By
Marc Lynch
In a March 25 interview
with The Washington Post, American Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice marveled at the contribution of satellite television
to the emerging democratic trend in the Middle East and the
world. Watching the Lebanese protestors in the streets, she
argued, inspired people around the globe to take matters into
their own hands and demand democracy. This represents quite
a change for the Bush administration, and for mainstream American
opinion. Far more common over the last four years have been
fierce denunciations of Al Jazeera for allegedly spreading anti-Americanism
and extremism in the region. From Fouad Ajami's lurid portrayal
of Al Jazeera in The New York Times Magazine as
a cesspool of irrational anti-American hatred, to widespread
denunciations of the Qatari station as "Jihad TV"
or "Hate America TV," to sharp statements by administration
officials castigating the Arab media for allegedly inciting
or even supporting the insurgency in Iraq, the Arab media has
largely been cast in the villain's role. After Arab satellite
television coverage magnified the impact of the Iraqi elections
and the Lebanese opposition protests following the assassination
of Rafiq al-Hariri, however, Americans are beginning to realize
the potentially positive role which the Arab media can play
in bringing democratic reform to the region.
What are the potential
contributions of Arab satellite television to regional transformation?
Talk shows on Al Jazeera and other Arab television stations
have contributed enormously to building the underpinnings of
a more pluralist political culture, one which welcomes and thrives
on open and contentious political debate. News coverage of political
protests and struggles has opened up the realm of possibility
across the Arab world, inspiring political activists and shifting
the real balance of power on the ground. But satellite television
alone will not suffice to overcome entrenched authoritarian
regimes. Nor are its political effects always constructive.
Satellite television has had a vital role in driving underlying,
structural change in the Arab world, but expectations that it
alone can bring about democratic transformations should not
be exaggerated.
Talk Shows
The first transformative
feature of the satellite television stations comes from the
political talk shows. Al Jazeera's programs famously revolutionized
political discourse in the Arab world, fearlessly tackling taboos
of all stripes. Open, frank discussions of social issues (AIDS,
education, women's rights), economic issues, and especially
political issues brought those subjects which had previously
been discussed only in private salons or in limited circulation,
elite newspapers into everyone's living rooms. That Faisal Al
Qassem's provocative program The Opposite Direction became
one of the most watched and discussed television shows in the
Arab world virtually overnight in the late 1990s attests to
the ravenous hunger for such frank political debate.
Perhaps too much
has been made of the transgressive nature of these programs,
what Mamoun Fandy calls their "political pornography."
Smashing taboos is exciting, and wins market share for a time
(until fatigue sets in, and audiences start to crave more extreme
pleasures), but is not in and of itself politically transformative.
As Jon Alterman has argued, the framing of political discourse
around a confrontation between two radical extremes actually
strengthens existing governments by leaving the status quo as
the only seemingly sensible, viable alternative. Pairing the
Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi against "terrorism expert"
Steven Emerson to discuss the possibility of a "dialogue
of civilizations," or inviting Daniel Pipes to debate old-school
Arab nationalists about the implications of Bush's re-election,
does little to bridge gaps or seek common ground. And allowing
angry talk can be a mechanism for allowing people to blow off
steam without taking any real action.
But Alterman, Fandy,
and other critics similarly fail to offer a full account of
these talk shows. They fall into what one might call a "Faisal-centric"
view, one which takes The Opposite Direction not simply
as a paradigm, but as typical. But it is not. Other programs
on Al Jazeera are far less polarized, and emphasize argument
and debate rather than breaking taboos for its own sake. While
one popular Al Jazeera program is called "With No Limits,"
epitomizing the transgressive urge, the station's motto is famously
"The Opinion ... and the Other Opinion." Ghassan bin
Jiddu's Open Dialogue, for example, often invites moderate
guests, and his format (a small studio audience invited to ask
questions) and style encourage a more reasoned debate. Minbar
Al Jazeera usually simply presents a host taking calls on
camera. One recent episode of Voice of the People presented
a stellar lineup of thoughtful guests, along with focus groups
assembled in four different Arab cities, to discuss the results
of an online poll about the "priorities of the Arab street."
