By Scott Leadingham

You’d be forgiven for admitting confusion upon hearing or reading the term “Middle East.” And lately, that’s an almost impossible term to avoid seeing or hearing in news media.

What started as a backlash against policies in Tunisia has spread across North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and north to Syria. At the moment, the United States finds itself assisting in a United Nations-backed air defense mission in Libya.

With all of this has come near constant news coverage, which has only taken a backseat at times to news of the Japan tsunami and corresponding nuclear issues.

Each country in question is unique, and the circumstances surrounding protests and uprisings differ drastically from one to the next.

But it’s not uncommon to lump all these countries together under one simple descriptor: the Middle East. With U.S. involvement in Libya, news outlets have featured reporters, analysts, pundits and everyone in between wondering if military resources are being stretched. To encapsulate a topic of discussion: The U.S. is, after all, involved in two other Middle East conflicts – in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Therein is the question. Are Afghanistan and Libya (and any number of other countries – Tunisia, too) technically “the Middle East”? Does it matter?

It absolutely matters. Accuracy in news reporting is a fundamental underpinning of credible journalism. For example, if the BBC consistently referred to Mexico as part of South America, they’d be expected to correct this misnomer.

When hearing references to Libya or Afghanistan being in the Middle East, I had flashbacks to my undergraduate geography courses. I seemed to recall that Afghanistan was decidedly not in the Middle East by geographic standards. Aren’t these universally accepted standards in academic disciplines and in journalism?

Actually, I found, they’re not. While Mexico is certainly a part of the North American continent and not a part of South America, it’s not that simple with the Middle East.

The Middle East “is not an exact term,” according to Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Depending on the situation and who you ask, “Pakistan or Afghanistan can be either in or out,” Landis wrote in an email.

The Associated Press Stylebook – which, depending on your news outlet, is either the “Bible” or a nice spiritual guide in trying times – is in the “out” camp for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From the 2010 Stylebook entry on Middle East:

“The term applies to southwest Asia west of Pakistan and Afghanistan (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the eastern part of Turkey known also as Asia Minor, United Arab Eremites and Yemen), and northeastern Africa (Egypt and Sudan).”

By that standard, Afghanistan is not in the Middle East, and neither are Libya or Tunisia. The latter two would, in theory, be in North Africa. It would help if the Stylebook included a North Africa entry, but it does not.

[Update: 3/30/11 1:09 p.m. ET] New York Times Standards Editor Phil Corbett got back to me after this post was originally published.

The New York Times’ style guide says:

“The Middle East comprises Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and the Persian Gulf emirates.”

That definition includes Libya, but not Afghanistan or Turkey. (Note the differences with AP.)

Corbett wrote in an email that he agrees what constitutes the Middle East is debatable, and “there may occasionally be some contexts in which we would mention other countries in a general ‘Middle East’ connection.”

Note: I inquired of GlobalPost about its definitions of “Middle East,” but haven’t heard back.

Landis of the University of Oklahoma notes that North Africa is part of the Middle East, “according to most traditions.”

But the tradition of Bernard Haykel is less broad. Haykel is a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and directs its Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

“When I think of the Middle East, I think of lands that include Egypt to the borders of Iraq,” Haykel says. “And Iran, too.”

He says he would correct a student who places Afghanistan in the Middle East, while recognizing there is ambiguity in the description. And, he notes, such regional descriptions are relative. In India, for example, what people in the U.S. and Europe label the Middle East is called West Asia.

Perhaps some of the ambiguity comes from textbooks.

Since I was channeling college geography courses in thinking about this issue, I asked a good source: my undergraduate geography professor.

Elaine Glenn is a senior lecturer at Central Washington University focusing on political geography and the Middle East. She says Afghanistan gets placed in different regions depending on the text you read. One text she uses, “Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World,” refers to everything from Western Sahara (in northwest Africa) to Iran as “South West Asia and North Africa.” Another text, “World Regional Geography,” calls the same region “the Middle East and North Africa,” and it includes Afghanistan in that description.

“You could technically describe anything from Western Sahara to at least Iran as the Middle East,” Glenn says, but notes that it’s subjective and “each text is different.”

Glenn says she personally tells students that everything from Western Sahara to Afghanistan could be included. But, she qualifies an important point.

“(I) try to help them understand the more subtle connections and linkages in these countries. Generally it is OK to put them all together, but a deeper study of the region reveals the similarities and differences in culture, language and history.”

