Book Review: Fit to Print

By Joris Luyendijk
Published by Scribe Publications
Reviewed by Dan O’Gorman S.C.

This publication argues that, because of poor reporting as a result of filters, bias, distortion and manipulation in media representation, much of the Western World is largely ignorant about matters relating to the Arab World.

When working in the Middle East for five years as a correspondent, the author, who speaks fluent Arabic, spoke with people from all walks of life, and such contacts enabled him to chronicle first hand experiences of dictatorship, occupation, terror and war. However, he concluded that the more he observes of the Middle East, the less he understood. He also outlines that he became increasingly aware of the yawning gap between what he saw on the ground and what was later reported in the media. As a journalist, he observed that the media favour the stories that will be sure to confirm the popularly held, but overly simplified, beliefs of Westerners, and he uses topical examples to demonstrate the ways in which the media provides a filtered and manipulated image of reality in the Middle East.

The author also argues that bias in news reporting often arises as a result of different labelling of  comparable cases. For example, Muslims who base their political orientation on their faith are “fundamentalists”, whereas an American Presidential candidate with the same religious convictions is labelled “evangelical”, or “deeply religious”. If that American won the election, almost nobody would say that Christianity was marching forwards, but when Muslims who were inspired in their politics by the Koran were successful, Western commentators often say that Islam was on the march. If an Arab leader clashed with a Western government, he is “anti-Western”, whereas Western governments were never “anti-Arab”, and Palestinians who use violence against Israeli citizens are “terrorists” whereas Israelis who use violence against Palestinian citizens are “hawks” or “hardliners”.

In raising questions relating to the reporting of events and issues in the Middle East, the author casts light on a number of major crises in the world today, including the Iraq War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He argues that most of the events and issues reported from the Middle East are misrepresented because the reporting is so defective. Hence, most Westerners would not know, for example, that the word “Arab” refers to a language (namely Arabic) and not to a belief, that there are millions of Christian Arabs and that there were hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews who lived all over the Middle East until the creation of Israel. He also points out some basic facts such as the fact that amongst themselves, Arabs speak dialects and these are so different that one cannot talk about a single language, the pronunciations also differ so much that the Dutch language is closer to the Turkish language than the Arabic language, and in Persian-speaking Iran you make as good an impression speaking Arabic as you do speaking German in the Netherlands.

He argues that the New York Times statement on its front page that “All The News That’s Fit to Print” is, in a democracy, an extremely useful principle. However, he points out that in a dictatorship, such as those that exist in the Middle East, only a miniscule of reality if verifiable and fit to print, the rest getting stuck in four “filters”, namely (1) fear within the resident population which prevents correspondents finding out very much at all, (2) the virtual lack of reliable and verifiable figures or statistics against which one could set these cases in a broader perspective, (3) the vulnerability of sources keeps the realities of daily life out of the news, and (4) because one’s sources are often prepared to be known only under a neutral name, a story with reference to such sources often does not constitute news (that is, if there’s no surname available, news is rendered a little less “fit to print”.

The author does not take sides in the Middle East conflicts.  However, he does highlight some on the shortfalls in the reporting of events and issues in the Middle East and he outlines why one should exercise care in relying upon such reporting. He also highlights that the gulf between East and West exists, not because we are so different from each other, but because the media shows us radically different images of each other.

This is a well-written and balanced publication that will be of great interest to anyone with an interest in Middle East affairs generally, and how such matters are reported in the Western media in particular.

Dan O’Gorman S.C.