LONDON — If we live in the first stages of an “information age,” it is never too early to be sure that we do not repeat the excesses of the past. We should grasp the political and national nature of news and other forms of information, so that we do not replicate in modern, neocolonial media terms the historical colonial experience that peaked in the 19th Century. Media is both the new terrain and weapon of global domination and indigenous resistance between the American-led West and other parts of the world.
Some of these issues came into focus during a two-day gathering I just attended in London, the We Media Global Forum, organized by the U.S.-based The Media Center in association with BBC and Reuters. The discussion focused on the intensity and diversity of new forms of media that challenge the dominant mainstream companies that are either owned by governments or that are often heavily influenced by government policies.
Technology has opened millions of doors to individuals who can now create media “content” and disseminate it to the world through a variety of web-, cell phone- and iPod-based distribution channels. Bloggers on the web are the most dynamic segment on this new universe, offering expert and amateur views alongside live reportage, often from the safety and comfort of their home or office. Individuals also enrich the information universe with photographs, videos and audio broadcasts.
The mass media universe in the West is shifting from its traditional “megaphone broadcast” style to a “network facilitator” mode that incorporates and aggregates the work of “citizen journalists”. In the past two months alone, five million new blogs were created around the world.
Things are slightly different in the Arab world which is witnessing an explosion of new satellite television media, with around 300 stations in operation. This is a reaction to the grim legacy of state-run modern Arab mass media that had little credibility with their people. The global telecommunication revolution allowed independent Arab satellite news and entertainment stations to proliferate, responding to Arab citizens’ thirst for such services.
There proved to be high demand for news, views, sports, films, music videos, and sexy young ladies in tight shirts and jeans delivering the weather for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. The success of Al-Jazeera news channel, followed by MBC, Orbit, LBC, Al-Arabiyya and others, sends a sharp message: Ordinary Arab citizens want to exercise their right to access to information. In doing so, they feel liberated from the stultifying autocracy and police state subjugation of their mediocre state-run media that had treated them as idiot-subjects, not as mature adults and citizens with rights.
We now move into an even more fascinating era: a string of world powers is entering the global satellite television arena, broadcasting in English and Arabic, including BBC’s new Arabic service, Al-Jazeera’s new English service, and channels from France, Germany and Russia. The U.S. is already a player with its Arabic-language Al-Hurra television and Radio Sawa. Where European powers in the 19th Century sent their navies around the world to conquer new subjects, today the preferred instrument of global power is the satellite television station.
The diversity and dynamism of the indigenous Arab stations reflect two crucial political dimensions of the news business. Arab-owned stations more extensively report realities on the ground in the Middle East, including the impact of American, British and Israeli foreign policies, e.g., coffins of infants, babies and bridal parties killed in air attacks. They also accurately reflect street sentiment and public opinion throughout the region, which is usually critical of the Anglo-American tradition, Israel, and Arab ruling elites and regimes.
Such dissemination of Arab political sentiments often is unfairly attacked in the West as poor journalism or deliberate incitement against Israel and the United States; in fact, it is more in the realm of good, comprehensive journalism that honestly reports the full scope of events on the ground as well as ordinary people’s views about those events.
I am not surprised that many Western media and political leaders applaud the proliferation of news sources in their societies that more accurately report on their world, while they tend to condemn the same process when it happens in the Arab world in a way that is mostly critical of Anglo-American-Israeli policies. The extensive flow of better news and more views throughout the Arab world is more than a journalism phenomenon. It is a new form of anti-colonial liberation. It is a form of struggle and resistance directed against oppression, occupation, subjugation and denial that are practiced variously by Arab rulers, Israeli occupiers or Anglo-American invaders.
The global media is the new arena of the old dynamic of colonial domination and anti-colonial resistance. It is the only arena where Arabs have been able to fight the Anglo-Americans to a draw, or even to triumph in some cases. No wonder that the West, after regrouping, will now counter-attack with a slew of new Arabic television services.
Gentlemen — and sexy weather report babes — choose your weapons on your remote controls. We are in for an exciting duel.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 06 May 2006
Word Count: 846
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