Similar to Nick, I found Hafez piece to be the most enlightening one of the readings chosen for this week. Hafez argues that international reporting often times tend to represent the interest of the reporting country (many times the U.S.) rather than the country that is being reported upon. Therefore, viewers are receiving biased information that really is being produced for a domestic rather than a truly international audience. Hafez finds that regionalism also is a more prominent feature of international reporting He states that international reporting focuses on elites rather than the overall general populace and rarely if ever presents any truly positive information. He concludes his piece by stating that in issues of foreign policy the media tends to follow rather than to truly lead.
Brown's chapter was also interesting in that he depicts the war on terrorism as also being waged through the use of the media. He mentions how the United States has portrayed certain double standards since the beginning of the war by supporting press freedom in the Arab world until it was in their best interest to contain it. The U.S. has made several attempts to shape perceptions of conflict but he finds this has had a very small impact in the Middle East.
From the readings this week we can conclude that the media definitely does play an important role when it comes to politics and disseminating information, but it can be limited to several constraints such as the presentation of biased information, a north-south information flow, and representation coming only from the elites.
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