14 كانون الأول 2002
Participants in the 7th Common Terms Conference called on the Arab media Friday to be independent from the Western media and adopt objectivity in providing the public with information.
“The media should rid itself of portraying Arabs the way they are represented in the Western media,” the participants said in a statement.
They called on media institutions to “avoid exaggeration, distortion and (disseminating) misleading information.”
The final statement recommended that media institutions “describe (Arabs) in an impartial way and also show how others perceive them.”
“That is, the statement explained, “to adopt a reporting strategy that does not over- look” certain issues.
The two- day conference, which began Thursday at UNESCO palace, was organized by the Imam Musa Sadr Center for Studies and Research.
Participants urged the media to keep following the case of Sadr, who went missing in 1978 during a trip to Libya.
They asked the media “to exert more effort to uncover attempts that aim at misleading public opinion by hiding the Libyan authorities’ responsibility in this crime.”
They were referring to statement such as the one issued in October by a group, calling itself the Brigades of Martyr Imam Musa Sadr, which declared the death of the Shiite imam.
On Thursday, the imam’s son, Sadreddine Sadr, warned of “Libyan- financed media institutions that are disseminating false scenarios” on the missing cleric’s fate.
He also said he was seeking to bring his father’s case to international courts “to reveal who planned, executed and covered up” his father’s disappearance.
Then, “those responsible will be held accountable,” he said.
The conference highlighted the role of the media in the Arab world, with some participants suggesting that more be done to compete with the efforts of Israeli- influenced media.
“Arab regimes have failed to own media institutions abroad such as newspaper, radio and television stations,” said Rafik Nasrallah, the head of Abu Dhabi Television here.
“Israelis continue to effectively combat us through the media,” he continued, “yet our efforts have been very modest.”
To support his argument, Nasrallah cited how Arab information ministers have failed to collect $15 million to establish an Arab media plan that would counter Israeli propaganda following the start of the Palestinian intifada.
Israelis and their supporters, he said, “are present in all international media institutions that are influential, while we are completely absent.”
Hassan Fadlallah, the head of the news department at the Hizbullah- owned Al-Manar Television, spoke about his station’s experience during the Israeli occupation of the South.
He said that Manar did not follow the usual path of Arab media institutions that operated during past wars, which he said had resorted to exaggeration and that, in turn, had led to loss of credibility.
“When our men were martyred, we would admit that and when one Israeli sodier was wounded, we would not give a higher number of casualties (for the Israelis).”
He also criticized Arab media institutions that “host Israelis under the pretext that it was for the sake of having dialogue with the others.”
Laurie King- Irani, a Lebanon- based American academic and activist, highlighted the consequence of the Sept. 11 attacks on the American media.
“Arabs and Muslims are the new enemy in a national capital that many find reminiscent of the dark days of the McCarthy Era,” she said.
US Senator Joseph McCarthy led congressional hearings in the 1950s to determine whether certain American citizens had participated in “un- American,” namely pro-communist, activities. The hearings, which tarred many public careers, were later denounced as unconstitutional witch hunts that violated the civil rights of the accused.
“The Bush administration and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media seem to find Muslims and Arabs suspicious and guilty until proven innocent,” she added.
