| Mission Al-Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World |  | Author: Josh Rushing
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: eBooks
In Stock
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 169,758
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.4309174927
ASIN: B001AW2PHS
Publication Date: June 12, 2007
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Product Description
Blending his riveting personal story with innovative ideas about how to win the war on terror, former marine turned Al Jazeera reporter Josh Rushing addresses all the issues he was not allowed to talk about when he was in uniform. If we are to win the war on terror, Rushing explains, we have to interact with the media at home and abroad in order to control the way we are perceived. By refusing to appear on Al Jazeera, Western leaders allow people who disagree with the current administration to represent the West to the Arab world in a skewed, negative way. By taking readers inside Al Jazeera, Rushing offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the controversial news channel and shows how the West can harness it to its advantage, relay a positive message to the Arab public, and hear what it has to say in return.
Book Description
Blending his riveting personal story with innovative ideas about how to win the war on terror, former marine turned Al Jazeera reporter Josh Rushing addresses all the issues he was not allowed to talk about when he was in uniform. If we are to win the war on terror, Rushing explains, we have to interact with the media at home and abroad in order to control the way we are perceived. By refusing to appear on Al Jazeera, Western leaders allow people who disagree with the current administration to represent the West to the Arab world in a skewed, negative way. By taking readers inside Al Jazeera, Rushing offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the controversial news channel and shows how the West can harness it to its advantage, relay a positive message to the Arab public, and hear what it has to say in return.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
An American Hero June 17, 2007
John Nordin (Minnesota, USA)
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
I admit that I admire Rushing. From his first appearance in the movie Control Room through the last page of this book he is unfailingly calm, reasonable and even handed; not something we have a surplus of these days. His personal journey is compelling, but his mission: to break down barriers of misunderstanding between Americans and the world confident that most people everywhere want to live in peace is one I strongly believe in.
The book mirrors this. He recounts his personal story, his upbringing, his career in the Marines, his frustration with the political appointees who shaped relations with the media during the early days of the Iraq war and his transition out of the Marines due to their distaste with his appearance in Control Room. By the way, he explains that almost all of the film of him in that movie comes from one interview, and doesn't really reflect an arc of growth over a period of time.
My only frustration with the book is that because he so calm, that he doesn't provide many of the juicy details I was hoping for. Some are there, and my favorites are the stories of the arch-conservative spokespeople who orate against the evil of Al Jazera and then accept money from it for interviews. But even then he can't bring himself to indulge in inflated rhetoric and violent denunciations. Probably a good thing.
Most of the book is given to him arguing his case for increased and open interaction with the Arab world and the key role that interacting with Al Jazera could play in that. He points out that, by one survey, Al Jazera is the number one media brand in the world. He defends the network against some common distortions (it has never, not once, shown a beheading, for example) and reminds readers that Al Jazera has been thrown out of most of the Arab world for its honest reporting.
One of the interesting ironies is that Israel is more open about interacting with Al Jazera than is American media. Israeli government spokespeople appear on the network regularly; American's refuse.
Rushing's vision of the world is hopeful and compelling. His tag line on the book is reflected on every page: "Build a bridge, seek the truth, change the world."
 Eyes: Opened. Mind: Opened. World: Enlarged. June 30, 2007
Lawrence Slobodzian (Merriam, KS United States)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Thank you, Josh. You've made my world a little larger, and my understanding of it has grown as well.
As a Marine, I would never have read this book had it not been for Josh Rushing's Marine Corps service. Had he been Army or otherwise, I probably would have dismissed his story, and that would have been my loss.
Mission Al Jazeera provided information on several ideas I think we should consider further:
-How the American and Arabic cultures have clashed unnecessarily.
-How we can find points to agree on.
-How to open up a dialogue on points where we disagree..
-How the U.S. manages (or mismanages) the publicity war.
-How we can (and why we should) engage the Arab world through their media.
-How we could improve our own military public affairs.
Josh is still a Marine, though he is no longer paid by the Corps. This shows in his writing as he is intelligent and respectful when he is critical. It is clear that Josh disagrees with almost everything the current administration stands for, but this is not a Bush-bashing book. His points against the administration are fair, and he also has criticism for the American Left, the Arabic World, and himself.
