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Read
shrinkingglobe.com's interview with Thomas Friedman here
The
primadonna
strikes again
An Arab
media summit in Dubai was loaded with symbolism -- and the same sort of
drama that governs the way the news is covered. Tarek
Atia reports from Dubai
(shrinkingglobe.com,
April 29, 2002)
Most of the
attendees at the opening session of yesterday's Arab Media Summit in
Dubai were surprised to find the familiar-looking mustachioed man
sitting on stage waiting to speak. All eyes were on him as he began --
this was, after all, none other than Thomas Friedman.
"I'm paid
to be biased," the esteemed New York Times columnist told the crowd
of Arab and Western media professionals gathered at the ultra-luxurious
Emirates Towers hotel.
Why yes, most
people here knew that.
Suffice it to
say Friedman's columns have consistently managed to raise the ire of
Arab countries (in much the same way that Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera
does the same) with their somewhat frank, somewhat simplified approach
to foreign policy.
One of
Friedman's famous devices -- writing columns in the form of letters from
US presidents to Arab leaders -- had inspired talk of Friedman being a
front man for US foreign policy. That may actually be the nicest thing
his critics had said about him.
Many of his
high-level media colleagues also seemed miffed by how famous Friedman
had become. One American attendee described him to shrinkingglobe.com
as a "primadonna."
Eric Rouleau, a
diplomat and long-time editor of French journal Le Monde, showed his
disdain for Friedman's comment about being "biased", by
describing his own style of writing as "Cartesian" -- meaning,
Rouleau said, that journalists should be critical thinkers who try to be
objective.
Martin
Woolicott, a veteran Middle East correspondent for The UK's The Guardian
newspaper, described the first session as "The Tom Friedman show".
Woolicott said that Friedman had "achieved a position of
enormous influence in the thinking of Americans and others regarding the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict." He's done that, Woolicott
emphasized, by defending both sides.
The audience
here in Dubai, however, did not quite see things that way. A barrage of
angry questions and accusations were directed at the columnist -- all of
which Friedman seemed to take in stride until a Saudi fellow accused him
of "continuing to criticize my country although you were offered a
private aircraft in your recent visit to Saudi Arabia to tour the
country, meet people, and explore that we have nothing to do with
terrorism."
"You can
say whatever you want," Friedman interrupted the speaker in a huff,
"but I won't sit here and listen to this garbage." He then got
up from his chair and stormed out of the large hall where the summit was
taking place, leaving the audience stunned and giddy. It was a highly
charged and symbolic moment that seemed to reflect perfectly the
essential problem this summit was trying to discuss -- Arab and Western
media still had a long way to go before the two sides could truly engage
in a broad-based, and even-handed dialogue.
The Saudi trip
being referred to, of course, was the one which led to Friedman breaking
the news that Saudi Arabia was considering offering a peace proposal to
the Israelis -- the now famous measure that was ratified by the Arab
League just a day before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began his
assault on the Palestinian Authority one month ago.
Friedman was
eventually convinced to come back to the hall to continue the
discussion. In very emotional tones, he said, "If I was so
committed to my own bias, why would I go to Saudi, or come here... why
would I bother..." As for the accusation of accepting a free ride
from the Saudis, he said, "The New York Times does not need
a hotel or plane from any government -- I can assure you of that."
Friedman also
had something to say about the peace initiative and the way Arab media
was covering Sharon's response to it. "If you just think that there
was an Arab peace initiative and that Sharon's response was Jenin,"
he said, "then you're not telling the whole story." Friedman
then described the Passover suicide bombing which took place on the same
day the Arab peace initiative was passed. "You can't leave out the
gaps," he said.
Amazingly, the
columnist -- widely reviled in the Arab world -- ended his tirade with
the claim that all his criticisms of Arabs were not based on bias or
hatred, but "respect and affection."
Read
shrinkingglobe.com's interview with Thomas Friedman here
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