Al Shindagah

2 | Al Shindagah | Issue 140 recently flew home from one of my regular visits to the most powerful nation on the planet, the United States, a country with some of the greatest people anywhere. I am always made welcome and afforded warm hospitality wherever I go. On this occasion, I held discussions with ordinary folk, politicians and top-level doers and shakers but was disappointed how few have any grasp of our positions on the global stage. I concluded that this sorry state of affairs is not their fault, it is ours. We have neglected to use modern tools to get our messages across. The fact is that public opinion in America is largely shaped by the media which in our day and age is more opinion-centric than focused on neutral reporting. Mainstream television networks and newspapers give stories a lick of paint according to the political persuasions of their owners, investors, major advertisers and editors. Note the massive disparity in the way that CNN and Fox News handle breaking news for instance. Whereas CNN’s anchors called for gun control following yet another tragic school shooting, Fox News – that is in bed with the National Rifle Association (NRA) – cited mental illness of the Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz who killed 17 people. Moreover, it was the corporate media that sold the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the unsuspecting American people who were misled into believing that the then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In the same way that the American left and right vie with each other on- air and in print to influence minds, some countries among them the smallest and weakest are sufficiently media-savvy to manipulate US opinion at all levels. They flood popular talk shows with their political emissaries and inject massive funds into media campaigns, self-promotion – via advertisements or even sponsorships – as well as public relations and lobbying firms. The same goes for groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood whose leaders have been photographed visiting the White House, the Department of State and the UK’s House of Commons as part of their efforts to persuade high-level officials that theirs is a benign organization when as we are only too well aware in my part of the world just the opposite is true. For more than half-a-century Israel and its American backers have perfected the art of manipulating minds via Hollywood movies depicting Jewish immigrants to Palestine as courageous pioneers rolling up their sleeves in “A land without a people for a people without a land”, an oft-quoted phrase in Zionist literature. Conversely – and until today – Arabs are almost always portrayed in a negative light. Israel’s promoters bought up film studios and later, major newspapers and I CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE lack media Gulf allies Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor • Published in the media on 24 February 2018