Good advice. That’s not just a job for geography professors. Aside from striving for accuracy, providing such context and explanation should be a primary mission for all news outlets – regardless of the region from which news disseminates.

Scott Leadingham is editor of Quill magazine. On Twitter: @scottleadingham

First posted at SPJDC.org, the website of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The Hong Kong University Journalism and Media Center sponsored a talk by Rutgers University media researcher, Nick Diakopoulos late last month.

The topic: Innovation and Computing in Journalism.

“As information comes at us faster and faster, we have more and more data to deal with,” Diakopoulos said. “Social media is pumping out terabytes of this every day. We need computers to help us deal with that scale.”

Diakopoulos defined computational journalism as “using computing to facilitate, enable and reinvigorate the practices and processes of journalism, including collecting, organising, making sense of, communicating and disseminating news information, while upholding the values of journalism such as fairness and accuracy.”

As part of the presentation Diakopoulos presented two programs to help wade through all that data.

• “Videolyzer” is a fact checking application designed for online videos.
• “Vox Event Analytics,” that asks, “What would a journalist ask from social media, what could be interesting?”

JMSC Media Talk: Innovation and Computing in Journalism from JMSC HKU on Vimeo.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the latest attack on journalists in Honduras.

Honduran community radio director shot; staff threatened

Franklin Meléndez, 35, who directs the Voz de Zacate Grande community radio station in southern Valle province, was shot on March 13 at a local bar, according to CPJ interviews and local press reports. Meléndez told CPJ that he was approached by two men angered by the station’s critical coverage of local land disputes as he and two colleagues were playing billiards. According to Meléndez, one of the men threatened him and as he was retreating, the second man shot him in the left thigh. A second shot was fired but missed him.

The two assailants, who Meléndez recognized as relatives of a prominent landowner in the region, followed him before the radio director was able to flee on bicycle, he told CPJ. He was later driven to a hospital in nearby Choluteca, where he underwent surgery to remove the bullet.

Rest of report.

The CPJ reports that nine journalists have been killed in Honduras since March 2010. At least three of the killings are tied directly to their work.

The Committee published a special report in July that showed a pattern of negligence on the part of authorities in investigating the killings.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Congrats to NBC Miami. They see a world beyond their local beat.

The station ran a story today about how Brazil is now the No. 1 trading partner with Florida. (Brazilian Businesses Booming in South Florida) (And that doesn’t count all the Brazilian tourists that are flooding into Florida creating jobs in Florida.)

Here is another example of how a local news organization uses local information to build on an international story.

FYI: According to the U.S. International Trade Administration, while Brazil is the #1 international trader with Florida, Florida is the #2 exporter of U.S. goods and services to Brazil. (Texas is the #1 exporter.)

It is a pity that so few local news organizations have taken the time to use the occasion of Pres. Obama’s trip to South and Central America to look at how the politics and economies of that area directly affects their own local areas.

BTW, Besides being the #2 exporter from the United States to Brazil (value $7.2 billion), Florida is also the #2 U.S. exporter to Chile (value $2.8 billion) and ranks as #1 to El Salvador (value $2.4 billion). And it took me less than five minutes to get that information. Now think about how much those export sales add to the income of the state and how much the state budget would be hurt if those exports were cut or ended.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

The Olympics are over. The World Fair has closed. Therefore, no more reasons to allow for relaxing the rules on speech and press in China.

In recent weeks the Chinese government has taken off the velvet glove to reveal the iron fist of censorship.

• First all mention of Egypt and Mubarak were blocked from microblogs and other web sites.
• Then the term “Jasmine” caught the censors’ eyes.
• Directives were sent out about what was and wasn’t allowed in the Chinese media.
• And now the hordes of Chinese censors are hard at work making sure no one talks about protests or other things that could destabilize Chinese society.

The New York Times reported yesterday that censors are apparently listening in on more mobile phone conversations. (China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications). The censors use their authority to cut off the connections when “improper” terms are spoken or typed.

The results are predictable:

A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude’s response to Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The second time he said the word “protest,” her phone cut off.

He spoke English, but another caller, repeating the same phrase on Monday in Chinese over a different phone, was also cut off in midsentence.

Then there is the episode feminist, sociologist and sexologist Li Yinhe had with the nanny state.

