The other day, instead of blogging, I spent a wonderful hour chatting with Brad Plumer of Mother Jones about my book, about the Arab media, and about American public diplomacy. The result can now be seen at the Mother Jones website.
Some excerpts:
President Bush was hardly the only person to see al-Jazeera as an enemy of the United States. Then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz accused al-Jazeera of "inciting violence" and "endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq. Middle East expert Walid Phares has labeled the network "Jihad TV." William F. Buckley, Jr., once wrote an editorial in the National Review demanding that al-Jazeera be "put out of business." To hear this side, the popular network—which from 1997 until about 2003 was the first and only truly independent Arab news channel out there—broadcasts nothing but sensationalist images that rile the Arab public and foment anti-Americanism. Is that all there is?
Far from it, argues Marc Lynch, in his new book, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. Insofar as U.S. policy in the Middle East is to promote democracy and reform, al-Jazeera—along with the networks that have recently sprung up to imitate it—may be America's most useful ally. In part thanks to new media such as satellite TV and the internet, a new public sphere is emerging in the Arab world, where political issues can be debated and the status quo criticized for the first time in history. Talk shows on al-Jazeera have provided a forum for Arabs to debate the future of the region, and to agitate for democratic change. (Indeed, al-Jazeera receives as much criticism from despotic Arab regimes as it does from the United States.) Says Lynch: "What I call the new Arab public is palpably transforming Arab political culture, [and] building the underpinnings of a more liberal, pluralist politics."
Surprisingly, it may be this new public sphere, rather than the war in Iraq or the Bush's administration's democracy rhetoric, that does the most to promote liberalization and reform in the Arab world. Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College and the (until recently) anonymous writer behind the popular blog Abu Aardvark, talked to Mother Jones about how the new Arab public is transforming the Middle East.
Here's one of the questions and answers:
MJ: Now how would you connect the 2005 protests in Egypt and Jordan, along with the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, to the creation of this new Arab public and the emergence of networks like al-Jazeera?
ML: Well there's a huge indirect relationship, and obviously each country in the Middle East has its own individual issues, but if you look at the changes going on across the region as a whole recently, I would say that this new Arab public is one of the most important driving forces. I think that al-Jazeera had a lot more to do with them than the Iraq war. Its talk shows had been talking democracy since the late 1990s, and if anything the invasion of Iraq drove democracy questions off the front burner for almost a year.
One reason is that there's a common Arab narrative that connects events in the region together: If you're Jordanian or Egyptian or Syrian and seeing what's going on in other countries, it's inspirational. A Syrian looking at the pro-democracy protests going on in Egypt might make a correlation, "Wow, maybe there is a possibility for us to protest and with the cameras on, maybe the government won't be quite so willing to shoot us as they would in the past."
There are also direct relationships. If you look at the people who are actually involved in the protests—if you look at the Kefaya movement in Egypt—those individuals often cut their teeth in the Palestine and Iraq protests. That's where they learned a lot of what they know about how to organize a protest and not get shut down by the secret police, how to build networks, etc. And one of the things those protestors have learned is that an al-Jazeera camera is worth many thousands of people. Al-Jazeera can really empower small dedicated groups of protestors, first by protecting them from reprisals—although that doesn't always work—but also, if a protest gets on al-Jazeera, then it gets international attention, and the local media can't ignore it.
That's one of the biggest differences between, say, 1995 and 2005. Back then, you could have had Kefaya protestors in the streets of Egypt, and nobody would've noticed. The regime could've safely ignored it because the local news would be ordered not to cover it. But now, al-Jazeera will cover a protest and suddenly it's on the international media, and everyone with a satellite can watch it, and now the Egyptian regime has to take it seriously.
Here's one more:
MJ: How do you think news outlets like al-Jazeera might start changing now that they're subject to a great deal of market pressure? Could there come a time when they have to start pander to audience preferences, becoming more sensationalist, and less able to create a forum for serious debate?
ML: Well, I think that the "al-Jazeera era" is really over. From 1997 until about 2003 al-Jazeera virtually defined this new Arab public. But now you have a more competitive market with al-Arabiya, which is the Saudi-funded satellite network and the main competitor, as well as smaller, local satellite television stations. If you live in, say, the United Arab Emirates, you very well might be watching Abu Dhabi TV or Dubai TV as much as you're watching al-Jazeera. Everybody watches al-Jazeera still, but it's no longer the only game in town.
So it's really competitive, and it's interesting to ask why it's so competitive, because none of these stations really sustain themselves through advertising, and so winning market share isn't necessary for revenue. Market share is more a measure of influence and political power, and these stations do take their relative importance very seriously.
But what that competition leads to is not 100 percent obvious. It might lead to pandering to the lowest common denominator, true, but one of the really interesting findings of a number of surveys that I've seen is that the more educated you are, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to have al-Jazeera as your top choice of network. Which suggests that even though it is often sensationalist, it's not necessarily appealing to the lowest common denominator. I mean, most of al-Jazeera's most important programs are essentially glorified versions of C-SPAN. We're not talking about reality TV here—although that's huge in the Middle East, as it happens.
In fact, the argument could be made, looking at what al-Arabiya has done in the last year or so, is that some networks are actually becoming less sensationalist, at the expense of market share. Al-Arabiya seems to be losing market share by pitching itself as the more moderate, if not pro-American, alternative to al-Jazeera. Interestingly, Al-Arabiya is actually doing a lot of what the U.S. wanted al-Hurra to do when it tried, unsuccessfully, to set that network up—challenging al-Jazeera, giving voice to more pro-American and what we consider moderate voices. The problem with al-Arabiya, though, is that it's owned by the Saudis, so it's very soft on the Saudis and tends to be much friendlier to Arab governments and the status quo than al-Jazeera is.
There's a lot more there.. I'd post it all, but I think that you should read it over at Mother Jones!
Comments