National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries - Compress

National Broadcasting and State Policy in
Arab Countries
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National Broadcasting
and State Policy in
Arab Countries
Edited by
Tourya Guaaybess
Assistant Professor, University of Clermont-Ferrand and Researcher,
Laboratory of Communication and Politics at CNRS, France
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Tourya Guaaybess 2013
Individual chapters © Contributors 2013
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
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Contents
List of Tables vii

Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction: A Return to the National Perspective 1

Tourya Guaaybess
1 Broadcasting Transitions in the United Arab Emirates 13
Muhammad I. Ayish
2 Television Reform in Saudi Arabia: The Challenges of
Transnationalization and Digitization 28
Marwan M. Kraidy
3 The Other Face of Qatari TV Broadcasting 42
Hugh Miles
4 Reforming Egypt’s Broadcasting in the Post-25 January Era:
The Challenges of Path Dependence 49
Tourya Guaaybess
5 The Lebanese Broadcasting System: A Battle between
Political Parallelism, Commercialization and
De-facto Liberalism 69
Sarah El Richani
6 Syrian Television Drama: A National Industry in a
Pan-Arab Mediascape 83
Christa Salamandra
7 ‘We Cannot Let it Loose’: Geopolitics, Security and
Reform in Jordanian Broadcasting 96
Naomi Sakr
8 Tunisian Media under the Authoritarian Structure of
Ben Ali’s Regime and After 117
Joan Barata
v
vi Contents
9 Liberalization of the Moroccan Broadcasting Sector:

Breakthroughs and Limitations 131
Aârab Issiali
10 Libyan Broadcasting under al-Qadhafi: The Politics of
Pseudo-Liberalization 150
Carola Richter
11 Algerian Public Authorities in the Face of Transnational
Media Competition: Between Status Quo and
Deregulation 166
Belkacem Mostefaoui
12 Towards a Supranational Analysis of Arab Media:
The Role of Cities 188
Joe F. Khalil
Conclusion 209
Tourya Guaaybess
Index 215
List of Tables
1.1 UAE national broadcasters 17

1.2 National Identity Index in broadcast media 22
1.3 National Identity Index in selected radio programmes 22
1.4 National Identity Index in selected television
programmes 23
5.1 Owners and religious or political affiliations of Lebanese
channels 71
9.1 New licences granted by the HACA in 2006 143
12.1 Media cities spectrum 199
12.2 Economic free-zone media cities in Dubai, Egypt
and Jordan 200
12.3 TECOM profile 202
vii
Acknowledgements
The study of national Arab broadcasting through the prism of states’

policies (and vice versa) was a long-standing project. Though I was
convinced that such a comparative study was necessary for scholars
and students, I also knew that it required – due to its breadth – far
more than the competencies of just one researcher.
The present book owes a lot to the authors, and my deepest
gratitude goes to them for their professionalism, their enthusiasm,
and the swiftness with which they responded from the onset to the
completion of the book.
It is also a pleasure to thank Elias for his support and constant
encouragement.
I would like to express my gratitude to Felicity Plester and Catherine
Mitchell at Palgrave Macmillan for their patience, their reliability
and their rigour at all times during these past two years. I would also
like to thank an anonymous referee for his/her encouragement and
for the relevant comments and suggestions which helped further
improve the book. Finally, I feel very grateful to Monica Kendall for
her effective editorial work, and her comments, on the manuscript.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Muhammad I. Ayish is currently Professor of Mass Communication

at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. He holds a doctoral
degree in international communication and public diplomacy from
the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (1986). He has taken up
academic posts at several universities in Jordan and the United Arab
Emirates, including Dean of Communication at the University of
Sharjah, UAE (2002–8). He has over 70 journal articles and book
chapters published in international books and journals on Arab
broadcasting, women and media, media and politics and new tech-
nologies. His most recent book, co-edited with Shakuntala Rao, is
Explorations in Global Media Ethics (2012).
Joan Barata is a Professor of Communication Law and Vice Dean

of International Relations at Blanquerna Communication School,
Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona. He was previously a professor
at the University of Barcelona (2001–5) and the Universitat Pompeu
Fabra (2010–11). He has been a professor at the Open University of
Catalonia since 1997, as well as a visiting scholar at the University
of Bologna (2003) and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law,
New York (2003–4). His writings and research interests include
topics such as freedom of speech, media regulation, public service
broadcasting and political and legal media transitions. He has
provided assistance to several institutions and organizations regarding
these issues in countries such as Thailand, Morocco, Tunisia,
Lebanon, Jordan, Albania, Hungary, Dominican Republic, Colombia
and the United States. He has been Head of the President’s Cabinet
(2005–9) and General Secretary of the Catalonia Audiovisual Council
(2009–11). He has also provided assistance to the OSCE (2004) and
the Council of Europe (2012).
Sarah El Richani is a doctoral student researching the Lebanese

media system from a comparative perspective at the University of
Erfurt. Sarah obtained her MA in Journalism from the University of
Westminster courtesy of the Quintin Hogg Scholarship and her BA
in English Literature and Philosophy from the American University of
ix
x Notes on Contributors
Beirut, Lebanon, where she was granted the Stephen Penrose Award.
She has worked for two years as MENA Programme Officer for the
London-based ARTICLE 19, and continues to carry out consultancies
for International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) amongst
other NGOs in London and Berlin where she currently resides.
Tourya Guaaybess is an associate professor at the University of

Clermont Ferrand and a researcher within a laboratory at the CNRS,
Paris. She was a Marie Curie Fellow in 2001–3 and served as an
assistant professor at the University of Kyoto in 2010. She has been
working on Arab media since 1997, especially broadcasting, with
a historical and political economy approach. She is the author of
Télévisions arabes sur orbit (2005) and Les medias arabes. Confluence
médiatique et dynamiques sociales (2012). She also co-edited Les Arabes
parlent aux Arabes (Actes Sud, Paris, 2008). She is also the author of
many papers and book chapters on this issue.
Aârab Issiali is head of ISIC (Institut Supérieur de l’Information et de

la Communication) in Rabat, Morocco. He has worked for many years
in media and education. He was head of Research and Development
at the Haute Autorité de la Communication Audiovisuelle, the regu-
latory body for broadcasting in Morocco, in 2005–8.
Joe F. Khalil is Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in
Qatar. An expert on Arab television production and programming,
he has more than 15 years’ professional experience as director, execu-
tive producer and consultant with major Arab satellite channels. His
scholarly interests revolve specifically around Arab youth, alterna-
tive media and global media industries. Khalil has authored a policy
monograph on Arab satellite entertainment television and public
diplomacy and is also co-author of Arab Television Industries (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009, with Marwan Kraidy). He is currently working on
a book project based on his dissertation, ‘Youth-Generated Media in
Lebanon and Saudi Arabia’, which examines alternative media in the
Arab world.
Marwan M. Kraidy is Professor of Global Communication at

the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania and the Edward Said Chair of American Studies
at the American University of Beirut. A Fellow of the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and of the Woodrow Wilson
Notes on Contributors xi
International Center for Scholars, his books include Reality Television

