Al Jazeera and U.S. War Coverage

Conventional wisdom is the Al Jazeera and other Arab-based news networks are breaking down barriers between East and West, but communications scholar Samuel-Azran cites contrary evidence. He says that the US government has convinced US media that it is in an information war with Al Jazeera, and thereby strengthened the tie between the government and the media, and so reduced any critical analysis of the US war effort. When mainstream society feels threatened by counter-hegemonic globalization processes, he argues, local debate becomes even more centralized and ethnocentric, a fact that is hidden by the myth of media globalization generally and the Al-Jazeera effect in particular. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)