Democracy and Terrorism: The Half-Demon / Half-Angel Face of Arab Media (Focus on Arab Transnational TV networks)

I- The Half-Angel Side: Arab Media and the Promotion of Democracy

1. Foreword

"The general belief holds that representative government is the only form of democracy that is feasible in today's sprawling, heterogeneous nation-states. However, […], telecommunications now make it possible for tens of millions of widely dispersed citizens to receive the information they need to carry out the business of government themselves, gain admission to the political realm, and retrieve at least some of the power over their own lives and goods that many believe their elected leaders are squandering" (L. K. Grossman, cited in Dana Ott, The Role of Democratic Media in Promoting Democracy in Africa, 1998).

Thanks to media, the power of individual citizens can be increased in a multiplicity of ways: through greater access on the one hand, and greater influence on the other hand. Media may facilitate access to information about issues, decisions and pending legislation that might affect the individual. Media may also empower ordinary people by giving them a greater influence both as an individual, who can more easily communicate his or her views on a topic directly to elected representatives, and indirectly through easier access to issue advocacy organizations. In the following sections of the paper, we will seek to determine whether the existence of a media democracy paradigm is relevant to the Arab media discussion or not. We will also provide a series of perspectives on the eventual implications of the establishment of a such a model in the future for Arab media.

2. Can we Talk about the Existence of a Media Democracy in Arab Societies?

2.1. What is Media Democracy?

“Media democracy is a production and distribution model which promotes a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society, and enhances democratic values. The term also refers to a modern social movement evident in countries all over the world which attempts to make mainstream media more accountable to the publics they serve and to create more democratic alternatives.
It is a concept and a social movement that has grown as a response to the increased corporate domination of mass media and the perceived shrinking of the marketplace of ideas. Its proponents advocate monitoring and reforming the mass media, strengthening public service broadcasting, and developing and participating in alternative media and citizen journalism.” (Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_media)

2.2. The Role of Information in Promoting the Democratization of Arab Societies

Despite the rigidity of the constraints to which they are subject, information provided by public or private TV channels are becoming an indisputable driving force in the democratization of Arab societies because they:
- Allow ordinary people to access to political/economic/societal news content relevant to their informative needs.
- Provide an opening onto the political realm for ordinary citizens.
- Introduce plural voices to the public debate / representation of a diversity of voices and viewpoints. - Provide independent news reporting to promote alternative views. - Emphasize women's role in Arab societies.
- Offer a public space for the promotion of democratic values such as fairness, equality and tolerance. - Deliver development messages - Provide alternative forums for dialogue and debate. - Boldly and effectively push social reform in primetime [The power of transnational satellite TV].
- Widen the range of news, opinions, and entertainment citizens receive.

2.3. Concentration of media ownership and the profitability leitmotiv

As a result of the growing concern of Arab corporate media for profitability, infotainment on satellite TV channels such as MBC or AL Jazeera has become more prevalent over the last few years. The opportunity cost of such a “garbage information” trend is that it triggered the withdrawal of Arab media from holding their initial social responsibility, which is to inform people.
Arab mass media should not blindly follow the Western model in which the quality of the information provided to the public has been increasingly altered by the combined effects of increased concentration of ownership and commercial pressures. This cautionary statement actually reflects a key implication postulated by the media democracy model which, as stated on Wikipedia’s webpage, is that “the concentration of media ownership in recent decades in the hands of a few corporations and conglomerates has led to a narrowing of the range of voices and opinions being expressed in the mass media; to an increase in the commercialization of news and information; to a hollowing out of the news media’s ability to conduct investigative reporting and act as the public watchdog; and to an increase of emphasis on the bottom line, which prioritizes infotainment and celebrity news over informative discourse” (Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_media).

2.4. The Relative Counterweight of Public Broadcasting:

Hopefully, in many Arab countries, such as Morocco, Egypt or Tunisia, public broadcasting channels serve as an important counterweight to the transnational corporate media like AL-Jazeera, Al-Arabyia or LBC. De facto, public broadcasting via state-owned channels pertains to the establishment of a media democracy dynamic. Since government and/or individual donations usually fund public television and radio broadcasters, these later are not subject to the same commercial pressures as private broadcasters. Nevertheless, this simplistic logic can be easily refuted: if Arab state-owned TV channels are not subject to the kind of commercial pressures influencing the choices of corporate media, they can be reversibly subordinated to a litany of other constraints ranging from political pressure or lobbying, to information distortion and censorship. Moreover, those public TV channels often faces major difficulties in raising funds, which prevent them from fulfilling their public service role consistently.

3. Perspectives regarding the establishment of a “media-democracy” system in Arab countries:

- (1) The health of the Arab democratic political system will depend on the efficient, accurate, and complete transmission of social, political, and cultural information in the societies;
- (2) The Arab media must be the conduits of this information and should act in the public interest;
- (3) As a result, Arab voters and citizens should become able to participate knowledgably in public policy debates. Otherwise, political, economic and diplomatic decision-making power will remain the prerogative of those who owned it for so long: the political and corporate elites ruling Arab societies.

II- The Half Demon Side: Arab Media and the Terrorist Propaganda

Over the last decades, terrorism has emerged as a new phenomenon for which media propaganda has proven to be quite effective in ensuring the success of its campaigns that aim at shaping / swaying public opinion. In fact, media propaganda of terrorist acts has emerged as a channel for alternative diplomacy to gain support from massive audiences. A significant segment of Arab media display a behavior which is such that it promotes terrorism and mass murder rather than condemns them. Those media de facto enable and encourage terrorists’ exactions of innocents by either deliberately or non-deliberately supplying a constant flow of propaganda bonanza for the terrorist cause. In the following sections of the paper, we will provide you with a series of concrete examples and anecdotic events that corroborate this statement.

