Show Notes:
1:00 - National Book Award
1:22 - US Ambassador / Boston University Chat
4:32 Regarding Western Media Shrinking Overseas Bureaus:
- Formal analysis from the American Journalism Review on the issue from 2011
- A look back on the same issue from as far back as 1998, also by the American Journalism Review
7:02 - Operation Cast Lead
A three-week armed conflict between Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Israel that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 in a unilateral ceasefire.
9:01 - Inter Press Service (official link)
Inter Press Service (Wikipedia Page)
10:49 - Watching Peter Arnett describe the First Gulf War
13:00 - Studying Arabic in Cairo:
The American University of Cairo
Cairo Ain Shams University in Cairo
AMIDEAST Arabic Study in Cairo
16:30 - Idea. Erin: It’s important to portray the Middle East as a region full of ordinary people, important to speak to ordinary people and speak to the issues of their lives.
18:45 - Why I Decided War Reporting Was No Longer Worth The Risk by Tom A. Peter, in The New Republic
Quoted paragraphs:
“Never before have Americans disliked journalists as much as they do now. Political coverage, which tends to be most contentious—and also to most influence perceptions of the press in general, thanks to its prominence—remains relentlessly even-handed, as a meta analysis of decades of presidential campaign reporting by University of Connecticut professor David D'Alessio has shown. Yet readers believe the opposite. In a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, two-thirds of respondents said that news stories are often inaccurate. About a third said the news media is “not professional.” Forty-two percent described the news media as immoral, with only 38 percent judging the profession as moral.
Working overseas, I rarely thought about how people process the news. To be certain, I never imagined people clamoring for foreign reporting. I assumed most people were indifferent but I took comfort in knowing that my profession provided a public record readily available if or when a person decided to devote time to an issue. More than anything, I worked as a journalist because I loved the day-to-day hustle. A possible higher purpose was what convinced me it was worth it when bad things happened, like getting caught up in an air strike or having a roadside bomb explode under the truck just in front of me.”
22:43 - Idea. Erin: It’s such an important time in the region, and to be a part of that, to speak to the people participating or affecting or being affected, it’s really amazing.
26:50 - Idea. Erin: What does foreign reporting accomplish? Maybe nothing. Can’t say for certain that it accomplishes anything.
35:50 - Erin’s Twitter account
36:07 - The Arabist Blog
Arabist.net was launched in Cairo in November 2003, by Issandr El Amrani, partly as response to the the lack of interest in the domestic politics of Arab countries in much Western media. It focuses on Egypt but tries to follow broader issues in the Arab world, US policy in the Middle East and cultural developments throughout the region.
36:48 - Omar Ashour
Omar Ashour is a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. His research focuses on jihadism, democratization, security sector reform and civil-military relations, armed conflict, and Islamist movements and ideologies in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. He is a lecturer in politics and director of the Middle East Politics Graduate Studies Program at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements.
37:38 - Kareem Shaheen, journalist with The Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper
41:45 - ISIS
44:40 - Erin’s information is organized mainly by folders by country, then subject. Adds in color, interviews, tweets, etc to flesh out this information. It’s all backed up on Google Drive.
46:40 - Instapaper
48:45 - Goodreads
49:30 - Erin’s Instagram Account
53:20 - Erin’s Book Recommendation:
Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege, by Amira Hass
55:03 - Matt’s reads this week:
Dark Continent, Europe’s Twentieth Century by Mark Mazower
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz
Recommendations taken from Farnam Street Blog by Shane Parrish
56:40 - Erin’s Film: Iraq in Fragments by James Longley
Film trailer:
