Arab satellite televisionThe world through their eyes

With 150 channels to choose from, Arabs are arguing, comparing and questioning as never before. Will this burst of freer speech bring democracy any closer?

THE dusty little town of Laayoune lies at the extreme western end of the Sahara desert, or about as far as you can get from Arabia and still be in an Arabic-speaking land. Before this century its only links to the Arab east were shortwave radio, old newspapers, the occasional Egyptian movie, and the talk of pilgrims returning from the haj. But now the clamour of places such as Beirut and Baghdad has come to Laayoune's doorstep: indeed, right into its living rooms, 24 hours a day.

Across the Arab world, the impact of the satellite dish has been profound. It has not merely broken the isolation of Laayoune and countless other towns and villages (roads and telephones can do that). It has not simply exposed their people to extremes of behaviour, from stark pornography to fervid fundamentalism (the internet can do that). Satellite television has created a sense of belonging to, and participation in, a kind of virtual Arab metropolis. It has begun to make real a dream that 50 years of politicians' speeches and gestures have failed to achieve: Arab unity.

That dream remains, in fact, a distant prospect. Despite lofty talk, the ties that bind Arabs remain largely ones of sentiment and memory, as well as the broadly shared Muslim faith and Arabic language. Yet all these common things are strengthened by satellite television.

Arabic is a diverse, richly layered language. Natives of Laayoune still speak their local dialect. But now that they hear a range of usages every day—from the classical speech of literature to its many regional derivatives—these no longer strike them as over-formal or exotic. The written language taught in schools, known as modern standard Arabic, used to be forgotten in daily affairs. Now it has come alive as a real spoken tongue, accessible not just to the educated few, but to everyone.

For religious instruction Arabs are as likely, now, to tune directly to Mecca as to seek opinions from the neighbourhood mosque. They may follow one of two private Saudi-owned channels that propagate the kingdom's arid take on the faith. Viewers bored by bearded sheikhs may turn instead to TV preachers such as Egypt's Amr Khaled, whose similarly conservative message comes packaged in a snappy blazer and jeans.

Such satellite fare has speeded the homogenisation of Muslim religious practice. In January, for example, Saudi religious authorities abruptly announced, a day earlier than expected, the start of the Muslim lunar month of Dhu'l Hijja. During four days of this month pilgrims perform the haj rituals at Mecca, while fellow Muslims celebrate the Eid holiday. In the past, other governments could have ignored the Saudi call, citing reliance on their own astronomers. But the haj is now broadcast live. Despite the global chaos as millions scrambled to change their Eid plans, every Muslim country except Indonesia felt obliged to follow the Saudi line, for the simple reason that their people could see their co-religionists gathered at Mecca's Mount of Mercy.

Local issues still inflame passions in places like Laayoune. But so do the travails of Iraqis and Palestinians, 3,000 miles away. Saturation coverage has made provincial Arabs as keenly aware of the issues and personalities involved as the café pundits of Cairo and Damascus. And when the politically minded of the Arab periphery think of making noise about their own concerns, their preferred forum is now not the local press. It is chat shows and news bulletins beamed from distant Qatar and Dubai—home, respectively, to the Arab world's two most popular news channels, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya.

Al-Jazeera, by far the best known among some 150 Arab satellite channels, boasts 40m-50m regular followers. The entertainment channel MBC has even more. When their smaller rival, Beirut-based Future TV, ran a song contest last summer, 15m viewers voted on the outcome: more Arabs than have ever cast ballots in a free election.


On his favourite channel

Critical voices

The winner of the song contest, a Libyan student of dentistry, was instantly, if briefly, the most famous Libyan in the world after the country's leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. This underscores another reason for the potency of Arab satellite TV. Until a decade ago, rulers such as Mr Qaddafi were assured of captive audiences. The only critical voices were likely to come from Bush House in London, via the BBC's Arabic Service, or from the French government's racier Radio Monte Carlo, or from the propaganda broadcasts of neighbouring, hostile regimes.



Jazeera Storm

It is not just inadvertent imagery that can induce a certain restlessness. The most popular programmes on Arab satellite TV happen to be those whose interest in posing questions, and stimulating appetites for change, is pretty frank. The pioneer, and still the leader, in this kind of programming is al-Jazeera.

