Americans turn to Al-Jazeera for raw images of war: Study

PHOENIX - A new study has found that most of those who use the English-language Al-Jazeera website are from the U.S., Canada, the U.K and Australia.

According to the study by Shahira Fahmy, a journalism professor at the University of Arizona, respondents indicated that they appreciate the graphic pictures of war they find on the site that they don’t see in the mainstream media.

Findings suggested that nine out of 10 of those surveyed support the broadcasting of graphic visuals, including that of the Iraq War and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“Younger audiences, especially the ‘YouTube’ generation, seek graphic visual images in a far different way than audiences did before the World Wide Web,” The University of Arizona News quoted Fahmy, as saying.

“This has serious implications for the news media. I think it’s time for media organizations to amend their ethical codes to allow for more graphic visuals in an effort to provide a more comprehensive and realistic view of war and conflict to U.S. audiences,” he added.

The study also found that almost 90 percent people visit the website because it provides visual information that cannot be found in the Western media.

“CNN and other Western media have abdicated their journalistic responsibility to provide balanced, objective news and have instead become a voice of the government - not controlled by the government but controlled by the big multinational multimedia conglomerates that own them and by their own self censorship,” one user said.

The study titled “When Blood Becomes Cheaper than a Bottle of Water: How Viewers of the English Version of Al-Jazeera Website Judge Graphic Images of Conflict” was published this month’s journal Media, War and Conflict. (ANI)