CAIRO—One of the benefits of teaching outside the U.S. is that I get to work with polyglot students. In my journalism ethics classes today, I scrapped my lesson plans and decided to peek at Osama bin Laden coverage on news sites in the many languages my students speak. I can read Arabic and English, but my students make me look primitive, as many of them speak three or more languages, including German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Danish, and French.
We took a look at news websites around the world, and I asked students to translate when necessary. Here are a few of the things we saw:
Norwegian news outlet VG emphasized on its homepage above the scroll that bin Laden had reportedly used a woman as a human shield while besieged by gunfire. (Norway is about as progressive as nations come in terms of women’s rights; new mothers get over a year of paid maternity leave at 80 percent of salary).
The homepage of Germany’s Der Spiegel offered a video piece providing information on the compound in which bin Laden had been hiding out.
The font size of The Huffington Post’s single-word headline “DEAD” was so large—like the scrawlings of NBA fans trying to get their signs viewed on ESPN—that no information about who had died was visible above the scroll.
As of 1:30 p.m. Monday Cairo time, the website of Egypt’s government-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, the country’s largest daily, had not a single mention of bin Laden’s death. (A story was eventually posted sometime after 2:00 p.m., or 8:00 a.m. in New York). The English-language Daily News Egypt, though, published under the auspices of the International Herald Tribune, ran the story front and center almost as soon as it came across the wire.
Al-Jazeera’s Arabic site had a very modest spatial mention of bin Laden’s demise, and the organization did not appear to adjust the font size of their headlines at all.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the intense rivalry between India and Pakistan, The Times of India speculated on its homepage above the scroll that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, may have happily ignored bin Laden’s semi-urban bungalow.
Like many other global news outlets, the website of Turkey’s Haber Turk network gave prominent space to bin Laden’s assassination, but also included the large, bloody photographs zooming in on the terrorist’s disfigured skull.
The French newspaper Le Monde’s site immediately took a more philosophical approach, asking “After bin Laden’s death, what is the impact on the threat of terrorism?”
While Twitter and Facebook pumped news of bin Laden’s death around the globe, word-of-mouth still mattered. Most of the fifty or so students in my two journalism ethics sections, who are wealthier and more digitally connected than most of the other 80 million people in Egypt, heard the news from a friend, taxi driver, relative, or me.
Still, plenty of other students I surveyed got the news via Blackberry Messaging, Twitter, Facebook, CNN.com, or other digital locales. One Arab student who was raised in the United States got a racist, ribbing text message from a friend back home saying, “Sorry about your uncle” and including a link to a bin Laden obit. She said it made her laugh and knows her friend wasn’t serious.
And of course there was the interplay between digital and interpersonal communication. Not long after NYTimes.com jolted me with the bin Laden news, at 6:30 a.m. Cairo time I brought my wife her coffee and asked, with a smile so her heart wouldn’t stop to worry about loved ones, “Guess who’s dead today?”
“Qaddafi?” she responded with a good guess.
“Well, maybe he died while I was making the coffee. We’ll have to go online to see about that one.”
“Osama bin Laden is dead,” I said.
Verification. Has any news organization ask for proof? As of May 2, 1:24 PM, my google search has yet to find a news account where the question has been asked.
#1 Posted by Arthur S. Hayes, CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 01:28 PM
Did U.S. or coalition troops recently kill Osama bin Laden? Really?
-- OBL already was dead, according to Benazir Bhutto:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=645&source=hp&q=benazir+bhutto+bin+laden+dead&aq=1z&aqi=g-z3g2&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691
-- OBL has been dead — or probably has been dead — for years, according to Musharraf, Karzai, and Peter Bergen et al., as reported by non-Taliban and non-al Qaeda news outlets:
http://omasiali.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/osama-bin-laden-a-dead-nemesis-perpetuated-by-the-us-government/
But never mind all that. We must hang on the words of our Dear D.C. Overlords, according to our "free and independent," corporate-state news media. Neither of whom would EVER lie, or distort the facts, to retain or gain power or to advance "U.S. interests." Never mind that the "official story" has changed many times since the news broke last evening. Wave that flag like good little American lemmings.
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 01:45 PM
Media-State fraudsters get OWNED!
From "Osama bin Laden's Second Death," by Paul Craig Roberts:
If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.
Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?
Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that "bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia." That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?
This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting "USA USA." Could something else be going on? [. . .]
Full article: www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts302.html
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 02:20 PM
Media-State fraudsters get OWNED!
"Is There a Geneticist in the House?" by David Kramer:
According to this piece of information from a DNA laboratory:
So how did our $14 trillion dollars in debt “efficient” government get DNA test results back on the dead bin Laden in less than 24 hours? Hmmm?
