Al Jizeera reporter Sherine Tadros, right, discusses working in the Gaza Strip as Ayman Mohyeldin, left, looks on.
As Ayman Mohyeldin reported on-camera from a rooftop in Gaza, bombs fell from the sky, forcing him to stop mid-sentence and duck for cover.
And Sherine Tadros was given a five-minute window to evacuate before the next attack on a clinic where she interviewed Palestinian families.
For these two Al Jazeera English Gaza correspondents, it was just another day on the job.
Yesterday, these two journalists who had reported from the very center of the chaos in the war-torn Gaza Strip shared their experiences and delivered a cautionary message about the issues of ignorance that pervade Western media portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
About 70 attendees filled the Richard Eaton Broadcast Theater in Knight Hall for a conversation with the correspondents. With an on-campus Islamophobia event just last week and another one scheduled for later this month, the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian war that’s occurring so far away is a meaningful issue for a large base of students.
The event included a special screening report from Mohyeldin on the Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound convoy, including on-board footage of the attack and a report from Tadros on an Israeli government press conference a few days before the attack that distorted the facts on poverty in Gaza.
Those in the audience came ready with questions for the war correspondents on their experiences and the Israeli-Palestinian war in general — including the dangers of reporting from a war zone, finding the human faces behind the conflict, the Arab world’s antagonistic views of the West and vice-versa.
Mohyeldin and Tadros emphasized their personal mission as reporters to look beyond the flash, bombs and terror that define most of today’s headlines and understand the story’s larger context that is far too often overlooked in Western media.
They explained that, unlike Al Jazeera, virtually all Western media networks have no bureaus in Gaza and therefore cannot accurately capture the true complexity of the Middle Eastern world and the many forces that influence it.
“They lack the on-the-ground context, and they lack the day-to-day nuances of life and the developments,” Mohyeldin said of Western media. “You cannot look at Gaza from yesterday’s perspective and try to understand what’s happening. You cannot look at rockets being fired in Israel and say it’s just the result of a few months worth of policy or a few years worth of policy. That is something that most Western media news outlets have tremendously failed in.”
The subject of context rose repeatedly during the conversation as they discussed the implications of generalizing the Arab world.
“I think that a lot of things perceived as bias is really a lack of knowledge and a bit of ignorance,” Tadros said. “And we see that a lot in the language that is used in Western media.”
This issue hit especially close to home for journalism graduate student Klive Oh. As an international student from Korea, he said he often found himself having to correct his peer’s misconceptions of his country’s people and war.
“It was right on the spot about those details I had in mind regarding international news coverage,” he said.
Other students who attended the event said the discussion was more enlightening than the typical forum.
“I thought it was interesting to see their perspectives,” freshman journalism major Nick Munson said. “It opened my eyes to the stereotypes that exist between Americans and Arabs and within the Western media outlets.”
And although Mohyeldin acknowledged a bias in the media often occurs, he said he can only attempt to tackle the issue with accurate and fair reporting.
“Yes, I do think that there is a bias,” Mohyeldin said. “Do I think it’s my own personal responsibility to try to crush it? No, I don’t think so. I think my job is to report and provide analyzed information and knowledge, and in doing so I hope that provides the appropriate context and understanding.”
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