and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (2010), Arab Television
Industries (BFI/Palgrave, 2009, with J. Khalil), Hybridity, or, The Cultural
Logic of Globalization (2005) and the co-edited volumes Global Media
Studies: Ethnographic Perspectives (2003) and The Politics of Reality
Television: Global Perspectives (2010). Kraidy is a frequent ecommenta-
tor on global media issues, most regularly on National Public Radio
in the United States.
Hugh Miles is an award-winning freelance journalist and author of

two books, Al Jazeera – How Arab TV News Challenged the World (First
Prize in 2006 ‘Grand Prix du Livre Des Dirigeants’ Categorie Livre
d’Investigation) and Playing Cards in Cairo (2008). A Middle East spe-
cialist, he is a frequent contributor to various media including the
Daily Telegraph, London Review of Books, the BBC website and others.
He has produced TV documentaries for Al Jazeera in Egypt and Libya
and he writes and presents for BBC Radio 4. Hugh Miles is also the
director of Al Shafie Miles, a consultancy company helping clients do
business in the Middle East. He lives in Cairo.
Belkacem Mostefaoui is Professor at the Ecole nationale supérieure

de journalisme et des sciences de l’information in Algiers, dean of
postgraduate studies. He acquired his PhD at the University of Paris II
and had a weekly column in the newspaper Al-Watan from 1999 to
2008. He is the author of several books, including Médiascopie: Recueil
choisi de chroniques El Watan 1999–2008 (2008), La télévision française
au Maghreb: Structures, stratégies et enjeux (1996) and L’usage des médias
en question (1982).
Carola Richter is Assistant Professor for International Communication

at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at Freie
University of Berlin. From 2004 to 2010 she worked as a teaching and
research assistant for international communication and comparison
of media systems at the University of Erfurt. She received an MA in
Arabic studies, journalism and political sciences from the University
of Leipzig. Her research focuses on Arab media systems and political
communication in the Muslim world. She is also the co-editor of the
Global Media Journal – German Edition.
Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and

Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster,
xii Notes on Contributors
and Director of the CAMRI Arab Media Centre. She is the author
of Arab Television Today (2007) and Satellite Realms: Transnational
Television, Globalization and the Middle East (2001) and has edited two
collections, Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-
Expression (2004) and Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community,
Legitimacy and Public Life (2007). Her research focuses on the political
economy of Arab-owned media, with particular reference to satellite
television, development of journalism and human rights.
Christa Salamandra is visiting professor at The Center for Middle

Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden, and Associate Professor of
Anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, The City
University of New York. She is the author of A New Old Damascus:
Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (2004) and numerous
articles on Arab media.
Introduction: A Return to the
National Perspective
Tourya Guaaybess
The 2011 Arab Spring confirms the importance of an analysis of Arab

media especially focusing on the national scale. If influences exist,
confirming that the notion of a regional system has its relevance,
domestic trends remain very strong, and the most impacting political
facts for Arab citizens occur at that level. Also, national broadcasting
remains of the highest importance because it is accessible to a vast
majority of the population, and is hence able to attract and bring
together the most diverse segments of the societies which it is sup-
posed to reflect. Nevertheless, a brief retrospective of the studies on
Arab media in European or American universities reveals that only a
few have tackled this topic with the same scientific distance which is
commonly granted to ‘Western’ media.
Communication studies and Arab media1
Information and communication sciences or communication stud-

ies (or media studies, the appellations are different from one country
to another) have emerged during the twentieth century in Western
countries (Boure 2002). At the beginning, studies on media and com-
munication were scattered among different academic disciplines of
social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and political science.
Media studies only recently began to be identified as a science,
an autonomous and ‘official’ science, through the emergence of
specific departments at universities and of specialized journals. This
science is of course the product of specific social contexts: its emer-
gence is explained by the will to have a better understanding of the
1
2 Introduction: A Return to the National Perspective
propaganda between the two world wars; it is also the product of

the fascination exerted by artificial intelligence after the emergence
of the first electronic calculators; and finally it is the product of
the constant interest of societies in the latest media set-up (from
the print media to broadcasting, and nowadays to the Internet)
(Mattelart 1999; see also Maigret 2007). At the very beginning,
studies on media in the Arab countries by Western scholars were
not tied to communication studies. There has been an a posteriori
reorganizing of work which brought about an apparent coherence,
but Arab media were not inscribed in a distinct discipline until a
relatively recent period. Arab electronic media (radio and television)
have been a topic of research – although marginal – for sociologists
and anthropologists after the Arab countries became independent
from the colonial powers.2 This kind of research, sometimes labelled
as ‘area studies’ due precisely to its pluri-disciplinary nature, dealt
with Arab media with a certain distance and it was natural to con-
sider the Arab region as part of the ‘Third World’ – Arab countries
being indeed included in the ‘developing countries’. With good
intentions, these scholars considered that they should participate
in the development of poor countries and lead them to modernity
(Guaaybess 2002). Today many criticize these studies for having
ethnocentric and paternalistic bias.
However, it is important to stress that the first studies on electronic
media in Third World countries were done at the time when radio
just began to be accessible (or affordable) to large segments of popu-
lations. The idea of modernization was central, as well as the idea of
a breaking with traditions. One of the most emblematic scholars of
‘modernity’ is Daniel Lerner (Lerner 1958; see also Schramm 1964),
a sociologist from the MIT. According to Lerner, media could lead to
social development by inducing a change in mentalities. These
theories have been criticized and they have undoubtedly shown
their limits. But one must recognize that they have been used in
Arab countries driven by political decision-makers, inasmuch as, at
least until the mid-1990s, one could find on Arab university shelves
a plethora of studies on the role of media for development, for family
planning, for education of children, alphabetization and so on. This
faith in media is not reconsidered or questioned even by UNESCO,
for instance, which is continuing its crusade for modernization via
media and, today, via the Internet. UNESCO defends the idea that it
Tourya Guaaybess 3
is necessary to reduce ‘the digital divide between rich and developing

countries’,3 even though the role of media in development has never
been clearly established. Sometimes, the approach (scientific tools
and paradigms) one adopts to work on a subject eventually shapes
the topic of research more than the other way round (Bourdieu
et al. 2005). When studying Arab media and placing them in the very
wide group of developing or Third World countries, and adopting a
sociologist and functionalist approach, researchers eventually give
more information about their own views than about their topic
of research. Over the years, from the end of the 1970s on, specific
studies on media in Arab countries were initiated at the same time
as communication research began to be a distinct science.4 As we all
know, even science depends on its social and political context, and
during the 1970s, especially after the Vietnam War, many left-wing
Western scholars defended Third World countries. They assumed a
Manichean view of the world with on one side poor and dominated
countries and on the other side rich and dominant countries in the
field of information and communication. In international commu-
nication studies, this view is represented by the dependency theory
and more specifically by the theory of cultural imperialism defended
by the American sociologist Herbert Schiller (1976).
From one trap to the other
During the eighties and the nineties many studies broke away from
these generalizing approaches (Sui-Nam Lee 1995) and chose to focus
instead on media in some specific countries of the ‘Third World’ area
and in particular in the Arab region.
Many authors rejected the idea of cultural imperialism, saying
that, firstly, people of countries in the so-called ‘South’ are able to
filter the meaning of the media messages they receive (they have
their own reading). Secondly, that they are not acculturated –
rather they appropriate the new norms and adapt them to their
cultural context which is referred to as creolization (Hannertz
1996) or hybridization (Garcia Canclini 2005) of culture. Thirdly,
countries have ‘emerged’ in Asia, South America and in the Arab
region to become major broadcasting players on the international
scene. The book New Patterns in Global Television: Peripheral Vision,
edited by Sinclair and Cunningham in 1996, is emblematic in this
regard. This book addresses precisely those countries which are

