book is both interesting as a critique on mainstream journalism, as well as an introduction to the Middle East, For years the Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk was a news paper correspondent in Egypt, Lebanon and IsraelPalestine, He wrote this book afterwards, clarifying that objective journalism in this region isn't really possible, and illustrating how media in general make a mess of their reporting on the Middle East.
Of course, he's a bit oneside once in a while, but he does make his point clear, Luyendijk sets the bar for journalism very high: you will not find the truth there, for those who still had that illusion a bit of humility is more appropriate.
Mandatory reading for every one aspiring a career in journalism or interested in current affairs, Weergaloos boek. Hoe een dictatuur in het Midden Oosten onbewust de journalistiek van het vrije Westen onvrij weet te maken en hierdoor het echte verhaal der burgerij weet te censureren.
Maar ook hoe de huidige journalistiek het probleem in stand houdt door continu de focus te hebben op het in beeld brengen van nieuws en de waarlijke gebeurtenissen die letterlijk niet te filmen zijn in dictaturen en in consumenten Westerse media onder te brengen zijn.
Prachtig hoe een jonge, idealistische journalist toch wel zijn stempel heeft proberen en mogen zetten in een onvrij gebied, Dit boek zou iedere leek, die überhaupt een kant kiest in conflicten lees: racisme, seksisme, homofobie, dictaturen, moeten lezen als burgerplicht.
Mijn dank gaat uit naar het mooie mens Joris Luyendijk, Petje af. Zot hoe hard er een kloof is tussen beeld en werkelijkheid in het MiddenOosten, We weten allemaal dat de media ons bespeelt, maar hier lees je hoe het allemaal er daadwerkelijk in deze landen aantoe gaat en hoe verkeerd we denken over de Arabische wereld.
'Journalism is about the world, likewise there has to be journalism about journalism since it's part of that same world.
The media are a controlling power, but it also holds power, The idea of a democracy is that all powers are held accountable, that's the main reason i wrote this book, '
Growing up, i used to be a big reader, My mom would take me and my sister to a local bookstore for National 'Bookweek' and buy us a book, More often than not, i would finish the book that same day, Sadly, over the years, reading started feeling like more and more of a chore,
This however, felt like my return to form, Such an incredible book.
It's quite literally overloaded with hottakes, realizations and 'pressingyournoseonthefacts', I kept getting surprised that there was éven more stuff i had no idea about,
Such an interesting part of the world, experienced, and subsequently written about, by such an interesting person, هم بشر مثلنا
غالبا ما أبتعد عن قراءة مثل هذه الكتب, لأن لدي حكم مسبق عنها, أو لأني أعرف ما يحتويه الكتاب, خاصة وأن كاتبه غربي, ولكني كنت مجبرة لقراءته ضمن حلقة قراءة اشتركت بها. لم أندم على ذلك, بل أن هذا الكتاب شجعني على متابعة يورس ومقالاته وقراءة كتب أخرى له. ليس من السهل أن تكتب بعدالة عن أناس مختلفين تماما عنك, ويتم تقديمهم دائما بأغلفة وحشية, متخلفة ومخيفة. الكتاب يضم الكثير من الآراء, القصص, المشاهدات التي تحدث عنها يورس, بالأضافة الى ما ذكرته, منها: أن المراسلين الأمريكيين مدللين ويسكنون في فنادق الخمس نجوم, مقاله عن الشيف رمزي وشهرته في "فولكس كرانت", برامج أجنبية بنسخ عربية, والديكتاتورية التي تتشعب في كل مكان, في حياة, مشاعر وثقافة العربي, " الديكتاتورية والديمقراطية ليستا من نفس النوع: إذا كانت الديمقراطية سيارة, فان الديكتاتورية بقرة أو حصان. " ومقص الرقيب الذي خصص له فصلا كاملا. وتحدث أيضا عن حياة المراسلين, الخطر الذي يعيشونه, إيصال الخبر وعرضه في الأعلام, وعلاقات المراسلين مع بعضهم, وإخفاء مصادرهم.
يتحدث يورس في كتابه عن تفاصيل دقيقة من حياة العربي, النكات المصرية عن اسامة الباز ومبارك والصعايدة, السوريين عن الحمصيين والعراقيين عن الدليم, وذكر العديد منها في كتابه.
