The Oppressive Objectivity Standard in Western Media Coverage of The Middle East

Abstract

As a journalist from Beirut covering Lebanon and Syria, I have moved between mainstream institutions including the Washington Post and the Telegraph, to lesser known local media sites such as Daraj media and Megaphone. All too often, American and British journalists dominate mainstream media offices. They work in the name of the “objectivity” standard, washing down reports on exploitation, poverty and police brutality with robotic tones, neutral words, and empty quotes from corrupt authoritarian political figures. This raises a question: What does it mean to choose neutrality when covering a region plagued by dictatorships and injustice?

I aim to interrogate and draw attention to the standard of ‘objectivity’ within prominent Western mainstream media, including its role as a catalyst in silencing authentic voices from the Middle East and how this could cause a great deal of harm in a region of conflict. The rules surrounding this journalistic standard ultimately lead towards dry reports that fail to contextualize on-the-ground realities and subtly label local voices as too “emotional”, “attached” and “biased”.