This brief, valuable look at Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya serves as an excellent introduction to an enormous subject: the significance and impact of Arab media today, and its interaction with the ideas and ideologies of the West. Fortunately, the Stanley Foundation delivers -- this is just a taste of what they've produced on the subject. I'd like to quote from this segment, because it's the content here that matters. (There's nothing special about the presentation.)
Here's the 'American' pov: "Al Jazeera is a propaganda outlet, as well as a news agency, and it's one that promotes ideas that are very inimical to American interests," says Ilan Berman, the VP for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in D.C. "[Al Quaeda] is inherently more ideologically proximate to Al Quaeda and to other regional radicals..."
What does Al Jazeera say to this? According to news editor Ahmed Sheikh: "When we receive a tape by bin Laden, we choose certain quotes that we believe are newsworthy, and we put it on the air, and we drop out all the other things that we believe are just propaganda, so we are not a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden -- and for god's sake, we did not divide the world into two camps, and it is not Al Jazeera who installed Osama bin Laden as the head of the 'camp of evil.'
Can the Holocaust be remembered... accurately? Does it matter if 'nonfiction' accounts, like Elie Wiesel's autobiography "Night," don't get all their facts quite straight? Can memory mingle with the creative imagination to create a larger truth? Does a work of art speak as truly as fact -- or more so?
These questions dominate this Out of Bounds interview with Prof. Daniel Schwarz, the author of "Imagining the Holocaust." But Tish Pearlman, the casual, low-key host and her somewhat crotchety guest seem to be out of sync. Somehow they don't find their rhythm, and as a result, at times the interview lurches from topic to topic.
Nonetheless, the half hour goes quickly -- touching on such great works as Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and "The Diary of Anne Frank," what's not to like?
Review of Life Distilled: Four Decades of U.S. Poet Laureates (deleted)
"Poetry I think is an interruption of silence," says former poet laureate Billy Collins, "whereas public language is a continuation of noise." This fabulous hour-long look at poetry, produced by New Letters magazine, proves Collins' point on the continuing if not growing value of poetry as antidote.
This is the fourth episode of "New Letters on the Air," a series of five devoted to U.S. poet laureates of the past 40 years, and it deserves our attention.
It is difficult to fit into our lives poetry. But when we do, it fills a space within ourselves that to be frank feels starved and thirsty. So once you start to listen, you just don't turn it off.
One quibble -- to bleep out the word "piss" and to refer to this as "appropriately censored" is embarrassing. I quote the offending section of a poem by Howard Nemerov, who was poet laureate from 1963-64, called Ceremony:
"At 5 of this winter morn the hound and I go out the kitchen door to piss in the snow as we have done in all solemnity since he was a pup and would wake me up to go. We mingle our yellow waters with the white in a spatter of silence under the wheeling skies..."
Somehow to hear a beep in the middle of poetry is to piss all over it.
This is where radio can really shine -- raising from the dead people who are so forgotten it's embarrassing. To hear voices from the past, in all their gritty glory, is exhilarating. Bad audio? Even better. It connotes a sense of authenticity.
But if no audio actually exists, then we face a conundrum. In this case, the producer chose to have an artist narrate their words. Is this sort of thing better suited for print? Possibly.
Of course, any opportunity to hear women's voices from the past -- those with presidential ambitions, no less -- deserves our attention.
These pioneering women have earned the right to be heard, and remembered.
Comments by Jenny Attiyeh
Comment for "The enigma of existence -- and the economy -- on ThoughtCast!"
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on July 21, 2009 at 01:30 AM | Permalink
this piece is 56 minutes and 30 seconds long, NOT 53:25, as the PRX system says...
Note:
this piece is 56 minutes and 30 seconds long, NOT 53:25, as the PRX system says...
Comment for "The enigma of existence -- and the economy -- on ThoughtCast!"
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on July 21, 2009 at 01:30 AM | Permalink
this piece is 56 minutes and 30 seconds long, NOT 53:25, as the PRX system says...
Note:
this piece is 56 minutes and 30 seconds long, NOT 53:25, as the PRX system says...
