Roxana Saberi
"Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process. Our establishment media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are -- look at those Iranian mullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture -- while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by our own government."
And another interesting part of this article:
"A Nexis search for "Roxana Saberi" reveals 2,201 mentions in press reports, virtually all of them in the last two months regarding her arrest by Iran. By stark contrast, a search for "Ibrahim Jassam" -- the Iraqi journalist still held without charges by the U.S. even in the face of an Iraqi court finding that there's no evidence of his guilt -- produces a grand total of 71 mentions. A search of "Sami al-Haj" for the first five years of his detention in Guantanamo (2001-2006) reveals a grand total of 101 mentions. For the entire period of his lawless detention, Bilal Hussein's name was mentioned 556 times. "
(Thanks Sasa)
5 comments:
Very telling. Thanks for posting.
good find, thanks for sharing.
Wasim,
You are absolutely right but the flip side is why is the Arab media not publicising the plight of someone like Ibrahim Jassam? Is it perhaps out of embarassment; because for every Ibrahim Jassam held by Americans, there are a hundred Ibrahim Jassams held incognito by their own governments.
Abu Kareem,
Welcome back. I don't see how you can make this connection. Roxanne Saberi is being held by Iran and not by Arab governments who, incidentally, are almost overwhelmingly all vassals of the United States.
The point of the quoted article was actually to show the hypocrisy of the Western media. Also, I'm not sure if you are able to see al Jazeera in America, but I think that they have done a pretty good job of highlighting the plight of the Ibrahim Jassams of the world. I don't think that what you pointed out is the flipside to this story..
Of course I get the point of the article, ya Wassim. I am just making an additional observation. I applaud Al Jazeera if what you said is true, but Al Jazeera is the exception among most Arab media.
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