One interesting point which I see reading between the lines of some of the TBS Journal articles is that Broadcasting Board of Governors and al-Hurra officials seem to be backing away from their boosterist claims about impressive market share in favor of claims that they are making a difference, providing an alternative, establishing credibility, that sort of thing. That change in their claims seems wise, given two surveys of Arab television viewing preferences by the Arab Advisors Group which seem to confirm the more skeptical views expressed by the station's critics.
In Cairo, al-Jazeera remains number one by far, with 88% of people with a satellite dishing watching it; 35% watch al-Arabiya, and 5% watch al-Hurra. Do they consider them trustworthy? Al-Arabiya scored 32.6% "very trustworthy", 42.9% "trustworthy", 21.9% "somewhat trustworthy"; and 2.7% "not trustworthy"; the comparable numbers for al-Jazeera were 58.2% "very", 27.5% "trustworthy", 11.5% "somewhat"; and 2.9% "not."; for al-Hurra, 8.8% said "very trustworthy", 26.9% "trustworthy", 35.1% "somewhat", and 29.2% not. Funny, that's not the way the BBG tells it.
In Jordan, 72% watch al-Jazeera, 54% watch al-Arabiya, and 1.5% watch al-Hurra. As for "trustworthiness", al-Arabiya scores 61.2% "trustworthy", 34% "somewhat trustworthy", and 4.8% "not trustworthy"; al-Jazeera scores 63.8% "trustworthy", 32.7% "somewhat trustworthy", and 3.6% "not trustworthy"; al-Hurra scores 20% "trustworthy", 42.4% "somewhat trustworthy", and 37.6% "not trustworthy" (note that al-Hurra's trustworthy stats are based on a very small number of respondents, since so few people watch the station).
One intriguing point here - if you mash together the "somewhat trustworthy" category with the "trustworthy" and "very trustworthy" categories (which is what the BBG does, I believe) you can sort of reproduce the BBG findings about al-Hurra's trustworthiness. Lumping everything other than "not trustworthy" together, you can proclaim that 62.4% of Jordanians and 70.8% of Egyptians find al-Hurra at least "somewhat trustworthy".
But that's nuts. "Somewhat trustworthy" for a news agency is roughly the same as "somewhat pregnant." Take away the "somewhats" for everybody, and a truer picture emerges: in Jordan, 20% credibility for al-Hurra compared to roughly 61% for both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya; in Cairo, about 75% credibility for al-Arabiya, 86% for al-Jazeera, and 35% for al-Hurra.
Maybe the BBG should commission the Arab Advisors Group to carry out market research to, ahem, alleviate this problem?
Perhaps they should put a good friend, former Arab Advisors media man and private equity investor in charge of the whole bloody show, dump the morons in DC, move the studios to Cyprus or whatever....
Posted by: collounsbury | May 13, 2005 at 05:46 AM
I love how al-Hurra is based in Bethesda and is in that new complex of buildings right next to the Montgomery Mall and Lockheed HQ.
Posted by: praktike | May 13, 2005 at 09:22 AM
Collounsbury: I'm not sure Cyprus would work. It's a bit out of the way from the transportation, cultural, etc. nexuses that are typically required by media types.
However, moving it from DC would seem smart.
Praktike: Hey, at least they're not based in Alabama or something.
Posted by: Penta | May 15, 2005 at 01:15 PM
I was looking at the breakdowns by gender for the two surveys, and found something curious. (Note this is just me eyeballing their numbers not doing any actual analysis.) For al-Arabiya, al-Jazeera, and al-Hurra anyway (which I'm assuming are considered less "local" than the other Arab-run – as distinct from Arab-owned – sources), both surveys indicate distributions that are shaped about the same for males and females, but which peak in different places. However, in the Cairo data, the distribution peaks for females are shifted more toward the "trustworthy" end, while in the Jordan data, the distribution peaks for males are shifted more toward "trustworthy". In other words, it appears that in Cairo, on average, women find these outlets more trustworthy than men, while in Jordan the opposite is true. I don't know how much confidence to have in this observation, since some of the results are within the margin of error, but the pattern is there in each case. (And the pattern does not hold for the Arab outlets I'm considering more "local", where as often as not the distributions for males and females are not really the same shape.)
This can be contrasted with the results for the Western sources: CNN and BBC World. In Cairo, while the distributions are nowhere near as well matched in shape as they are for the Arab sources, the overall shift toward the "trustworthy" end for the female distribution is even more marked. However, the Jordan data for the Western outlets is very different from any other sample I looked at. Not only are the men far less trusting of these outlets than women, reversing the trend for the Arab sources, but this difference is far wider than for any of the other samples I've looked at in either dataset: CNN and BBC World were considered "Not trustworthy" by 55.0% and 59.1%, respectively, of men, but only 10.2% and 12.3% of women.
A superficially plausible conclusion is that Jordanian men have an exceptionally pronounced bias towards Arab-run media (even to a limited degree, al-Hurra – which is despised by Jordanian women to the same degree the Western outlets are by the men) as against Western media that is not widely shared by Jordanian women or by Cairenes of either gender. Is this a result that would be expected? And if so why?
Why are women's opinions in Cairo more similar to men's opinions than is the case in Jordan? Is the status of women very different in the two countries?
It also looks like, overall, Cairenes have a distinctly more positive view of Western media (including al-Hurra) than Jordanians. Is this expected? Is there any straightforward way to characterize the difference between Jordanian and Egyptian attitudes towards Americans or Westerners in general?
Is the real problem that I'm just reading way too much into these statistics?
Anyway, I'm probably asking too many questions. Many thanks for any attention you might be able to spare for them.
Posted by: plover | May 15, 2005 at 11:49 PM
Love your blog. Think we might ever get al-Jazeera broadcast in English for us stuck out here in stalingrad, tx actually if you guys ever do get democracy, would you mind getting out over here and give us a jump start? the toxic texan in the white house seemed to have outsourced our constitution and bill of rights. Also we got all these creepy american taliban from the christrian wingnuts now. they got some problems maybe we could hook em up with osoma they got soooooooooo much in common.
Peace
Posted by: judy | May 16, 2005 at 05:33 AM
plover - that is absolutely fascinating.. you looked at the data a lot more closely than I did! I have no real thoughts on how to explain those patterns, but I am reminded of this interesting focus group on women's issues that Brian Katulis did for Freedom House last year. If I recall correctly, he also found that men and women in Cairo looked for different things in the media, and appreciated them differently. If I have time later, I'll try to follow up.
Posted by: the aardvark | May 16, 2005 at 07:22 AM
I just happened on your post from back in February on the CSS study of Arab public opinion. You say that that figures for a "not positive at all" attitude toward the US are 58% and 63% respectively for Jordan and Egypt. This tends to confirm my general impression that Jordanians and Egyptians would have similar feelings about the US, which is one reason I thought the observations above worth noting.
Another idea that occurred to me today is that the disparities might have something to do with urban vs non-urban populations, i.e. if data were taken for all of Egypt rather than just Cairo would it look more like the Jordan data? I suppose there would even be some way to correct for the urban/non-urban proportions of each country's population.
Also, in that earlier post, when you say that "Egyptians almost unanimously despise Bush", are you saying that Bush is despised in Egypt more than in, say, Jordan or Morocco or Bahrain (if those are appropriate comparisons)?
Posted by: plover | May 16, 2005 at 10:00 PM
Couldn't say in Morocco and Bahrain, but I'd say that the numbers (and anecdotal evidence and cultural stuff and all that) put Egypt and Jordan pretty close together.
Posted by: the aardvark | May 17, 2005 at 07:04 AM