Voices of the New Arab Public

Review: Perspectives on Politics

Voices of the New Arab Public is reviewed in the new issue (vol 4, no. 4, December 2006) of Perspectives on Politics, the flagship journal of the American Political Science Association.  This is the first major academic review of the book.  I will comment on the review elsewhere, but here is the full text.

Mahmud A. Faksh

University of Southern Maine

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. By Marc Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 293p. $ 24.50.

The book delves into the crucial subject of the new independent media and politics in the Middle East. It examines the changing landscape of Arab public discourse consequent to the proliferation of the new Arab media—al-Jazeera, Abu Dubai TV, al-Manar, al-Arabiya, al-Hurra, and a host of other satellite television stations—over the past decade. The study contends that these new Arab media outlets have freed the dissemination of information from the shackles of state control, challenged old taboos on open discussion, and generated free debate about pertinent political and social issues—culture and identity, political reform, Palestine, Islam and modernity, and Iraq, among others. All this marked the birth of a new diverse Arab public sphere, which ended the previously controlled and muted Arab public discourse and posed a challenge to the future of Arab politics and to U.S. diplomacy.

The book delves into the crucial subject of the new independent media and politics in the Middle East. It examines the changing landscape of Arab public discourse consequent to the proliferation of the new Arab media—al-Jazeera, Abu Dubai TV, al-Manar, al-Arabiya, al-Hurra, and a host of other satellite television stations—over the past decade. The study contends that these new Arab media outlets have freed the dissemination of information from the shackles of state control, challenged old taboos on open discussion, and generated free debate about pertinent political and social issues—culture and identity, political reform, Palestine, Islam and modernity, and Iraq, among others. All this marked the birth of a new diverse Arab public sphere, which ended the previously controlled and muted Arab public discourse and posed a challenge to the future of Arab politics and to U.S. diplomacy.

Of all the new Arab media outlets, the author argues that al-Jazeera served as the leading and most influential public platform (minbar) for Arab critical voices across the Middle East and in the Diaspora that were denied expression under authoritarian and semiauthoritarian Arab regimes. In the process, it has truly revolutionized Arab public discourse on Arab political issues, especially on Iraq and Palestine, which is challenging the contrived monolithic discourse, dominated by the “voice of the state,” and has spawned a genuine transnational Arab public universe. More specifically, al-Jazeera's novel approach to Arab politics—freely aired open and unscripted public arguments and disputations on the most sensitive issues—is seemingly empowering individual Arabs to assert their independent opinions in the public arena, thus “defining a new kind of Arab public and a new kind of Arab politics” (p. 2).

The author correctly assumes that this cataclysmic transformation of Arab political culture is “vital to any meaningful pluralist politics” (p. 2). But this raises the question: Is the new open Arab public sphere really paving the road to a liberal, pluralist politics, as the author seems to imply? The answer is simply no. Indeed, as the study shows, the emerging Arab public discourse, open and free though it may be, remains cloistered in an Arab narrative anchored in Arab-Islamic identity and culture, spewing populism, anti-Westernism driven by past and present grievances (colonialism, the plight of the Palestinians under occupation, the suffering of the Iraqi people under the weight of the U.S.-imposed sanctions, the subsequent U.S. occupation, and perceived or real Western double standards), and obscurantist Islamism—all the antithesis of a civic liberal culture that promotes tolerance, trust, compromise, and reason in the marketplace of ideas. It is doubtful that such a populist, identity-based public enclave can provide the foundation for liberal reforms in the Arab world.

Another pitfall of the new Arab public sphere, as the author points out, is that it is deeply fractured on internal and external issues and policies and lacks the institutional mechanisms to aggregate it and channel it into constructive political action to address the real problems of the Arab order and the need for reform in the region.

Coupled with these limitations, which render the Arab public sphere weak and helpless, is the growing influence of religious identity and culture in public debates that are tending in an illiberal direction, which the author addressed only marginally under “Islamist Publics” (pp. 83–88). Indeed, the Middle East today is in the throes of an ongoing struggle for the soul of Islam: a struggle between moderate Islam and militant Islam that is shaping the area's evolving cultural dynamics and its worldview. The struggle between the two contending voices of Islam is so pervasive and intense in the Arab public arena that it rendered the modernist-secularist discourse inconsequential. The few and far-between voices of modernism and secularism are increasingly on the defensive in the name of religious identity and cultural authenticity—the axiom of the Islamists' discourse. The heavy weight of religious culture, as the defining perimeter of what is permissible in public life, is threatening to eviscerate the already shrinking zone of liberal-reformist ideas and to cast society in a stagnant, conformist religious mold.

