The View From Abroad   

The foreign media are covering the war on terror through lenses that differ dramatically from those used by their American counterparts.

The average American news consumer could be forgiven for believing that America not only owns this war but the story, too.

The saturation coverage, the eyewitness reporting from remote villages, the investigative enterprise inside the corridors of power, the thousands of mobilized journalists and hundreds of millions depleted from news budgets, all testify to an unprecedented effort by the U.S. media to report every facet of the terrorist attack and its aftermath. But American journalism is going to have to share the bows.

The BBC got to Kabul first. A Pakistani journalist got the first face-to-face interview with Osama bin Laden after September 11. All journalist deaths in the first months of the war in Afghanistan were non-Americans. And one can hardly ignore the fact that a small TV station in the remote emirate of Qatar got all post-attack footage of the al Qaeda chief.

On the morning of November 13, after numerous feints and burqua disguises to get there, BBC correspondent John Simpson entered the Afghani capital a few steps ahead of the victorious Northern Alliance forces. With his cameras rolling and arms raised in triumph, the intrepid British television journalist cut "a swathe through the welcoming throng," as one London newspaper described it.

Peter Arnett, for one, believes that European and British television have done a better job than the American television reporting on the war in Afghanistan. Arnett, who just went back to war reporting after leaving CNN in 1999 in the wake of a controversial investigative piece that was later retracted, said he has heard a lot of recent criticism from his colleagues abroad about American television "caving in" to Bush administration pressure. "The big failure of American television is all the flag waving," adds Arnett, who joined the small independent video producer BNN in November.

No one would suggest that the U.S. mass media are falling down on the job. But the inordinate repetition, America-centered chauvinism and signs of what one New York Times reporter euphemistically calls "self-selection" can take their toll. As a result, some discriminating news consumers in this country are turning more to international Web sites for a fresh view of events, priorities and opinions--as well as the occasional scoop.

"Increasingly, those of us who want to understand the full ramifications of the U.S. 'war on terror' are finding that big chunks of the story are severely underreported--or missing entirely--in the U.S. media," Bruce Mirken, a freelance writer, wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle.

An informal survey of foreign press and Internet coverage since September 11 indicates that the foreign media are indeed covering aspects of the conflict largely ignored or unseen by their American counterparts. But "big chunks" is a bit of an overstatement. Historians will long debate how much national security and fears of being called disloyal have hobbled American journalism, but in sheer volume, the foreign press is a distant second.

A perusal of international coverage on the Net during the first three months of the crisis revealed an amazing phenomenon: There were actually other things going on in the world besides the hunt for terrorists. By late October, The Story started sharing space on most front pages and Web sites instead of dominating them. Even in Israel, which has a huge stake in what's happening in Afghanistan, the press has largely reverted to homeland concerns. In U.S. papers, however, the international reporting remained largely devoted to Afghanistan into December.

The sheer number of media outlets around the globe, not to mention the diversity, defy generalities. But there are some common threads. For instance, basic facts of the crisis and its causes are not in significant dispute either here or abroad--with a few exceptions. The most notable and egregious one--published in some Arab newspapers shortly after the plane attacks--claimed there was proof that Israel was behind it all. These reports claimed that all "4,000" Israelis working in the twin towers called in sick on September 11. In fact, no such thing happened, and at least five Israelis died in the New York tragedy.

The main difference between U.S. and foreign coverage seems to be in emphasis, spin and play of news that American editors regard as secondary. When the American press bannered the start of the bombing campaign on October 7, it generally gave also-ran status to the simultaneous food drops, while many foreign media gave equal play to the "bread and bomb" campaign. This is not to say the Bush administration got overwhelmingly high marks abroad for its humanitarian efforts. A State Department survey of media reaction in 49 countries revealed an almost even split between supporters and critics. The skeptics were especially vociferous in the Middle East, South Asia and the leftist press in Europe. "A cheap propaganda trick," declared a German daily. American editorials and commentary focused more on the question of how effective the food drops might be than on questioning the motives behind them.

Then there's America's patriotism. While journalists in the United States debate whether they should wear flags on their lapels or balance every report about civilian casualties in Afghanistan by reminding the public that thousands died on American soil September 11, it should come as no surprise that the foreign media couldn't care less.

But others practice their own brand of patriotism. The British and European media, for example, have given prominent coverage to their own countries' contributions to the war effort, no matter how small or uncertain those efforts might be. Provincial, nationalistic coverage is a worldwide phenomenon.

