The British media and the middle east

Abstract

I would like to begin by considering some general aspects of the business of reporting and commenting on Middle Eastern affairs. What is it like? How well has it been done? How well is it being done today? Here at the outset I must admit to a strong prejudice which places the press, steam radio, and television in order of preference as media of information on current affairs. I believe, for example, that a television documentary is more likely than not to give a misleading and unbalanced impression of the situation in an area which is necessarily remote from the experience of the vast majority of people in this country. This has little to do with the talent of the television journalists; in fact, the more brilliant they are, the more insidious may be the effect. But what is it like to be a correspondent in the Middle East? First of all there are some very considerable and obvious advantages. One of these is the public interest that the area represents, and that because nothing can be more demoralizing than working in a region which is regarded, probably quite unfairly, as boring or unimportant. This interest has been fairly continuous since the Second World War, with two relatively fallow periods in 1959-60 and 1970-72. (I recall a former colleague, Kim Philby of The Observer, writing in 1959 that we foreign correspondents must not grumble at the lack of incident because 'we have had a good innings'.) The result is that, although there will always be some correspondents who are bored or unhappy with their work in the Middle East, they are rare; most of them find it absorbing. Here it is relevant to point out that the size and scale of the Middle East is an advantage. So much variety and interest are packed into a relatively small region. The area that I covered included Turkey and Iran as well as Arabia and extended as far south as Khartoum and west to the Maghreb. (There was a bit of a struggle here; 'French North Africa' had previously been the province of Paris correspondents, but they showed increasing reluctance to go there after independence while, at the same time, communications with the eastern Arab World improved. It was therefore possible to persuade editors that it was worthwhile sending Cairo or Beirut correspondents from time to time to Algiers, Rabat, and Tunis.) Even so, the whole area could be included in one of the larger states of South America. Latin American correspondents are often obliged to report on a coup in Chile from Buenos Aires. Such a handicap does not apply in the Middle East. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the disadvantages and difficulties of Middle East reporting. These can arise at both ends: from the management of the media and from local conditions and attitudes. As regards management, there was always the question of editorial policy, and here a distinction cannot be avoided between the 'quality' and the popular press. For me, the hallmark of a quality paper is that it should trust its correspondents and not allow editorial bias to overrule their judgement. This is why I would deny the right to quality status aspired to by one famous daily with peculiarly partisan views on the Middle East. On the other hand, the Financial Times has proved to be one of the very best sources of information and analysis of Middle Eastern affairs. Its owners doubtless hold strong