Hey! Has anyone asked what Arab Street thinks?

A thought-provoking piece from the Columbia Journalism Review - reflective of what an editor at the Sydney Morning Herald responded, just before the invasion of Iraq, when asked why the newspaper wasn't publishing anything of what the Iraqis thought about the whole situation in Iraq, that it hadn't ever occurred to her.

"On Wednesday, I went to hear Ayman Mohyeldin, the Cairo correspondent for Al Jazeera English, speak at the office of the Committee to Protect Journalists. His subject was the risks and realities of covering the Mideast, and at one point he was asked to reflect on the current situation in Libya. In his answer, he said something that stunned me: The vast majority of Arabs support the no-fly zone.

Despite all their suspicions about Western intervention in the region and all their doubts about U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, “nobody in the Mideast would denounce the U.S. military intervention in Libya,” Mohyeldin said. Muammar Qaddafi had baldly stated his intentions of carrying out a bloodbath, he explained, and most Arabs were delighted to see the West act to prevent it.

In the vast outpouring of coverage of Libya and the no-fly zone, I’ve seen little discussion of what ordinary Arabs think about the situation. As much reporting as there’s been on the position of the Arab League, there’s been next to nothing about opinion on the Arab street."

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