In countries where the government and political parties have strong control over the print and broadcast media, coverage has been maddeningly predictable. For example, the Arab media were in indignant lockstep about U.S. allegations that the Saudi and Egyptian governments were lukewarm, if not duplicitous allies, in the anti-terrorist effort. "The American media campaign against Saudi Arabia is clear evidence that the American community is arrogant, backward and lacks any knowledge about other countries," wrote a commentator in Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper. Another Kuwaiti newspaper said "America wants to hear nothing but obedience." So much for liberation gratitude from the Persian Gulf War.

There's even a high level of media carping from the first tier of nations allied with America in the anti-terrorism effort, countries such as Britain, Germany and France. Stephen Hess, the respected international media observer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., says he is often interviewed by journalists from these countries who routinely "take a certain pleasure in sticking it to the Americans.... I must say it's starting to get on my nerves."

The Guardian of London seemed to enjoy itself immensely when sponsoring a caption contest to go with an embarrassing photo of President Bush with an overly curious turkey, taken during a pre-Thanksgiving photo-op by the Reuters news agency.

The pundits who have made careers out of criticizing America--and there are many--have had a field day with this crisis, using it as a metaphor for everything they see wrong with American society and U.S. foreign policy. Their commentary immediately after September 11 typically began with the obligatory disapproval of terrorism and sympathy for America's victims. Then they got around to what they really wanted to say.

A September 29 column in the UK's Guardian by the Anglo-Indian writer Arundhati Roy (best known for her book "The God of Small Things") expressed the quintessential outrage of the international intelligentsia. The column, which was written before America began its bombing campaign, was circulated widely on the Net within the U.S. academic community but not in its national media. Here is an excerpt:

America is at war against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the U.S. government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an 'international coalition against terror,' mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.... What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new kind of war."

Many overseas critics seemed almost disappointed that it took a month for Washington to live up to its notices and actually launch the war.

Thomas L. Friedman, the influential foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, was among those who threw up their hands over the deluge of negative coverage from abroad. In an October 5 column, while conceding that American policy could use some improvement, he told his overseas colleagues to look in their own mirror for a change.

Those keeping a regular eye on foreign coverage tend to agree that an underlying subtext creeps into even breaking news reports. Take the respected BBC, for example. David Anable, a British-born journalist who now heads the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., claims an addiction to the BBC's nightly broadcasts but voices a frustration. "Most of the younger reporters seem unable to resist this wonderful chance to be prophets, ending their pieces with forecasts of doom. The old good rule was that you played it straight, no matter what."

With some exceptions, non-American media traditionally take liberties in news reporting, opting for a personalized approach that shuns the clear separation between information, analysis and political commentary. The current conflict seems to have exacerbated this tendency. While the British and European media tend to run the more sophisticated commentary, the American press stands fairly well alone in its respect for facts.

"The professional class in Europe wants the press to confirm its opinions, not change them," notes Gerald Fitzgerald, a freelance journalist and media watcher who divides his time between Washington and Ireland.

American media have given short shrift to foreign news in recent years. Up until September 11, anyway. That's something that didn't go unnoticed in the international arena, and the resentment is showing up in spades now.

Ray Conlogue, a columnist for the Globe and Mail of Toronto, wrote on November 5 that many Americans have failed to understand why "so many people around the world hate their country." He then offered his own explanations--"from poor foreign-affairs coverage in U.S. media to the willful amnesia of Americans about the sometimes brutal realpolitik of U.S. foreign policy."

The newspapers themselves are often less stridently critical in their editorials than their columnists are, not unlike the American press. The Globe and Mail has even sponsored a donation campaign for the World Trade Center victims.

Not all foreign coverage is slanted. Hamid Mir, the editor of the Dawn newspaper in Pakistan, played it straight when he interviewed Osama bin Laden at a secret location inside Afghanistan in early November. In this now famous interview, in which bin Laden claimed to have nuclear weapons, Mir depended on a tape recorder and ran the interview as it happened, with little embellishment.

It also is essential to note that the majority of media outlets in allied nations have been largely behind the American effort. London's Financial Times, which has prospered mightily from its American edition, has been a sober-minded supporter. Even France's left-of-center daily Liberation doffed its hat to American military success in Afghanistan. "The success of the strikes has made it possible to forget today the collateral damage of yesterday," the paper's foreign affairs specialist, Jacques Amalrik, wrote on November 16.

Foreign press coverage has two facets--coverage from inside America and coverage of the anti-terrorist campaign abroad. The international press corps in the U.S. has swollen enormously since the crisis began. The New York Police Department says it alone issued over 1,000 temporary press cards to incoming foreign journalists after September 11.