Yesterday, I found myself suddenly unable to send emails, but had no problem receiving emails. After looking through my email settings multiple times, I could find absolutely nothing wrong and as a last resort, I decided to call up the 263.com customer service. On the other end of the call was a polite male voice, who requested that I give him the error number, which I did. The troubleshooting took no time. He asked, “Can you see if your email has the following three English letters — ‘s’, ‘e’ and ‘x’?” I was flabbergasted beyond words. This was a business email discussing the publishing of the works of renowned German sexologist Erwin J. Haeberle in China — of course there was the word “sex” in it. Be that as it may, we finally spotted the reason, and I was able to send the email as soon as the word “sex” was deleted from the email.

And let us not forget that the battle between Google and the Chinese government is still going on. The most recent example came this week in an attack against Gmail users. (Google Says China Is Hindering Gmail)

Google says that Gmail users in China have been reporting difficulties using Gmail and that it has checked its systems and found no problems. “There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.”

And so the battle continues.

Four New York Times journalists who have been missing in Libya have finally been freed.

The New York Times reported today on the release of Anthony Shadid, Tyler Hicks, Lynsey Addario and Stephen Farrell. They went missing nearly a week ago while covering the conflict between rebels and the Libyan government in the city of Ajdabiya.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it welcomes their release but “remains deeply concerned about 13 other journalists who are either missing or reported in Libyan government custody.”

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Congratulations to Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for the [New Jersey] Record.

He not only understands the idea that there is a connection between international and local events, he knows how to dig into the various databases to get the numbers to back up the link.

Obama’s trip to Brazil key to N.J.

He did what I and a few others have been arguing for a long time. He took information already on hand from the wire services, looked up some data and did some local interviews.

Without spending extra money to send someone overseas, the readers of the Record got a news story that was specific to their local area AND showed how the New Jersey economy depended on global trade.

This is called providing context.

It would be nice to see more LOCAL reporting like this.

Too often most Americans don’t know or care about global events. In part, this is because the U.S. media don’t show enough intelligence to provide the context of why understanding what goes on in Brazil or Japan or Germany means to the local reader/listener/viewer.

Again, congrats to Herb Jackson for being a good journalist who sees connections vital to his readership.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

I will repeat it again for those who have not heard it the first several hundred times: When the media are controlled by the government the people trust rumors more than the official reports. This leads to instability in society.

The latest example of how China’s policy of controlled media leads to social instability comes from a report by the L.A. Times on salt sales in China.

Japan radiation fears spark panic salt-buying in China

Because the media are controlled in China and limited about what it can say (all in the name of ensuring stability), people tend to not believe what is aired/printed. They, instead, prefer to believe whatever fanciful rumor gets passed around by SMS or word of mouth.

Let’s look at the latest round:

1. Rumors a radioactive cloud from Japan’s quake-damaged nuclear plant will reach China. (FACT: The prevailing winds are taking whatever small radioactive clouds AWAY from China.)
2. Iodized salt will protect against radiation poisoning. (FACT: False.)
3. China’s sea salt supplies will be contaminated because of the damaged power plants. (FACT: No way.)

The salt issue took on major proportions. Besides the concerns about the Japanese power plants causing the problem, rumors circulated that an earthquake in Taiwan was going to disrupt the salt supply.

1. There was no earthquake in Taiwan, and
2. No one could explain how an earthquake in Taiwan would affect China’s salt supplies.

According to the L.A. Times story

In a scene repeated across the country, online video from the eastern city of Wenzhou showed panicked shoppers filling their baskets with tubs of salt and street vendors complaining about being cleaned out.

To restore “stability,” the Chinese government had to go into information overdrive. The problem is that no one believed the government’s statements.

Chinese authorities have tried to quash the rumors, explaining that the country has massive reserves and that 80% of its salt sources were on land.

Thousands of television screens on Beijing’s subway cars displayed a public service announcement Thursday that said: “The local salt bureau has stated that there’s an adequate supply of salt. Salt is a special product that is controlled by the government. Supply is greater than demand.”

Think about how much money and time was wasted explaining something that could have been prevented if the people had a reliable source of information. Such as independent and free news organizations.

The ruling Communist Party in China says it must control the media to ensure stability. That the people cannot properly deal with information that is not carefully vetted and cleared for “the public good.”

Without independent media poking and probing the public has nothing to rely on but rumors. This latest episode shows once again that the policy of controlling the news is more destabilizing than allowing for competing news organizations to freely and openly investigate and issue and expose the truth.

(BTW, I understand that even with competing and free news media, there will always be a group of people who believe the fantastic over facts. Just look at all the Americans who still question the birth location and religious beliefs of Pres. Obama despite all the facts that have been presented. But at least the facts are available and confirmed for anyone who wants to know.)