يورس ذكي جدا في كتابة آرائه الشخصية دون أن يؤثر ذلك على الحقيقة, ما يقوله لا يختلف فيه عربيين أثنيين, وهذه معجزة حقا. بالأضافة الى أسلوبه الممتع في الكتابة الذي جعل الكتاب يختلف عن أي كتاب آخر لنفس الموضوع.
وأخيرا يلخص يورس انطباعه عن العالم العربي:
"إذا كان يمكنني أن أضع العالم العربي في صورة واحدة , فأني سأختار هذه المحاكمة الصورية: الأنظمة التي تضع بخبث كل معارضة في خانة "الأرهاب", الغرب يقف معها, يرى ذلك وعند اللزوم يمد يد المساعدة. ولهذا المعارضة لن تبدو واضحة أن كانت بديلا عن الأسلام الفاشي أم عن المسيحية الديمقراطية. والحقيقة هي في البحث عن الديكتاتور الذي صنع هذا النظام الصعب جدا. "
قرائتي للكتاب كاملة على الرابطين :
: sitelink com/DD
: sitelink com/DD Ik bedacht me laatst al kijkende naar het nieuws, dat dat ook maar een afspiegeling was waar de camera met verslaggever op dat moment was.
Als kijker krijg je maar een klein deel mee, van dat wat daadwerkelijk gebeurd, Dit boek gaat daar op in, En beschrijft de situatie in de jarenin het midden oosten, die zelfs voor een verslaggever onbegrijpelijk of onbereikbaar is, Erg boeiend. Originally published in the Netherlands inHet zijn net mensen, Luyendijk reports on his experiences as a news correspondent in the Middle East.
This book quickly became a bestseller in the Netherlands and has been translated into many languages see Luyendijk's website for details: jorisluyendijk. nl/.
English translation copyright,
UKEnglish edition: Hello Everybody! One Journalist's Search for Truth in the Middle East Profile
USEnglish edition: People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East Soft Skull Press
AustralianEnglish edition: Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East Scribe
Luyendijk tells the story of his five years as a correspondent in the Middle East.
He chronicles firsthand experiences of dictatorship, occupation, terror, and war, His stories cast light on a number of major crises, from the Iraq War to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, along with lessreported issues such as underage orphan trashcollectors in Cairo.
The more he witnessed, the less he understood, and he became increasingly aware of the yawning gap between what he saw on the ground and what was later reported in the media.
Een mustread die de nauwe beeldvorming van het MiddenOosten door de westerse media blootlegt, De titel geeft perfect de toon en essentie van dit boek weer, Ik wilde dit boek al heel lang lezen vanwege de warrige situatie in het midden oosten die al decennia duurt, De gebeurtenissen die Luyendijk meemaakt zijn zo neergezet dat je je helemaal kunt inleven in zijn situatie, Het lezen zelf duurde wat langer omdat de schrijfwijze mij niet helemaal ligt, Het is een boek vol feiten en informatie, maar wel een die elke alinea over een andere situatie verteld, Dat leest wat vermoeiend, maar het ging me dan ook om de inhoud, En die is rauw en eerlijk, كتاب يتعرض لما قد يقع وراء كواليس الأخبار من تجاهل الأضواء أو تسليطها أو تشويهها لما يقع حقيقة وعلى أرض الواقع, لم يكن الكتاب الأول الذي اقرأه حول هذا الموضوع فسبق أن قرأت كتب تصل إلى نفس النتيجة أن هناك لعبة علاقات عامة ومصالح في صناعة الخبر. مؤلف الكتاب يوريس لونديك وصل إلى نتيجة منذ أن أصبح مراسل صحفي وأصبح مطلع كيف تجري الأمور حوله إلى: "كنت قد تخليت عن الفكرة القائلة إنك تعرف ما يجري في العالم إذا تابعت الأخبار" وأنا كذلك ومنذ فترة طويلة!!
Foreign correspondence, especially that reportage from the Middle East and other redoubts of dictatorship, is a house of cards.
Thats the conclusion of Joris Luyendijk, the former Dutch correspondent who spent five years reporting from Cairo, Beirut, Jerusalem, and other regional hotspots.
People
Like Us, however, is more than a simple accounting of his time on the ground, Instead, its a hardhitting critique of the news business, of the concerted efforts to shape what that business reports, and of the often illiterate consumers of that reporting.
Readers might be forgiven for looking to another more influential critic of the news business, the former New Yorker journalist A.