important regional players in the broadcasting sector such as India,
China and Egypt. In their introduction, Sinclair and Cunningham
explain their approach, which is mainly based on a total rejection
of the cultural imperialism theory that they consider ideological
and too much generalizing or totalizing. They are surprised that
Schiller has not rejected his own theory over the years (Schiller
1991). Sinclair and Cunningham defend their approach, that they
call a ‘middle-range’ approach, which focuses on the regional space
of broadcasting rather than on the international or world space,
like that of Schiller, among other scholars. They consider that the
regions handled in the books by Schiller are not ‘peripheral’ as
the imperialism theory used to qualify them. Their opposition to
the dichotomous view of Schiller has undoubtedly some relevance,
and the fact that they consider large broadcasting operators across the
globe is very enlightening. However, if we consider the structuring
of the media markets described in their book we may say that they
are not far from Schiller’s theory that they criticize, in the sense that
they are describing structural domination relationships of a country
over several others. Eventually, their approach is just a change of
geographical scale.
The balance of power that defenders of the cultural imperialism
paradigm observed in the international arena is also taking place
within regions or at the regional level. The balance of power that the
supporters of the imperialist view were observing in the international
arena is also valid at some regional levels (the Indian subcontinent,
the Arab region, Latin America, etc.). Within the regions some very
dynamic centres emerge, develop broadcasting activities and
exchange at an intermediary level between the international and the
national level. For instance, Egypt, which has never imported
programmes from Arab countries, exported massively its own produc-
tions to the whole Arab world before the early nineties. Doing so,
this country was spreading – if not imposing – its language (the
Egyptian dialect or ’amiyya), its norms and values to the other Arab
countries. This does not mean that Egyptian culture was threatening
the other cultures in the various Arab countries, but in the broadcast-
ing field its resonance and influence must not be underestimated,
all the more so if we consider the systemic dimension of the Arab
broadcasting arena. This means that all Arab television channels
Tourya Guaaybess 5
are interrelated as they are all aiming at the same audience, sharing
the same language. Since the end of the nineties, with a regional
or international perspective, the dominant players in the Arab
media space have been various Gulf countries as they impact on the
Arab broadcasting system. Moreover, the paradigm of Sinclair and
Cunningham does not invalidate the theory of a domination and
influence of the Western and above all the American culture over
the Arab world. In the Arab region these Western programmes are
passed on by the major transnational Saudi networks which have
established partnerships with multinational companies like Viacom
Inc., which distribute channels such as Disney channel, ABC, Fox
News or Showtime, not to mention the US serials among other types
of programmes regularly broadcast on the Hertzian networks of Arab
countries. The idea that there are several possible scales of analysis is
valid but one must be consistent: even if some dynamics are observ-
able at several levels, some facts we can observe at the regional level
are not valid or relevant at the international or the national level.
The more we narrow the focus, the more complex the phenomena
observed become.
So it was relevant to narrow the analysis to the regions, above all
in the 1990s with the overwhelming proliferation of satellite chan-
nels across the globe. After this decade, one could notice an increase
in the number of studies and publications dedicated to Arab media,
dealing with various subjects and adopting diverse perspectives –
even if Al Jazeera attracted the most interest. Indeed, as stated by
Kai Hafez (2008: 9), studies on Arab transnational media, specific
journals or courses dealing with Arab media have been set up in a
very recent period – especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – in
major universities in Western countries and beyond.
The analysis at the national level: a methodological

choice
In this collective book, we have chosen to analyse media in their

national context. Obviously the national level is in a dialectical
relationship with the other levels, regional and international. This
has been brilliantly shown by two authors who have become clas-
sics for any scholar dealing with Arab media: Douglas Boyd and
later William Rugh (Boyd 1999; Rugh 2004). Not surprisingly, both
authors spent several years in the region, and their books, the result
of extensive fieldwork, provide a unique insight into the dynamics
of Arab media, including within a national context.
While Arab countries are engaged in an intimate and common
regional dynamics, each country has its own history, mainly deter-
mined by domestic factors (social, cultural, political or economic).
By resorting to a comparative analysis one can draw specific national
features on the one hand and general trends on the other hand from
comparing the broadcasting structures and their evolution in several
Arab countries.
The national territory is linked to a state, a government in power,
an official authority. The state structures society and is sovereign
within a territory clearly bounded by terrestrial borders (Badie 1992).
This classical definition of a ‘state’ linking the governing power to
a territory is crucial when it comes to media and especially trans-
border media (satellite channels, the Internet) which challenge the
sovereignty of the state over its territory. States, elites in power,
take part in a national destiny and political traditions. They create
fluctuating ideologies like Nasserism, Arab nationalism, Baathism,
before finally abiding, for the vast majority of them, by the precepts
of economic liberalism. Today, the dominant value could be labelled
a ‘stated democratism’. This ideological vacuum would, according to
some, be the reason behind the resurgence of religion on the political
scene (Burgat 2007).
Arab broadcasting was set up after independence in the newly
formed nation-states. Radio and television were created as true
emanations of the states, within dedicated public institutions as
natural referring frameworks. The first broadcasting used the terres-
trial frequencies technologies, that is to say that states used to control
all the broadcasting programmes beamed within their territory.
Until today, most of the Arab countries are represented by national
broadcasting authorities even if private channels have been estab-
lished over the past years. These broadcasting bodies have evolved
over the years and have been affected by a series of legal changes.
The national legal system is an instrument allowing to measure the
degree of political autonomy that the broadcasting sector enjoys
vis-à-vis the government administration. Indeed, the legal framework
is a highly national matter and it is a tool that states have used
to keep their control over broadcasting. It is interesting however
Tourya Guaaybess 7
to note that media free zones dedicated to the broadcasting sector,

established since the 2000s in several Arab countries, are means used
by the authorities to bypass their own laws, enforceable within the
national territory.
National broadcasting as a gauge of political opening
Television authorities and government policies in the field

of broadcasting are the prisms here chosen to observe and analyse
broadcasting in the Arab countries: radio and television (terrestrial or
via satellite). They are the ideal prism to analyse the relation between
liberalization, be it political or economic, and national broadcasting
in the satellite era.
National broadcasting authorities have evolved in the Arab
countries, but it is important to note that since the beginning of
the 2000s, many have undergone deep reforms. This is precisely
the nodal aspect of this book when it comes to studying the
national cases that we will compare. But the retrospectives done by
the authors start way before the 2000s because it is important to
carry out a study of the national broadcasting institutions adopt-
ing a historical perspective. Understanding their functioning since
their inception helps to shed light on another important question,
namely the role of public broadcasting. What is its vocation? Can it –
should it – fulfil its original mission which is one of public service
(see e.g. Atkinson and Raboy et al. 1998)? At a time when many
Arab countries are experiencing overwhelming political and social
changes, this question takes on an unusual connotation. How can
one build a bridge between the past and the future of national broad-
casting institutions? These are often more than 50 years old, they are
often huge, unwieldy institutions, with a long memory embedded
in their structure and functioning. One cannot simply ignore this
past, especially considering all its human, symbolic and material
resources. On the contrary, these will have to be involved in any
major reform if it is to succeed.
Arab broadcasting and government policies: the book
The topic of this book is national broadcasting in Arab countries. The

