That cleric was rude to the Lebanese anchor, but not necessarily because she was a woman

Just in time for International Women’s Day earlier this month, the internet went wild for a video that supposedly showed a female Lebanese television host putting a rude, misogynistic cleric in his place.

It’s the sort of segment we’ve all seen before: A news anchor — in this case, Al Jadeed’s Rima Karaki — attempts to guide the conversation with an alternately short-fused and droning guest, London-based cleric Sheikh Hani Al-Siba’i’.

The discussion grows into a heated exchange, and eventually Karaki points out to her ranting guest that she’s actually in charge of the conversation — because, you know, that’s her job. Then Al-Siba’i sternly tells Karaki to be quiet, and the host instead cuts the segment short.

This was a pretty unremarkable moment in the 24-hour life cycle of TV news — but it was painted by many Western media outlets as a rare feminist victory.

In her write-up of the video, the Daily Dot's Marisa Kabas said that Karaki "is a strong female figure in a country where women's rights are still commonly ignored."

Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik points out that the exchange was actually “relatively tame” for Arabic-language TV news: “It is quite often carnage, with presenters and panelists talking over each other, hurling insults and abuse, sometimes even coming to blows.”

Even though female hosts are a regular sight on Arabic-language TV, Western media tend to interpret their behavior through preconceptions about Arab and Muslim environments, Malik contends.

The video is “part of a now established genre that morphs the everyday behavior of Arab and Muslim women as being something impressive and counterintuitive,” she writes.

What's more, many outlets mischaracterized what the cleric said to Karaki, based on one group's translation of the video transcript into English. Most of the stories assumed that the cleric's rudeness concerned the presenter's gender. That wasn't necessarily true. 

Mashable's story, shared over 19,000 times, had the headline "A female TV host totally shut down a man's sexist comments during an interview."

Mic also used gender to frame their write-up, using the headline "This Lebanese TV anchor just silenced the misogynist who told her to 'shut up.'"

BuzzFeed initially used the headline "Badass journalist shuts a man down after he says it’s beneath him to be interviewed by a woman" — but eventually changed the end of the headline to "beneath him to be interviewed by her." 

Some of those issues also had to do with the translation. The English translation said the cleric tells the presenter to "shut up" during the interview, but the Arabic phrase that Al-Siba'i actually used means "be quiet" or in this context, "stop talking, so I can talk."

Still, Al-Siba'i's tone is sharp, which doesn't make it any less rude.

Another example came at the end of the interview, where according to the translation, the cleric says "it is beneath me to be interviewed by you. You are a woman who," before being cut off by the presenter. 

In actuality, he says "I do not get honor by being interviewed by you. You are a person who…"

The English translation of the interview between Karaki and Al-Siba’i sparked debates online, particularly around whether or not the cleric’s attacks on the presenter were gendered.

Mohamed ElGohary, an Egyptian blogger and board member of Global Voices Online, described the translation as “accurate but skewed.”

“He didn’t necessarily say 'shut up because you are a woman,' he said shut up in the female sense of the verb,” said ElGohary.

Karaki herself told the Guardian she “did not want to blame Sibai’s behavior on sexism.”

“I don’t know if perhaps if it was a man, he would not have told him to shut up, but I took it as being disrespectful, whether it was with a woman or if he was a sheikh or whatever his background is,” she said.

Lost in translation

Another part of the story has to do with the group behind the widely cited English translation of the video, the benign-sounding Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The group, founded in 1998, bills itself as an “independent, nonpartisan" nonprofit that translates media from languages spoken in the Middle East and South Asia to English, in the name of informing policy.

MEMRI is usually described neutrally in reports as a “media watchdog,” but the organization has a track record of selective translation and pro-Israel positions, according to observers. Brian Whitaker, the former Middle East editor at the Guardian says the excerpts typically “reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel.”

Whitaker also wrote back in 2002 that the group’s website once said the group promoted “the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and the state of Israel.” Yigal Carmon, the group’s head and co-founder, is ex-Israeli military intelligence.

Over the years, the group has been accused of not only piecing together a version of the Arab and Muslim worlds that suits their agenda, but also of mistranslating videos.

“MEMRI’s translations are very often ever so slightly off, in the sense that they do not completely fabricate stories, but deftly change a word here or there, in order to communicate a generally inaccurate story to suit an agenda,” Malik told GlobalPost.

“If one does not speak Arabic and can parse the nuances of the language, MEMRI is not a trustworthy source of news about the Arab world when they have conducted the translation themselves,” she said.

Ali Gharib over at ThinkProgress points out that the rosters of both the board of directors and the board of advisors of MEMRI “read as a veritable who’s who of right-wing supporters of Israel.”

The group receives a small portion of its funding from the US government, according to the most recently available financial statements.

Going viral

Mashable, the Daily Dot, the Guardian, BuzzFeed, and Mic were just some of the outlets that relied on MEMRI's translation of the video for stories they wrote on Karaki's interview.

GlobalPost contacted all of them to ask whether or not they independently verified the transcript. BuzzFeed and Mic both said they did not verify the translations before publication, but did note some of the video’s translation issues.

Mic's News Editor Matt Essert said that his outlet's story "cited MEMRI's video clip and translation in the article, while providing context by stating that 'MEMRI is a pro-Israel organization.'"

Essert added that Mic cited "a Middle East scholar who says that MEMRI is selective and biased against the Arab press.'" 

“I published the article initially without verifying the translation,” BuzzFeed’s Jo Barrow said. “Fortunately people very quickly got in touch from all over the world to let me know about MEMRI. We sent it to our Egyptian fixer who translated it and explained the nuance in the translation, and we immediately changed the headline to remove references to misogyny, and put a comment beneath the article to explain the change.”

Will Youmans, an assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, cautioned that media watchdog groups are not always as impartial as they sound.

“Any reporters using a media watchdog’s selection should note the group’s background and agenda, as many do with think tanks,” Youmans said. “If journalists report on one of these selected episodes, they should acknowledge it’s a very small and highly selective sample, and avoid drawing any wider conclusions.”