American Coverage of Lebanon’s Civil War
The afflictions the Lebanese people experienced for over fifteen years caused by a civil war were not a prominent headline in American newspapers until the kidnapping of Associated Press Beirut bureau chief, Terry Anderson. America’s profound ignorance about Lebanon is directly correlated to the failure of the American media to report in depth about the Lebanese conflict. America’s particular ignorance concerning the Lebanese conflict is not acceptable because Lebanon plays a key role in the persistent problems in the Middle East, which directly affect the United States and world peace. There may be no way to objectively report the situation in Lebanon because the history of the myriad culture clashes there are so intricate but Mark Pedelty, author of War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents, acknowledges that objectivity is not necessary for good reporting, and in actuality breeds poor reporting. To try to solve the problem of America’s ignorance, Terry Anderson has taken the first step in recognizing the problem of ignorance toward the conflict and then by searching for and publishing knowledge which aids the American people in understanding the conflict, as well as the cultures and people of Lebanon.
The possible bias and reasoning behind what was reported about Lebanon needs to be explored. All the newspapers reported on the lives of the hostages, their families, and the expected hopes for their release. All sources which I have researched have neglected to delve into the background of the Lebanese conflict, focus on the Lebanese civilians, or offer extensive explanation of motives or strategy behind the American hostage situation.
The bias could have been intentionally what most Americans identify with as “pro-Israeli” tendencies, or could have been unknowingly biased through the method of filtering information to report. The reporting of the Lebanese conflict can be considered bias and non objective. Pedelty discusses the problematic utopian ideals of objective reporting, and the reporting of the Lebanese conflict can be paralleled with his discussion of the coverage of El Salvador on many different levels.
Pedelty structures his argument against the common perceived notion that objective journalism is good journalism. First he defines the key factors of objective journalism which are: “emotion is taboo... politics are not considered objective... [and] objectivity is supposed to be value-free” (Pedelty, 171). Pedelty also acknowledges that “objectivity remains the standard by which journalists are judged” (Pedelty, 173).
In the eighty-five pages play, Lafferty, Sherlock, and Wood exert their utmost effort to document, organize, and reconstruct a collage of verbatim testimonies, reports, and interviews eyewitnesses of the Syrian Revolution .The interviews were conducted by Laffery in collaboration with veteran war correspondents: Sherlock and Wood. Lafferty and colleagues conducted interviews incognito with ordinary people, activists, businesspersons, defectors, Free Syrian Army soldiers, and medical staff. Subsequently, Lafftery not only edited and adapted the play for theatre performance, but also directed it. The three compliers risked their personal safety and arranged to be covertly smuggled into the Syrian precarious land. Were they caught, they would have been, unquestionably, exposed to the horrendous Syrian torture, killing machine. The Assad regime banned Western media, and journalists no longer had any immunity. They could have been a legitimate target of any attack.
In “Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin”, the theme darkness and light appear throughout the story. The narrator's perspective of the Harlem is rough and shady due to his ability to accept new ideas and gestures. In the opeining introduction, the Narrator introduces darkness by comparing children to darkness by saying “All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness” (Baldwin, James). The Narrator is not only disgusted by the way the children acted but also by the music that contributes to darkness by not dealing with the real world. In Sonny's Blues, the narrator demonstrates being close-minded, strong, and accepting toward his family members.
Segregation – prejudice – persecution: slavery had ended, but African-Americans were still forced to carve out a grim existence beneath the dispassionate stare of narrow-minded bigots. Soon, the Civil Rights Movement would gain momentum and drastically alter such social exclusion, but James Baldwin writes his story “Sonny’s Blues” before this transformation has occurred. In the style of other Post-Modernist writers of his day, Baldwin invents two brothers, Sonny and the narrator, who seem to have given up on finding meaning in their lives: escape, not purpose, is the solution for suffering. Although marginalized by white society, these men are still influenced by external standards – most noticeably our narrator. Using these two brothers as voices for a broader purpose, Baldwin develops conflicts within the story to depict a battle between the expectations of society (our unnamed narrator) and a free, African-American spirit (Sonny) as they each try to understand how to live in a changing world. Baldwin forces them to grapple with such difficult concepts as escape and suffering in an attempt to guide his own race toward the soothing balm of reconciliation.
In this essay James Baldwin’s world renowned story “Sonny’s Blues” will be analysed in detail, including Baldwin’s background, the artistic quality, thematic meanings, a plot summary, and the role this story plays in world literature. James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York’s Harlem. At the time the center of black culture, Harlem was once a culturally vibrant community of artists of all kinds, but it was also a neighborhood deeply afflicted by poverty and violence. Baldwin’s mother was eventually left by Baldwin’s biological father, and assumed a job as a domestic servant and married the preacher David Baldwin, whose strong influence on Baldwin was evident not only in Baldwin’s writing but in his religious faith as well. Baldwin’s religious faith had its follies. He had a difficult relationship with his stepfather, and while attending High School in the Bronx, he began to accept his homosexuality, which further complicated his role in the church. During his highschool years, Baldwin’s literary talent took off. He began spending time in Greenwich Village, which was widely considered the heart of the post–World War II artistic community.
Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin works with the narrator and its younger brother Sonny. The narrator presents life changing moments between both himself and Sonny, although both are related they are both two very distinct individuals. In the beginning of the passage, it started off describing their critical living conditions in Harlem and how people were trapped in the projects while others were able to escape. Although some people were able to escape these living conditions it seemed as though the desperation of trouble would always be with them. The narrator expresses his thoughts on the subject through a complex picture of rage, an express of violent uncontrollable anger reflecting to the audience both external and internal by change, escape, trap, and racism.
Shaheen, J. (1985). Media Coverage of the Middle East: Perception of Foreign Policy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, v482, pp. 160-75.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
When the US initiated the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it gave the justification that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam aided the perpetrators of the September 11 attack on United States soil. The Bush administration also accused Saddam of engineering a nuclear program and amassing destructive weapons. All the US justification and the entire war have been highly criticized on many fronts. The media has taken the lead on shaping public opinion on both sides of the war, that is, the US or rather North America and the Middle East. It is a fact that citizens get to understand an issue such as the Iraq war through the perspective of the media (Al-Rawi, 2013). This paper focuses on the media, its portrayal of the war and the effect of its perspective.
...,” constantly watching and worrying over him. Another conflict that Baldwin expresses in “Sonny’s Blues” is imprisonment. The characters are either trapped physically and emotionally or even both… Throughout the story, Sonny is constantly struggling to break free. Sonny is physically imprisoned in jail as well as by his addiction to heroin. The narrator is confined to Harlem to be specific. In addition, they are both trapped within themselves, the narrator unable to express his emotions or live up to his obligations as a brother until his daughter’s death gives him the motivation that he needs to change and do so, while Sonny is unable to express himself without heroin and his music.
Now James Baldwin himself was born into Harlem neighborhoods which was a huge focal point of African American culture at it’s prime. At a point, Harlem was known for its culture and bright jazz musicians and artist, although it was sadly affected by much poverty. Now with “Sonny’s Blues” it can be quite an intriguing story as it focuses on human suffering but overcoming it. Some can relate to this story to some degree when it comes to its overall focus and themes that come into play. Like for example, Sonny began to take heroin or drugs in general due to him feeling trapped by everything around him. Like as if the things he’s trapped by what he is supposed to strive for instead of doing what he wants to do in his life. It’s like a form of escape as he attempts to find his direction in the world around him although he isn’t an “adult” but also not necessarily a “child” either. Most of us as teens tend to try to find ourselves in high school and soon to discover our true potential. But the core issue is we still are told to listen to those in higher power even if we at that age have our own opinions and ideas that shape who we are. So what Sonny is dealing with is not being taken seriously when it comes to his overall desire to become a well-known jazz musician etc. Therefore, Sonny was only a young man trying to figure out what really made him happy as a musician without dealing with the social discrimination of his life choices; only leading to his escape from reality with the use of
Another day another bombing; an all to common story in Lebanon these days. So, is Lebanon on the brink? The easy answer, yes. The more complicated one? Well, the Lebanese are very resilient people, akin to a phoenix that rises from the ashes, only to burn up in flames again.
Characters: Jared Evan Grace, Simon Everett Grace, Mallory Evan Grace, Arthur Spiderwick, Lucinda Spiderwick, and Helen Grace.
Lebanon is characterized by cultural identity of ethnic and religious diversity owing to its location at the crossroad of Arabian hinterland and Mediterranean Basin (Choueiri, 2013). Following the country’s independence from France in the year 1943, the “confessionalism” political system was established allowing for power sharing between different religious communities located in the region. The capital city of Lebanon, Beirut, serves as a regional center for trade and finance. Since independence, Lebanon has experienced the interspersion of political stability and prosperity, and political turmoil (Fisk, 2012). Lebanon is located between Israel to the south and Syria to the east and north. The instability in Middle East countries, like Israel and Syrian often spills out to Lebanon causing different instances of, external aggression, political assassination, national government collapse and civil war such as 2006 Lebanon war, 2007-2008 Lebanon conflict, and various instances of sectarian violence (Marshall, 2012). This paper seeks to evaluate the current events in Lebanon, their impact to the country, and the significance of Lebanon to the United States. The paper shall also give a predictive analysis of Lebanon in both short term and long term.
Entman, Robert. “Symposium Framing U.S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts in Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents.” Journal of Communication 41,no4 (1991): 6, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1991.tb02328.x/abstract;jsessionid=1ED043007C2287AA69B7A3A2DD869C27.d01t02 (accessed April 16 2012)
Two years ago in 2012 (since the time of the article), Lebanon’s tourism minister Fadi Abboud thought about suing the series for an incorrect depiction of its capital Beirut. Instead of portraying a street in Beirut as a cultural, lively place, the program had a group of terrorists meet there. Also, the scene was filmed in Israel, who was at war with Lebanon.