❊ Let’s Play a Game..

It’s called “fill in the blanks”. Which countries are missing from the following sentence?

In a televised speech, Nasrallah praised revolutionaries and protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen for their “faith and high spirituality.

You guessed right. But Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is not the only one doing the some-revolutions-are-more-noble-than-others thing. Take Aljazeera for instance. The cheerleader of Arab revolutions cut off Sayyed Nasrallah in mid sentence when he started talking about Bahrain.

You see, Aljazeera and Alarabiya don’t find anything wrong with calling armed Libyan rebels “freedom fighters”, while treating peaceful Bahraini protestors like 5th column parasites who don’t even deserve to be listened to. It’s as if they learned that trick from the Iranian president who in the same breath denounced Iran’s demonstrators as CIA instigators and saluted the Egyptian and Bahraini freedom fighters.

I really don’t mind politicians and media championing their favorite revolutions and ignoring the others. But what has been getting under my skin lately is the fact that they haven’t lost their sense of moral superiority. They still speak as if they own the clarity of true conviction. They still preach that they’re the fairest in their coverage and the closest to our hearts. They wholeheartedly ignore the fact that we’re seeing right through them.

Here’s a statement you won’t hear in Alarabiya anytime soon:

We are the official propagators of Saudi policy. There’s a cold war of influence between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Our job is to support the revolutions that topple unfriendly regimes (like Syria and Iran) and undermine revolutions that target our close allies, especially if they lived in our own backyard. (Bahrain) But don’t worry, we’ll still keep the illusion that we’re on the side of Arab peoples seeking freedom. After all, we don’t want you to switch to BBC and France24

This logic also applies to Iranian media and Hezbollah’s priorities by the way.

Here’s the takeaway from all of this: There is no such thing as independent and balanced media. I found myself recently watching France 24 for coverage of the region. They covered Bahrain well and seemed generally balanced. But then today, as the French jets started bombing Tripoli and Benghazi, they too wore their “I will speak for my government” mask. They suddenly lined up the right experts and became in charge of explaining why the French bombings are the right thing to do in these difficult times.