Fighting Words

How Arab and American Journalists Can Break Through to Better Coverage

On September 19th, 2006, the International Center for Journalists launched Fighting Words, a new guide for American and Arab reporters, with a forum at Carnegie Corporation. The guide aims to minimize misunderstandings between these two cultures by changing the way they cover each other’s worlds. Panelists Andrew Mosher, deputy foreign editor of the Washington Post and Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of the Arabic-language daily An Nahar responded to questions posed by Joyce Barnathan, president of the Center. They discussed the need for “deep knowledge” of one another’s worlds to provide context for accurate news stories, and urged reporters to recognize how their own cultural baggage could cause biased coverage and stereotyping. True understanding would help reverse today’s tendency toward sloganeering and snap judgements, said Vartan Gregorian, who advised journalists to have “critical minds for critical times.” To order or download a copy of Fighting Words go to www.icfj.org.