INTRODUCTION:
The Media and the Middle East have been conducting a torrid love-hate relationship for quite some years now. Don't get the idea that I don't like the media. Without journalists - among whose ranks I have been numbered - we would have no clue about what was going on in the world. Having said that, if you're going to spend millions of dollars collecting the news and broadcasting it instantly around the world via satellite, you should take the time to make sure that you do it right. These days, my media work is found at The Electronic Intifada, a project set up in the immediate wake of the Second Intifada to "counter spin, myth, and distortion by the Israeli media war machine."

• 7 May 2001 The Electronic Intifada on KPFK Pacifica's 'Middle East In Focus' programme - Transcript of a 2 May 2001 interview with two of The Electronic Intifada's founders, Nigel Parry and Laurie King-Irani, on Don Bustany's "Middle East In Focus" programme.
  
  
• 26 April 2001 "CNN as a byword II" - CNN's language use in reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to present the Israeli occupation as a Palestinian point of view.
  
  
• 25 April 2001 "On CNN's report of the 'new' Israeli closure" - CNN's reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict falls into one of the standard media traps.
  
  
• 12-18 April 2001 "The Vocabulary Of Revenge" - Published in Al-Ahram Weekly, this article looks at Israel's use of the word "retaliation" and how the media readily picks it up.
  
  
• 8 March 2001 - "Deconstructing 'for security reasons': Israel's closure of Birzeit University" - Published on the Media Monitor's Network. A look at the clearly punitive targeting of Birzeit University and the language used.
  
  
• 29 October 2000 - "CNN: Richard Blystone's report, 'Poisoned Playground'"
  As the clashes that began on 28 September 2000 continued to result in a high loss of life and level of injuries among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip including many children, various Israeli official and media sources claimed Palestinians were using "children as shields", in some cases for financial gain, CNN broadcast an unprecedented feature on children throwing stones.
  
  
• 28 October 2000 - "CNN: An excellent Hebron report | Investigating the clashes"
  As the clashes that began on 28 September 2000 continued to result in a high loss of life and level of injuries among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and as the various Israeli claims, including Palestinians using "children as shields", increased, I wrote to CNN from London with some suggestions about how to get to the bottom of this.
  
  
• 22 October 2000 - "CNN as a byword"
  As the clashes that began on 28 September 2000 continued to result in a high loss of life and level of injuries among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I wrote to CNN from London, on 22 October 2000, to point out that CNN has become a byword for bad coverage, and to make a suggestion about the use of language in reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
  
  
• 4 October 2000 - "CNN, 'rubber bullets', and the current clashes"
  As clashes at a level unseen since the September 1996 Clashes once again swept the landscape of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000, I wrote to CNN concerning their use of the term "rubber bullets", a diminutive term that misleads about the nature of these heavy steel cylinders covered with a mm or two of rubber coating.
  
  
• 21 December 1999 - "The daily drudge of occupation", Ha'aretz newspaper
  Ha'aretz journalist Daphna Lewy-Yanowitz conducted an interview with me in December 1999 which ended up in this piece.
  
  
• 11 March 1999 - "CNN Interactive finally changes its 'Middle East Related Sites' page"
  Still hiding away in Minnesota, I took some time once again to write a letter to CNN Interactive about part of their website, a letter I'd written perhaps 12 times over the last few years, and one I arranged a limited letter-writing campaign about a couple of years ago. The difference this time was that I got a positive response...
  
  
• 29 November 1998 - Commentator on international donors conference for Palestine, Blue Danube Radio, Austria (coming one day, with Real Audio sample).
  
  
• 16 October 1998 - "Middle East in Focus" programme, KPFK Pacifica, California
  Don Bustany has been hosting this very honest programme on the Middle East since the 1970s, and invited me on to talk about my experiences before I left Palestine, and the peace process at a time when the Wye negotiations were in full swing. The highlight for me in this interview was the opportunity to talk about the reality of clashes, one that exists on an entirely separate dimension than TV coverage of the conflict. The full transcript and a RealAudio clip are available.
  
  
• 31 August 1998 - "7 Questions", Newsies.com
  Tom Mangan created the Newsies.com website to pursue his belief that journalists have a higher number of interesting websites per capita on the Web. I answer questions about U.S. culture in Palestine, what the most unforgettable sight I saw during the Intifada was, what people do for fun in Ramallah, offer a recommendation for tension reduction in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more, in his 7 Questions section. Afterwards, why not visit the excellent Newsies.com website?
  
  
• 16 June 1998 - "The new webmasters of the West Bank", Ha'aretz newspaper
  Just before the incident with my home that made me decide to take a break from Palestine, Israeli journalist Tzuri Dar got in contact with me to do a feature on the Palestinian Internet for Ha'aretz, a quality newspaper in Israel. It was published in the wake of my departure and, despite a few unintentional factual innaccuracies and an unfortunate section heading half-way through the article, served as a timely epitaph for my time spent helping to build the Palestinian Internet.

RELATED SITES:


• ali abunimah's bitter pill, uncovering media myths about the middle east - the activist's media monitoring site of choice. Ali regularly writes letters to CNN, NPR and other media organisations and archives them on his website at http://www.abunimah.org/. A model of content and tone for protest letters. It really doesn't get any better.
  
  
• The Electronic Intifada - a resource for countering myth, distortion and spin from the Israeli media war machine.