These limitations notwithstanding, the author rightly maintains that the new vocal Arab public still matters. Arab governments, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, and even Syria, among others, are now more disposed to be attuned to these voices and to adjust somewhat their domestic and foreign policies under the heavy pressure of mass opinion. These policy adjustments, albeit limited, serve to add a measure of legitimacy to unpopular regimes by identifying with popular Arab causes, like the Iraq and Palestinian tragedies.

In his concluding chapter, the author addresses the challenge that the new assertive Arab public presented to the United States, as the target of increasing invectiveness and heightened animosity. He counsels a U.S. public diplomacy course that encourages dialogue and engagement, rather than resentment and confrontation. To counter the rampant anti-Americanism of the Arab street, the author calls for serious acknowledgment and keen awareness by the United States of the emerging Arab public sphere and the employment of imaginative public diplomacy that would promote mutual communication and understanding and facilitate the spread of liberal tendencies. However, one may add here that judging by the current administration's record in dealing with foreign publics, U.S. diplomacy has not risen to the challenge. The misguided approach of the Bush administration in dealing with the Arab public sphere as an enemy to be overcome in a “war of ideas” or a contender “to be manipulated via a public relations” campaign (p. 250) has proven to be a colossal public policy failure. The failure of American diplomacy is most evident in the latest tragedy to engulf the Arab lands this summer: the war and destruction in Lebanon, which widened the chasm between a galvanized Arab public opinion and the United States more than ever.

Overall, the study represents a significant contribution to the emerging field of the media and politics and the budding literature on the new electronic media and Arab politics. It is a highly scholarly study, extensively researched, well documented, and lucidly written, combining a wealth of data and keen analysis, which offer an excellent understanding of the nature, evolution, and impact of the Arab media and the rising Arab public sphere.

Finally, there are few minor name spelling and typing errors, such as “Bathina” instead of Buthaina (p. 8), “Bishar”  instead of Bashar (p. 232), and “a since” instead of a sense (p. 152), which went undetected and should not detract from the high quality of the study.

TBS Journal Review

Voices of the New Arab Public reviewed in the new issue of TBS Journal by Carola Richter. 

Excerpts:

With Voices of  the New Arab Public, Marc Lynch has published a scholarly  book that reads in parts like a thriller. Lynch traces the emergence of a new Arab public sphere starting in the early 1990s until the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2004, analyzing the evolution of Arab debate on political developments related to the Iraqi crisis.

His main thesis is  that national Arab public spheres could never really develop  as they are at the mercy of the politics of the carrot and the  stick practiced by the ruling elites of authoritarian states. The emergence of new media targeting the Pan-Arab market changes the rules of the game, creating a transnational sphere that,  according to Lynch’s argument, provided the breeding ground for a new Arab public sphere. The actors of this public sphere  do not shy away from addressing taboo topics head-on and encourage audiences to turn into publics. Therefore, this new Arab public   holds transformative potential for Arab national systems.

                               

....

Lynch attempts to frame the definition of an Arab public sphere.  In this theoretical exercise, his pragmatism stands out positively from many other authors who evaluate democratization processes in Arab countries by using quite idealistic definitions of a       public sphere. A gradually emerging public sphere in authoritarian systems cannot be understood as the Habermasian ideal of an area of negotiation between the state and civil society –  if only because non-state actors have to be able to voice their  arguments freely in public in order to break the political and discursive monopoly of authoritarian governments. Lynch affirms that one has to look at the actual public discourses to get  an accurate picture of the political potential of an Arab civil society. In terms of its political influence, the effects of such a public sphere (which is still in its infancy) may be  very limited, but at least it is a promising start.

....
                  
Using his data as evidence, Lynch explicitly and insistently  belies the picture of Al Jazeera as a fundamentalist channel  and the picture of an Arab public sphere as unconditionally anti-American and ignorant. Arab debates might be extremely             self-referential and centered on Arab or Muslim problems, but,  Lynch argues, these self-centered disputes hold enormous transformative potential for home grown democratic reforms. With this argument he breaks fresh ground in prevailing debates among US officials.  ....

he has produced must-read work foranyone interested in political communication, civil society,democratization or transformation processes in Arab societies.                   

