Voices: New Statesman review

A review of Voices of the New Arab Public by Jean Seaton in The New Statesman:

Since the launch of al-Jazeera in 1996, a wild frontierland of international satellite television has revolutionised life in every Arab nation and across the Arab diaspora. A fiercely competitive set of stations has sprung up in the Qatari channel's wake, all attempting to capture the attention of highly politicised Arab audiences. News and political debate may be low-ratings stuff in the UK, threatened by audience indifference and revenue crises, but all over the Middle East new satellite stations are acting as centres for a release of energy and the fluid formation of opinion.

It is an exhilarating story of the emergence of an Arab public voice, frustrated by the oppressive incompetence of most of its rulers and hungry for better government. But it is also a cautionary tale of a huge energy that we have hardly begun to appreciate. For if this torrent of argument has a rational political side, it also has a potential populism that should chill us because we have been so blind to it.

Although there are significant differences between countries in the Middle East, with Lebanon's historically freer press, Jordan's greater tolerance of dissent and Egypt's long history of opposition, Arab states routinely censor, intimidate or buy up their local media, drowning out independent thought with "official messages". Forced underground, Islamist groups have created a parallel universe of pamphlets, CDs and cassettes. Al-Jazeera and its competitors burst into this unhappily narrow world, creating what Marc Lynch here calls "an autonomous counter-public" quite simply by beaming over the heads of the national opinion managers.

The novelty of Voices of the New Arab Public depends on its analysis of the talk shows that dominate the new stations. On these programmes, members of elites, governments and every political group battle it out - but the real excitement is provided by the opinions of the Arab public, elicited by means of a new phenomenon: continuous phone-ins and broadcast voting. The format is loud and plebiscitary, and everyone wants a say in it.

Lynch observes that debate over the Iraqi conflict has caused an important shift in the quality of this discussion. For the first time, he suggests, there has been real disagreement, not about the centrality of Iraq, which, as he points out, "has become a touchstone of Arab identity as the result of the intense public arguments in the new Arab media", but about how the situation should be resolved. Despite their fundamental political bias, these new international stations are creating a "public sphere" of responsive argument between different points of view. Even though some of the talk shows are crudely polemical, others present multi-layered arguments that evolve as you watch and listen. They are certainly having a direct impact on governments in the region.

The satellite explosion has its own dangers, however. As competition grows, there is tremendous pressure to indulge in sensationalism. Reservations about screening made-for-television beheadings, for instance, were drowned out in a ratings battle. Although Lynch fails to examine what is unsayably taboo in the Arab forum, he does show how few programmes feature the environment, unemployment, health, child abuse or anything else that affects everyday life - except politics.

Yet Lynch's authoritative and exciting book, rooted in local knowledge, urgently demands that we engage with this modern Arab world. Out there, along with the wildly popular mobile-phone downloads of the pan-Arab equivalent of The X Factor and the beautiful (unveiled) female news presenters, people are engaging in a fragile but vital rational argument. We have everything to learn from listening to it, much to gain from a conversation with it, and have already disastrously lost much by ignoring it.

(Cross-posted at the Voices "page 2" blog)