Comment for "Inside Al Jazeera and Arab TV News Centers"
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on May 02, 2006 at 05:24 PM | Permalink
Review of Inside Al Jazeera and Arab TV News Centers
This brief, valuable look at Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya serves as an excellent introduction to an enormous subject: the significance and impact of Arab media today, and its interaction with the ideas and ideologies of the West. Fortunately, the Stanley Foundation delivers -- this is just a taste of what they've produced on the subject. I'd like to quote from this segment, because it's the content here that matters. (There's nothing special about the presentation.)
Here's the 'American' pov: "Al Jazeera is a propaganda outlet, as well as a news agency, and it's one that promotes ideas that are very inimical to American interests," says Ilan Berman, the VP for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in D.C. "[Al Quaeda] is inherently more ideologically proximate to Al Quaeda and to other regional radicals..."
What does Al Jazeera say to this? According to news editor Ahmed Sheikh: "When we receive a tape by bin Laden, we choose certain quotes that we believe are newsworthy, and we put it on the air, and we drop out all the other things that we believe are just propaganda, so we are not a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden -- and for god's sake, we did not divide the world into two camps, and it is not Al Jazeera who installed Osama bin Laden as the head of the 'camp of evil.'
Comment for "Evergreen interview w/ DANIEL SCHWARZ author of fascinating book "Imagining the Holocaust""
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on April 12, 2006 at 10:05 PM | Permalink
Review of Professor Daniel Schwarz
Can the Holocaust be remembered... accurately? Does it matter if 'nonfiction' accounts, like Elie Wiesel's autobiography "Night," don't get all their facts quite straight? Can memory mingle with the creative imagination to create a larger truth? Does a work of art speak as truly as fact -- or more so?
These questions dominate this Out of Bounds interview with Prof. Daniel Schwarz, the author of "Imagining the Holocaust." But Tish Pearlman, the casual, low-key host and her somewhat crotchety guest seem to be out of sync. Somehow they don't find their rhythm, and as a result, at times the interview lurches from topic to topic.
Nonetheless, the half hour goes quickly -- touching on such great works as Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and "The Diary of Anne Frank," what's not to like?
Comment
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on April 05, 2006 at 09:58 AM
Review of Life Distilled: Four Decades of U.S. Poet Laureates (deleted)
"Poetry I think is an interruption of silence," says former poet laureate Billy Collins, "whereas public language is a continuation of noise." This fabulous hour-long look at poetry, produced by New Letters magazine, proves Collins' point on the continuing if not growing value of poetry as antidote.
This is the fourth episode of "New Letters on the Air," a series of five devoted to U.S. poet laureates of the past 40 years, and it deserves our attention.
It is difficult to fit into our lives poetry. But when we do, it fills a space within ourselves that to be frank feels starved and thirsty. So once you start to listen, you just don't turn it off.
One quibble -- to bleep out the word "piss" and to refer to this as "appropriately censored" is embarrassing. I quote the offending section of a poem by Howard Nemerov, who was poet laureate from 1963-64, called Ceremony:
"At 5 of this winter morn the hound and I go out the kitchen door to piss in the snow as we have done in all solemnity since he was a pup and would wake me up to go. We mingle our yellow waters with the white in a spatter of silence under the wheeling skies..."
Somehow to hear a beep in the middle of poetry is to piss all over it.
Comment for "Lady Presidents"
Jenny Attiyeh
Posted on March 28, 2006 at 07:54 AM | Permalink
Review of Lady Presidents
This is where radio can really shine -- raising from the dead people who are so forgotten it's embarrassing. To hear voices from the past, in all their gritty glory, is exhilarating. Bad audio? Even better. It connotes a sense of authenticity.
But if no audio actually exists, then we face a conundrum. In this case, the producer chose to have an artist narrate their words. Is this sort of thing better suited for print? Possibly.
Of course, any opportunity to hear women's voices from the past -- those with presidential ambitions, no less -- deserves our attention.
These pioneering women have earned the right to be heard, and remembered.