Mehdi and Ayman Mohyeldin have a lot in common: They were both born in the same year, they’re both immigrants and naturalized US citizens, they’re both Muslim, and they both worked at Al Jazeera and then MSNBC (now MS NOW). As Mehdi says to his former colleague, “I look at you and I feel like I’m looking at a taller, better looking, Arab version of myself.”
Ayman joins Mehdi in Washington DC for the latest episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding’ to discuss their careers in TV journalism, the failures of Western media on Gaza, and the new US war with Iran.
“What do you make of the Iran coverage so far?” Mehdi asks.
“The imbalance of representation of viewpoints is always one of the things that immediately jumps out. You see this in multiple conflicts in the Middle East,” Ayman says.
Mehdi and Ayman also discuss Israel’s role in instigating the war, Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long obsession with toppling the Iranian regime, as well as the media’s unwillingness to name Israel as an influence on US foreign policy. “Israel has said it wants regime change in Iran for 40 years, but you couldn’t say that until Marco Rubio came out and said that,” Ayman says.
As one of the only American journalists who lived in Gaza during the 2008-09 war, Ayman brings a perspective on the region that few other mainstream journalists are able to. The two talk about Ayman’s history of reporting on the conflict, what has changed (and sadly not changed), as well as the shortcomings of most Western media outlets in offering balanced coverage. “There was no willingness to challenge on a systematic basis the Israeli narrative about what it was doing in Gaza,” Ayman says. “Everything that was coming out of Gaza was always shrouded in doubt, as if Palestinians couldn’t document what was actually happening to them.”
The two also discuss:
Beginning their journalism careers in the post 9/11 era.
Double standard attacks levied against Muslim journalists.
Bari Weiss and her “Iran expert” Douglas Murray.
Which Republican lawmakers are “dumb as shit.”
And Mehdi quizzes Ayman on the French national soccer (sorry, football) team…
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