J. Liebling, to succinctly capture the spirit of Luyendijks short and utterly readable book, For it was Liebling that said famously, “Journalism is what somebody doesnt want you to print, The rest is publicity. ” By describing how foreign reporting works, or more aptly, how it doesnt work, Luyendijk is able to convincingly extirpate any notion that its possible for the casual observer to really understand the situation on the ground in culturally distant or undemocratic places.
Luyendijk writes about his former profession in the same jaded way that an exwife might air out the dirty laundry of her former spouse.
And though one sided, his account is refreshingly forthright in a way that a current journalist could never be, Furthermore, he doesnt shy away from selfcritique, He very candidly describes his inability to reestablish friendships with ordinary Egyptians that he had met while earlier studying at university there.
He says that absent those workaday relationships, it was impossible for him to report norms, only distortions, Rather than being a participantobserver, in the classic model of anthropology, he was doomed to be only a removed onlooker,
Being likened to an anthropologist may be the highest form of praise any journalist can receive, But in reading People Like Us it becomes readily apparent that the discipline of anthropology may even be a more appropriate course of study than journalism school for aspiring foreign reporters.
“It was a Catch situation: In order to hear what was going on, I needed local contacts yet Id only get those contacts by living in a way that was incompatible with the life of a correspondent,” he writes.
One suspects that his remove from those people he was reporting about is not unique to journalists, but to diplomats as well.
At the same time, Luyendijk has a playful and lighthearted streak when it comes to his work, Though not all of the humor translates well from the original Dutch text, he does relate some humorous stories, such as that of doing an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the pious groups public relations office which happens to sit one floor above a large intimate apparel retailer in South Beirut.
In another moment, he relates how he would playfully mock his Palestinian interlocutors who suspected that a Jewish conspiracy could explain media coverage of the region.
In the middle of their conversations, Luyendijk would look at his watch and say, “Can I just make a call My secret boss in Israel is going to dictate tomorrows article to me.
”
Luyendijk also writes with great force and lucidity about news stories being precomposed by governments, His examples range from the Sudanese showing melted pill bottles at a pharmaceutical factory just struck by a U, S. missile to Gazans throwing out baby clothes onto the wreckage of a building just destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, With convincing detail, he describes the media life cycle of a terrorist attack in Israel and also quotes a U, S. military official telling a gathering of foreign reporters at the outset of the Iraq War that they need not worry, that “were going to make sure that after the war your boss comes up to you and gives you a slap on the back and compliments you on what a fine job youve done.
”
The true indictment, however, is not of government spin agents, but instead of editors worshipping at the alter of simplification and nationalistic bias.
Robert McChesney, the noted scholar of American mass media might argue that the root of the problem lies not with editors, but with the corporatization of the news business.
Others, such as National Public Radio reporter and media critic Brooke Gladstone, have suggested that we get the media we deserve, and that it is a reflection of ourselves.
Either way, there couldnt be a more searing indictment than Luyendijk intoning, “If the Western mass media had done their jobs during the war, viewers would have set in front of their television sets crying and vomiting.
”
What perhaps makes People Like Us most prescient, however, is what it has to say about the possibility for democratic change in the Middle East.
“Try imagining this report,” Luyendijk writes, “Today in Kuwait, thousands of people marched against Western support of their dictators, They demanded the dismantlement of the secret Western bank accounts in which dictators hoard their loot, and chanted slogans against the generous commissions that Western defense companies pay out to dictators and their entourages.
Banners displayed protests against Western training and armament of the Arab secret services who torture and murder on a large scale.
” Of course reading such a report today, following the Arab Spring, is entirely imaginable, but when the book was published in, such a report would have been farfetched.
Yet, this was precisely the point, Journalists covering the numerous summits and other nonevents that shaped news coverage from the region were never going to be able to foresee the mass movements that have shaped Arab politics over the past year.
Though it is far from clear that either the refreshing breeze of the Arab Spring or a new model of more ethnographic reporting will be enough to topple the house of cards that shapes the regions reporting, Luyendijk has done an admirable job of pulling the curtains open behind the great and powerful wizard that is the mainstream media.
While certainly there is another side to the story, one that a more connected and seasoned reporter from the region might be able to tell, this book is a good reminder to the casual media consumer that all is not what it appears in the news.
Distortion often trumps reality and its very difficult to do good reporting amidst repressive and nondemocratic regimes, Jeffrey L. Otto October,
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Procure People Like Us: Misrepresenting The Middle East Presented By Joris Luyendijk Displayed In Manuscript
Joris Luyendijk