                                                                               

Voices an academic bestseller!

I've no idea how this translates into actual sales, but according to Academia, an online journal for academic librarians, Voices of the New Arab Public is an academic bestseller for both April and May 2006.  Excellent!

Variety review

I mentioned yesterday that I had been profiled in Variety. It isn't online, alas, but it's based on a chat I had with Steven Kotler, and it runs on page A1, continuing onto page A10, of their March 27 special section on "Mideast TV".  It has a picture of my book rather than of me - no doubt a wise choice - and a picture of Nancy Ajram alarmingly close by. 

Anyway, here's a snippet from the text of the piece: 

In the 1970s and '80s, Arab television was a staid affair. Repressive regimes stocked the airwaves with political puppets towing the party line. But then came Al-Jazeera.

Marc Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College, spent six years translating nearly 1,300 hours of Al-Jazeera programming - focusing on the five most popular talkshows. The results can be found in his book "Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today."

"It's a great model, but maybe too great," says Lynch. "The days of Al-Jazeera's monopoly are over. They now face strong competition in nearly every market. There are dozens of stations that have sprung up that buy into Al-Jazeera's approach and are competing for their audience."

Lynch has said that Al-Jazeera is fundamentally about argument. It seems as if argument - be it haggling in the bazaar over goods or discussing political theory in universities or cafes - is intrinsic to Arab culture and is the key to Al-Jazeera's success.

.... "It changed the culture of the entire Middle East. Suddenly everyone had access to the news, and all of those arguments that used to take place in private burst into the public sphere. Now you almost have to disagree to be an 'Arab' - which is important since it's such a key idea in democracy. Satellite TV has rearranged all aspects of Arab life."

I also put in a plug for the Nancy-Haifa wars:

Al-Jazeera certainly has a relentless dislike of the status quo, especially the political one, but it's not as much of a hard driver for social change, for better treatment of women, for gay rights, for sexuality and so forth.....

"What really seems to be driving social change is reality TV and music videos," Lynch says..... "If Americans saw how sexy these music video clips by singers like Haifa Wehbi or Elissa get, they'd be shocked. These music videos and reality TV shows can be really sexually bold and show women in all kinds of strong roles.... They've become incredibly popular in the last few years. Those shows and videos offer all kinds of alternatives to the Islamist project and let young Arabs really engage with a more open pop culture."

There's a bit more, but I don't want to be violating copyright or anything until they actually post it online.   The rest of the special section is also quite interesting, with profiles of MBC, religious satellite TV stations and music videos (what I've taken to calling the "Rotana-Risala Axis"), reality TV, al-Jazeera and al-Jazeera International, LBC, and more.

 

Jordan Times review

Another review of Voices of the New Arab Public, this one in the Jordan Times (link should be good for about a week):

This is not a study of Al Jazeera or Iraq per se, but of the effect that the combination of the two has had on Arab discourse.

Marc Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College, argues that the advent of the Arab satellite stations, Al Jazeera in particular, created a totally new Arab public sphere that cut across borders and censorship. While the new Arab public is united by a sense of common identity and consensus on core issues, such as Palestine, it also offers a platform for radically divergent opinions and unprecedented, open debate: “The remarkable impact of the new Arab public sphere rested upon its bringing previously private political debates into the glaring light of publicity.” (p. 58)

Thus, a new phenomenon burst into the open in 1998 in response to American and British bombing of Iraq. “The open arguments on Al Jazeera could not be restricted to just the television screen, and soon began to spill out into open political mobilisation in almost every Arab country.” (p. 159)

In the ensuing years, with extensive coverage of the Palestinian Intifada and Iraq, these two “issues increasingly merged into a common narrative, with the United States playing the villain's role in each.” (p. 128)

Lynch notes that while anti-Americanism was not predominant in the aftermath of Sept. 11, it rose dramatically under the combined impact of Bush's “Axis of Evil” speech, Ariel Sharon's reoccupation of the West Bank, and the beginning of the campaign against Iraq.
“The grinding violence in the West Bank, and especially the bloody Israeli reoccupation in April 2002, ensured that any American moves on Iraq would be viewed through the lens of Palestinian suffering.” (p. 155)

Based on research in a number of Arab countries, including Jordan, and extensive monitoring of the political talk shows broadcast by satellite stations, Lynch disputes claims that Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for radical Islamists or Al Qaeda, or that its journalists were on Saddam Hussein's payroll. Contrary to American preconceptions that Arab media are biased, the Arab public now has greater access to all sides of the question, especially when contrasted with the tight media control imposed by the Bush administration during the invasion of Iraq.

