Canadian Press Coverage in the Middle East :: Canada Media Middle East News Essays

Canadian Press Coverage in the in-between EastIn December 1985, the Canadian extract reported the death by self-destruction of hundreds of field mice in the Middle East. In an app bently instinctive reply to a problem of over-population, the mice willfully plunged to their doom off the cliffs of the Golan Heights. This bizarre bosh was the subject not only of straight news coverage in the Canadian press, but also of an editorial in the Globe and hop out on December 20. On November 1, 1985, the Globe and Mail also ran a photograph of a visiting Roman Catholic priest from Brazil, formula prayers on the banks of the Jordan River at the site where Christ is said to have been baptized. stand alertly near the priest was an Israeli soldier with a get going slung over his shoulder, his eyes carefully scanning Jordanian territory crossways the river. For the analyst of the media and media image-making, these rather unusual press items raise an interesting point about news selection and presentation by the editorial departments of the daily press. Had the mice topp direct off Mount Kilimanjaro would this essentially scientific story about fauna behavior have found its way so prominently into the Canadian press? Had the priest been peacefully saying mass on the agglomerate would this religious item have been deemed worthy of coverage? Or was it the newspapers palpate of the irony of these tied(p)ts, of their news value as symbols depicting the pervasive interlocking and violence we have come to associate with the Middle East that led to their selection for publication from the reams of teletype endlessly flowing into the editorial departments of the Canadian press? It would seem that even when the subject matter is scientific or religious--about mice or monsignors--the press is inclined to remind its readers of the inherently violent nature of the Middle East, and a fundamentally negative image is developed or reinforced. It is, Canadians are told in effe ct, a region so bleak and hopeless that even its despairing mice are driven to take their lives. The purpose of this study is to attempt in an empirical fashion Canadian daily press coverage of the Middle East to establish, inter alias, what type of image of the region and of its trail actors (Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states) is, in fact, resented to the Canadian reader and what impact, if any, the character of that coverage has had on the do of Canadian foreign policy.