Khouri on Arab TV

Rami Khouri has a very good piece in the Daily Star about the Arab satellite television question.  Just a quick excerpt, then back to Christmasing:

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.

...

  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.

Not far from what I've been arguing the last few years, and nicely said. 

Comments

[Jay C]

"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."

And just WHAT exactly, does Mr. Khouri (or anyone for that matter)expect from the Adminstration of George W. Bush? The attitude of the White House and its official enablers is that even the American television media is "unreliable" and prone to broadcasting the "wrong" message most of the time (i.e. anything that reflects badly on the Administration or the country; not that the Bush gang make much of a differentiation between the two) - how are foreign media - especially in the Arab world - going to be thought of as any better?

Shooting the messenger may not be the best way to deal with bad news: but messengers are certainly an easier target!

[Moloch-Agonistes]

As an undergraduate over 1993-1995 I spent two years in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem talking with editors, journalists, and stringers for my senior thesis. After that experience, I have to say that complaints about al-Jazeera by right wing Americans and Israelis strike me as weirdly misplaced. Would they really want to go back to the situation before al-Jazeera? The news media split between party-funded organs, secretly party funded organs, and foreign news outlets that hired local journalists as stringers but published (usually without them on the byline) in a venue that barely anybody could afford, even if they understood it? Conspiracy theories published at will, with little sense of professional commitment to anything but? A million fragmented versions of events, so any consipracy theory could be proposed, with little chance of refutation?

Al-Jazeera is so obviously to the mutual advantage of both the populations in its satellite footprint and anybody who has ambitions to govern those populations that you have to wonder what the bitchers and moaners in Washington and Tel Aviv are thinking. I suppose one issue is it's "in your face," a document as opposed to the oral grapevine that most people got their real news from before al-Jazeera came along. But they'd better get used to it, because whatever the technological advances in coming decades, no one is ever going to make a product that consumers everywhere in the world are willing to accept. Regional satellite stations are the wave (so to speak) of the future, and if they don't like what it's saying then they ought to think about not pissing off people in the region so much.

[Chuck Dupree (Belisarius)]

Of course the real reason the Bush administration and its supporters complain about Al-Jazeera is that it's precisely "an accurate and timely reflection of how ordinary Arab men and women feel about their world". This tends to increase the sense that people can run their own affairs; in short, that democracy could work.

And of course "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." That's the problem: it's the threat of a good example.

The real goal of the US government has long been, to use the title of a Chomsky book, Deterring Democracy, both at home and abroad. Problem with that strategy is, it's a tough sell in the marketplace of ideas. So we talk about security and the spread of WMD. My opinion is, which are the two most dangerous states in the world today? The US and Israel. Let's get them to eliminate their nuclear arsenals in synch with the elimination of nukes by the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and whoever else is developing them (wouldn't you, given the difference between the US reaction to Iraq and North Korea?). Then we'll be talking about the spread of people power.

I'm not holding my breath.