In Lynch's view, the new Arab public can be a catalyst for change and democratic reform, but as yet its impact on policy is still limited. The fact that it “enabled both a new kind of open public argument and a more potent politics of identity would over time develop into a major contradiction. During the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the struggle between the politics of identity and the public sphere imperative of rational discourse would come to define much of the debate over the performance of the Arab media”. (p. 142)

The most valuable feature of this book is that it gives the English language reader direct, unparalleled access to contemporary Arab political debate. Lynch quotes from scores of participants in the talk shows, thus giving voice to the opinions of a broad range of people, from intellectuals, media commentators, politicians and the Iraqi opposition to ordinary Arabs who call in from around the world.

Compared to the comprehensive data that Lynch presents and the insightful way in which he analyses it, his conclusion is disappointing. Everything in the book points to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs today oppose US Middle East policy not because the media incite them to do so, but because this policy is destructive, unjust and detrimental to their interests and goals. Yet the author proposes only that the US administration engage the new Arab public in a rational debate, with the need for policy changes only mentioned in passing without any specifics. The implications of his analysis, however, point to the need for major changes.

Nonetheless, “Voices of the New Arab Public” is a unique contribution among the many recent books on Al Jazeera and Iraq. No other has addressed the intersection between the media and the prospects for social change in such a meaningful way.

Sally Bland

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.

Globe and Mail mention

Not really a review, but Voices gets mentioned by Martin Levin in the Globe and Mail, alongside a grab bag of books about Islam and the Middle East.  His blurb: "U.S. political scientist Lynch finds encouraging signs in how Al Jazeera has transformed Middle East politics, or at least begun to transform them, by undermining the idea of state control of the media and giving a hearing to long-repressed voices."

Bradley: "subtly subversive"

I can't find an on-line version of this yet, but Voices of the New Arab Public has been reviewed by John Bradley in the Straits Times:

THE Egyptian-American scholar, Dr Mamoun Fandy, provocatively wrote in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat in April 2004 that there are no real journalists in the Arab world, and anyone who thinks Arab satellite television has a constructive role to play 'is at best deceived, or at worst a liar or ignorant'.

The Qatar-based Arabic network Al-Jazeera is now often condemned by pundits as 'jihad TV', its journalists labelled 'killers with cameras' complicit in terror attacks or accused of filling the airwaves with anti-Semitic, anti-American and pro-fundamentalist propaganda.

Whether true or not, reports that US President George W. Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera certainly reflect the sense of outrage among many in the West at what is perceived as a steady stream of beheading videos and Osama bin Laden tapes broadcast by the network.

Now Professor Marc Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College who runs the www.abuaardvark.com blog, has set out to prove that consensus wrong.  The result - Voices Of The New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera And Middle East Politics Today - is a closely argued and provocative study that calls for a far more nuanced Western response to the phenomenon of Al-Jazeera.

Asserting that 'it is manifestly untrue that the Arab media are dominated by a single perspective', Prof Lynch points out that often the most hostile critics of Al-Jazeera neither speak Arabic nor bother to watch the programmes they castigate. By contrast, he himself has amassed a breathtakingly wide range of network data, allowing him to rely 'primarily on what Arabs themselves have actually said'.

They include the full transcripts of 967 episodes of five of the most important Al-Jazeera talk shows aired between 1999 and 2004, a separate database of those episodes that dealt specifically with Iraq, and another containing thousands of opinion essays published in Arabic newspapers between 1992 and 2004.

Prof Lynch's startling conclusion: Arabs are 'relentlessly bombarded' by their media not with crude propaganda but with diverse 'political arguments'.

In 1999, long before the US-led invasion of Iraq, more than a dozen Al-Jazeera talk shows, he writes, criticised the absence of democracy in the Arab world. In response to revelations of the sexual torture of Iraqis by Americans at Abu Ghraib Prison, the network's most popular show, The Opposite Direction, provocatively discussed conditions in Arab prisons.