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

The editors of the  hyper-local news service Patch.com seem understand that there are local connections to international events. And they are willing to really work those connections.

The Fairfax City Patch is running raw updates from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team.

The Fairfax team — VATF1 for Virginia Task Force 1 — was created in 1986, a year after the Mexico City earthquake.

The Task Force began its humanitarian response relationship with the US Agency for International Development – Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID-OFDA) in 1986 following a tragic 1985 seismic event in Mexico City. Realizing the void of qualified search and rescue resources in the Americas Region, USAID-OFDA joined in a strategic partnership with Fairfax County and the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Departments to develop a self-sustainable response resource. Its first deployment was to the former Soviet Armenia in 1988 in the aftermath of a large earthquake.

I saw first hand the importance of SAR teams from around the world in the Mexico earthquake. Since that time, other communities around the United States set up similar special teams to aid in disaster relief.

Many of these teams were deployed to New Orleans after Katrina hit. They also went to China and Haiti to help after the earthquakes in those countries.

The activities of these teams are all local stories waiting to be told. And those stories of international issues can be told without sending one reporter overseas.

Hagit Limor, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, is currently traveling in Japan and was in the country when the earthquake and tsunami struck on Friday, March 11.

I contacted Hagit through Twitter on Saturday night (Sunday morning in Japan) and set up an e-mail interview. I received her answers Sunday morning around 9:30 AM Central  (11:30 PM Japan).

Q. What’s happening there, and what are you learning about this disaster?

A. It’s become a nightmare times three – first the earthquake, then the tsunami and now the continuing nuclear threat. In many places there’s still no power and the rest of the nation is cutting back power usage to preserve what there is. Journalistically, news coverage is 24/7, much as we experienced in the first days after 9/11 and to a lesser degree, Katrina. We’re seeing images you may be seeing too of the hardest hit areas that have been pulverized. Even out of that zone, some gas stations have run out and shut down, and supermarket shelves are bare. The aftershocks are continuing every day and the biggest worry now comes from those nuclear plants where the chief cabinet secretary of Japan just said he expects another explosion.

Q. What can you tell us about the mood of the people you’re interacting with?

A. People are glued to TV’s and smartphones, getting the latest information. The government’s offered a continuous series of updates from the prime minister, nuclear officials and others, so no one wants to miss the latest live details. People in Japan are well-mannered, soft-spoken and kind so even in the first hours, they masked their fears well in stoic fashion. Everyone got on their cell phones to make sure family members up north were ok, but cell service was very spotty so it took some people a while to get confirmation. Now, there’s worry and an immediate drive to help the hardest hit areas, with donation jars popping up. They’re intent to rebuild as they did after Hiroshima and Nagasaki but right now they’re still just hoping to find survivors.

Q. You were in Japan during the earthquake. Where were you, and what was your experience?

A. I was at Kadena Air Force Base in Naha City, Okinawa, having just flown in late that morning from Tokyo. Kadena has air force, navy, army and marines, many trained in search and rescue. We were getting briefed by commanders in each of the service branches when the quake and first aftershocks hit. They jumped on cell phones and I followed them to the hall and overheard as they started coordinating massive evacuations from Okinawa’s beachfronts. One of the captains also put me in touch with an oceanographer on the base who was tracking the seismic activity. We were watching in real time as the tsunami was still out to sea and approaching, which was surreal. We had a two hour head’s up in Okinawa so it hadn’t arrived yet when we left the base for a previously scheduled meeting with the state’s disaster chief. I could have understood if he’d canceled but he still met with us and I was able to get the first casualty report, which I reported minutes later on my station, in the first of 50 or so reports to my entire station group, C-SPAN, and a national radio show based at WGN in Chicago. I was also posting on Facebook, tweeting and writing a web script incorporating the information from the military sources and the disaster chief.

Q. Are you in Japan for SPJ, and if so, what’s the purpose for your trip there?

A. I’m in Japan on a journalists’ exchange representing the Society. It’s an East-West Center fellowship. We are being escorted by NSK, Japan’s national organization representing journalists. We’ve been meeting with reporters and editors all over the country, as well as business, political and military leaders. I often speak at conferences about the need to make sure you learn new skill sets to do your job in this day. This experience made that ultimately clear. Five years ago I couldn’t have reported nearly as effectively. Between Skype, Twitter and Facebook I could jump in from another continent and provide my company with valuable coverage. It was a case of preparation meeting opportunity.