Students and faculty from Marquette joined three other universities Tuesday in a videoconference to discuss the presence of religion in Middle Eastern media and how the United States influences news organizations there.

The videoconference focused mainly on the delicate relationship between the United States and Middle Eastern countries. Its keynote speaker was Mohammed el-Nawawy, a professor from Georgia State University and author of "Al-Jazeera: Ambassador of the Arab World."The primary issue was the response of people in the Middle East to American-sponsored media outlets in the region.

"(Middle Easterners) feel they are attempts to manipulate them and make them think a certain way," El-Nawawy said. "This is going on when they're not seeing changes on the ground (in Iraq) or in U.S. policy."

While students were given the opportunity to respond to this assertion, El-Nawawy provided his own suggestions on how to fix the problem.

"The U.S. government needs to utilize the Arab networks in a better way," he said. "…Why not encourage U.S. officials to go on networks that Arabs already trust and see as credible in the Arab world?"

The conflict between the two cultures' news outlets was a source of questions and debate ranging from portrayal of Arabs in Western movies to anti-Islamic sentiment after 9/11. The dialogue gave Lara Georgis, a senior in the College of Communication, a better perspective of the importance of media in different cultures.

"I saw the way American and Arab networks view each other with discretion and as biased," Georgis said. "The Americans look at Al-Jazeera as biased and (Middle Easterners) look at them as pro-American. It's interesting to see different opinions of different countries."

The videoconference was part of Cultural Identity, Media and World Religion, a class taught by advertising and public relations Professor Claire Badaracco. The class will conduct 14 videoconferences throughout the semester, Badaracco said.

At each conference, class members will team up with students from the University of Santa Clara, Regis University in Denver and a guest university. Georgia State was the visiting school at Tuesday's meeting.

According to Badaracco, the conferences help connect the universities to different speakers who deal with issues concerning media and religion in various cultures.

"We look at how the media covers religion and how religions use the media to communicate," she said. "Students will hopefully continue to communicate and continue to talk to one another about the issues."

The class has been offered since 2000 and currently involves 37 students from the participating universities, Badaracco said. The schools are able to connect using IP addresses over the Internet or high-speed phone lines, according to Marko Stojkovic, a technician in the Instructional Media Center, which oversaw the technological operation.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 29, 2005.