Martin Kramer's Middle East Quarterly has posted online an article about al Manar by Avi Jorisch. Jorisch argues that while people can disagree about the nature of al Jazeera, al Manar is a pure propaganda organ of Hizbollah. I haven't studied al Manar in enough detail to judge authoritatively, but this doesn't sound terribly wrong to me. I remember an al Jazeera talk show where one of the guests was al Manar's programming director, and he offered no apologies for a television station having a clear political mission, and rejected the idea of an objective media. While I'm always wary of articles attacking the Arab media, al Manar does seem to be a distinct and special case. I'm going to think about it and blog more about it over the next couple of weeks. At any rate, this is a welcome contribution to the small but growing literature on the Arab media.
Well, my old colleague Avi!
Without wishing to be unfair to him - I do despise Avi on a personal basis - Manar is clearly not an al-Jazeerah. The argument that it is one of the most popular I find a bit odd, although typical of Avi's take on things. I rarely hear people here in the Hashemite Kingdom talking about Manar. Probably more popular in the camps than elsewhere. I very much doubt it is one of the most watched stations in the Arab world. Maybe, just maybe in the Sham.
Posted by: collounsbury | March 12, 2004 at 07:35 PM
I would love to see some real market research on this. I've heard anecdotally that al Manar has been getting more popular the last couple of years, but it has never shown very well in any of the published surveys which ask what people watch. The two places where I've heard specific claims about its increased audience are Palestine and Iraq, but again I've not seen actual research to back this up. If I had to guess, I'd say that people watching it know exactly what they are watching - and tune in for the anti-Israeli spectacle more than for news per se.
Posted by: the aardvark | March 13, 2004 at 06:27 AM