MEDIA-MIDDLE EAST: Campaign to Defend Arab Image

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Jun 24 2002 (IPS) - Arab information ministers meeting in Cairo outlined plans last week for a 22.5 million dollar media campaign to defend the Arab image against defamation.

Ministers from 13 Arab states held talks at the Cairo headquarters of the 22-member Arab League to propose a media campaign against “Israeli and U.S. attempts to portray the Palestinian national struggle as unjustified terrorism.”

The campaign calls for assisting the Palestinian Authority in rebuilding media infrastructure destroyed by Israel, launching a new Arab satellite channel, and banning Arab television stations from interviewing Israeli officials.

The meeting also endorsed a proposal to establish a specialised media monitoring institution to counter Western media bias. This Arab Observation Centre will be established in a European capital or in the U.S. to defend Arab interests, Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa told reporters.

“The centre will pick up and monitor an assortment of anti-Arab accusations and allegations, then share the information with Arab governments concerned and prepare the adequate answers for publicising on a wide scale,” he said.

Details on how the media campaign will be financed or carried out were not given, but Moussa said the Arab League would notify each member state of its obligations.

Egyptian minister for information Safwat el-Sherif said at the meeting that an Arab satellite channel could counter Israeli efforts to influence world opinion. “Concerning an Israeli satellite channel broadcast in Arabic, Arab satellite television could effectively and properly communicate with the public opinion in Europe and the U.S.,” he said. There is a “pressing need to have a permanent media presence,” he said.

SherifâÇÖs comments ignore the existence of Al-Jazeera satellite channel – and for good reason, say local media analysts. The Qatar-based pan-Arab news channel began broadcasting in 1996 and quickly shocked many.

The U.S. claims that Al-Jazeera fosters anti-American sentiment, and Israel objects to its repetitive images of Palestinian suffering. Arab states have repeatedly tried to silence it, accusing the station of unfairly criticising their regimes.

“Al-Jazeera has invariably stepped on many toes, which are particularly sensitive in authoritarian political cultures where anyone in authority rarely has his toes stepped upon,âÇ¥ says S. Abdullah Schleifer, director of the Cairo-based Adham Centre for Television Journalism.

How Al-Jazeera would figure in the new media campaign remains to be seen. The channel has given no indication that it will stop interviewing Israeli officials. The Qatar government, which recently dissolved its information ministry, seems unlikely to enforce the ban.

The “rogue” station is exactly what Arab information ministers are hoping to avoid, and demonstrates the difficulty in creating a unified Arab media entity, whether a satellite channel or media monitoring institution. Arab states agree on the need to support the Palestinians and create a media watchdog to defend the Arab image, but their inability to put aside their own political suspicions and jealousies could undermine any unified efforts.

“It won’t be easy because there are always differences among Arabs,” says Naila Nabila Hamdy, a journalism and mass communications lecturer at the American University in Cairo. “But there is a possibility for it to succeed. It’s a shame it has taken this long to try… it’s really 40 years too late.”

Some critics suggest the campaign could fall into the same trap as one proposed last August by Arab information ministers meeting in Cairo. The earlier proposal, more limited in scope, was never enacted.

“For Arab information ministers to show enthusiasm for action is a right signal,” The Jordan Times said in an editorial. “But until they move from the phase of theorising to the challenging and taxing phase of implementation, scepticism is called for.”

The newspaper was critical of the meagre funding for the proposed campaign. It said the U.S. is pumping 245 million dollars into a media campaign to address the Arab audience. Israel, meanwhile, is just days away from launching its own Arabic language channel.

“The Israeli government did not waste its people’s time talking about taking action, and nor did it waste its energies lodging especially conspicuous complaints about bias in the Arab media: instead, it simply identified a goal and then went ahead and did it,” said The Daily Star, an English language daily published in Lebanon.