns away from legal issues or even the geopolitical aspects.
The propaganda styles used by the media in the Middle Eastern region entails censoring the main reasons of the war that occurs as well as containing the in-depth factors. This includes using details that only portray worrying deaths of civilians without revealing the actual details in order to maintain the image of the countries in this region. Research conducted by other journalists has indicated that the coverage of incidents occurring in these regions contains metaphors and utilizes enthusiasm in portraying the incidents. Arguably, there is too much biased coverage of the incidents that occur with international media networks trying to safeguard their position in the war. These reasons behind this type of coverage are that, the designated audience includes government officials who would not wish for their actions to be shared with the rest of the world. It also occurs due to accidents that occur within the regions and the state government would not wish for other nations to intervene as a result.
References
Iraq War Media Reporting, Journalism and Propaganda — Global Issues. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/article/461/media-reporting-journalism-and- propaganda
