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From
El Hayat, no. 14646
Star reporters on the
satellite channels and some of them tell the truth and some stray into analysis
Salam Harb
30 April 2003
After the reporters from
Arab television left the battlefield in the war on Iraq and returned to their
bases in Arab and foreign countries, some of them were also obliged to bid farewell
to a number of colleagues who had fallen as occupational casualties-an occupation
that once involved searching out trouble spots, and now sometimes means searching
out death. Most satellite stations proceeded to host their reporters as stars
on their news and political analysis shows. The reporters would give their impressions
of the conditions under which they were living and working in the Iraqi cities
as they were being bombed or transformed into battlefields. These descriptions
were of great interest to Arab audiences who followed the bombs, rockets, injured,
and killed of the siege of Iraq live minute by minute. Eyewitness accounts of
the battle have greater impact than any other description.
Some news and talk shows
on some stations roamed into political or military analysis with their reporters,
which is a hard thing for reporters to do no matter how well educated they are
in political or military matters. Some reporters would completely avoid embellishing
their answers with their own views, talking about the work conditions during the
war on Iraq. But others would launch into analysis and draw inappropriate conclusions,
either affecting an air of inside knowledge, or parroting views already aired
elsewhere.
So Al Jazeera brought
out Diyar El Omari, Tayseer Allouni, and Omar El Kahki, Al Arabiya hosted Ali
Noun and some of his colleagues, and Future Television invited its correspondents
from Iraq and Kuwait, Najwa Qasim, Najat Sharaf El Din, and Diana Muqallad onto
its program "Stay at Home" with Zahi Wahbi. All of the other stations did the
same sort of thing. Working under fire for the love of the profession.
ENDS
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