1. Al-Manar TV Case: the Instrument of Hezbollah’s Political Ideology

Al-Manar TV is a Lebanese-based channel owned by Hezbollah, the major political party of the country often considered to be a state-terrorist organization by Westerners. Among other things, Hezbollah is being held accountable for the abduction and killing of many European and North-American journalists in Lebanon, and made responsible of the direct mass murder of scores of Israelis against whom they claim to be in Jihad, or holy war. Symbol of Hezbollah’s resistance against the “Jew oppressor”, AL-Manar TV was created in 1991 to serve the political agenda of the party. Today, the channel, which broadcasts its programs in Arabic, French and English, is being highly controversial because of its blatant anti-semitism and direct support for terrorism.

2. [In what ways do] Arab media act like terrorist sympathizers [?] (Mamoun Fandy, Washington Post, 2004)

2.1 The “Terrorism Buzz” in Arab Media

Arab media often report the crude reality of terrorists’ infamous attacks on civilians without condemning the cruelty of such ignominies. At times, they even display a widespread delectation to run stomach-turning videos and photos of executions and beheadings again and again to audiences eager of thrills. Amongst the litany of morbid examples that appeared over the media in the last few years, we can cite the execution of U.S. soldier Keith Maupin in July 2004 or the beheadings a week earlier of South Korean Kim Sun-il in Iraq and of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.
As Fandy states in his article, “showing people being beheaded is a new phenomenon for the Arab media; the Internet even makes the incessant replaying of the senseless killings possible.
In Iraq, journalists working either for local newspapers or the national TV channel have been largely accused by their Western counterparts to intentionally distort the coverage of terrorists’ exactions in order to blur the line between terrorism and Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation.
2.2 Kim Sun-Il’s Beheading Story: An Example of Information Distortion

The video of Kim Sun-Il's beheading is another example suggesting Arab media’s implicit empathy towards terrorists’ acts. It is provided in the article of M. Fandy entitled: Arab Meida act like terrorist sympathizers (2004). As Fandy stresses in the article, “Al-Jazeera and the Lebanese LBC presented the video [of Kim’s decapitation], which al-Jazeera said it had received from a group linked to al-Qaida, as if the terrorists were part of the Iraqi resistance against the Americans and their allies. Al-Jazeera did not note what any person knowledgeable about the region's dialects would have known: that the terrorists who appeared in the video and read the "verdict" that justified Kim's killing were not Iraqi and therefore not part of the Iraqi resistance. They clearly spoke a dialect from the Saudi heartland of Najd” (Fandy, 2004).
By the way, Al-Jazeera is the same T.V. network that refers to every Arab suicide bomber as a ‘shaheed’, or martyr (Fandy, 2004).

2.3 The Reasons Explaining the Prevalence of Terrorist Programs in Arab Media

According to Abdul Rahman Rashed, the head the Saudi-financed al-Arabiya satellite channel based in Dubai, there are two drivers explaining why terrorist are given so much airtime on Arab T.V. channels: (1) the commercial interests, (2) the fear factor. On the one hand, because they attract audiences, the broadcastings of chocking photos and heart-stopping videos of civilians’ murders represent a financial manna for Arab media whose foremost objectives are to increase profits. On the other hand, fear is another factor which inhibits Arab journalists’ willingness to publicly condemn the horrors perpetrated by terrorists. The exhaustive list of writers who have been killed because of their public opposition to terrorist movements reinforce the threat of a sword of Damocles felt by contemporary journalists when they openly criticize terrorists’ infamous slaughters.

3. The Marwan Barghouti Affair

Another case illustrating Arab media tacit support of terrorism occurred in December 2005 when the popular Arab television network AL-Arabiya lobbied for a deal in which a convicted terrorist running in Palestinian elections would be freed from Israeli prison in exchange for the U.S. release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Pollard was about to be released from prison in a deal that would also release Marwan Barghouti, whom was referred to as being "a mass murderer of Jews." Al-Arabiya actually aired several programs calling for Barghouti to be released in a prisoner exchange deal that would also include Pollard.
Barghouti, founder of the terror group Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was serving multiple life terms for his role in killings Israeli civilians. Barghouti was even considered as being the architect of the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000. Leader of the terrorist group Al Aqsa, he led the organization of scores of suicide bombings and deadly shooting attacks against Israeli people.
Barghouti’s case is another testimony of the indirect support that Arab media provides to terrorists.

4. Perspectives Regarding the Development of a Terrorism-Sympathizing Attitude in Arab Media:

- The number of media in the Arab World who condone / support violent propaganda campaigns appear to be on the rise.
- Terrorist viewpoints and messages are delivered in a variety of media: newspapers, newsletters; audio and videocassettes; films; posters, handbills, and flyers; bumper stickers; tee shirts, and even political pin backs.
- A number of TV channels in the Arab World have specifically been created to publicize the agenda of state terrorist groups.
- The Arab media play a critical role in shaping the information environment fomenting the "culture of death" that ennoble suicide bombers and the cult of terrorism.
- The general public derives its perception of the wider reality beyond direct personal experience via the media. When the major media all sing a similar tune the public generally assumes it is being honestly informed.
-Arab media are directly or indirectly complicit in the perpetuation and exacerbation of the terrorism phenomenon.


Reference List
L. K. Grossman, 1996. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. N. Y.: Penguin, p. 6., cited in Dana Ott, The Role of Democratic Media in Promoting Democracy in Africa
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 11, 2004 by Washington Post