Is there a media bias in the things that are left unsaid? Consider this excerpt from the BBC:

Little guys come last

The idea of the national conference had been promoted by the UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

He had organised the loya jirga, or grand assembly, which chose the post-Taliban administration in Afghanistan.

The clear aim was to show, in the absence of elections, that a political process was under way with a degree of popular participation.

In the event, UN officials in Baghdad quietly distanced themselves from the result. They had given advice, they said, but it had not been their show.

The assembly, like the current interim government and before it the Iraqi Governing Council, is dominated by the political parties which, mostly from exile, formed the opposition to the Saddam Hussein regime.

Smaller parties and independents are feeling squeezed out.

The article was titled 'Iraqi Assembly: Democracy or pretence,' and one gets the sense that the old boys network of the rich and powerful is having its way as it always does and that the independents, who doubtless have more humanistic and humanitarian goals, are squeezed out in the process. It should be noted that the BBC article also had as a paragraph unto itself the line, "A quarter of the seats were reserved for women."

There is no indication in the article that these two things are intricately connected. Here's the account given in le Monde:

Vers 20 heures, deux listes étaient constituées. L'une menée par les grands partis (UPK et PDK kurdes, Conseil suprême de la révolution islamique en Irak, Entente nationale, Haut Conseil islamique et parti Daawa), l'autre forgée sous l'impulsion des indépendants. Mais cette dernière n'est pas parvenue à remplir les conditions imposées par la commission préparatoire, à savoir une répartition des membres selon des quotas visant à respecter la diversité religieuse, ethnique et sociale de l'Irak. Les indépendants ont notamment buté sur la participation des femmes, auxquelles devaient revenir au moins 25 % des sièges.

The "little guys" offered their own list, which was flatly rejected because it refused the participation of women in government. The major parties are actually the progressive voices here, but the traditional division of 'majority:bad, minority:good' was too comfortable to let facts get in the way for the BBC. Interestingly, if you'll note above, even the Kurds are represented among the so-called major parties, and it was the political minority which showed a lack of interest in offering representation to Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups.

This is important to note because Iraq has historically been a country in which a certain minority has held authoritarian power over all other groups and has variously used ethnic and religious division to its advantage. That the 'little guys' in Iraq have decried the 'dictatorship of the major parties' is ironic, but also quite misleading when journalists fail to give context and history.

In fact the 'little guys' were disruptive and attempted to bully the proceedings:

Les personnalités dites indépendantes (ONG, représentants de la société civile) forment le gros des mécontents. Parmi eux, plusieurs dizaines de délégués ont claqué la porte de la conférence, refusant catégoriquement ce procédé qui favoriserait, à leurs dépens, les grands partis politiques. Pour tous les autres, les tractations politiques sont allées bon train, à peine perturbées, en milieu d'après-midi, par un obus de mortier visant les bâtiments tout proches du ministère de la défense.

ONG is the French acronym equivalent to our NGO, for non-governmental organization, which may be why le Monde says, 'dites indépendantes,' which I'm tempted to translate 'so-called independents,' though that may be too strong.

NGO is not an acronym I take lightly. While many are fine organizations which have done and continue to do good work, the designation NGO can be great cover for shady business, and to question those who abuse the status and position of NGOs invariably leads people to question the questioner, and to circle the wagons as if NGOs themselves were being attacked.

NGOs are virtually unaccountable, cross international lines, and often attempt to affect policy throughout the world.

Just look at the UN, which (as we've said before) continues to make a mockery of human rights and whose members are probably still making money on the side.

But I digress.

I'll offer one more excerpt, this time from the Boston Globe:

Organizers said the system was designed to force broad coalition-building, but it had the effect of making a minority of delegates feel frozen out of the process.

After it became clear that the slate endorsed by parties involved in the interim government was virtually certain to get more than the 65 percent support required for a first-round victory, organizers of the other slate withdrew. That meant the list of pro-government candidates won without the delegates ever voting.

This article does not mention the issue of women in government and also paints the 'little guys' as victims of the status quo. The New York Times mentions the issue, but blames both sides for coming up short and ultimately fails to mention that the 'little guys' never accepted a role for women while the major parties did. Their report however reprints the accusations of minority representative Ismail Zayer that there was some sort of conspiracy and sabotage on the part of the majority. Even if this were so the minority was still unprepared to submit an acceptable list (i.e. one that would not only allow women to serve in government but fill 25% of the seats). It seems much more likely that the conspiracy theory is meant to mask the minority's refusal to allow women into government.

So is there a media bias, and do we really have to learn French to get all the facts? And if there is a media bias is it predicated upon what my old sociology professor has called 'a subtle kind of racism,' akin to President Bush's criticism of 'the soft bigotry of low expectations?' Are many in the West willing to support a society that treats women as secondary citizens because 'that's their way?'