During a rare visit to Doha in 1999, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak toured the satellite TV station 16 May 2012
| July 2010 - Politics |
| July 2010 |
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The Revolution Will Be Televised By Marwan Kabalan
Today, the Arab world hosts some of the best satellite TV channels outside the Western world. What's more, they have proved to be much more than a match box. Prior to the satellite era, Arabs did not pay much attention to the media in their own countries. Patterns of reporting in the state-owned media were in many ways simply an extension of the views of their respective governments. This alienated Arab viewers and forced them to turn to the Western media for news and analysis. Three major Western broadcasting stations benefited from this situation: the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and Voice of America. For decades these three stations dominated Arab public opinion and shaped its worldviews. During the 1991 Gulf war, for example, it was CNN which controlled the flow of information from Baghdad, the battlefield and Washington. Arab state-owned media got most, if not all, of their news through an American lens. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the situation was completely different. This war was told through the lenses of Abu Dhabi, Al-Jazeera and MBC. With these stations the world came to know, via first-hand reporting, what was happening in Baghdad and on the battlefield. Embedded journalism and the lapdog role played by Fox News, CNN and BBC only boosted the credibility of the Arab media and turning it into an authoritative source for millions of viewers around the globe. Beyond challenging the Western media in its own sphere of influence, the impact of the new media on the Arab domestic domain is tremendous. New communication technology has challenged the power of Arab states and weakened their grip over the flow of information. The role of the state as an educator, in the Gramscian sense, has also been challenged. Arab governments are no longer in a position to select their people's news and information. Signals of Arab and foreign satellite channels are crossing national borders without permission or the censorship of old. And with no integrated ideology to indoctrinate the masses, the huge, state-owned media machinery has become all but irrelevant. Perhaps more importantly, new media is profoundly changing the region's political and social realities. In many ways it is contributing to the rise of civil society, the emergence of the public sphere and – just maybe – the dawn of a new kind of politics. The popularity of new Arab media, however, does not only emanate from its endeavours to challenge the lifeless state agenda. It also results from the reflection of views and opinions held by many in the region that are not reflected in the state-owned media. This interactive, two-way communication is probably the most prominent and lasting feature of the new Arab media. Some may play down the contribution new media has made in the political and social transformation of the Arab world. Given the authoritarian settings of the Arab region, they argue, the public sphere is not an open place of contestation, but structured wherein the rules of the game can be changed by an intrusive state at any time. New technologies have, however, led to major political, social and economic changes in many societies. The Arab world cannot be an exception merely because it is Arab or Muslim. In addition, it is too early to definitively judge the real impact of the new Arab media. History is still in the making and the whole picture is yet to emerge. It is true that there are some negative aspects regarding the patterns of reporting in the Arab media, but with time, effort and dedication, this new media is likely to play a vital role in transforming the political culture of the Arab world. Marwan Kabalan is a professor at the faculty of political science at the University of Damascus. |
16 May 2012
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