Why Middle East News Matters
“Don’t try to explain — just describe. That’s the only way to get to the truth.” These were some of the first words of advice I received after arriving to freelance in Lebanon. They came from a young woman whom I had only just met, who rolled her eyes when I told her I was in Beirut as a journalist. “Not another one,” she laughed. Beirut is a hub for journalists from around the world, each covering the Middle East with their own agendas and preconceptions. But for all the strides outsiders writing about the region have seemingly made over the last century or so, our shortcomings are still painfully obvious to those living there.
Many American or European observers who struggle to understand the Middle East often attempt to “demystify” it by digging into its history, its religions, or its geopolitics, trying to pinpoint the driving factors for the region’s instability in order to find a way to remedy it all. In some ways this makes sense — the Middle East has been the ultimate “other” in the western imagination for hundreds of years. But what started as a fascination has over time morphed into an apprehension, and in the aftermath of 9/11, into a hatred, fueled by coverage of war, terrorism, the refugee crisis, and the society-wide misunderstanding that came with it.
Yet modern journalism’s efforts to explain and qualify these headline-grabbing problems have…
