MEDIA

Media

Media

Role of Western Media in Reporting War on Terror

The coverage of the "war on terror" has shown that the media have violated the basics of journalistic ethics, and instead of reporting have misinformed, and this would have given to the government manipulation of the United States (Thussu & Freedman, 2008).

The media favoured the war and patriotism led them to violate the right of citizens to be informed objectively and truthfully, in addition to violating the code, of ethics of UNESCO which requires all journalists, openly oppose form of advocacy or incitement to war.

Besides, repeatedly presenting news on the main subject of "Islam and violence", for example, using words such as "Islamic terrorist", "fundamentalist," "extremist," "radical Islam" or "Muslim activist" Western media have also become principal instruments of a campaign for "world war against terrorism."

Media coverage of the war also showed flaws in the investigation of the context in which they performed the conflict, the causes that provoked it, as well as the dissemination of information every day. Media readily agreed to be "embedded" in the battlefield, and the news agenda submitted to the strategic needs of the U.S. military (Kuypers, 2006).

Finally, the leading news networks agreed to censorship and self-censorship practiced for the American people and the countries that supported the war was not discouraged in supporting that war. Media of these countries forbade showing the coffins of dead American soldiers.

Middle East in Hollywood Movies

The U.S. entertainment industry over the years, has built representations of the caricatures of Washington designated opponents. The Arabs are the group treated worse in the movies, as opposed to other groups marginal as Jews or Gypsies, and racist abuse is the reason "invisible" to these films, which systematically present the figure of "Arab" as subhuman, fanatical, that does not value human life like us, who wants to destroy - to West, with their oil and their terrorism.

The Eastern mysticism is the first reason that attracted great personalities of Middle East to Europe at the beginning of the last century. Arabs are stereotyped in Hollywood as cruel, barbaric and lusting after money and women. For instance, the film of the decade of the 50 Arabs represented through erotic "Dance Oriental" women of the harem who performed at a party, snake charmers arising in any place and the camel and the magic carpet as the main means of transport (Richardson, 2004).

The second is that Hollywood had "the desert" as the home of the Arab population. Obviously, this finding does not conform to reality, since the Arab population living in the desert is very low. The third stereotype has a negative impact and Arabs' projected image as uncivilized or barbaric figures; not only in the classic film, but also cartoons. Many people are able to remember and repeat some of the songs from the Disney movie, Aladdin to see what we find in his lyrics or the same movie scene where the princess threatens to cut off the hand as punishment for stealing an ...