Arab media should aim for global reach — scholar

AMMAN — Despite Arab countries’ access to technology, the media sector in the region is yet to become global, according to an academic researcher.

“Having a global Arab media means that media outlets should broadcast across borders in different languages, attracting worldwide audiences,” Makram Khoury-Machool, a Cambridge-based scholar, said on Monday. 

Globalising Arab media by purchasing a satellite for media purposes was supposed to start in 1969, but it was delayed until 1991 because of “pressure from the Zionist lobby”, Khoury-Machool added in a lecture titled “Arab Media: From the First Press to New Media”.

The speaker pointed out that Arab ownership of media outlets does not necessarily produce an Arab media.

The rise of the petrodollar shifted the location of Arab media capitals from Egypt and Lebanon to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, he said. 

Khoury-Machool noted that media is a controlling power in societies, along with economy, military and politics, adding that it usually “serves the government financially or by controlling the public”.

Social media seems to resist government hegemony and censorship, he argued, adding that language and media are used in promoting ideologies.

“When an ideology is revealed through language using a media outlet to promote certain social or economic practices, it becomes a form of power,” Khoury-Machool told the audience at the Arab Thought Forum.

It is hard to find “independent” Arab media, because Arab countries are “a non-homogeneous mosaic” and contain several ideologies, the scholar said.

Political turmoil has been the main driving force fuelling the continuation of Arab media, he added.

“The emergence and continuity of Arab media was the result of the world wars, the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and regional wars in the second half of the 20th century, in addition to the current crisis that the Arab world is witnessing,” he concluded.