Friday, August 08, 2014

Media rumors in the Arab world: yellow Arab journalism

An-Nahar (the right-wing sectarian and racist paper in Lebanon) was until the 1970s the leading newspaper in Lebanon.  Now, it is one of the examples of cheap yellow journalism: it often resorts to sleaze stories to get readers' attention--its top story was yesterday about "sleeping naked").  This article by one of its many unread columnists captures a lot of the stupid rumors circulating in Lebanon: 1) that a Snowden document "revealed" that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was a Mossad spy; 2) that Hillary Clinton "revealed" in her book that she agreed with the Muslim Brotherhood on producing ISIS, and so on.  3) that Obama planned the clashes in `Irsal.