continued: "Global Media, the New World Order-and the Significance of Failure" by S. A. Schleifer
page 1

In contrast to Arab and Islamic culture at the periphery of global civilization, there are the Japanese, profoundly conscious of themselves, of their history, their culture and, almost to a point of embarrassment, their homogeneity. But every Japanese high school boy masters Western history, and with far more intensity than the subject is approached by most American college students. One cannot imagine any contemporary educated Japanese journalist or politician having trouble appreciating the sort of appalling associations that attach in Western consciousness to Hitler or Hitlerian behavior.

But Saddam Hussein had no perception of this. On August 2 when the Iraqi Army rolled across the border into Kuwait, it did so with barely any but the most transparent of efforts to mask this land grab. Its unveiled ruthlessness immediately reminded any middle-aged or older person (and not just George Bush) whose consciousness had been shaped by global culture of Hitler's armies pouring into Poland or Holland.

But even the masters of high-tech information systems do not understand the implications of an emerging global culture and, in particular, of the dangers of uneven participation in that culture.

From mid-August to mid-September 1990, this author worked in Saudi Arabia as an NBC News field producer covering the buildup of Desert Shield. He was struck at the time by an extraordinary lack of equilibrium in access and coverage.

Every day the US armed forces public affairs office provided the international press covering the buildup with a minimum of eight story opportunities with American troops. In that same period the Joint Forces-the Arab-Islamic contingent in the coalition, including Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, Kuwaiti, Moroccan, Senegalese and Pakistani troops-provided a total of eight stories for the entire month. That's eight stories per day about the American buildup and only eight stories a month about the 100,000 Arab-Islamic forces holding down the front line, far in advance of American forces at that time.

Since the British forces provided an average of two story opportunities a day, this established an Anglo-American total of approximately 10 a day to the Joint Forces' eight stories a month. According to colleagues who stayed on for the duration, this ratio continued and even worsened.

The implications of this imbalance must be considered within two contexts. First, neither CNN nor any other international news organizations were in Kuwait when the Iraqis struck. And the Iraqis-however hospitable they were to CNN and other global journalists in Baghdad-never allowed access to Kuwait either during the first days of the invasion, when looting and rape were followed by the rounding up of foreign hostages, or later on during the conflict, when Kuwaiti nationals suspected of resistance activities were tortured, executed, or deported to Iraq.

While there were a few print stories about the invasion that contained eyewitness accounts taken from refugees or by telephone calls from Kuwait, there were no vivid on-the-scene accounts, no vivid pictures, no round-the-clock electronic images, nor any flood of newspaper stories. There were only some hazy, quickly shot home videos of a few burning cars and buildings-fuzzy images of Kuwait City that faded away after a few days.

At the same time, round-the-clock coverage of the American military buildup in Saudi Arabia was transmitted throughout the world. Arab and Islamic television stations rarely if ever cover foreign news with their own crews and rely instead on international TV agencies or CNN for foreign news pictures. Even if Egyptian, other Arab states, and Islamic TV stations had sent news teams to Saudi Arabia, they would have faced the same problem as Western media: the severely limited access to the Arab-Islamic joint forces under Saudi command.

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These misleading, out-of-context images flashing continuously across the global consciousness (through little fault of the media itself) made Saddam Hussein's case for him. For the duration of the crisis, Radio Baghdad broadcast a stream of accusations: that American troops were in the sacred city of Mekkah directing security around the Haram, the Holy Mosque that contains the Kaaba; that American women soldiers were practicing prostitution in Mekkah, as well as in other parts of Saudi Arabia; and that American troops were also deployed in Medina.

Given the focus on what increasingly appeared-courtesy of out-of-context global TV-to be an Anglo-American military occupation of Saudi Arabia, Radio Baghdad acquired credibility. This was all the easier for Radio Baghdad since no consistent or significant attempt to rebut these charges on a global basis was made by Saudi Arabia until the outbreak of fighting in mid-January 1991. That was when the author returned to the Kingdom to direct the World Muslim News Service, an emergency multi-media unit for the Muslim World League, an international semi-official Saudi body based in Mekkah (Davidian, 1991; Shadroui, 1991).

Davidian, in one of the few press reports on the activities of WMNS, noted that while Westerners may not understand the outrage of Muslims hearing (and believing) the Radio Baghdad accusations, neither had the media (pro-coalition Arab and Islamic media as well as global media) countered the reports. This left the Muslims around the world with only the incorrect version of the story.

WMNS was established by the Muslim World League in response to the increasingly serious waves of massive pro-Iraqi demonstrations in countries like Morocco and Pakistan where the political establishment was strongly pro-Saudi, but were forced by the intensity of the demonstrations to minimize any bold role for their armed forces in Saudi Arabia in the last days leading up to Desert Storm.

