Media Coverage of Israel-Hezbollah Fighting Shapes Perceptions

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• RICHARD ENGEL, NBC News:

  We've been hearing Israeli shelling on the outskirts of Tyre all day…

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  From Lebanon…

• JOHN ROBERTS, CNN Correspondent:

  It was the roughest day for the Israel army…

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  … to Israel…

• BILL O’REILLY, FOX News Host:

  Three weeks into this chaos in the Middle East…

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  … from studios in New York and points in between…

• LARRY KING, CNN Host:

  We have top journalists everywhere in the region, and we're going to check in with all of them.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  … American television networks have dedicated enormous resources and time to covering the Middle East crisis. Much of the coverage is based in Israel, where American networks have long had bureaus and well- developed contacts. But sometimes those ties have still not allowed reporters to get solid information.

• JOHN ROBERTS:

  And I have to say, part of the problem is, it's the fighting that we're not witnessing. You know, after being embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, we're not seeing any of the fighting. The Israeli military likes to keep a close hold on all of that information.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  On cable in particular, on-the-ground coverage has been mixed with plenty of analysis and opinion.

  SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), Arizona: I think what it's really all about, Larry, is an extension of the war on terror.

• BILL O’REILLY:

  But you are making an excuse for the United Nations, which I think is so impotent there isn't enough Viagra in the world. These people aren't going to protect us.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  But how much of the story are American journalists showing and their viewers seeing? Last week, NBC's Brian Williams raised the point in this way.

  BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC Host, "NBC Nightly News": How this crisis in the Middle East is being covered, especially in the Arab world, in part because of the longtime U.S.-Israeli alliance, it has long been argued that American viewers and readers get one view of the Middle East that is not shared by all.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Indeed, audiences in the Middle East have a growing number of different viewing options. Al-Manar TV is run by Hezbollah itself and today showed a triumphant address by the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

  And viewers in the region have access to a wide range of news networks, some of them made available in the U.S. on Link TV.

• ARABIC NEWS ANCHOR:

  … Lebanese unity and steadfastness in the face of the Israeli war machine.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  From Al-Jazeera, the largest Arab news channel in the Middle East, which along with its big rival, Al-Arabiya, has correspondents on the ground and discussions in its studios, to one of the six networks in Lebanon itself, to Iranian state television.

• IRANIAN STATE TELEVISION ANCHOR:

  More than a dozen rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon hit the port city of Haifa in northern Palestine.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Indeed, with so many options available, this is a war that can be, and is, viewed through many prisms.