{"id":8442,"date":"2012-04-09T19:56:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T02:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8442"},"modified":"2012-04-09T19:58:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T02:58:23","slug":"bahrain-how-the-us-mainstream-media-turn-a-blind-eye-to-washingtons-despotic-arab-ally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8442","title":{"rendered":"BAHRAIN: How the US Mainstream Media Turn a Blind Eye To Washington’s Despotic Arab Ally"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study Reveals Corporate News Blackout On Democracy Uprising in Persian Gulf Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

BAHRAIN: How the US Mainstream Media Turn a Blind Eye To Washington’s Despotic Arab Ally<\/strong>
\nby Colin S. Cavell – 9 April, 2012 – Global Research.ca<\/p>\n

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 (\u201cThis Week,\u201d December 25, 2011). Apparently, Bahrain falls off the global map with Amanpour and ABC News [1].<\/em><\/p>\n

In its year-end edition, the world\u2019s largest weekly news magazine with headquarters in New York City, Time, awarded its \u201cPerson of the Year\u201d award to \u2018The Protester\u2019 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 \u201cThe Protester,\u201d 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 \u201cdays of rage\u201d had reached to the \u201csofter monarchical dictatorships\u2014Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco\u2026\u201d (Andersen, p. 72) [2]. Yes, that is it\u2014one 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?<\/p>\n

Dr. James J. Zogby, founder and president of the Washington DC-based Arab American Institute, in his article \u201cThe \u2018Arab Spring\u2019 Effect,\u201d 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\u2019 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?<\/p>\n

Noted commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, Professor Juan Cole from the University of Michigan, in his November 10, 2011 article entitled \u201cProtest Planet: How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism,\u201d writes of the factors that have motivated the Arab Spring rebellions including \u201cthe 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\u2026high 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though able to pinpoint many of the causes of the revolts, Dr. Cole\u2014like others in the American mainstream\u2014fails to mention Bahrain even once when he traces the path of the Arab rebellions thusly: \u201cThe 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\u201d (Cole, November 10, 2011). Excuse me, Professor Cole, but what about Bahrain?!<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like nothing ever happened\u201d<\/p>\n

In a rare exception to the near-national blackout of reporting on Bahrain by the USA\u2019s top media outlets [3], National Public Radio reporter Kelly McEvers, in early 2012, tells, after several trips to Bahrain in 2011, of \u201cBahrain: The Revolution That Wasn\u2019t\u201d (McEvers, January 5, 2012). \u201cBahrain\u2019s uprising didn\u2019t get quite as much attention as some of the others in the Arab world last year,\u201d she reports. \u201cBut it was one of the first, beginning on Feb. 14.\u201d McEvers continues, \u201cBahrainis had protested before, mainly about the fact that the country\u2019s majority Shiites remain poor [4] and disenfranchised by the Sunni monarchy. But they\u2019d never protested like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBahrain State TV called protesters traitors and agents of Iran, which is nearby and also has a Shiite majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bahrain, pro-government thugs attacked protesters, and protesters fought back. Just one month into the uprising, Bahrain\u2019s ruling family authorized some 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enter the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cApache helicopters circled overhead as authorities cleared the Pearl Roundabout of all protesters. They never made it back\u201d (McEvers, January 5, 2012).<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe United States and its allies wanted it that way.\u201d Bahrain definitely stands apart from the other Arab regimes implies Jones. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2495],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8442"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8444,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions\/8444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}