BAHRAIN: How the US Mainstream Media Turn a Blind Eye To Washington’s Despotic Arab Ally

Study Reveals Corporate News Blackout On Democracy Uprising in Persian Gulf Kingdom

BAHRAIN: How the US Mainstream Media Turn a Blind Eye To Washington’s Despotic Arab Ally
by Colin S. Cavell – 9 April, 2012 – Global Research.ca

In her year-end summary of the Arab Spring revolts of 2011, Christiane Amanpour, the Global Affairs Anchor of ABC News as well as an anchor and Chief International Correspondent at CNN, highlights the rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria but never mentions the uprising in Bahrain (“This Week,” December 25, 2011). Apparently, Bahrain falls off the global map with Amanpour and ABC News [1].

In its year-end edition, the world’s largest weekly news magazine with headquarters in New York City, Time, awarded its “Person of the Year” award to ‘The Protester’ heralding the millions who voiced their opposition to dictators and corruption in 2011 starting with the protests in Tunisia which spread throughout the Arab world on into Europe and across the Atlantic to the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the USA. In his cover story on “The Protester,” Time magazine reporter Kurt Andersen praises activists in cities in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Britain, Israel, Mexico, India, Chile, the USA, Russia, Syria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Jordan, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. Is Bahrain mentioned at all, our dear reader may inquire? Only once: to indicate that the “days of rage” had reached to the “softer monarchical dictatorships—Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco…” (Andersen, p. 72) [2]. Yes, that is it—one mention. In a 21-page article, one would think that a seasoned journalist would care to write a little more about the massive demonstrations and subsequent onslaught by regime forces against the pro-democracy protesters which occurred in Bahrain in 2011. Is this careless journalism or deliberate policy to exclude reporting on Bahrain?

Dr. James J. Zogby, founder and president of the Washington DC-based Arab American Institute, in his article “The ‘Arab Spring’ Effect,” conducted a year-end public opinion survey in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran regarding the effect of the 2011 Arab Spring and the publics’ satisfaction with the pace of political change, and there is not one mention of Bahrain and no reporting on how Bahrainis feel about the pace of political change in their country (January 1, 2012). Is Bahrain just too small or too insignificant one may begin to ponder?

Noted commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, Professor Juan Cole from the University of Michigan, in his November 10, 2011 article entitled “Protest Planet: How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism,” writes of the factors that have motivated the Arab Spring rebellions including “the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere…high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures, and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life.”

Though able to pinpoint many of the causes of the revolts, Dr. Cole—like others in the American mainstream—fails to mention Bahrain even once when he traces the path of the Arab rebellions thusly: “The success of the Tunisian revolution in removing the octopus-like Ben Ali plutocracy inspired the dramatic events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and even Israel that are redrawing the political map of the Middle East” (Cole, November 10, 2011). Excuse me, Professor Cole, but what about Bahrain?!

“Just like nothing ever happened”

In a rare exception to the near-national blackout of reporting on Bahrain by the USA’s top media outlets [3], National Public Radio reporter Kelly McEvers, in early 2012, tells, after several trips to Bahrain in 2011, of “Bahrain: The Revolution That Wasn’t” (McEvers, January 5, 2012). “Bahrain’s uprising didn’t get quite as much attention as some of the others in the Arab world last year,” she reports. “But it was one of the first, beginning on Feb. 14.” McEvers continues, “Bahrainis had protested before, mainly about the fact that the country’s majority Shiites remain poor [4] and disenfranchised by the Sunni monarchy. But they’d never protested like this.

“At first the protesters asked for things like an elected Parliament, a new constitution. But then when demonstrators started getting killed, tens of thousands of Bahrainis converged on a place called the Pearl Roundabout to call for the fall of the ruling Al Khalifa family.”

“Bahrain State TV called protesters traitors and agents of Iran, which is nearby and also has a Shiite majority.”

“In Bahrain, pro-government thugs attacked protesters, and protesters fought back. Just one month into the uprising, Bahrain’s ruling family authorized some 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enter the country.”

“Apache helicopters circled overhead as authorities cleared the Pearl Roundabout of all protesters. They never made it back” (McEvers, January 5, 2012).

McEvers further notes that Bahrain is the one Arab country where the government was able to definitively suppress a major uprising. She quotes Dr. Toby Jones, a professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University, who concluded this is because “the United States and its allies wanted it that way.” Bahrain definitely stands apart from the other Arab regimes implies Jones. …more