As a Conservative and a Bush supporter, I did not find this to be leftist propaganda, mindless Bush-bashing, or even a criticism of the Iraq war itself. It is a criticism of our failure in nation-building (which is well-documented) and a criticism of individual policies for which Rushing is not only opposing, but providing solutions as well.
One example of Rushing's book that I thought was insightful: He makes the argument (in front of an audience of Generals, no less) that if you can trust young men and women to lead a patrol through a village with little supervision from superiors, you should be able to train and trust at least one of those squad members to be an on-the-spot spokesperson to speak to the media and provide relevant details. This is currently forbidden, and it prevents the media from communicating the military perspective on a situation, while the victims and enemies are able to get their perspective out immmediately. Overall, Rushing argues for new communications policies due to the new, flat world we live in.
Rushing also argues that Al Jazeera English is what media should be. According to Rushing, they provide all sides of a story better than any other international news service. We all know that the American media is slanted, that they "dumb-down" the news, and they all play essentially the same stories. Maybe Al Jazeera is not the best alternative (or maybe it is,) but the fact is that they are challenging the establishment and may be the catalyst required for an American media that is overdue for a change.
I read the book over a few evenings. The book is well-paced and short enough to get to the point, provide enough information, and not drag on.
Must read for the Public Affairs Community June 24, 2007
Charles Kyle (Alexandria, VA)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World, Josh Rushing, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 256 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Major Charles M. Kyle, U.S. Army, student at the Command and General Staff College.
Though not an autobiography, Josh Rushing, a former Marine Captain, and now al Jazeera journalist, shares his personal story while assigned to the public affairs office at CENTCOM before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The author discusses two very important topics in this book. First, from an historical perspective, Rushing discusses the interaction or lack thereof between DoD and the Arab Media. This topic of discussion is extremely enlightening on the subject of how the military public affairs office went from doing its traditional job of informing on and about the war to "selling the war", a state department public relations responsibility. Rushing goes to great lengths to explain how the US marginalized the Arab media eliminating all possibility of US influence in the Arab world.
The second topic that Rushing explores is the means by which US government officials could engage the Arab world, both governments and populace. Rushing writes "if we are to win the war on terror, we have to interact with the media at home and abroad in order to control the way we are perceived."
Rushing spent 14 years as a Marine Corps media liaison officer and is currently working as an international journalist for Al Jazeera. This mix of military public affairs with western and Arab journalism, gives him a perspective not found in the normal American Mind. This allows the author to remove the American cultural lens that most of us normally suffer from and provide a perspective that could be a great tool to be used.
The greatest take away from the book is a look into the Arab Mind and how they, the Arab world, perceive US actions. Rushing does discuss that this perception is often faulty but argues that it will continue to be until the US decides to engage instead of marginalizing the Arab media.
This work is a valuable, informative effort to discuss our media engagement plan. I highly recommend it to all readers because of its relevance to the challenges our military leaders face today of engaging and dealing with the media within the contemporary operational environment.
 Blue shirt or khaki? There's a big difference October 9, 2007
Cecile Wehrman (North Dakota)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
(From the column "Whines & Roses", published Oct. 10, 2007 in The Journal, Crosby, North Dakota)
The day I met Josh Rushing he was wearing a shirt with checks as blue as his dazzling eyes. It's a small detail, but telling. If a journalist is to be credible, facts must be reflected in their proper shade.
If Rushing's new book, "Mission Al Jazeera", is to be believed, you'll have to color me a bigot.
How else to explain the figure in Rushing's book described as a reporter from The Journal of Divide County, North Dakota? This reporter, according to Rushing, expected to be met by "Bedouins on camels" when Al Jazeera came to town.
You could have filled my mouth with a bucket of sand when I read those words.
While it was clear to me at the time some people were upset by the presence in Crosby of a crew from a Middle Eastern-owned network, I wasn't among them.
I accurately and fairly reported who these Americans represented, their sterling journalistic credentials and professed mission, along with what was a very serious response by law enforcement officials who were concerned the crew had ulterior motives for being here.
To this day, there are people in Divide County who believe I somehow "brought" Al Jazeera to town, and by extension, the threat of terrorism. My writings at the time made clear Rushing was doing a legitimate story on the out-migration from the Great Plains. We also reported that people were upset by Al Jazeera's presence, and that the Border Patrol investigated.
