Essays
How Arab TV stations are changing the world
It is particularly interesting to observe how Arab television stations, born in an extremely authoritarian socio-political context, and not in line with the typical western tradition of freedom of expression, have been able at times to influence not only their own media system but even the global one. The transnational perspective was already very strong in the past decades, but only the introduction of the satellites across the region at the beginning of the Nineties breathed new life into this project, thanks to the creation the first real regional platform. According to the Allied Media Corporation studies, Al Jazeera reaches an average audience of 50 million viewers and with very high percentages in all the Arab countries. At least 44%, becoming a network that is so transnational to be recognized as the Arab voice in the global arena of information.
The global challenge faced by journalists
The audiences are watching media that reconfirm their ideologies. The global scene has become more complex and complicated, and so working as a journalist. Because of this complexity, we, as journalists, tend to simplify things. After 9/11 there is a kind of “mind for emergency”: big events and catastrophes produces adrenaline shots inside the newsrooms and that makes it more difficult to manage a balanced information, also because of the strong competition amongst the main global media that all want to show off their muscles.
The future of the Public Service Broadcasting Model
Since the early 1990s, governments have sought to bolster their legitimacy by presenting their radio and television services as the best champions of the public interest. In the meantime, non-state broadcasters’ have struggled to establish a foothold in the regional Arab media market by offering Western-style radio and television contents and formats. By 2007, there were over 400 satellite television channels available to viewers across the Arab region in addition to hundreds of radio broadcasting outlets, many of them with clear local community orientations. Academic and political discussions of the future of broadcasting systems have championed the institution of the public service model as a third alternative for the region’s radio and television services. Government broadcasting the Arab World, as a legacy of the pre-globalization era, is here to stay, yet on totally different terms.
Arab Journalism: Between De-Westernization and Objectivity
The growing ranks of media experts expressing opinions on the state of Arab journalism have come to the conclusion that, in spite of the increased number of sources, origins and contents, they all come under the heading of something that is ideologically evil. This has justified a significant number of institutions (both governmental and non) with the objective of providing assistance to improve Arab journalism and encourage greater freedom for the media in that region. Arab scholars, however, tend to see things differently and believe that Western programming in Arabic is in fact an euphemism for the word "propaganda".
A great deal of sensationalism, but little real understanding
The use of new technologies in the media world has resulted in an increased emphasis on dramatic but unrelated events taking place in the world, and reported in a manner that leaves viewers feeling frightened, confused and ready to attack the “bad guys”. Now more than ever, news has become a review of events captured on camera, a production of soft news, fragmented information, instead of hard news, capable of providing indications regards to the context and also explanations with greater depth. But those exposed to this kind of news show a greater inclination to support simple or naive, or even belligerent reactions to events.
The Media used as Weapons? Crossed views between East and West
To what extent can the East and the West inflict damage on one another through the media? And how much good can they do each other? A number of television producers – such as Al Jazeera in Arabic at a pan-Arab level, and like CNN, BBC World, and Sky, in English at a global level – have begun to provide information (as well as entertainment and all the rest) for supranational audiences. In places not covered by satellite TV there is always the internet. We need to address the consequences of this new situation, as well as initiatives that could be taken in this new era, to encourage the understanding of others and lower the risk of a radicalization of the images of others, to then worsen them in our own imagination and vice versa.
In search of enemies
I think Carl Schmitt was right in saying that politics needs an enemy. Must this enemy necessarily be the ‘other’, and hence a political opponent or someone who is diverse? Could the enemy instead be hatred, intolerance and such other issues, so that the message conveyed through the media would become very different? One could say that this does not attract attention. This is not true. Political leaders have an undisputed advantage compared to anyone else. If they have something significant to say they obtain attention and visibility. Ordinary people can preach wonderful things without anyone paying any attention, while statements by national, regional and local political leaders become news, and not necessarily bad news.
We need news that is worthy of trust
One aspect that needs serious consideration is that, within limits, there is a pre-fabrication of facts by the media; how images are chosen, which news is broadcast first. In other words, there is an unavoidable selection, a prejudgment. Secondly, there will never be media without tendencies. I believe one should begin by educating people about the media, adding media studies to school and university curricula. We must ensure that the public is capable of dealing directly with the media, of judging and understanding the mechanisms. This – I believe – is one of the key issues, because this kind of education would influence the media too.
Can Islam Accommodate Democracy Or Democracy Accommodate Islam?
It is absurd to think that Islam cannot accommodate democracy or that democracy cannot accommodate Islam. It is not Islam per se, but religion tout court that stands in some tension with secularism and with democracy – a tension that is healthy rather than unhealthy in a free society. Like Christianity and other religions, Islam is a religion practiced in many cultures and societies, sectarian, stratified, schismatic and pluralistic. To the degree Islam is fundamentalist, so is religion in many places, because in our secular age religion is under siege and fundamentalism is above all a reaction to religion under siege.
A “post-secular” society – what does that mean?
I have thus far taken the position of a sociological observer in trying to answer the question of why we can term secularized societies yet “post-secular”. In these societies, religion maintains lays claim to a public influence and relevancesignificance, while the secularistic certainty is losing ground that religion will disappear worldwide in the course of accelerated modernization is losing ground. Above all, three overlapping phenomena converge to create the impression of a worldwide ‘resurgence of religion’: the missionary expansion, a fundamentalist radicalization, and the political instrumentalization of the potential for violence innate in many of the world religions.