Still, brevity is no excuse for lack of nuance. Simon’s 60 Minutes bio calls him “the most honored journalist in international reporting,” and whether this is true or not, he can do better. The 60 Minutes story on Qatar could have fulfilled its purpose without neglecting Al Jazeera’s emir-imposed limitations, insulting Arab journalists, and mispronouncing the country of interest. There’s so much imprecise Western reporting on the Middle East; it’s important for places like 60 Minutes to hold themselves to a higher standard.
What the world has in Qatar is a classic rentier state in which a populace accepts certain setbacks (political stagnation, speech limitations, and tardiness of women’s rights) for the payoffs of the state’s sale of natural wealth: free education, guaranteed employment, little or no taxes, and state-funded health care. Journalistic exploration of Qatar should introduce it as the latest country in the rentier model, spending at least as much time dissecting the system’s perils as toasting its bling.
Some of the blame for the failures of this story belongs to 60 Minutes producer Harry Radliffe, who put the story together. Still, Bob Simon is a grown man who decides whether or not to speak on camera. When Radliffe showed him the crackpot script, Simon should have said, “Are you kidding? I’m not reading this shit.”
I once heard someone float a possible book title for a tome on American foreign policy in the Middle East: Bumbling White Men in the Sand. That title fits the 60 Minutes story well.
The criticism of the pronunciation is so fatuous as to cast into doubt everything else. Wikipedia disagrees with you, for one thing, but more importantly I'd guess that 80% of Americans who have ever pronounced the name use something like "cah-tahr". You may object to that but your objection is irrelevant.
Local pronunciation is of course not the standard for most country names; every living American including you pronounces the a in "France" like in "cat" not "father," and 99% of them pronounce the x in "Mexico" as an English rather than Spanish "x." (Not to mention saying "Spain" instead of "Espana" etc. etc. etc. etc.). Names that "look" the same in English and in their local language (though here that's transliterated!), and that are less familiar, tend to cause this confusion - but that doesn't excuse your falling into it at such length and with such vitriol.
#1 Posted by Matt, CJR on Wed 15 Feb 2012 at 01:28 PM
Well, Matt, if Wikipedia disagrees with me....I'm sunk, right?
#2 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Wed 15 Feb 2012 at 02:17 PM
"More than once, Simon suggests Al Jazeera caused the Arab uprisings, calling it “the engine of the Arab spring.” The engine. I thought it was Twitter. No? Facebook? Thomas Jefferson? I was in the Middle East during the early weeks and months of the Arab spring. To flatly claim there was a single, technological cause for the Arab awakening is at best not testable, at worst a bald fabrication."
It might be more accurate to say that twitter, facebook, and cellphones were effective tools of social organization, without which those revolutions would not have had much likelihood of success, but it's important that we don't understate Al' Jazeera's contribution to Middle East identity and their changing relationship to their powers that be.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-03-06/news/0503050068_1_arab-status-quo-satellite
The internet handed out the tools, but Al'Jazeera gave those tools purpose.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 16 Feb 2012 at 01:19 AM
Actually Matt, most Americans don't say it that way. Everyone that I know says it correctly because the soldiers in Iraq went there A LOT for vacation during tours and so they say it correctly and that was the first time I had ever heard of the country was from a Marine buddy of mine.
#4 Posted by Tom-AZ, CJR on Thu 16 Feb 2012 at 09:46 AM
The pronunciation issue might sound churlish but, as someone who has lived in Qatar, I would say that it is an issue that can tip the balance when taking a reporter or researcher seriously. The general critique, though, is spot on, accurately highlighting the obsequious approach to profiling countries such as Qatar and the UAE.
On the issue of Al Jazeera - though they weren't the engine of the Arab Spring, I do wonder how events in Egypt would have unfolded without their unyielding (and embarrassingly biased) support and coverage. Bear in mind that, although some naive youth in Egypt think that they are the standard bearers of the revolution (not dissimilar to the exuberance and zeal of first-time student activists who think that they are the first to have thought of something...), popular movements to overthrow the regime have been active for decades - and in large numbers.
The difference is that these were largely Islamic in nature and so weren't covered or adopted by a press corps who largely preferred them not to succeed. Such movements were dismissed as extremists' attempts to impose their ideology on an unsupportive public, though, as the elections in Egypt have somewhat demonstrated, their popular support was actually very far-reaching among the wider community. Furthermore, because in principle their goal was no different to any other ideological cause, whether democratic or socialist, it should not be up to the press to decide which is more worthy of their support and coverage.
The recent demonstrations, however, were initiated and organised (extremely well i might add) by a core group of secular activists calling for secular (whether liberal or leftist) mandate. The support provided to them by Al Jazeera (and subsequently by CNN, BBC etc) painted a breathless image of nation-wide popular movement (e.g. reporting 1m in Tahrir, which holds no more than 250k), which then became a self-fulfilling prophecy. That Al-Jazeera was instrumental in first creating and then sustaining the revolution's momentum cannot be denied.
#5 Posted by Bekay1, CJR on Fri 17 Feb 2012 at 03:51 PM