[tadamon-l] [Lebanon] The Manichean Middle East of Mark MacKinnon - The Dominion

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The Manichean Middle East of Mark MacKinnon
Globe and Mail coverage of Lebanon suffers from ideological interventions

by Stefan Christoff & Dru Oja Jay

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/the_manichean_middle_east_of_mark_mackinnon

When newspapers send correspondents afield to report on world events, the 
position is fraught with opportunity and responsibility. Opportunity to 
share meaningful insight into current events, and responsibility to 
accurately report on them.

In many cases, unfortunately, other motivations prevail. For the owners 
and editors of the few papers that shell out for foreign correspondents, 
the opportunity to shape public opinion seems too tempting to pass up, 
even if it comes at the expense of insight and accuracy.

The Globe and Mail's Middle East correspondent Mark MacKinnon has been 
publishing dispatches on the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon regularly 
from Beirut. It should be noted that MacKinnon's reports are often 
superior to the generic newswire reports carried by many newspapers. 
Regrettably, this speaks more to the skewed quality of wire reports and 
less to the Globe correspondent's capacity to promote accurate 
understanding of events in Lebanon.

It's no secret that the Globe and Mail prefers certain political actors in 
Lebanon to others. When in 2005, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese 
demonstrated in response to the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri, 
eventually resulting in the withdrawal of Syrian troops, amidst intense US 
pressure on Damascus, the Globe ran a series of front page stories, 
touting the "pro-Western" "Cedar Revolution" that was sweeping the 
country. Globe editorialists praised the IMF-mandated "free market" 
reforms of "pro-Western" forces, which won a Parliamentary majority in the 
subsequent elections.

When larger street protests hit Beirut in recent weeks, however, Globe 
coverage was to be found in small doses, nowhere near the front page. It 
is in this context that Mark MacKinnon's frequent reports are published.

MacKinnon's reporting from Beirut is dominated by a neat division of 
Lebanese politics into "pro-Syrian" and "pro-Western" camps, a theme that 
is repeated multiple times in every one of 19 dispatches that were 
examined for this analysis. On the other hand, MacKinnon barely mentions 
the summer Israeli offensive that destroyed most of the country's 
civil-infrastructure, and killed thousands, mostly civilians. MacKinnon 
mentions the offensive in less than half of the reports we examined, and 
then usually only in passing.

A look at the evidence shows that MacKinnon's Syria-vs-West division is 
erroneous, while Israel's summer offensive is the defining factor in the 
current political situation on the streets of Beirut.

MacKinnon cites Gen. Michel Aoun, the Christian leader of the "Free 
Patriotic Movement" party, as one of the key supporters of the 
Hezbollah-led protests, which he constantly characterizes as "pro-Syrian." 
Overlooked by MacKinnon is the fact that Aoun was driven to exile in 
France by Syrian and allied Lebanese factions in 1990, and returned only 
with the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005. As a result, it is awkward 
to characterize Aoun as simply "pro-Syrian."

Hezbollah, on the other hand, maintains a strategic alliance with the 
government in Damascus, though this is far from the central focus of the 
current protests.

Why do these unlikely allies find themselves demanding a greater share of 
cabinet seats? Because, as MacKinnon mentions in passing in one article 
(but does not mention at all in 17 out of 19 reports on the subject), 
"recent opinion polls suggest Hezbollah and Gen. Aoun would combine to win 
more seats than the government in a snap election."

Why is this? It has everything to do with the Israeli bombing of Lebanon 
that killed 1,100 people, displaced a full quarter of the country's 
population, and systematically destroyed its key infrastructure, including 
roads, airports, power stations, hospitals, schools and refugee shelters.

During the assault, Hezbollah led fierce counter-attacks, ultimately 
limiting the Israeli army's ability to maintain a hold on the ground in 
southern Lebanon, and winning massive support from the Lebanese for their 
resistance.

The relatively well financed government and state institutions of Prime 
Minister Fouad Siniora--the leader of MacKinnon's pro-Western camp--by 
contrast, did almost nothing to provide aid to many affected by the war, 
and offered no military defence against the Israeli attacks despite 
multiple bombings of Lebanese military bases.

At the height of the Israeli bombings, Ghassan Makarem of the grassroots 
relief organization Samidoun, told CKUT Radio that the "internally 
displaced Lebanese support for the resistance hasn't wavered due to the 
level of aggression on the part of Israel."

"Until now, there has been no action from the government or by the 
government agencies," Maskarem added, "while many people in regions of 
Lebanon who are traditionally not supportive of Hezbollah are shifting 
their support towards the resistance."

In stark contrast to the silence of Lebanese state powers during the war, 
the Free Patriotic Movement, Gen. Aoun's political support base, mobilized 
hundreds of volunteers to provide frontline medical and humanitarian 
relief for internally displaced refugees from southern Lebanon, while 
thousands more opened their homes as impromptu shelters in the heart of 
East Beirut, a traditionally Christian area.