public policies in this sector are scrutinized in 11 different chapters
(country studies) with a twelfth transversal chapter dealing with

media free zones.
We selected 11 of the 22 countries in the Arab League. This choice
reflects three main considerations. First of all, the goal of this book
is not to provide an exhaustive, dictionary-like review; rather, it is to
extract the main trends which help understand the key facts in the
broadcasting arena of the Arab region. Second, and this is a logical
consequence, the countries chosen are those which have made the
Arab broadcasting system what it is. We have focused on the major
players who set the trends, be they historical leaders fighting to keep
their leadership, or new challengers rising fast. Third, the connections
(whatever the nature of these – competition or cooperation) between
the Arab countries in the broadcasting sector are not uniform across
the region. Some sub-regions are more dense than others in terms of
activity: while new pivotal actors emerge to challenge the old ones,
other countries appear to be left in a newly formed periphery. Hence
the choice is diverse enough to include first and foremost what can be
considered as the two pillars of the system – Egypt and Saudi Arabia –
then very interesting cases like Qatar, where Al Jazeera overshadowed
the national broadcasting, and other countries very diverse from a
variety of points of view (demography, politics, history of broadcasting)
and where significant evolutions are undeniably taking place.
The chapters in this book have all been written by scholars who
have worked for many years on Arab media, each chapter being
made possible by the empirical knowledge of the country tackled.
The renowned academic expertise of the contributors is an important
point, because it allows a distantiation which is necessary in order to
deal with Arab national broadcasting without falling into the trap of
adopting a short-term approach of the Arab Spring.
The Arab revolutions are not a trivial event and are mentioned in
the chapters whenever relevant. In this respect, the different chap-
ters may be useful in trying to understand ‘where to go from here’.
Knowledge of the historical background of national broadcasting,
their reforms, their strengths and their weaknesses, is a prerequisite
for the builders of the forthcoming reforms. It appears that some
rulers have been aware of the fact that the Arab Spring was a good
opportunity to accelerate the liberalization movement started years
ago, with ups and downs, as shown by Naomi Sakr and Aârab Issiali
for the Jordanian and the Moroccan cases.
Tourya Guaaybess 9
A large spectrum of countries is dealt with in the book, from the

Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Peninsula. Each has its own design,
but similarities and divergences appear when one reads the different
case studies. The similarities are not all fortuitous; many are due to
the fact that these different countries, above all since the advent of
transnational media, are at the same time rivals at the regional level
because they share the same audience, and allies because of their
mutual agreement to prevent criticism of Arab regimes in the media.5
In this competition it appears clear that Egypt’s once dominant
position has been seriously challenged by Qatar, the Emirates and
Saudi Arabia as central media marketplaces.
One of the common striking features is the great mission that the
broadcasting sector is endowed with. Muhammad Ayish and Marwan
Kraidy show how broadcasting can be considered as an efficient tool to
preserve national unity and cohesion. This is far from being a theoretical
project coming out of nowhere in countries such as the United Arab
Emirates or Saudi Arabia, where immigrants are relatively numerous
and where the populations are scattered in vast territories in a context
of ‘asymmetrical demographic realities’ (Ayish). But such is not the case
just for the Gulf countries; rather it is valid for all the Arab countries
and even in the liberal Lebanese case which, as shown by Sarah El
Richani, needs a strong national television which can transcend the
confessional or community ties and logics which fragment Lebanese
society and consequently the Lebanese broadcasting landscape.
All the different studies except for the Lebanese case show that
the rulers have been wavering between two temptations: a tight
control over broadcasting and the will to liberalize. When it comes
to economic liberalization of the media, it is quite clear that Saudi
Arabia and the UAE are success stories. To quote Marwan Kraidy on
Saudi Arabia, this success allows to combine ‘financial gains with
political influence’. The ambitions and values of the Emir of Qatar,
as presented by Hugh Miles, help us understand better Qatar TV.
Here also liberalization and national unity allow the authority to
manage national broadcasting in a very centralized way, while
preserving the balance between different sets of values (religious,
political, cultural). The fact that the official and historical Qatar TV
is popular and more watched in Qatar than Al Jazeera – to which the
Qataris feel ‘alien’ – illustrates the importance of TV dealing with
domestic issues.
Belkacem Mostefaoui defends this view as well. His close scrutiny

of Algerian broadcasting leads to the conclusion that economic
liberalization has been undertaken for the benefit of private actors,
mainly foreigners. This leads to the impoverishment of national
productions and, hence, is detrimental to diversity. Here and in other
contexts like Egypt (Guaaybess), Jordan (Sakr) or Libya (Richter),
liberalization benefited an elite, connected with the central power,
whether these ties were familial or clientelist.
The Libyan case, studied by Carola Richter, illustrates that reforms
can also be undertaken by very authoritative and centralized
governments, which can even encourage freedom of speech, even
ephemerally. Of course, the ‘pseudo-liberalization’ of Libyan broad-
casting was coupled with the peculiar personality of Qadhafi, who
wanted to be considered as the ‘agent of change’. Interestingly,
in many Arab countries, including Libya, there was an accel-
eration of reforms of broadcasting around the 2000s. They were
hampered by many factors: conservative actors, administrative
inertia, corruption and clientelism, unstable regional context and
political control.
Through the drama of the national Syrian TV, Christa Salamandra
sheds light on the ups and downs of the regime. The experience
of satirical programmes, like Spotlight, at the beginning of Bashar
al-Assad’s era was short-lived. Culture meets with social and political
reality when dramas depict the precarious conditions of Syrian
characters afflicted by neoliberalism and an existential dead-end.
In the end, it is difficult to draw a conclusion as to the outcome of
the reforms: one cannot say that they are a success, but they are not
a failure either, they are in a ‘grey zone’, like the media free zones.
These media cities addressed by Joe Khalil are extra-territorial only
superficially, since Cairo, Amman or Dubai remain closely connected
to the governments’ authority.
To provide a tentative answer to the question raised above
(economic vs political liberalization), we could say that, for the
moment, governments have done their best to keep reforms confined
to the economic sphere, while at the same time giving foreign (and
domestic) investors a flavour of political opening. But the media
sector is very specific. If we use the terms of the path-dependence
theory, we would say that economic liberalization in the media
sector, along with the strong incentives provided to import the latest
Tourya Guaaybess 11
technological change in this field, are in fact a ‘path-shifting’ policy,6

