Fox News Defends Perceived Bias

The second annual Arab Media Forum kicked off with a lively debate moderated by Egyptian media giant Emad Adeeb.
The debate touched on the fairness of coverage in Arab and Western news media. Amy Kellogg, Middle East correspondent to Fox News, defended her channel’s perceived bias towards Israel, asserting that Fox News was the only Western channel to maintain a camera crew reporting from Gaza after the war in Lebanon. (although BBC also had a crew there!) Kellog insisted that Fox journalists reporting from the field simply relayed the news and suggested talk shows such as Bill O’Reilly’s are similar to the op-ed pages in newspapers.

The debate shifted to the media's role in escalating sectarian violence. Many audience members agreed that media coverage contributes to widening the gap between warring Shiite and Sunni populations in Iraq. Despite the political context of news, raising distinctions between different religious groups promoted a religious spin on the conflict. Ali Al-Jabri, an Abu Dhabi TV presenter, reaffirmed this view by indicating that Baghdad itself was divided into factional regions.