ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Veteran journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave on Friday scolded the news media for "the constant melodrama of constant trivia" -- such as the stories on Monica Lewinsky, O.J. Simpson and Gary Condit -- that "blinded us to the new forces shaping the developing world, particularly the Muslim world," in the run-up to 9/ll.
"We journalists tend to lose sight of our responsibility to inform, of course, but also to illuminate and dramatize major trends so that our political leaders can muster the courage to resort to unpopular measures that will later be seen as acts of visionary statesmanship," de Borchgrave said.
Another keynote speaker at the opening session of the 19th World Media Conference urged the audience of editors and reporters from around the globe to undertake more thoughtful coverage of religious issues.
"Religious identity, for literally billions of people around the world, is the basis of identity, and not merely some private, personal preference," said Chung Hwan Kwak, chairman of the board of media company News World Communications Inc., the parent corporation of the World Media Association, which hosted the media conference.
News World publishes The Washington Times, Buenos Aires, Argentina-based Tiempos del Mundo and several other publications and owns United Press International. Kwak on Thursday took the helm of the 95-year-old news service as its chairman, chief executive officer and president. News World was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.
"The media does not need to advocate any one religion, but it can educate, inform and shape attitudes respectful of the diverse family of religions," Kwak said. He noted, for example, a lack of understanding between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world.
"The events of 9/11, although they have been perpetrated by alienated radicals, were nevertheless an extreme manifestation of the tension and rift that exists between much of the Islamic world and the USA," Kwak said. De Borchgrave had also cited this knowledge gap by the West of the Muslim world.
"Since the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War, the constant melodrama of constant trivia from Tonya Harding to Monica Lewinsky and from O.J. Simpson to Gary Condit, who was liberated by (coverage of ) Osama bin Laden, blinded us to the new forces shaping the developing world, particularly the Muslim world," said de Borchgrave, who is editor at large of UPI and The Washington Times. The former chief foreign correspondent of Newsweek has covered more than 90 countries and 17 wars.
"A new journalism of assertion has displaced the old journalism of verification," de Borchgrave said. "What's true or what's not true is no longer the compass bearing as rumor, gossip, innuendo, factoid, disinformation and misinformation frequently travel as fact courtesy of the global town crier called the Internet."
Looking ahead, de Borchgrave predicted: "All I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that the world is a lot safer today than it will be 10 years hence.
"Much global turmoil lies ahead as the forces of nationalism, fundamentalism, globalism -- and increasingly, transnationalism -- sort themselves out.
"I guarantee you today that somebody, somewhere, is planning to take the lead of a post-capitalist world, a system that the teeming impoverished all over the world can identify with."
The topic of the World Media Conference, which concludes Saturday, was "Media's role in peace and conflict: Covering the consequences of 9/11." The conference drew about 140 people from some 35 countries.