WMNS's news product--finished TV field reports or "spots" in Arabic and English--were transmitted via Arabsat to all Arab countries and were rebroadcast in Egypt, the Gulf states, and Morocco. Video copies of the WMNS reports were also distributed to CNN, Visnews, and the American, British, and European TV news pools. The sounds portion of the video reports was copied on audio tape for rebroadcast by Radio Free Kuwait operating out of Saudi Arabia, and for a joint American-Saudi Armed Forces Radio Service broadcasting to Iraqi troops in and near Kuwait.

But WMNS was a shoestring operation; its product, however earnest and sophisticated, was but a drop in the media bucket, and it had begun five months too late.

In a background report submitted to the Muslim World League, this author, in his capacity as WMNS executive producer, defined the problem:

"The purpose of the World Muslim News Service (WMNS) is to generate daily coverage of the Islamic dimension of the Gulf War with TV field reports, still photography for daily newspapers and other publications, and news feature stories for wire copy news services.

"This is of critical importance since the overall impression in the Muslim world derived from global media coverage of the war as well as from the extensive propaganda work undertaken by the Iraqi regime is mostly negative to Saudi Arabia and demoralizing to those Arab and Islamic countries allied to Saudi Arabia in the coalition.

"Despite the fact that ulama from all over the Muslim world support Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that troops from more than half a dozen Arab and Islamic countries are serving on Saudi soil, despite the fact that the Saudi and Kuwaiti air forces have participated fully with the other allied forces in the first phase of the battle for the liberation of Kuwait that is now underway, the Muslim peoples throughout the Islamic world or in residence in large numbers in Europe and the Americas are unaware of the Islamic dimension to this struggle, if not hostile to Saudi Arabia and the cause of Kuwaiti liberation.

"On the other hand, the most despicable lies about the status of the Holy Places here in Hijaz are circulated by Baghdad media throughout the Muslim world without rebuttal, as well as the Iraqi claim that this is an American war against the Arabs and the Muslims. The fact that this is a jihad by Arab and Islamic forces, first to defend Saudi Arabia from aggression and then to liberate Kuwait, has been eclipsed by the absence of almost any Arab and Islamic element in the coverage transmitted by global news organizations to the Islamic world" (Schleifer, 1991).

What was to be finally set up by the Saudis with very limited resources and too late into the crisis had been proposed to the highest echelon of the United States Information Service in Washington by the author via American embassy channels in Cairo in mid-September. Washington was not interested. Its response was that an Islamic-oriented field news unit was the proper concern of the Muslim partners in the coalition, not of the United States. But that was to ask the problem to come up with the solution.

From the Kuwaiti perspective the Gulf War began on August 2, 1990, with the Iraqi invasion. What happened in mid-January 1991-Desert Storm-was the counter-offensive launched by the powerful friends and allies of Kuwait and included participation by Kuwaiti air force and infantry. But because of the circumstances of global news coverage and the varying abilities of the coalition forces to make effective use of that coverage, even the West's own perception of when the Gulf War began-with Desert Storm, on January 17-yields unconsciously to the Iraqi definition of who initiated the conflict.

It would be as if history had recorded December 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, as the beginning of World War II-and not the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

The stunning military victory by the American-led coalition appears to have minimized the damage. But the inability of unwillingness of the Arab forces allied in that coalition, and the failure of Washington to take corrective measures in light of that unwillingness or inability to respond to the requirements of global coverage, gave most of the Muslim world's streets to Saddam Hussein.

The reverberations of that extraordinary political failure may yet return to haunt the Arab and Islamic world.

References:

Alter, Jonathan. "Ted's Global Village." Newsweek, June 11, 1990, p. 48-52.

"Cross-Frontier Broadcasting." The Economist, May 2, 1992, p. 21-22, 28.

Davidian, Geoff. "Press Told It Sleights Friendly Islamic Side." Houston Chronicle, Jan. 26, 1991, p. 3.

Napoli, James J. "Egyptian Sleight of Hand." Index on Censorship 2: 21-23, 1992.

Schleifer, S. Abdallah. "WMNS Situation Report." Internal document. Jeddah, Feb. 1, 1991.

Shadroui, George. "WMNS Offers Pro-Alliance Perspective on War." Middle East Times, Feb. 19, 1991, p. 3.

Smith, Anthony. "Media Globalism in the Age of Consumer Sovereignty." Gannett Center Journals, Fall 1990, p. 1-20.

Smith, Vern E. "The Whole World is Watching." Sunday Times Magazine, Oct. 7, 1990.

Sreberny-Mohammedi, Annabelle. "The 'World of News' Study-Results of Cooperation." Journal of Communication, Winter 1984.

Webster, Richard. "A Brief History of Blasphemy." London: Orwell Press, 1990.

Zuckerman, Lawrence. "The Global Village Tunes In." Time, June 6, 1988, p. 77.