One of the worst-kept secrets in journalism is that the foreign press corps in the United States, no matter how critical it might be of America and its policies, doesn't go to the bathroom without first checking the New York Times and CNN. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC and a few others are also on the "must check" list. (Watching foreign journalists hovering around those late-night newsstands is a fun sport in Washington and New York.)

And it's not just news about America they're interested in. If the Times runs an editorial about Kashmir, that's drop-everything stuff for Indian and Pakistani journalists in the United States. While only a handful of Americans may care about that subject, it invariably becomes front-page news throughout the subcontinent. There are two reasons for this. First, the disputed territory of Kashmir is seen in India and Pakistan as a critically vulnerable point in the current crisis. And second, the international elite regards the New York Times as an authoritative weathervane of America's foreign policy direction. Few believe the newspaper's protestations about being totally independent of Washington, especially when it comes to the Middle East conflict, and the current crisis is widely seen as a direct symptom of that conflict.

If one were to draw a single political line between the United States and most of the world, it could be described in one word: Israel. As conflicted as the Washington-Tel Aviv relationship might actually be, the foreign perception is fairly united in believing that America and its press will excuse any behavior by Israel, and that this historic support is more responsible than anything for bringing terrorism to American shores. This has been a constant theme in critical coverage from overseas, especially in the Islamic world--but not confined to it. Even the British press, which is closest to ours, gives a privileged platform to its pro-Arab writers.

The Independent's Robert Fisk is a good example. The most decorated journalist in the United Kingdom, Fisk wields an eloquent pen with graphic, often courageous eyewitness reporting. He was badly beaten by a mob of Afghan refugees in early December, barely escaping with his life. But he seldom avoids taking a venomous swipe at American and Israeli behavior, while dismissing British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a Washington puppet. "We are being asked to support a war whose aims appear to be as misleading as they are secretive," Fisk wrote a week before America retaliated.

How seriously is negative coverage like this taken by allied governments eager to win the "war of ideas"? It all depends, say those in a position to know. Journalists with a long track record of criticism are pretty much dismissed, according to Edward S. Walker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. "While it's important for policymakers to keep their finger on the pulse, predictability is usually a discount factor," says Walker, now head of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

The one foreign news organization that Washington and London take very seriously these days is the Arab television station Al Jazeera, which enjoyed a wide following in the Islamic world for its controversial journalism even before it aired exclusive videotapes of bin Laden. After the Saudi-born zealot went on the air with a new call for jihad against the decadent West, an Arabic-speaking American diplomat was on hand at the station in Qatar with a rebuttal.

While the American media generally acceded to National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice's call not to help the enemy by rebroadcasting these videos, most foreign media not only ignored the request but scored the vaunted "free press" of America for knuckling under out of fear of being called disloyal. The Bush administration's argument that the tapes might contain "coded messages" for bin Laden's supporters and cells was widely dismissed, on grounds that Al Jazeera can be seen directly by satellite nearly everywhere, including the United States, so U.S. networks would hardly be helping the terrorist cause by broadcasting them.

Lest it be thought that Al Jazeera is little more than a terrorist mouthpiece, it should be noted that the station claims to be fervently independent and is known for airing subject matter and personalities long considered taboo in the state-controlled Arab media – including interviews with Israelis. The station received an enormous publicity boon when Washington started taking notice, granting the little station interviews with top administration officials like Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Fouad Ajami, the respected Middle East watcher at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, provided a disturbing profile of Al Jazeera in the New York Times Magazine on November 18. In the piece Ajami strongly recommended that the Bush people not put all their public-relations eggs in that one Islamic media basket, but instead open the door to a pool of more moderate Arab stations. He was skeptical about Washington's chances of altering the fundamental mind-set of Islamic nationalism and anti-Americanism that forms the rockbed of Al Jazeera's programming.

The terrorism and war story has been an attention-getting--and in some cases profitable--bonanza for much of the world's media. Traffic on news Web sites like Al Jazeera's have jumped four-fold in hits since September 11. Papers everywhere are paying top dollar for increasingly scarce newsprint to keep up with circulation demands.

London's Mirror, a tabloid that traditionally focuses almost exclusively on the Three S's (scandal, sex and sensationalism) has been transformed by September 11. "We at the Mirror may never recover from the shock of discovering that endless pages of serious news, comment and analysis on a massive story can not only be exhilarating to produce, it can also sell a lot of papers," Editor Piers Morgan told The Guardian October 23.

An Indian correspondent in New York, Vijay Pandhi, puts it more succinctly in talking about both his country's and profession's feeling about the retaliation campaign:

"We are all very happy about this."