- YEMEN
UPDATE
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- YEMEN
ARTICLES
- Media Mediocrity in
the Coverage of Yemen
Yemen Update 25
(1989):9
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- Articles in the popular Western press on
North Yemen are generally few and far between. However, the
opening of the oil pipeline in 1987 provided an opportunity for
members of the media and reporters to see the country celebrate a
major event in the region. While I do not expect the few fleeting
days of a reporters' sojourn in Yemen to yield a definitive
coverage, I still look for a fair and adequate look at the
society. I can not speak for the majority of the media people who
came to Yemen, but I have been sadly disappointed by the shabby
and biased reporting by one representing The Wall Street
Journal. This reporter published two articles I have seen and
perhaps many more variations on the theme. In the first, (January
12, 1988) we are treated to a front-page spread filed from Khamir,
North Yemen (I must have missed the press office in my last trip
to Khamir…). Do we learn about the fundamental change in
Yemen's economy brought about by oil production? No, we are
treated to a National Enquirer-ish line of "Guntoting
Yemenis Buy Their Weapons at Corner Bazaars." This is Yemen with
a "wild west atmosphere" where Sa‘da becomes an Oriental
"Dodge City." The Journal informs its business-conscious
readers that even in the most remote dukkans in Yemen you
can pick up bayonets, submachine guns, assault rifles, bazookas,
rockets, tanks and, of course, daggers! It would seem that the
NRA could make a fortune here selling bumper stickers. How
touching that the journalist was able to witness a
13-year-old-goatherd who conveniently "shrugs and empties his
AK-17 into an abandoned roadside hut." In all, the article is so
lacking in objectivity and insensitive to the society that one
ends up wondering about the hang-ups of the reporter himself.
Could it be that he really wanted to cover the war in
Afghanistan?
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- The second article by the same reporter
was billed as a top-level article in a spring issue of The
Washington Post. Here the wild west atmosphere (which I
imagine might scare off the tourist clientele) gives way to one of
"Bowery bums" with "rumpled polyester shirts" (but how do you
rumple polyester?). What we find is the standard obsession
with qat and jambiyya, apparently the only things
the journalist could peg his story on. How clever is it, though,
to call the scarf worn around the head a "rag" or to say that
chewing makes Yemen "look like a last-place team in mid-September
(Are the Orioles really moving to Sanaa?) I do enjoy hearing
about those "mud fortresses" in the mountains and all those
hardworking "water buffalo" plowing the terraces. (I guess the
carved stones are now being used to hide all the Zebu cattle I
used to see in Yemen…)
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- Indeed it is clever, if only in a crude
way. The point is that it is not journalism. The reporter is
more in love with his own metaphors than describing or expressing
what it is like to be in Yemen. He would rather write a comedy
skit than look at Yemenis as ordinary people. The result is one
of stereotype in the worst way and comments that belong to fiction
rather than in major American newspapers. The bottom line is that
all the puns and cleverness may get a cheap laugh, but none of
this informs. This is the mediocritization of the media where the
news takes a second seat to the one supposedly covering the
news.
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- A great hue and cry is often raised in
the U.S. about the inalienable rights of journalists. Third world
and developing nations usually take the heat for restricting media
coverage and censorship. While there is a certain amount of truth
in the fact that many governments (including my own) like to
control at least the direction of the media, there is also a
measure of arrogance. A reporter who is invited to Yemen does not
have to agree with what he sees. But when he prefers to work with
stereotype and a condescending attitude, he forfeits any respect
as a fair and objective reporter. In the case of North Yemen,
which so seldom gets any coverage unless it is bad news, it is
tragic that an opportunity for informing the American public about
an out-of-the-way place has been so rudely squandered.
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