( www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/87020.html )
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 02:29 PM
I did not intend to imply that the U.S. is involved in a conspiracy to fake Bin Laden's death. I'm just wondered why a basic tenet of objective journalism—verification—seemed to have been abandoned or postponed by the news media. There is now a CBS story exploring the question. See: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/02/national/main20058850.shtm
Also, according to one scientist, DNA studies can be done within a matter of hours. So I guest the conspiracy theorist might have to drop that point.
See: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-do-you-id-a-dead-osama-anyway-2011-05-02
How Do You ID a Dead Osama?
By Christie Wilcox | May 2, 2011 11:20 AM
Osama Bin Laden is dead. At least, that's what we've been told, and I tend to believe such things.
But how do they know it's him? Well, they have the visual evidence and the body, for one. But to be certain it's not a look-a-like, the government has taken steps above and beyond to make sure they've got who they think they have: DNA analysis.
Now, I'm not entirely sure what DNA analysis has been done, but I can say this for certain—whatever method they used could be completed in a matter of hours given a lab ready to go and focused solely on this. Using commonplace PCR methods—which, for the record, is what I use in my lab every day—Bin Laden could easily be ID'd faster than you'd think. Heck, I can get DNA from a fish and turn it into sequences or genotypes in 24 hours, so I think the US government can work faster than me when time is of the essence. Allow me to explain how they could do it so quickly.
#5 Posted by arthur S. Hayes, CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 03:36 PM
"Also, according to one scientist, DNA studies can be done within a matter of hours. So I guest the conspiracy theorist might have to drop that point." (LMAO @ "conspiracy theorists.")
So, we are supposed to be satisfied that the govt did a DNA test within 24 hours, then immediately THREW THE BODY INTO THE OCEAN? Is that typical protocol of an honest group of servants, or of a gang of liars, thieves, and murderers? (The question is rhetorical, yes.) And is that the end of trillions of dollars spent in the "war on terror"? Oh dear.
"At least, that's what we've been told, and I tend to believe such things."
Well, at least you admit to having blind trust in the State and its compliant news media. Never mind their historical and contemporary records of lying, plundering, and murdering in the name of protecting and serving.
#6 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 04:08 PM
I'm a skeptic, not a conspiracy theorist. Consequently, I rarely trust any government to tell an unvarnished truth. So, I acknowledge that the U.S.'s conduct here raises doubts as do some of its explanations.
And, I do criticize the media—even foreign media apparently, including Al Jazeera—for not immediately asking for proof. (That was the first question I asked when I learned about the killing this morning.)
But I try to deal with all the facts—or as many facts as we can get—to support all sides of an assertion. So, the jury is still out on this matter, as far as I am concern.
#7 Posted by arthur S. Hayes, CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 04:23 PM
Fair enough, Arthur. You and I are not so far apart in principle. I am just so tired of the press' lock-stepping and failure to focus on obvious contradictions and typical govt BS. Same m.o. before Iraq: our Dear Overlords said it, so it must be true! Rah rah! Kill kill! Go USA!!! Totally sickening and maddening.
#8 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 09:10 PM
I'd like to see an analysis about all the fictitious details that came out at first. Bin Laden was firing a weapon. Bin Laden used a woman as a shield and she was killed. Then how did these fictions get corrected?
Who concocted the fictions and why? Why did people people in the administration propagate these fictions? How was it discovered that these fictions were entirely incorrect?
Why did the administration bother to correct these fictions? How do we know the corrections are any more reliable than the original stories?
#9 Posted by Steve13565, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 09:53 AM
What Steve said. Hear hear.
#10 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 06:15 PM
If you watch the Monday morning press briefing -- you can get the video either on the White House site or CSPAN -- you can answer your own questions definiteively by watching White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan describe his understanding of the events. You will also note his numerous caveats which were not included in the press coverage of his statements.
Then watch the press briefing from yesterday, available to you in the same venues, to see how these initial statements were corrected. Don't take anyone's word for it, watch the damn thing yourself.
Either that, or, please, continue to make a complete fool of yourself by inventing conspiracy theories about whether or not the members of US Special Operations Forces are lying. It's fun to watch these conspiracy theories blossom over the landscape and develop into funnel clouds in your head.
#11 Posted by James, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 07:00 PM
James, you haven't the authority to lecture here. You're the one advancing the state-worshiping myth that we can, and should, take govt officials' words as Gospel Truth. Were you also in lock-step behind the Bush Administration about the fantastical Saddam/al Qaeda alliance, incubator babies, yellow cake uranium, and WMD?
#12 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 08:58 PM