Nermeen Shaikh: The thing that was very striking to me when I moved to the U.S is that the media was always framed in what they called a "bi-partisan" way. In other words, if you watched certain networks you were more likely to get the democratic perspective, the democratic party perspective. If you watched others, it was the Republican perspective. I found that very odd because what struck me the most was the fact that, irrespective of what mainstream media outlet one read, or heard, or saw, they represented the interests of the United States and its projection of power all over the world.
And, here, I'm speaking obviously of their coverage, which is what my interest was in terms of American foreign policy.
No matter where you read, what radio station you heard and what news channel you watched they spoke with one voice. There was no internal criticism of what it means for the U.S. to be a superpower, an imperial power, the most powerful country in the world. And that, I found extremely troubling because this was at a time when the sanctions had already taken place in Iraq, the war was impending, and we had already seen so much of what the Cold War had brought in so much of the world.
And now with America as the greatest power, you would think that one role of the media would be to say "what exactly are we doing in the world?" and there was none of that. So, that was where DN! came into my view.
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