Frank Rich’s Wallflowers at the Revolution in this weekend’s New York Times resonates deeply. It hits me both as an observer on the impact of social media platforms on such uprisings, as well as as former television news reporter in the Middle East.
The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.
Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.
Rich takes some good shots at our own ignorance, thanks to the self-censorship of the American corporate media establishment (TV, cable providers):
That we often don’t know as much about the people in these countries as we do about their Tweets is a testament to the cutbacks in foreign coverage at many news organizations — and perhaps also to our own desire to escape a war zone that has for so long sapped American energy, resources and patience. We see the Middle East on television only when it flares up and then generally in medium or long shot. But there actually is an English-language cable channel — Al Jazeera English — that blankets the region with bureaus and that could have been illuminating Arab life and politics for American audiences since 2006, when it was established as an editorially separate sister channel to its Qatar-based namesake.
Interestingly, the “35-year veteran of the Canadian Broadcasting Company” who heads Al-Jazeera English that Rich refers to is Tony Burman — who eagerly hired me at CBC when I left NBC News Tel Aviv back in 2001. He always thought that the U.S. nets were light and frothy, and I suspect that he was thrilled to deprogram this Canadian national of his American ways. He’s probably feeling pretty good now, having struggled to convince North American cable providers to carry Al-Jazeera English since its inception:
Unable to watch Al Jazeera English, and ravenous for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East otherwise unavailable on television, millions of Americans last week tracked down the network’s Internet stream on their computers. Such was the work-around required by the censorship practiced by America’s corporate gatekeepers. You’d almost think these news-starved Americans were Iron Curtain citizens clandestinely trying to pull in the jammed Voice of America signal in the 1950s — or Egyptians desperately seeking Al Jazeera after Mubarak disrupted its signal last week.
HRH Media 
Though I confess after reading Frank Rich’s piece in the NY Times that I was unaware Hanson had written about it, I must say it seems a bit much for Rich to claim there is “Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media” without providing so much as a single example. Ignore-o-phobic maybe, but hey…
…on the other hand, Rich accurately describes and very appropriately gripes about the absolutely ridiculous “stacking” [order] of stories as they often appear on evening news.
His examples of the impacted price of gas at the pump, plus TV networks’ seeming obsession with weather are fair. (However, Rich’s remark diminishing devastating blizzards in the Midwest serves only to legitimize mid-America’s perception of the East Coast “media elite.”)
The observation that too many U.S. network news suits try too hard to be hip in their trumpeting of Facebook and Twitter is by far Rich’s most fabulous point. Indeed such perspicacity almost atones for Rich’s ridiculous assertion that an American blackout of Al Jazeera English is almost comparable to life behind the Iron Curtain.
Please note my opinion does not equal disdain (or even indifference) toward the notion of Al Jazeera English being broadcast across America, but at the ripe old age of 48, I should perhaps feel awfully sheltered as I’ve yet to meet even ONE of those millions of Americans “ravenous (oh my!) for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East.”
And here I thought Americans were ravenous for nothing more comprehensive and sophisticated than American news coverage of “Two And A Half Men” dictator Charlie Sheen.
I genuinely admire Hanson’s old boss, Tony Burman, passionately pursuing and achieving his dream of running Al Jazeera English – particularly after starting his career with the CBC in his mid-20s.
Hopefully Burman, who of course is not responsible for Rich’s hyperbole, understands a sudden sea change in Americans’ appetite for exhaustive coverage of the Middle East – while wonderful – is not yet likely.
As an aside, I’m thrilled to see Mr. Rich’s column and, by extension, Hanson’s blog reach more eyes than it otherwise might. It has forced me to think more deeply.