Al-Jazeera English Anchor Critiques Modern Media as Moving 'Faster Than Thought'

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By Ross Barkan
SBU J-School Reporter

Dave Marash, a former ABC correspondent who serves as a Washington-based anchor for Al-Jazeera English, said yesterday at Stony Brook University that the Iraq War “is a pure product of opinionated ignorance.”

Marash said the war was a mistake because American policy makers failed to understand how the Iraqi worldview had been shaped by decades of Western colonization.

“You must understand more than one point of view; otherwise, you can be in deep, deep trouble,” Marash said.

At Al-Jazeera English, Marash said, he presents another viewpoint. The network, financed by the oil-rich state of Qatar, focuses mainly on issues facing the Middle East and often is perceived as hostile to the United States and the West.

“Al-Jazeera is a reverse flow,” Marash said, meaning that it allows people in the Middle East to “express their own take, their own point of view.”

Portraying the essential truth of a situation is imperative for any journalist, Marash said.

“The point of journalism is to represent reality,” he said. “Journalism should bring to you the most transparent, detailed, comprehensive and pointed selection of materials.

That is how you get the truest sense of reality.”

Marash said he believed that the United States never should have invaded Iraq because American leaders did not understand the complexities of the region.

“For Iraqis, it is all the same old stuff,” Marash said, “white boys from Europe kicking our ass. Everyone in Iraq over 70 has experiences with the British role in Iraq, and everyone under 70 has been educated about the shame of being colonized.”

He discussed the role of television in the Iraq War. Marash said that the 2004

Battle of Fallujah failed because U.S.-trained Iraqi troops did not want to be seen on television fighting against their own countrymen.

“They were asked to kill Iraqis on television,” Marash said. “The Iraqi troops understood that they were performing in public.”

Marash discussed what he considered the strengths and weaknesses of television news. The emphasis on speed in the modern media environment presents problems, he said.

“The media today adheres to the rule of faster, faster, faster,” he said. “News montages are so fast today that we only see the sum of the parts, not the parts themselves. Reality is in parts.”

News stories often are limited to less than two minutes of airtime, causing vital material to get cut.

“We are past the point of comprehension,” said Marash. “News is faster than the speed of thought. People can’t absorb the reality. News is at such a tempo that shots don’t hold long enough to saturate the eye.”

News consumers must understand more about the story-building process and the inevitable editing that follows, Marash said.

“Cutting the details from a news story is the moral equivalent of giving an undertaker a coffin five-eighths the size of a body and asking him,‘What parts do you want to cut off?’” he said.

Again, Marash said, presenting an accurate, coherent view of contemporary events must be the media’s top priority.

“If journalism were a religion, reality would be our deity,” he said.

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