And outside of Al
Jazeera, many more programs can be found which bear little resemblance
to the pyrotechnics of The Opposite Direction. Hisham
Milhem and Ghiselle Khoury on Al Arabiya, James Zogby on Abu
Dhabi TV, LBC's Al Hadath, and many other popular programs
depart from this mold. The Faisal-centric view is useful for
those who wish to portray the talk shows as a source of extremism
and division, but it poorly captures the reality of a diverse,
competitive, and evolving arena.
Alterman and others
are right, however, to warn that television talk shows can not
stand in for democracy. What one enthusiast once called the
"Democratic Republic of Al Jazeera" does not exist.
The Arab public has no way of directly influencing state policies,
and no institutional means for translating a consensus into
practical reality.
Put simply, Arab talk shows can not stand in for the hard work
of politics: party organization, mobilization, bargaining, and
negotiation. Growing recognition of this reality contributed
to a noticeable coarsening of political discourse over the last
few years. After the heady excitement aroused by the success
of Arab mobilization in forcing Arab states to show support
of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, as well as the simple success
of getting Arabs out into the streets to demonstrate their own
commitment to each other and to themselves, nothing of consequence
followed. Even if this vocal Arab consensus could score tactical
victories, such as scuppering Vice President Dick Cheney's attempts
to build support for an invasion of Iraq in a spring 2002 trip
to the region, it could not affect the ultimate outcome. Nor
did the angry criticism of Arab authoritarianism and a stagnant
status quo seem to translate into any immediately noticeable
democratic improvements. The new Arab media could build enthusiasm,
but could not translate its excitement into political outcomes.
That said, I would
argue that the talk shows have had two long-term and profound
transformative effects. First, they have contributed to building
the foundations for a pluralistic political culture by affirming
and demonstrating the legitimacy of disagreement. In a political
culture otherwise dominated by authoritarian states with a mobilizational,
monolithic nationalist discourse in which dissent equals treason,
or else by an emergent Islamist trend seeking to impose a religious
uniformity upon society, the centrality of argument and disagreement
to the satellite television talk shows can not be over-stated.
They demonstrated in the most direct way possible not only that
Arabs disagreed about the great issues of the day, but that
one could disagree publicly without compromising one's authenticity
or credibility.
Second, the talk
shows have contributed to the evisceration of the political
legitimacy of the Arab status quo. Relentless criticism of all
aspects of social, economic, and political life has exposed
the cruel failings of the Arab order for all Arabs to see. The
cumulative effect of program after program in which Arab leaders
are savaged for their failures, where the Arab street is ridiculed
for its impotence, where the Arabs are held up as "the
joke of the world," where sham elections and cults of personality
are mocked is to generate an urgency for change and impatience
with traditional excuses. The talk shows may not have caused
any of the current upheavals, but they prepared the ground for
them by legitimizing dissent and exposing the regimes.
Demonstration
Effects
A second level of
transformation comes from the direct political impact of straightforward
news coverage. Before the satellite television revolution, most
Arab viewers depended on terrestrial state television, and perhaps
on foreign radio broadcasts. Neither gave direct, immediate
visual access to political developments abroad, in other Arab
countries, or even in their own countries. When Egyptians protested
in one part of Cairo, for example, other Egyptians outside that
neighborhood would have heard about it only via word of mouth,
since Egyptian television would not have covered it. Now, virtually
any protest or election or political event is immediately covered
by Al Jazeera and its many competitors.
Paired with the talk
shows, it establishes a common, core Arab narrative which in
the past had existed only in a more abstract sense. When Al
Jazeera covers events in Algeria, in Bahrain, in Egypt, in Jordan,
it does not cover them as isolated events. It insistently places
them within a single Arab story, drawing connections by implication
(in the news) and explicitly (in the talk show discussions).
This can lead to political outcomes which some might find disturbing:
for example, the rise in anti-Americanism in the region since
2002 might well be partially explained not simply by the appearance
of graphic, bloody images from Palestine or Iraq, but also by
the common narrative linking America as the common denominator
for each of these otherwise distinct issues.
