Arab media is spreading its wings far and wide

It is widely reported that during a visit to Doha in 1999, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak toured the satellite TV station Al Jazeera. After a short stay in the station compound, he turned to his minister of information, Safwat Al Sharif, who was in his company, and said: "All this trouble [comes] from a match box like this?".

The Arab world hosts today some of the most genuine satellite TV channels – outside the western world – and in many ways they proved to be much more than a match box. The Arab media summit in Dubai this week is an additional effort in a consistent manner to develop the role of the Arab media in a changing and challenging political environment.

The summit comes at a time where the Arab and the Islamic world face challenges on the two most sensitive areas of ideas and convictions.

It also comes in the wake of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Arab media and for the first time ever provided a credible alternative for the dominant western media. By abandoning its passive role as a mere transmitter of news from western sources and by freeing itself from governmental control, the Arab media has proven beyond doubt that it reached the age of maturity and that it is up to the job.

Much attention

Prior to the satellite era, Arabs did not pay much attention to the media in their own countries. Pattern of reporting in the state-owned media, which was in many ways an extension of the views of their own governments, alienated Arab viewers and turned them to the western media for news and analysis.

Three major western broadcasting stations benefited from this situation: the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and Voice of America. For decades these three stations had dominated the Arab public opinion and shaped its views toward the outside world. During the 1991 Gulf war, it was the CNN. Arab state-owned media got most, if not all, of their news stories through an American lens.

In the latest Gulf War, the situation was completely different.

It was through the lenses of Abu Dhabi, Al Arabia, and MBC that the entire world came to know at first hand reporting what was happening in Baghdad and the battlefield.

Embedded journalism and the lap-dog role played by Fox News, CNN and BBC added to the credibility of the Arab media and turned it into an authoritative source for its viewers.

Beyond challenging the western media in its own sphere of influence, the impact of the new media on the Arab domestic domain is tremendous.

The new communication technology has played against the power of the Arab state and weakened its grip over the flow of information.

The role of the state as an educator, in the Gramscian sense, has also been challenged, if not totally disappeared.

Arab governments are no longer in a position to select for their people the type of news and information they want to know. Signals of Arab and foreign satellite channels are crossing national borders without permission or censorship of old. And with no integrated ideology to indoctrinate the masses, the massive state-owned media machinery has become all but irrelevant.

More important, perhaps, the new media is profoundly changing the political and social realities of the region. In many ways, it is contributing to the rise of civil society, the emergence of the public sphere, and maybe a dawn of new politics.

The popularity of the new Arab media, it must be said, however, does not emanate only from its endeavours to challenge the lifeless state agenda. It comes also as a result of reflecting views and opinions held by many in the region and are not reflected in the state-owned media. This interactive, two-way, communication is probably the most prominent feature of the new Arab media and the more lasting.

Belittle importance

Some may have attempted to belittle the importance of the new media in contributing to the political and social transformation of the Arab world. They dispute the relationship between technological change and openness of the political order in traditional societies.

They argue, the public sphere is not an open place of contestation, but structured wherein the rules of the game can be changed by an intrusive state at any time.

The Arab state has, thus, the capacity to absorb and adapt to the new developments assisted by cultural and religious essences, which make the people of the region immune to external influences.

This argument is flawed. It ignores that historically new technologies have led to major political, social and economic transformations in many societies and that the Arab world cannot be an exception merely because it is an Arab or Muslim.

It also overlooks the elitist aspect of the new technology. In addition, it is too early for the doubters to tell about the real impact of the new Arab media.

But, if the role of the new media is disputed in transforming the Arab world, its role in the war public diplomacy was, indeed, massive.

This latter aspect brought criticism from the US and made the Arab media target to its weaponry in both Iraq and Afghanistan, opening Washington up to charges of hypocrisy at precisely the time when it was pressing Arab governments to liberalise their political systems. US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, denounced Arab satellite channels for airing what he described as "vitriolic, irresponsible kinds of statements" when they broadcasted videotapes by Osama bin Laden.

Similar criticism was voiced when US war prisoners were paraded on Arab televisions during combat operations in Iraq. But, these attacks have backfired, forcing Washington to change tactics.

The Bush administration has decided to grant long-denied interviews with key policy makers to present US views about regional and international affairs. Now, there is even talk about buying time on Arab satellite channels to broadcast paid political advertisements.

Indeed, there are some negative aspects regarding the patterns of reporting in the Arab media, but they are bound to disappear. With time, effort and dedication, the new Arab media is likely to offset the deficit in the political influence of the Arab world, resulting mainly from the disunity of the Arabs.

Dr. Marwan Al-Kabalan is a scholar in international relations, UK