very probably beyond the control or will of governments.
Notes
1. These reflections were initiated while I was a visiting professor at the
University of Kyoto. I would like to thank Professor Kosugi as well as the
students of the Department of Islamic Area Studies, mentioning particu-
larly Yushi Chiba, for very fruitful discussions.
2. In France, François Chevaldonné was one of the first researchers to work
on the subject and devoted his life to it (see for example Chevaldonné
1971).
3. http://portal.unesco.org/fr/ev.php-URL_ID=6060&URL_DO=DO_
TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201. html 10-09-2002 Paris: ‘The free flow of
information, made possible by the advent of new technologies such as the
internet, holds enormous promise of cultural dialogue and mutual under-
standing, of quality education available throughout our lifetimes and of
more vigorous and participative democratic processes. But the so-called
“digital divide” – the enormous and growing inequalities between rich
and poor nations in access to the new information technologies (ICTs) –
threatens to deny this promise from entire regions.’
4. It is important to mention that books have been written on Arab media,
and especially the press, since the 1960s.
5. In February 2008, the Ministers of Information of the Arab League states
issued a charter on satellite television issues during a special meeting
organized by Egypt and Saudi Arabia – ‘Principles for Organizing Satellite
TV in the Arab World’.
6. In the sense that they open the way for new policies or reforms which
were not conceivable before. See Palier and Bonoli (1999).
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Communication, 22, 63–81.
1
Broadcasting Transitions in the
United Arab Emirates
Muhammad I. Ayish
Introduction
The view of media in general and broadcasting in particular as a

catalyst for social change has defined the United Arab Emirates’
national development ever since the launch of the Federation on 2
December 1971. For a nation keen on establishing itself as a modern
state, it was quite natural to see radio and television being harnessed
to promote socio-economic change and to preserve cultural tradi-
tions. In the past two decades in particular, the power of broadcasting
in the UAE is perceived to have arisen not only from its role in pro-
moting national identity and fostering economic progress, but also
from its building bridges with far-flung regional and international
audiences. While striving to maintain its leading position as an
economic power in the region, the UAE has yet to grapple with
challenges related to bolstering its national identity in the context
of asymmetrical demographic realities. In addressing those two
challenges (cultural and economic), the UAE holds high expectations
about what media, especially broadcasting, could contribute. Yet, to
enable radio and television operators to effectively deal with these
two issues, the UAE, at federal and local levels, has brought about
substantive transitions in national broadcasting institutional out-
look, technological sophistication and professional development. In
parallel, the introduction of media free zones in the UAE since 2001
marks a new development that has not only expanded diversity in
the nation’s economic sectors, but has also turned the UAE into a
global media centre (Sadiq 2010).
13
14 Broadcasting Transitions in the United Arab Emirates
This chapter discusses how institutional, technological and

professional transitions in UAE-based broadcasting have served to
foster the country’s radio and television’s contributions to national
development in its socio-cultural and economic realms. Though
broadcasting continues to maintain its traditional role as a govern-
ment voice on national and international issues, its most defining
functions as a guardian of national identity and a catalyst for economic
development remain the most conspicuous.1 Based on an empirical
analysis of national identity expressions in UAE broadcast content
(National Media Council 2010), we conclude that radio and televi-
sion in the UAE have come some way in reflecting the nation’s social
and cultural traditions. On the economic front, the privatization of
formerly state-controlled broadcast operations and the rising diversi-
fication of finances for radio and television services suggest how far
UAE broadcasters are going in enabling the development of a sustain-
able media industry.
Historical context: from radio in the 1960s to the media

free zones in the 2000s
Though the first start of modern broadcasting in the UAE goes back to
the early Federation era, the 1960s had witnessed the rise of numerous
broadcasting operations. In 1962, a local radio station operated by the
British authorities in Sharjah with the name Sawt Al Ashatie (Voice of
the Beach) carried news and music to local communities in Sharjah
and Dubai (Boyd 1999). In 1966, Abu Dhabi Radio was launched as
the first official broadcast station in the country, to be followed in
1969 by Abu Dhabi Television (Boyd 1999). At that time, UAE-based
populations had access to a wide range of regional and international
radio broadcasts from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UK and others. Coffee
shops in urban centres like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah used to have
big radio receivers tuned into news and music to attract customers and
curious listeners. Outside the urban settings, radio listenership was
rather low given the nomadic lifestyle of the desert where Bedouins
roamed the land for water and grass (Tabour 2000).
The real start of broadcasting in the UAE dates back to the estab-
lishment of the seven-emirate Federation on 2 December 1971.
All broadcasting outlets carried the title ‘UAE Broadcaster from
Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah’. At that time, the only pre-Federation
Muhammad I. Ayish 15
broadcast transmissions were coming from Abu Dhabi (one black

and white channel and one AM radio station). But with the institu-
tion of the UAE as an independent state, the need for more coherent
and reliable broadcast operations was, more than ever before, a top
priority on the nation’s agenda. The establishment of the Ministry of
Information and Culture in 1971 furnished the umbrella for launch-
ing such services across the country. In 1972, Dubai had its first
channel, followed some years later by the launch of Channel 33,
a foreign programme outlet that, along with Abu Dhabi’s 2nd
channel, sought to reach out to members of the large UAE expatriate
community, mostly with English-language programming. In 1989,
another television station was launched in Sharjah with mostly cul-
tural programming. Radio broadcasting also witnessed substantive
expansions in the 1970s and 1980s with the mushrooming of more
broadcast outlets in other emirates transmitting on AM and Short
Wave modes to local and regional audiences. In those two decades,
an extensive terrestrial transmission network was established by the
Ministry of Information and Culture to ensure full national coverage
across the country (Ayish 2003a).
The most defining development phase of broadcasting in the UAE
was in the early 1990s when new enhancements and expansions
were introduced to the country’s broadcasting scene. In that period,
UAE broadcasters based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, like their peers in the
region, went international on satellite services with new programme
genres, especially those drawing on entertainment. By the end of
the 1990s, broadcasting in the UAE seemed to have been drifting
towards more localization in institutional affiliation as federal broad-
casting began to disappear. The launch of local broadcasting operations
like Dubai Media Incorporated and Emirates Media Incorporated,
both serving as umbrella organizations for numerous publications
and radio and television services, was an important development
in this regard. The 1990s also witnessed a growth in the number of
local radio stations that, thanks to an advanced mobile telephony
network, gave rise to live talkshows and entertainment programmes
(Boyd 1999). But when the Ministry of Information and Culture was
abolished in 2006 to be inherited by the current National Media
Council (NMC),2 the localization of broadcast operations (as opposed
to federal) was already completed, leaving NMC with only media-
regulatory functions. Abu Dhabi Media Company was established
in 2005 to replace Emirates Media Inc. as a private media company

