The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

Iranian News : "War For Oil"; starving for foreign TV news

I'm watching "Mosaic: News from the Middle East" on WorldLinkTV, which is quick becoming one of my favorite stations. I am starving for non-U.S. News coverage on TV. I'm sure I'll rage about the U.S. media's coverage of this war soon enough -- it's pissing me off big time -- but the purpose of this post is just a small note about the Iranian news coverage that comprised 1/5th of the half-hour medley of Middle-East-based news reports. Unfortunately I didn't see the whole half-hour -- I surfed in just in time to see a piece of one other broadcast, and then this Iran one.

Which is a pretty big lead-in for what's really a small thing I guess. But a very interesting one.

You know how with the big news networks there's the title area at the top of the bottom of the screen -- where most U.S. networks currently have "OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM" written? On Iran's IRIB News, the title for the war coverage is "WAR FOR OIL".

I'll leave it up to you to determine which country's media has the more accurate picture of this war.

WorldLink has increased their schedule of news coverage in response to the war, but it's not primarily a news network per se. It's more of a documentary television/cultural showcase deal. Plenty of current events from the Middle East area, but not news-current, more like recent-current. Which means not about the war, generally. Which means I'm writing to WorldLink and asking them to show more foreign-based news. I'm feeling more and more like the U.S. coverage is 90% war commercial and 10% war news.

I know I can go read the foreign press all I want on the Web, but somehow reading war coverage doesn't feel quite complete. Like right now I'm watching Iraq Satellite Television news on C-Span, a press conference that one of their generals or something is holding, and I feel like I wouldn't be able to get the same sense of things at all from reading a written version of this news. I mean, they're largely saying the same stuff most of the rest of the world is saying, plus tons of morale-boosting efforts and confidence-having, but seeing them saying it adds a lot. And seeing their setting, and hearing their tone of voice, and all that good stuff. Iraq Satellite TV news shifted next to a military leader of some sort who was apparently in Umm Q'asr, the port city that I guess the U.S. does not have control of yet. At least not as far as this guy is concerned. It's one of the few times I've seen on-the-ground living people coverage from the Iraqi side.

Now C-Span has switched to Washington Journal with columnist Thomas Friedman saying that if you watch too much TV news coverage you can lose the forest for the trees, and get media whiplash from the hourly ups and downs. He also says now that we have lemons, let's make lemonade. Maybe it's time to turn off the TV. ;-)

Got any good links to decent-quality non-gung-ho TV coverage of the war? Post a comment and let me know. I'm not quite as starving for it as I was at the beginning of writing this, but I'm still pretty hungry.