Alex Safian

Alex Safian is associate director of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).

Safian is a graduate of Columbia University with a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Safian came to the Boston area to attend Harvard graduate school, and started as a CAMERA volunteer in the early 1990s after he got involved researching an anti-Israeli op-ed piece in a community newspaper. He calls himself "a news junkie" and says the trauma of following the news from Israel as a schoolboy during the 1967 war — when that nation's fate hung in the balance — was a "formative experience." Of his motivation in general, he says simply, "It motivates me when I see people misrepresenting things." [http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/manager/features/display_message.asp?mid=593 "Blaming the Messenger", Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe, Feb. 9, 2003] ]

CAMERA Director Andrea Levin and Safian operate out of CAMERA headquarters in a Boston neighborhood, overseeing a warren of busy offices brimming with tapes, transcripts, and clippings and adorned with maps, posters, and such books as Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder and The Media's War Against Israel. Its corps of researchers scrutinizes every paragraph and camera angle of Mideast reportage, counting sources, checking facts, and monitoring tone.

Safian is widely quoted on the problem of media bias. He told Fox and Friends that in producing the controversial series “God’s Warriors,” “Christiane Amanpour and her production team have an agenda" which is "anti-Israel," "anti-Christian," and "whitewashes Islam." [ [http://newsbusters.org/people/alex-safian "Fox and Friends Guest Speaks Out Against CNN's 'God's Warriors" '] ] His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union Tribune, the Middle East Quarterly, the Jerusalem Post, and many other newspapers and journals.

References