Our story on Al Jazeera was much the same as the stories we have written on a half dozen other outside news organizations visiting here in recent years to report on our "vanishing" lifestyle.
After giving Al Jazeera and Rushing the same fair shake we have given all the others, it is distressing that he felt compelled to cast me as part of the problem with the American media, depicting me as the stereotypical provincial xenophobe -- especially when I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment of what is wrong with the state of journalism in America today and have written on the topic myself many, many times.
I expected a media crew from Al Jazeera to be Arab about as much as I would expect a representative from the NAACP to be African American. I was surprised to find a crew of three Caucasian Americans and I expressed that surprise to Rushing, though not in the terms he relates in his book. He remembers the Divide County reporter saying "I thought you'd be wearing robes and headscarves."
I can't imagine what I could have said that approximated such an utterance unless it were in jest over the hysteria surrounding Al Jazeera's visit. But then, I wasn't taking notes on what I said as I interviewed Rushing, and neither was he.
I was intrigued with Rushing's story -- a 15-year Marine Corps veteran now employed at a network owned by the Emir of Qatar. His mission was one I could admire-- trying to bridge the gap between the Western and Arab worlds in an effort to forge peace and understanding. In his book, Rushing complains of the difficulty in bridging that gap when so many Americans have preconceived notions.
But in his effort to spin a juicy yarn about Divide County, he held me up for ridicule so that he might appear the only sane figure in what was a decidedly crazy few days in the history of Divide County.
Having caught flak in this community over the last five years for opposing the Bush Administration's rationale for war in Iraq, and for criticizing the American media's cheerleading role in it -- being cast in Rushing's terms is indeed an odd position to be in.
The week Al Jazeera came to town, people around here got a little paranoid and I was one of them -- I was paranoid about a Border Patrol agent questioning me about my contact with other American citizens.
In his book, Rushing doesn't even cast that paranoia in the proper shade, though he saw fit to repeat nearly a whole column I wrote skewering the climate of fear this country was living in at the time.
Rushing and his crew didn't even have the courtesy to call us as promised when the Divide County story was to be broadcast. Nor did he bother to let me know of my doppelganger's pivotal role in the introduction of his book. For a man who wants to build bridges, he sure burned one here.
The lack of accuracy in the introductory pages is all the more personally upsetting to me because after reading Rushing's book in its entirety, I truly believe a global network like Al Jazeera could someday accomplish what no amount of diplomacy can. But if I can't trust Rushing to portray every figure accurately, how can I trust his assessment of the bigger picture?
If these words somehow reach him across the chasm that exists between the Western and Arab worlds, your shirt that day wasn't khaki, Josh.
It was blue.
great message, but not a great read August 10, 2007
Constant Reader (Gloucester MA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The other reviewers have all discussed Rushing's message, which is an important and timely one, and one that can speak to conservatives and liberals alike. The book itself, however, is not as good a vehicle for the message as it could have been-- it's disorganized, very repetitive, and, while Rushing produced it with the help of another author, its rambling nature often makes it feel as though it were transcribed from oral interviews rather than written. The first half is devoted to Rushing's autobiography, with fascinating insights into his experience at CentCom and in the Marines, and his initial encounters with Al-Jazeera. From there, however, he wanders into the history of Al-Jazeera, moving around in chronology, moving in and out of the story himself, and often returning to the same points several times. Important details are simply buried in the text-- the imprisonment of one Al-Jazeera reporter in Gitmo for the last several years without charges, for example, is relegated to a single paragraph-- while large amounts of space in widely separated areas of the book are devoted to describing scenes from the movie Control Room, an odd organizational decision. This eventually weakens parts of the argument; in particular, critiques of Al-Jazeera are scattered and responded to in passing (claims that they are fair and objective in one part of the book, for instance, sit oddly with his description of how manipulated an interview with him to make viewers perceive him as describing a bombing). What is frustrating is that what Rushing has to say IS interesting, and there is a compelling case in here for engaging with Al-Jazeera as a vital part of the Arab world, and for revising American attitudes toward Arab media (and the Arab world in general). The message is important; but I at least was left wishing the book itself had been organized in some way, either chronologically or by topic, had engaged with one point at a time rather than looping through them (occasionally contradicting itself as it went), and that a good editor had either grouped similar things together or had cut out some of the repetitions. Not a good read, but an important one.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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