Facts and fantasies about Arab satellite TV

By Rami G. Khouri Daily Star staffSaturday, December 24, 2005
The recent British press revelation that President George W. Bush last year told U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that Washington was considering bombing the Qatar headquarters of the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera (denied by the White House) brought to new levels of intensity and idiocy the ongoing tension between the American government and some Arab satellite channels. This is the most dramatic edge of a wider phenomenon that is being extensively discussed in the Middle East and throughout the West: the virtually unregulated Middle Eastern and global Arabic-language satellite services, and their impact on Arab social and political sentiments, especially their views of the U.S. and Israel.
I have had the pleasure this month of participating in two gatherings in Dubai that treated this important issue, which has potentially significant consequences for the region, and also for the world. For there is a direct relationship today between mass media output, public opinion attitudes and political or military action by small groups of dynamic activists and leaders in society who believe they have a divinely-mandated mission to change the world for the better - including Osama bin Laden-type Arab terrorists, Dick Cheney-type neoconservative American militants, and Tony Blair-style British neocolonialists who represent the long and seemingly perpetual tradition (now in its third consecutive century!) of British leaders sending their troops to Basra in southern Iraq.
Having spent just three and a half decades in this business of mass media communication and miscommunication between the Arab world, Western Europe and the United States and Canada, I sense that we must avoid at all costs the serious mistake that seems to drive American views of Al-Jazeera and other pan-Arab media: we must not confuse the messenger that carries the bad news - that most Arabs are deeply critical of American and Israeli policies - with the reality and causes of that bad news for the U.S. and Israel.
Unlike most American officials who routinely criticize Al-Jazeera and other pan-Arab media, I've actually watched these stations virtually daily since their inception during the past decade, and have spent hours talking with their correspondents and senior staff to better understand their own views of the world and their place in it. My conclusion is that any useful, accurate analysis of the Arab satellite media must separate their professional conduct from their political impact. With half a dozen serious, news-oriented Arab satellite stations (among a total of 240 Arab satellite channels), and nearly a decade of experience to judge by, we can assess these channels on the basis of facts, rather than cultural fantasies and other imagined realities.
The facts suggest that these channels' professional focus is to provide audiences with a relevant and useful package of news, analysis, opinion and entertainment. Increasing competition in recent years has seen the news-oriented channels with impact expand to include Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiyya, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC), the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), Abu Dhabi Television, and, to a smaller extent, Lebanon's Future Television, Hizbullah-owned Al-Manar, Orbit, and Egyptian television.
Such competition has sharpened the channels' professionalism in delivering the news and offering lively political and social debates. In the past three years, covering the Anglo-American led war in Iraq and its messy aftermath, I've made it a point to regularly watch Arab, European and American television services in order to compare their coverage. On the basis of what I have witnessed during the past 1,000 days, I would like to bet Donald Rumsfeld a double cheeseburger with cheese, and Karen Hughes two tickets to a Yankees-Rangers baseball game on a balmy July evening, that the overall coverage of Iraq on the mainstream Arab satellite services has been more comprehensive, balanced and accurate than the coverage of any mainstream American cable or broadcast television service.
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There is a major research project to be done here by a combination of American and Arab university journalism schools who should do a content analysis of the output of selected American and Arab television services during the past five years, on issues such as Iraq, Palestine-Israel, or promoting democratic reforms in the Middle East. Such research would show that the problem is not the coverage of the news, but rather the fact that these Arab media accurately reflect the rampant criticism of the U.S., U.K. and Israel that defines the Arab world today.
This is the political dimension of these media companies. They should be thanked rather than attacked for providing something valuable that had been denied us for many decades: an accurate and timely reflection of how ordinary Arab men and women feel about their world, alongside the rich variety of views within Arab public opinion.
These stations, in fact, have provided a vibrant television form of precisely that which Bush and his nonstop string of dizzy dames of public diplomacy have been calling and warring for in this region: democratic pluralism, at least in television news and opinion. The U.S., Israel and others understandably dislike the criticisms of their policies that they see and hear on Arab television. To respond by attacking the Arab journalist messengers who carry the bad news, however, rather than addressing the contentious underlying political problems between the U.S., Israel and the Arab world, is a sign of political amateurism and personal emotionalism.
This deadly, peculiarly American, combination of foreign policy drivers has already caused the United States enough trouble around the world. The kids and confused adults running this show in Washington need to adopt a more thoughtful and constructive approach to dealing with the Arab world and its fast developing satellite television news services, especially because these media are potentially valuable partners in any drive for democratic transformations in this region.
There are many valid criticisms of these still young Arab television services, such as their limited probing of their own national power structures, and lack of in-depth investigative journalism. Whatever we do, though, we should act like adults in this analytical process, by separating the three distinctly different phenomena of professional assessments, political irritations, and emotional anxieties.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star.