This current-events channel, based in Qatar, began broadcasting in 1996, when it luckily picked up much of the London-trained manpower from a stillborn venture by the BBC into Arab satellite TV. Generously funded by Qatar's liberal-minded emir, and given a long leash, al-Jazeera burst on to the scene with a shockingly new approach. It was slick and fast-paced, serious and playfully critical. It presented contrasting, often clashing opinions, yet from a pan-Arab viewpoint. It dug into buried corners of the Arab past. And it had reporting from around the globe.

Particularly appealing to the Arab public was a programme called “The Opposite Direction”, a 90-minute showdown between guest opponents, where viewers were encouraged to call and join in. A recent trailer for the programme posed typically blunt questions: “Why is it that when an Arab leader dies, people moan and wail as if the nation can't live without him? What have these leaders ever achieved for us? Aren't they symbols of corruption and backwardness and tyranny?”

The loud airing of such talk has had a cathartic effect not just on Arab audiences, but on the profession of journalism. “The fact is that before us the Arab media were controlled by political and security apparatuses, which dictated what went in,” says Jihad Ballout, the channel's spokesman. “Al-Jazeera transgressed all that. People suddenly had access to all kinds of information that had been suppressed for 40 years. This forced regimes to grudgingly allow a bigger margin of freedom.” His view is widely shared.

Inevitably, al-Jazeera came under attack. When its reporters broke an Arab taboo and interviewed Israeli officials on camera, some said the channel was a Zionist conspiracy. Others whispered that it was controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, pointing to the prominence in its religious programming of Yusuf Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric with past links to the group. Numerous governments, alarmed that al-Jazeera granted airtime to their opponents, clamped restrictions on its reporters and warned advertisers to spend their money elsewhere.

Al-Jazeera's popularity grew nonetheless. A first big boost came with the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in October 2000. Al-Jazeera's live, graphic reporting of the bloodshed riveted Arab audiences, prompting a region-wide groundswell of sympathy for the Palestinians. A year later, its lucky decision to open a bureau in Kabul gave al-Jazeera an exclusive window on to the launch of America's own war on terror. Being Arab and Muslim, its reporters gained privileged access to the losing side on the Afghan front, and it became the outlet of choice for Osama bin Laden in his efforts to rally Muslims to his cause.

Tilted against America

Soon after, al-Jazeera raised American hackles further with reporting on Iraq that was similarly determined to give equal time to both sides of the conflict. American officials who had previously praised the channel's objectivity—a White House aide once described it as “a beacon of light”—now accused it of being a mouthpiece for their enemies. Al-Jazeera's slant could be seen not so much in its highly professional news reporting as in the editing and framing of stories, the angling of interviewers' questions, and the choice of sound and imagery for the dramatic plug spots that fill time between programmes. But this kind of tilt was, of course, just as evident in the enthusiastic coverage of many American networks.

When American warplanes (accidentally, or not?) bombed al-Jazeera's Kabul office and later its bureau in Baghdad, much of the Arab audience assumed this to be a direct expression of American ire. These and subsequent troubles—including the banning of al-Jazeera by Iraq's interim government and the recent jailing, in Spain, of a star reporter on charges of aiding terrorists—only added to the channel's mystique. It was seen as the underdog, a besieged voice of truth.

Perhaps inevitably, this perception infects al-Jazeera's style of reporting. Its coverage of Iraq has often been emotional, and has reflected a bias towards the Sunni, Arab nationalist view that sees armed resistance to occupation as noble and legitimate. Yet, overall, America's declining image among Arabs has owed less to al-Jazeera than to unpopular American policies, and to Washington's ineptness at selling them. Captain Josh Rushing, who was a military spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, says now that his commanders should have realised that the best way to reach Arab audiences was via al-Jazeera. “They should have identified this as mission critical,” he told an interviewer from America's partly state-funded PBS network last year. Amazingly, the American government still has no permanent, camera-trained spokesman capable of delivering its views in polished Arabic.

Surveys conducted by Shibley Telhami of Washington's Brookings Institution have found little difference in the attitudes towards America—or indeed towards most issues—between Arabs who watch al-Jazeera and those who don't. He has even found that, in some Arab countries, viewers of America's CNN were more anti-American than viewers of al-Jazeera. The fact is that Arab audiences often harbour what look, to westerners, like rather extreme views. According to Mr Telhami, for example, al-Jazeera was the most popular source of news in Jordan for coverage of the intifada until 2003. But when it shifted its news emphasis to Iraq, it lost many of its Jordanian viewers (most of whom are Palestinian) to al-Manar, the bombastic satellite channel run by the radical Shia militia in Lebanon, Hizbullah.