with no institutional ties to the federal government. By the end of
2010, all broadcasting services in the UAE were operating as part
of local government structures (Departments of Information or
Independent media corporations) (Table 1.1).
The other significant feature of UAE-based broadcasting devel-
opment appeared in 2002 with the launch of Dubai Media City
(DMC) as the first media free zone in the country. DMC, operating
as part of the Dubai Technology, Electronic Commerce and Media
Free Zone Authority (TECOM Investments), plays host to hundreds
of media operations, including radio and television services with
regional and international publics like Al Arabiya channel, Al Hurra
channel, Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) and others. DMC-
based broadcasters operate in a tax-free environment though they
have to pay licensing issuance and renewal fees. They are subject
to locally devised regulations regarding broadcast content. In 2008,
another media free zone was launched in Abu Dhabi under the name
Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority, known in short as twofour54.
The zone’s main goal is to promote Arabic media-content produc-
tion through providing state-of-the-art facilities and expertise.
In mid-2011, twofour54 was home to Abu Dhabi Media and CNN
International’s regional bureau. Plans were reported for host-
ing more international broadcasters in Arabic like BBC Arabic
Television and Skynews Arabic. The latter, a 50–50 joint venture
between Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp (ADMIC), a private
investment company, and British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), the
UK’s leading pay television provider, was launched on 6 May 2012
from twofour54.
Another important development of the UAE broadcasting scene
has been marked by the introduction of encrypted or pay-TV serv-
ices by content providers on a subscription basis. The most popular
services available to UAE-based audiences are offered by Arab Radio
and Television Network (ART) as well as by ORBIT and Showtime
Arabia. The latter two were merged in 2009 as Orbit-Showtime
Network (OSN) with 50 per cent of shares owned by Saudi Mawarid
and the other 50 per cent by Kuwait-based KIPCO. These services are
licensed for distribution in the UAE by the National Media Council
as well as by media free zones. According to a market report released
in 2007 on pay television in the Middle East and the UAE, almost a
quarter of UAE households subscribe to pay-TV services, which are
17
Table 1.1 UAE national broadcasters
Broadcaster organization Services
Abu Dhabi- Abu Dhabi Media

based national Television channels Abu Dhabi One
broadcasters Abu Dhabi Sports
Abu Dhabi-Emirates
National Geographic-AD
Radio stations Abu Dhabi FM
Emirates FM
Holy Quran FM
Star FM
Abu Dhabi Classic
Dubai-based Dubai Media Incorporated

national Television channels Dubai Channel
broadcasters Sama Dubai Channel
Dubai One
Dubai Racing
Radio stations Noor Dubai Radio
Arabian Radio Network Al Arabeyya 99
Radio stations Al Khaleejeya
Dubai 92
Dubai Eye
Virgin Radio
City Radio
Sharjah-based Sharjah Media Corporation

broadcasters Television channels Sharjah Channel
Sharjah Sports
Radio stations Sharjah Radio
Ajman-based Ajman Dept. of Information

broadcasters Television channels Ajman TV Channel
Radio stations Al Rabea’ Radio
RAK-based RAK Dept. of Information

broadcasters Television channels
Radio stations Ras al Khaima Channel
Ras Al Khaima Radio
Fujairah-based Fujairah Media Group

broadcasters Television channels
Dunia Television Channel
Zoal Television Channel
Radio stations Fujairah Radio
Um Quwain-based Radio stations Um al Quwain FM Radio
broadcasters
also offered by the country’s leading telecommunications company

Etisalat through its cable television system E-Vision (AMEInfo 2007).
The 2009 Arab Media Outlook Report noted that cable television
dominated 44 per cent of the television market platforms, followed
by free-to-air (35 per cent), pay satellite (11 per cent) and Internet
pay television (10 per cent) (Dubai Press Club 2009: 44). Mobile
TV is also making some headway in the country, with both Etisalat
and Du, the UAE’s leading telecommunications companies, offering
mobile television services to subscribers. In many ways, those devel-
opments suggest that the UAE seems to be leading the region as a
showcase for media convergence (Ayish 2003b).
Regulatory frameworks
Broadcast operations in the UAE are licensed by the National Media

Council (NMC), while local governments and media free zones also
have a key role in regulation through internal policies, standards and
codes. The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) handle
technical matters relating to spectrum and frequency allocation,
while NMC addresses conformity to content standards in accordance
with Cabinet Decision (13) for 2011. The Decision affirms the goals
of broadcast regulation in respecting religious, cultural and social
traditions in UAE society; reinforcing freedom of expression and
constructive interaction in the broadcast sphere; supporting UAE
media Emiratization efforts; enhancing the role of broadcast indus-
tries in the national economy; and providing a balanced and fair
content that protects privacy and safeguards the community against
harmful broadcast effects.3
As local government institutions, broadcasters are entrusted with
the role of safeguarding indigenous culture; promoting sustainable
development; and keeping viewers abreast of international issues and
events.4 Broadcasters’ subordination to local government systems
suggests that they depend for their financing mainly on state subsidies
with supplementary funding from advertising. All broadcast organi-
zations operate as part of either Abu Dhabi Media (three television
channels and five radio stations); Dubai Media Incorporated (DMI)
(five television channels and nine radio stations); Sharjah Media
Corporation (two television channels and one radio station). Other
broadcasters in Ras Al Khaima, Ajman and Fujairah are also operating
as part of local government-controlled information and communication

structures (Ayish 2011).
In media free zones, on the other hand, all communications are
required to receive initial licensure from the National Media Council.
Yet, content is subject to specific local self-regulations that offer media
zones more autonomy than their national media counterparts. For
example, Dubai Media City is subject to what has been termed as the
Broadcasting and Publication Standards Tribunal (BPST) Regulations.
The Regulations are intended ‘to govern an independent neutral
evaluation of a transmission to be carried out by a tribunal’. The
BPST is established by an order of the Chairman of TECOM under
the power granted to him by Article 5 of Law 1 of 2000. By virtue of
Regulation 3.2 of the BPST Regulations, TECOM has agreed to bind
itself to decisions reached by the BPST. According to the Regulations,
the Tribunal may be convened on request from the Zone or from a
licensee for a determination as to whether a proposed transmission,
or a transmission by a licensee, will breach, or has breached, the
standards. In an explanatory note related to the BPST, it was pointed
out that the regulations ‘will not be the approving authority for con-
tent. Freedom of expression will continue to be the cornerstone for
broadcasting and publishing businesses at DMC. The BPST will only
consider particular content when petitioned by either a broadcaster
or publisher or the authority itself’ (TECOM 2010).
In Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority (twofour54), the Dissemination
Licensing Regulations issued in 2008 stipulate that a person shall not
operate (or purport to operate) any Content Dissemination activities
in the Zone without a licence issued by the Authority under these
Regulations. Article 7.3 of the Regulations states that ‘In considering
whether to grant a License applied for under these Regulations, the
Authority shall have regard to the need to protect the public and the
reputation of the Zone, and the Authority may decide on the appli-
cation by reference to any other factor appearing to the Authority
to be appropriate’ (twofour54 2010). Article 14.2.B states that ‘if the
Licensee disseminates or otherwise makes available to the public any
content in any form, which is defamatory, obscene or in contraven-
tion of any law, regulation, guideline or resolution or which infringes
the rights of any third party or which violates any law, regulation,
guideline or resolution applicable to any of the above irrespective of
the medium used by the Licensee to disseminate or otherwise make
such content available to the public and irrespective of whether or

not the dissemination or otherwise making available of such content
takes place in connection with any Licensed Business’ (twofour54
2010). Article 17.3 of the Regulations also explains the areas that
constitute potential violations:
All Programmes, Advertisements, printed material and all other

content transmitted, broadcast, published and/or produced by
a Licensee (irrespective of the platform, technology or other
means used for such transmission, broadcasting, publication
and/or production) (‘Material’), as concerns the presentation and
content of such Material, shall respect the dignity of the human
being and the fundamental rights of others and in particular
shall not:
(a) be indecent or contain pornography;