An
Iraqi celebrates her vote. |
But it has also been
essential to outcomes which many see as vital positive developments.
The current wave of reformist enthusiasm in the region may or
may not have been sparked by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
-- whether by emboldening opponents or increasing pressure on
dictators -- but there is no doubt that the Arab satellite television
stations have been necessary. For the Iraqi elections to have
had an impact on Arabs elsewhere, they needed to see the images
of jubilant Iraqis voting -- and they needed to see them on
Al Jazeera, not on stations seen as vehicles for American propaganda,
such as the American Alhurra. The Kifaya ("Enough")
movement in Egypt, protesting the possibility of President Mubarak's
running for a fifth term, was well-served by Al Jazeera, and
to a lesser extent by other Arab satellites, which gave its
early demonstrations both prominence and some protection through
their coverage. Satellite television coverage of the arrest
of opposition leader Ayman Nour kept the issue alive, where
scores of previous Egyptian arrests of dissidents had passed
with little notice. In Jordan, the authorities made a point
of barring the satellite television cameras from the area before
riot police cracked down on an Amman protest on behalf of the
professional associations. For democratic dominoes to fall,
people need to see them falling.
It is Lebanon, of
course, where this has had the greatest impact. It is hard to
over-state the importance of the televised coverage of the early
opposition protests in shaping Arab (and Western) public opinion
after the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. Syrian President
Bashar al-Asad's frustrated demand that the television cameras
"zoom out" to reveal the true size of the protests-and
the inspired response of the protestors, who took up Assad's
challenge with signs and chants demanding that the cameras do
just that -- demonstrates the general recognition of the media's
effect on the political dynamics. Where in the past Arabs might
have been expected to flock to the side of a beleaguered and
targeted Syria, this time they did not. An Al Jazeera online
poll taken in the first weeks after the protest found some 90
percent of respondents supporting a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
The powerful images from the streets resonated with the core
Al Jazeera identity and narrative: the Arab people fighting
against the repression and corruption of Arab regimes. The massive
Hizbullah counter-demonstration complicated this narrative,
suggesting that Lebanon was indeed divided.
Protestors
in the streets of Beirut. |
The demonstration
effects in recent protests have been fascinating to observe.
In Jordan, protestors self-consciously imitated the Lebanese
decision to use the national flag exclusively rather than Islamist
or party symbols. In Lebanon, protestors imitated the symbols
of Egypt's Kifaya. In many Arab -- and non-Arab -- countries,
the Lebanese protests have been inspirational. Watching this
popular activism on television suggests new political possibilities,
new openings, and gives new confidence. One Al Jazeera cameraman
may be worth many thousands of protestors when it comes to generating
political power.
As with the talk
shows, this alone will not be enough. Arab regimes are resilient
and tough, and will not easily surrender their prerogatives.
They will no doubt look to weather the storm with token concessions
while blocking further reaching changes, as is arguably the
case with Egypt's move to presidential elections. As Egypt's
forceful blocking of a Muslim Brotherhood protest on March 29
reminds us, these states hold great repressive power against
which the publicity of satellite television offers only weak
protection. Street demonstrations do not necessarily translate
into sustained political mobilization, particularly where a
moment of enthusiasm conceals real differences in political
agendas and interests. And the television broadcasts will show
the frustrations and the failures as well as the dizzying moments
of success: not only the triumphant Iraqi elections, but also
the months of political stalemate and continuing violence which
followed.
Arab television alone
can not overthrow governments, nor can it create democracies
(two very different propositions). But satellite television
has transformed what the political scientist Sidney Tarrow called
the "repertoire of contention," expanding the realm
of political possibility for Arab citizens. Rather than view
the impact of satellite television in terms of single moments
of change, or pin great hopes for revolutionary change on its
broadcasts, we should focus on these deeper, less obvious but
more profound ways in which it is refashioning the political
terrain.
Marc Lynch
is associate professor of political science at Williams College.
He received his PhD from Cornell University. His second book,
Voices of a New Arab Public: Iraq, al Jazeera, and a Changing
Middle East, will be published by Columbia University Press
later this year.
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