Lawrence Pintak, a journalist and Arab media expert, says the problem with Darfur when it comes to the Arab media is that it does not fit the template of Arabs being the victims and other people the aggressors.

“Arabs here are good guys and bad guys,” he says.
....

“There is always going to be some sort of reluctance to demonise their own, the Arabs as they will see themselves,” Opheera McDoom, Reuters correspondent in Darfur, says.

“But I think while there has been coverage in the Arab media, there has been a reluctance in the Arab media to go to Darfur and check things out for themselves.
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However, some Arab media analysts say that the implied rationale from the American media in particular is that the story in Darfur is Arabs killing Africans because they do not know anything other than violence.

US suspicion

“That’s what the audience is left to conclude,” says Mahmood Mahdani of Columbia University.

“So that’s of course not acceptable if you are part of the Arab media. You can immediately sense that you are being caricatured and demonised at the same time.”

It is questionable, however, if such suspicions over the motivation and vigour of US media coverage account for the strategy of limited coverage from many Arab media outlets.

“What is most striking to me is that the media coverage has a single focus and that’s a focus on atrocities, on atrocity stories, there’s no attempt to place them in context,” Mahdani says.

“There’s no attempt to explain, to locate it historically, to show that there’s any change happening.

“I think it is about linking Darfur with the larger war on terror by portraying and framing the perpetrators of violence in Darfur as Arabs.”