Indeed, al-Jazeera has often exercised a moderating effect. Mr Qaradawi, its star preacher, recently excoriated a viewer who called in to his show, “Sharia and Life”, to denounce democracy and freedom as “infidel” concepts. The channel refuses to air the snuff videos produced by Iraqi kidnappers. Yet a recent (wholly unscientific) electronic poll it conducted found that a shocking 80% of respondents thought the killing of western hostages was legitimate. Perhaps, suggests Mr Ballout, this is because al-Jazeera tends to attract the kind of people who are frustrated at having no outlet for their opinions.

It so happens that a practical test of what Arab audiences really think is now under way. For the first time, al-Jazeera has a serious, dangerous rival. The competitor is not al-Hurra, an American government channel beamed from Washington that has struggled, and largely failed, to convince Arabs that it is objective. It is the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya, a 24-hour news channel based in Dubai.

At its launch early in 2003, al-Arabiya looked very much like al-Jazeera, but with flashier graphics. This was not surprising, since the Qatari channel had set the standard, and al-Arabiya actually poached some of its best-known newscasters. Al-Arabiya's coverage of the Iraq war—which again, fortuitously, earned it an instant audience—was also similar to al-Jazeera's.

Last year, however, al-Arabiya's owner, who happens to be a brother-in-law of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, put a new, staunchly pro-American editor in charge. Since then the two channels' coverage—and particularly their coverage of Iraq—has diverged dramatically.

A muscular rival

Watching their contrasting takes on November's offensive by American marines in Fallujah, for example, one might have thought they were covering different events. While al-Jazeera focused on civilian deaths and heroic resistance, al-Arabiya pictured the storming of a terrorist haven. Before Iraq's election, the Dubai channel broadcast saturation get-out-the-vote advertising, as well as a four-part exclusive interview with the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi. While senior American officials shun al-Jazeera, President George Bush has twice granted its rival exclusive interviews.

Al-Arabiya's chief editor, Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, is unapologetic. “We attract liberal-minded people,” he says. “Jazeera attracts fanatics.” Officials at al-Jazeera hit back. “They are losing legitimacy fast,” says Ahmed al-Sheikh, an impish Palestinian who is the Qatari channel's hard-worked news editor. “Al-Arabiya can be more popular with governments and get more access, but we can't compromise. We've got to uphold our principles, and that is much more important.”

In some markets, it is true, al-Jazeera retains its edge. A recent survey of satellite news viewers in Cairo, for example, found that while 88% watched al-Jazeera regularly, the tally for its rival was 35%. But more Iraqis watch al-Arabiya than al-Jazeera, and in the key market of Saudi Arabia the two run neck-and-neck. The question of access is also more important than Mr Sheikh admits. While al-Arabiya is welcome nearly everywhere, al-Jazeera suffers under bans not only in official Washington, but in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis will not even let its crews in to cover the haj.

And al-Arabiya has another advantage: money. Its mother company happens to own both MBC and Channel 2, the region's two most profitable commercial channels. It is also beginning to earn significant advertising revenue itself: $10m last year, it claims, which went some way to covering operating costs estimated at around $75m.

Al-Jazeera, with a similar budget, earns no advertising income except from some state-owned Qatari firms. The reason is simple. Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for four-fifths of Arab advertising spending, dislikes its politics. The kingdom's rulers also have little time for Qatar's, whom they tend to view as too big for their boots.

While expensive to run, al-Jazeera may on balance have been good for the tiny emirate. Qatar has gained both brand-recognition and a reputation for tolerance from hosting the station. But taken together, the accumulated bother of protecting and financing al-Jazeera appears to be swaying the Qataris.

Recently, the emirate announced it was preparing to privatise the channel. If it means it, and al-Jazeera is truly to be sold outright, its buyer will be pressed hard to make a deal with the Saudis. That would be a shame, because except for al-Jazeera, Saudi Arabia, through various proxies and deals, holds a virtual monopoly of the Arab satellite ether. In other words, Arabs may soon look back on the age of al-Jazeera as an all-too-brief flowering of critical, independent journalism.

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