'In this new Arab public, Iraqi opposition figures argue with their critics on television. Islamists and feminists square off over women's rights - Kurds openly challenge Al-Jazeera on its own broadcasts over its alleged silence about Saddam's mass graves,' Prof Lynch adds.

By focusing on the sensationalist side of the Arabic-language satellite media, Westerners may be overlooking their many positive characteristics. They have certainly shattered the ability of Arab states to control information or to stifle political debate. They have made it normal to argue publicly about political and cultural issues that used to be completely off-limits.

America, he adds, should stop 'scapegoating' the Arab media for US policy failures in the region. In his reading, Al-Jazeera and other stations have probably done more to advance democracy in the Middle East than anything else. They have empowered political activists in their struggle against regimes. In the case of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement Kefaya, 'it's clear that one Al-Jazeera camera is worth tens of thousands of protesters in the streets'. When Arab regimes feel threatened these days, he points out, the first thing they do is arrest any Al-Jazeera reporter they can get their hands on.

All of this adds up to a 'genuinely revolutionary change' in Arab politics, one whose impact is only just beginning to be appreciated both inside and outside the Arab world.

While this subtly subversive book will become the focus of what is too often a shrill debate over the role of the Arab media, there will likely be many counter-arguments that try to show Prof Lynch has engaged in little more than a clever whitewashing exercise.  There is little here on Al-Jazeera's murky relations with terrorist outfits in Iraq and elsewhere, for which the network's correspondents have been arrested and prosecuted. And there is little, either, on the backroom deals between the US and Qatari governments which have seen the network truncate Osama's speeches, remove 'anti-American' cartoons from its website after protests from Washington, and recruit mostly right-wing reporters for its new English-language channel, Al-Jazeera International.

Voices Of The New Arab Public would have been an even greater achievement if it had also dealt with these issues head on, and tried to prove that they did not undermine its central thesis. But in reality, we will probably not get to know the true inside story of Al-Jazeera until an insider writes an expose of his time there.  Until then, this book is likely to remain the best starting point.

Much appreciated review, especially the Abu Aardvark link! 

I think that Bradley's criticisms towards the end are fair enough. On the relationship between al-Jazeera and the Iraqi insurgency, I do have a few pages on that  - but basically I end up falling back on the simply point that no evidence of such links has ever been produced, despite great incentive on the part of al-Jazeera's enemies to produce such evidence (see the al-Sharq al-Awsat/Hazem Sha'alan/Omar Hadid fiasco).  I do say that this doesn't mean that such evidence won't emerge in the future, but until then it's just allegations.   And on the relations behind the scenes with the US, I will say that here at Abu Aardvark I was one of the ones who broke and/or pushed the story of an al-Jazeera on-line slideshow about anti-Americanism which appropriately drew official American ire and mysteriously disappeared soon after.

As to the "insider's acount", he's right - but then, I never set out to write one, since I'm not an al-Jazeera insider.  I say in chapter one explicitly that I didn't set out to write an insider's story of al-Jazeera, and in the book I try to fairly rigorously stick to what was actually aired or written rather than to speculate about the production process.  That's a weakness, no doubt about it, but one built in to the methdology.    But overall, Bradley is right that my account of the "receiving end" (on the air broadcasts, published newspapers) would be usefully supplemented with a parallel account of the "production end" - (inside the studio, inside the newsroom).  Somebody go write that already!   

Review: Milwaukee Journal

Philip Seib, professor of journalism at Marquette University, has published what I believe to be the first review of Voices of the New Arab Public in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (and can I say how cool it is that the first review of my book was published in my hometown newspaper - my parents probably saw it before I did!).

Throughout the world, the news media have significant influence on the agenda and tone of politics. This is particularly true in the volatile Middle East, where the proliferation of new media - most notably the satellite television channel Al-Jazeera - is profoundly changing how Arabs view their own countries and the rest of the world.

In "Voices of the New Arab Public," Williams College professor Marc Lynch does an excellent job of appraising the impact of this change. Lynch did a tremendous amount of work in writing this book, translating hundreds of transcripts and articles from Arabic and scrutinizing their content. The result is a fascinating look at media-driven political discourse.

Lynch focuses on "the Arab street" as the center of public opinion, which is both shaped and covered by Arab media. The new Arab public, he says, "has already conclusively shattered the state's monopoly over the flow of information . . . (and) rejects the long, dismal traditions of enforced public consensus."

