• MediaGuardian (free registration required), Friday, February 3, 2006 10:48 AM

Julia Day, a reporter based in Qatar for the U.K.'s MediaGuardian, began a dispatch yesterday with a provocative statement, which she attributed to a source friendly to al-Jazeera Broadcasting: "Arabic-language media have an unprecedented chance to take over as the world's premier news source because trust in their U.S. counterparts plummeted following their 'shameful coverage' of the war in Iraq." The speaker was Amy Goodman, identified as executive producer and host of a "US TV and radio news show" called "Democracy Now!" Goodman spoke at a news forum organized by al-Jazeera. The MediaGuardian headlined its story "U.S. Media At 'All-Time Low.'" According to Day's story, Newsweek's Paris bureau chief, Christopher Dickey, "said U.S. media were dying because of cutbacks and weren't interested in covering the world outside America"--an observation, as it happens, made frequently these days by foreign correspondents. Goodman is said to have told her audience that America's main broadcast networks, plus PBS, recorded 393 interviews on the conflict in the days prior to the Iraq war, of which only three noted the anti-war movement. "This is media cheerleading for war and does not represent mainstream opinion in the U.S.," Goodman said at the news forum.

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