(b) give undue prominence to violence or be likely to incite hatred
based on race, sex, religion or nationality;
(c) violate the basic social, cultural and religious values common
to the U.A.E.;
(d) contain material likely to encourage the commission of crime
or lead to public disorder; or
(e) violate any codes of practice and/or programming standards
the Authority may make or issue from time to time. (twofour54
2010)
National broadcasters’ role in reinforcing national

identity and economic growth
Ever since the UAE was founded as a federation on 2 December

1971, national identity has been a defining issue in national policy
discussions. Concern over a national identity being threatened by
global cultural and local demographic developments has been a
rather critical issue in a country where nationals constitute no more
than 15 per cent of a dominant expatriate population.5 Among
other things, concerns over this demographic issue have addressed
the potential negative effects of the flow of alien cultures through
expatriate communities and media content on the nation’s unique
cultural and social traditions. In 2008, a national conference on

national identity called on media to stand up to the challenge of
safeguarding national culture from the deluge of external flows.6 On
its part, the government at federal and local levels has embarked on
huge Emiratization programmes that sought to enhance Emiratis’
integration into the workforce in numerous sectors, including the
broadcast sector.7 On many occasions, broadcasting has been cited
as a powerful tool in the Emiratization drive through the transmis-
sion of content relevant to UAE culture and heritage. The following
section presents the results of a content analysis study conducted
by the author in late 2009 on behalf of the National Media Council
on national identity in UAE media, including radio and television
programmes.
Broadcasting and national identity

National broadcasting in the UAE is entrusted, among other things,
with the mission of reinforcing the country’s national identity.
To achieve that, national UAE broadcasters are expected to demon-
strate two things: (1) they have initiated substantive Emiratization
programmes to ensure heavy UAE nationals’ presence in the national
broadcasting sector, and (2) they have included a compelling amount
of national identity content in their programming. According to
a study commissioned by the National Media Council and carried
out by the author in early 2010, national broadcasters seem to have
scored high on a National Identity Index (NII) developed for the
study (Table 1.2). The findings of the study for radio show variations
in NII scores between different broadcasters with higher scores going
for shows aired by local government radio services while lower scores
were noted for private radio broadcasters with entertainment orien-
tations (Table 1.3). This is quite understandable in the context of the
written missions of local government broadcasters as guardians of
national identity as compared with the mission of non-governmental
broadcasters as business operations with commercial priorities. The
fact that Abu Dhabi Television channel scored the least in terms of
national identity is related to the fact that the channel was no longer
a government-operated service as it functions as part of the commer-
cial Abu Dhabi Media. But on the other hand, we should also notice
that Abu Dhabi Emirates channel was also generating higher scores
on the NII simply because its mission is to feature the UAE culture
Table 1.2 National Identity Index in broadcast media
Relationship to national identity
Strongly Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly Item N

disagree agree
0 1 2 3 4 Core values 1
0 1 2 3 4 Relevance for the UAE 2
0 1 2 3 4 Personalities 3
0 1 2 3 4 Language usage 4
0 1 2 3 4 Presenter 5
0 1 2 3 4 Dress code for presenters 6
0 1 2 3 4 Dress code for guests 7
0 1 2 3 4 Technical features 8
Table 1.3 National Identity Index in selected radio programmes
Broadcaster Programmes Index (out of 4)
Sharjah Radio Heritage talkshow 3.42

Issue for Discussion 3.2
Direct Line 3.5
Radio 99 FM Breakfast 2.2
Girls’ talk 2.1
As You Wish 2.77
AL Khaleejya Radio Entertainment 2.7
New Look 1.78
Take it Easy 2.99
Noor Dubai Radio Direct Broadcast 3.5
Noor Talk 3.4
Our Life 3.2
Radio Four Direct Broadcasting 3.3
Abu Dhabi Radio Studio One 3.4
and heritage through innovative programming (Table 1.4). In this

case, the corporate nature of the channel does not seem to have any
negative impact on its role as an instrument of national identity.
Broadcasting and economic development
The establishment of the Emirates Media Inc. in 1999 marked a

significant shift in the development of media and broadcasting in
Table 1.4 National Identity Index in selected television programmes
Broadcaster Programmes Index (out of 4)
Sharjah Channel Hope & Pain 3.31

My Homeland 3.87
Family Encyclopedia 3.77
Dubai Channel Talk Shadow 3.51
Nashwa 2.11
Color Your Life 3.23
Sama Dubai Mystry 3.77
Breezes 3.10
Ladies 2.45
Abu Dhabi Channel I Entertainment Nights 1.77
Step 3.42
Your Home 2.71
Abu Dhabi-Emirates U-Turn 1.97
Paperless News 3.76
Falconer 3.56
the UAE. EMI, which later changed into Abu Dhabi Media, has four
television stations and five radio services on a commercial basis
with the Abu Dhabi government holding 51 per cent of shares. In a
way, that development suggested growing convictions in the power
of the market rather than the state to define the future of broad-
casting. This should in no way suggest that broadcasting is no longer
committed to national cultural and social development. Abu Dhabi
Emirates channel continues to air programmes with significant rele-
vance for the UAE heritage and culture, while Abu Dhabi Radio,
Classical Music Radio and Al Qur’an Radio maintain programming
content that fosters cultural and national traditions as noted in the
national identity study. The transition from a state-controlled broad-
casting model into a market-driven model was meant to harness the
standards of broadcast work to enhance professional practices and
content quality in an increasingly competitive market. The drift
towards non-state funding has in fact brought about new innova-
tion in marketing practices that aim at diversifying financial sources
for broadcasters. This very practice has been used quite well even
by local government-controlled broadcasters operating under Dubai
Media Inc. and Sharjah Media Corporation. These two organiza-
tions have evolved over the past decade into more financially and
administratively independent media entities with significant market

orientations.
The transition of broadcast organizations towards market-oriented
business practices has had important implications for the volume of
advertising spending. Since the late 1990s, the UAE, with the second
largest economy in the Arab world, has been positioned next to Saudi
Arabia in terms of advertising spending levels. During the current
financial crisis, the UAE has managed to maintain its leading posi-
tion; yet, its volume of advertising spend experienced a decline of 27
per cent in 2009, according to the Pan Arab Research Centre (PARC).8
The report noted that the total advertising spend of 2009 was $1.46
billion; whereas the total spend in 2007 was $1.42 billion. In 2010,
advertising declined in the UAE between 2 per cent and 18 per cent
in the first quarter of 2010, with newspapers being hit particu-
larly hard, according to regional analysts. Advertising expenditure
declined 5 per cent to US$337 million (Dh1.2 billion), but the UAE
remains the second biggest advertising market in the region with a
12 per cent share after Egypt, according to the latest report by the
Pan Arab Research Centre (PARC). According to the 2010 Arab Media
Outlook Report, advertising in the UAE is expected to experience
some resurgence in the next few years, with radio advertising spend
maintaining its $16 million level from 2011 to 2013, and television
jumping from $38 million in 2011 to $43 million in 2013 (Dubai
Press Club 2009: 111).
But the role of broadcasting in the UAE as a catalyst for economic
development is not confined to its being an advertising outlet; it also
functions as a carrier of programming content with high relevance
for economic progress. All broadcasters carry news of finance and
business in their daily national newscasts dealing with stock mar-
kets, real estate, the construction sector, trade and energy. In the few
Arabic business-oriented shows like Indicators, In Dirham and UAE
Business on Dubai channel, audiences are introduced to new develop-
ments in the market with a focus on its bright sides. On the three
main channels in the UAE, government-initiated business ventures
and projects are featured highly in newscasts and some special pro-
grammes. In the post-financial-crisis period, this trend has been most
conspicuous in television’s focus on the opening of mega-real-estate
entities like Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in the world, and Atlantic
Hotel, one of the most magnificent structures in the region.
Conclusion
It is clear that broadcasting in the United Arab Emirates has come a

