Methods of communication across the globe have evolved, and as a consequence become more transparent to certain media biases that uphold certain ideas over others, particularly given that the media has been transformed into a tool to be used by political actors in order to spread their goals and increase supporter.
Yet, this politicization of the media has faced sharp criticism from a number of experts and professionals, in light of the role that the media has undertaken in the past to direct public opinion. The media has been used to formulate opinions on a number of major issues that affect the future of states.
Contrary to what is being portrayed by some views as a third world issue, signs indicate that the phenomenon of media politicization is rising in global media outlets headquartered in more developed countries as well.
Countries such as Russia and the U.S. have used the media as tools to promote their goals and politics in the Middle East. It has been noticed that certain issues have been given a great deal of media attention, as opposed to others, due to their importance and influence on those country’s interests.
Several Patterns
The rise of a politicized media is usually linked with major events taking place in a a country as the parties involved in these crises try to use the media in order to serve their interests and help form public opinion that would allow their plans to prevail. This is done through a privately owned media that serves the interests of its board members who have common interests with these politicians.
There have been a number of patterns that attest to the politicization of the media on both the regional and international level. They can be summed up as follows:
1. Party Media Outlets: in the last couple of years, the Middle Eastern region has witnessed a number of revolutionary movements, which have revealed the bias of several media outlets. Due to the ease in which the media was censored after these revolts, it revealed a new type of support and party politics. The media was then split in these states and public opinion was divided in its support for these outlets. The media lost all sense of neutrality and objectivity, and began to rely on an aggressive stances rather than properly analyzing the facts in the situations of these countries. The easiest way to gain a public following is to direct accusations against a constructed “other” in return for monopolizing nationalistic symbols. This type of pattern has been carried out in media outlets in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria.
The situation is becoming a lot worse in Syria, Libya and Yemen as the role of militias, terrorist groups and tribal groups have sought to achieve their goals through captured media outlets.
2. Directed Media: this media pattern emerged after global media outlets such as the BBC, Monte Carlo, London and Sawa began Arabic versions of their coverage in the region. These outlets, echo the sentiments of the radio station of Sawt El Arab, which sought throughout the 50’s and the 60’s to promote Nasserite Pan Arabism.
What is noticeable in this case is that the broadcasts did not hide their political goals. They saw them as a type of soft power to use in the region, prior to the appearance of satellite television, channels such as BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and El Aalam. These channels have been used as platforms to portray the opinions of some country’s policies in the region towards certain causes. More often than not, the political stance being proffered is reflected through media coverage.
The role of some channels, such as the Iranian channel El Aalam, sticks out clearly as a politically directed channel since it reflects the ideologue of Iran’s regime and promotes its causes in the region. These causes have led to several crises and instability from both a political and security standpoint in several states.
Through El Aalam and others, Iran has sought to shape public opinion in their respective regions and reinforce their ability to gain more followers in these crises. This has been achieved through the promotion of slogans such as “Help the Weak,” which no longer hides the political goals that Iran wants to achieve and the negative role that they have played in these crises.
3. A Restrained Media: in the latest rendition of politicized media, restrictions on also serve a political agenda and aim to stop certain opinions from flowing, by suppressing and restricting information. For example, a number of policy retributions were directed towards media outlets that were not part of the government or did not toe the government line. The latest incident of this was in Algeria. There, over 55 private channels were shut down during May 2016 with the excuse that these channels did not have the proper licenses and were undertaking their work illegally. Observers noted that this decision came as a result of these channels serving a purpose that did not follow the general politics of the state.
Turkey has also been adopting the same strategy by closing over 170 media outlets after the failed coup that took place in mid July 2016. Among the stations closed included media stations that were Kurdish and other outlets such as “Khedma,” whose leader was accused of heading the coup from his residence in the U.S.
4. Selective Reporting: during the past period, a number of reports by the global media have shown critiques on the number of ways that the media has been mishandling crises and issues in the Middle East. Russia’s media coverage in Syria was specifically called out in a story that appeared in The Guardian on Oct.3rd2016. The author, Alec Luhn, noted that there was a clear difference between what was being portrayed in the Russian media and the atrocities that were actually happening on the ground in Syria. The Russian media is only focusing on Russian raids against opposition forces in Syria and ISIS, and what they are calling the “successes” of the Syrian Army in regaining some of the region from the armed opposition and ISIS. The article also drew attention to the distribution of humanitarian aid by Russian soldiers to civilians in the regions of Aleppo, with the aim of improving the image of Russia on the global stage. Russia also aims to garner public opinion in their favor since public opinion began to abandon the idea of intervening in Syria, as per the article.
The same idea was proposed by The Independent in an article by Patrick Cockburn published on Oct. 21st, 2016. However, the author affirmed double standards of western media when it comes to assessing Aleppo and Mosul and, despite the author’s judgement in the article, he has based it on clear evidence in that respect. He notes that at this time western media are witnessing what is happening in Aleppo as a repeat of what happened to the city of Grozny in Chechnya 16 years ago at the hands of Russian military forces. However, western media has not given enough attention to the destruction of Ramadi in Iraq as a result of the U.S. bombing campaign, which aims to expel ISIS from the city.
In the end, it can be said that the politicization of the media, relating to events that are ongoing on the regional and international level, will probably increase in the coming period in light of the role that the media is playing in influencing public opinion, as well as garnering support for a number of specific policies. This is especially the case with the increased scope of the conflict between the regional and international powers that are concerned with the ongoing crises in the Middle East region.