A key part of this change is the rise of political talk shows, which are often even livelier than their counterparts on American television. Americans take for granted this kind of public give-and-take, but in countries where debate has long been restricted by government, the rise of the political talk show has a transforming effect. This is something American policy-makers should pay attention to because these programs - the on-camera discussions and callers' questions and commentary - provide valuable insights about the Arab world.

Lynch's analysis of these programs reveals that much of the resentment toward American policy in Iraq was based not on support for Saddam Hussein, who was widely despised, but rather was rooted in anger about the long-running U.S. economic sanctions that did terrible damage to the poorest Iraqis, with many children dying of hunger and disease. Perhaps the sanctions could be blamed on Hussein's intransigence, but that rationale could not compete with horrifying news stories and images.

Most Americans paid little attention to the sanctions' effects and have also failed to understand the extent of Arab sympathy for the Palestinians, who are seen as being oppressed by Israel, which is considered an American client-state. Pan-Arab opinion about these and other issues grew more cohesive after the 1996 birth of Al-Jazeera, which, says Lynch, brought "into the public eye not only graphic footage but also arguments that had previously taken place only in the elite press and private forums."

By the time of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, says Lynch, extensive war coverage by many new Arab media organizations "posed a serious challenge to the American strategic objective of maintaining information control." This was a big change from the 1991 Gulf War, when Western media coverage was far more dominant.

Looking ahead, if American policy-makers would cease their reflexive denigration of Arab media, they might realize that, as Lynch says, "Al-Jazeera and the new Arab public have been consistently and forcefully insistent on discussing reform in the Arab world, putting almost every issue - social, economic, cultural, political - and every regime under fierce public scrutiny." This can lead to constructive change, and Lynch thoroughly and thoughtfully illustrates why this is so important.

Thanks to Philip for the kind review!
(cross-posted to the Voices Blog)

Praktike

While I was out of town, Praktike posted his own first thoughts on Voices:

The book, I think, sits in an unusual spot by straddling the peer-review world of academia--wherein each term must be carefully defined and supported, cites are a must, and the evaluation of current events within the context of the literature are obligatory-- and the "public sphere" of Foreign Affairs and The National Interest, wherein the question that must always be answered is: what are the implications of X for US policy? The book's serious tone thus leaves little room, unfortunately, for Aardvarkian humor or extensive ruminations about the respective merits of various Lebanese pop tarts.

This is true... blogs are almost by definition more fun than scholarly work.   Although I did manage to work a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer into my 2003 Foreign Affairs article, thanks to the eternal graciousness of the managing editor!

He goes on:

Hence, Lynch has based his analysis on hundreds of transcripts of the most important al-Jazeera talk shows as well as op-ed pieces in major Arab newspapers. For whatever reason, there is an unfortunate tendency among us in the West to discount Arab voices and project our own views upon Arabs. So throughout the book, Lynch scrupulously follows his own advice by treating Arab opinions with the seriousness they deserve.

That doesn't mean he views the new Arab public sphere uncritically. Lynch is wary about making uncaveated claims about the potential for satellite television to precipitate liberal reform, acknowledging the prevalence of illiberal voices and a tendency toward sensationalism, to say nothing of the daunting concrete limitations on the Arab media in effecting change in the real world. But Lynch stresses that the fact that dialogue and debate is taking place is itself "revolutionary." This position should be familiar to anyone who has followed Lynch's writing, either on the blog or in print.

And this:

So far, I've found the third chapter of the book to be the most interesting. Here Lynch focuses on the debate within the elite Arab print media over the first Gulf War and the subsequent UN sanctions regime against Iraq, which to my knowledge hasn't been told with this level of detail and with such a focus on Arab public opinion. While Arabs and Arab regimes disagreed about what to do about Saddam, a public consensus did develop concerning the plight of the Iraqi people, which eventually forced unelected leaders to at least nod in the direction of the so-called "Arab street."

Americans, I think, were largely ignorant of the genuine ferment that the coverage of suffering Iraqi children was causing in the Arab world and in the Arab street. The chapter strongly implies that the sanctions were not sustainable both because of the passions they were arousing in the region and because of the growing success of the Iraqi government in undermining them. Attempts by the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and the Iraqi exile opposition to persuade others that Saddam and not the UN and the United States were responsible for the plight of the Iraqi people were largely unsuccessful.

I don't want to quote any more of his preliminary review, since you should click the link and read it over there.   More later.