According to a broadly reported opinion poll conducted throughout the 
country in late July 2006 by Lebanon's main polling institute, the Beirut 
Center for Research and Information, 87 per cent of Lebanese supported 
Hezbollah during the war.

While widely recognized in Lebanon, this reality doesn't fit with the 
Globe and Mail's image of the region. MacKinnon in particular goes out of 
his way to warn readers that despite the specific political demands [which 
his reports do not mention], clashes between demonstrators in the streets 
are "an ominous sign that efforts by the Shia Hezbollah movement to bring 
down the Sunni-led government... could rapidly devolve into all out 
sectarian conflict."

The warning would have been tempered had MacKinnon mentioned that in 
addition to Gen. Aoun's Christian party, some significant Sunni and Druze 
political parties are also supporting the demonstrations. Could the 
message of demonstrators in Lebanon be driven by something other than 
religion given that parties from all religious sects in Lebanon are on the 
streets with Hezbollah?

It's not even clear from MacKinnon's reports what motivates Hezbollah's 
demands, or what motivates the thousands of demonstrators to remain in the 
streets of Beirut. Further inquiry revealed that the reason for this is 
that he did not ask.

In a recent interview with CKUT Radio in Montreal, MacKinnon was asked 
whether he had interviewed any of the leaders of the demonstrations.

"Since it began... No," MacKinnon responded, "because they are quite busy 
people and in the specific case of [Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan] 
Nasrallah he hasn't given any interviews since the summer war with 
Israel."

However, Hezbollah political leaders have been regularly speaking with the 
Western press at the Beirut demonstrations. Just this week Mahmoud Komati, 
deputy head of Hezbollah's political bureau gave a widely published 
interview to the Associated Press.

"Now we are demanding it [greater government share], because our 
experience during the war and the performance of the government has made 
us unsure. On several occasions they pressured us to lay down our weapons 
while we were fighting a war," Komati told the Associated Press on 
December 15th, presenting a political argument against the current 
government, not a sectarian one.

Despite the readily available Hezbollah spokespeople and hundreds of 
thousands of demonstrators clogging central Beirut, MacKinnon did not 
quote a single Hezbollah representative while he was there. MacKinnon, 
however, did manage to secure an interview with Sheik Sobhi Tufeili in 
Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley.

Sheik Tufeili, a former secretary general of Hezbollah no longer 
associated with the party, has been comparatively absent from Lebanese 
politics in recent years. Living in a compound and flanked by bodyguards, 
Tufeili is wanted by the Lebanese authorities. Through fragmented 
quotations, paraded as confessions extracted by MacKinnon, Tufeili 
denounces the current Hezbollah leadership.

Highlighting Sheik Tufeili without featuring any of the hundreds of 
thousands of Lebanese on the streets of Beirut is puzzling.

It's not clear that the poor quality of his coverage is entirely 
MacKinnon's doing, though it is difficult to imagine that he is not aware 
that his coverage does not match the facts on the ground.

Indeed, MacKinnon's writing is more in touch with reality in his online 
diary than it is in reports that appear in print.

Shortly after the UN-brokered ceasefire in August, MacKinnon visited 
southern Lebanon. "No picture or 1,000 words of mine can ever capture what 
these places look like. In towns that once weren't much different from 
some places in Greece or Italy, there's simply nothing left standing," 
wrote MacKinnon. "Just piles of rubble where people's homes and lives used 
to be."

Today, a responsible journalist--or a minimally competent one--would have 
to ask why residents of the very same villages bombed by Israel and 
described by MacKinnon above are now demonstrating for political change in 
Beirut.

It's hard to imagine that MacKinnon is ignorant of this direct connection 
between the current demonstrations and the recent Israeli attack. A more 
likely explanation is that he is conscious of the interests of his own 
career, knows what his editors want to hear, and is willing to severely 
compromise his own journalism in service of both.

If MacKinnon were to be replaced, his successor may have a slightly 
different journalistic style. The ideological and political exigencies of 
the Globe and Mail's editorial board, however, would remain. We predict 
the result would hardly be an improvement, regardless of the skill of the 
correspondent.

In a recent op/ed in Montreal's La Presse, Fabrice Balanche took reporters 
to task for simplistic reporting along the same lines as MacKinnon's.

"Manicheanism is de rigeur," Balanche writes. "Certainly it is difficult 
to understand Lebanon and to explain it in a few minutes to [an audience], 
but all the same, lets stop the caricatures."

Balanche cites facts that show the story of pro-Syrian battling pro-West 
forces to be bogus. But while Balanche's modest appeal to pay attention to 
reality is compelling, corporate media like the Globe have long-standing 
and equally compelling reasons of their own to ignore it.

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