long way in its development since the establishment of the UAE
Federation in late 1971. From one monochrome channel and three
radio stations at that time, the country has come to have over 15
national television channels, 25 radio stations and hundreds of
broadcast outlets hosted at four media free zones. It is true that such
huge transitions in UAE broadcasting have not encompassed signifi-
cant political components, but the mere fact that broadcast structures
became more administratively and financially independent, more
professionally enhanced and more technologically empowered
underscores the magnitude of the transition in this sector. With
broadcasting viewed as a tool of cultural and economic development,
radio and television in the UAE have developed along those lines by
seeking to echo national identity in their globalized and indigenous
forms and to promote economic development in a free-market sys-
tem. The fact that broadcasting has turned into a local operation
with the diminution of federal broadcasting structures has been
instrumental in giving more focus to local issues and developments.
The hosting of scores of regional and international broadcasting
operations in media free zones has also been a central component of
the UAE broadcasting transition in the economic sphere. Media free
zones are viewed as central pillars of Dubai’s service-oriented econ-
omy as hosted broadcasters turn into viable sources of revenue. The
increasing alignment of UAE broadcasting dynamics with market
imperatives has also been important for the growth in ad-spending
levels in the country. Though many of the broadcast commercials
aired on UAE radio and television outlets are for multinational
corporations, the international position of the country as a global
business centre is also benefiting from this feature.
Notes
1. Consider for example the aims of Dubai Media Incorporated which was
launched in 2008 as follows:
Aims to reach the maximum number of viewers by presenting creative and

meaningful television content that respects social, cultural, and family
values in the UAE, the Gulf and the Arab world.
Seeks to embody the spirit of originality and modernity of the UAE and
Dubai. Contributes to the dissemination of the image of Dubai and its
achievements regionally and globally.
Encourages creativity through continuous development of new media

services parallel to relevant developments in the UAE.
Instill a culture of media work among employees of DMI and the media in
general, based on a clear study.
Create a new Emirati media generation able to deploy and demonstrate

the image of Dubai and the UAE and their local and global achievements
to the international arena and to reach a maximum number of viewers
with creative, respectable and relevant television content.
The Sharjah Media Corporation, established in 2009, also seeks to enhance

national media capacities to be able to cope with the evolving challenges
of development and to reinforce the role of media in bolstering family
coherence and the development of professional standards based on excel-
lence, innovation and responsible freedom.
2. The National Media Council is the sole media regulatory body in the
UAE. NMC is chaired by a government minister who reports directly to
the cabinet. The Council’s double mandate is media licensure and content
follow-up. Recently, NMC has engaged media organizations in its func-
tions through the establishment of its Advisory and Coordination Boards.
NMC also continues to run the National News Agency (WAM) as a federal
news organization.
3. Cabinet Decision (3), 2011, UAE.
4. The missions and objectives of broadcasters are embossed in their bylaws
and internal regulations.
5. In early 2011, a report by the National Statistics Center pointed out that
the overall UAE population totalled 8.5 million, with the local population
being only about 9 per cent.
6. The conference was convened on 16 April 2008 by the Ministry of Culture
in Dubai and witnessed heated debates about the future of the UAE in the
context of sweeping globalization.
7. Media Emiratization efforts are being carried out at the federal level where
a special committee has been set up at the National Media Council along-
side local government media actions to ensure systematic UAE nationals’
integration into the media sector.
8. ‘Advertising spend in UAE decline 27% last year’, posted 7 January 2010
on www.uaeinteract.com/docs/Advertising_spend_in_UAE_decline_27_
last_year_/39070.htm
Bibliography
AMEinfo (2007) ‘Strong growth forecast for MENA pay TV’, www.ameinfo.
com/123857.html
Ayish, M. I. (2003a) Arab World Television in the Age of Globalization (Hamburg:

Centre for Near Eastern Studies).
—— (2003b) ‘Media convergence in the United Arab Emirates: a survey of
evolving patterns’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into
New Media Technologies, September, 77–87.
—— (2011) ‘Media investments and the search for regulatory models in
the UAE’, paper presented at University of Westminster’s Conference on
Investors and Entrepreneurship in Arab Media, 14–15 April.
Dubai Press Club (2009) Arab Media Outlook (2009–2011): Inspiring Local
Content. Dubai.
National Media Council (2010) ‘Media and national identity in the UAE:
a study of the presence of national identity in UAE communications’, Abu
Dhabi.
Sadiq, A. M. (2010) Media Free Zones in the UAE (Abu Dhabi: Media Center for
His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan).
Tabour, A. M. (2000) Development of Media Organizations in the UAE and Its
Effects on Cultural Development (Abu Dhabi: Cultural Foundation).
TECOM (2010) Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority, www.
tecom.ae/law/law_7.htm
twofour54 (2010) Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority, Dissemination Licensing
Regulations, http://twofour54.com/en/regulatoryaffairs/about-twofour54/
regulatory-affairs.html
2
Television Reform in Saudi
Arabia: The Challenges of
Transnationalization and
Digitization
Marwan M. Kraidy
Introduction
Media policy in Saudi Arabia has historically been concerned with

building a national media system focused on preserving national
cohesion and protecting Saudi media and cultural space from exter-
nal influences, while at the same time developing a pan-Arab media
regime enabling Saudi Arabia to project power and influence beyond
the kingdom’s borders. Internally, the establishment of television in
the 1960s was controversial and met with fierce resistance from con-
servative opponents; since then television has remained the subject of a
moral-political-cultural struggle. Externally, Saudi media clout has grown
steadily in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, enabling the royal fam-
ily and associated businessmen to combine financial gain with political
influence. As the satellite era entered its second decade, the precarious
equilibrium maintained by the Saudi rulers between internal and external
media came under a severe challenge as new media technologies, from
satellite broadcasting to social media, eroded the boundaries between
the Saudi national sphere on the one hand, and both the pan-Arab
sphere and the global realm on the other. Media reform in the past ten
years has therefore focused on restoring the balance between on the one
hand various Saudi constituents – the Sahwa firebrands,1 conservative
clerics, liberal activists, business people – and on the other hand between
Saudi Arabia’s internal exigencies, and foreign agenda.
Against such a backdrop, media reform in Saudi Arabia has cus-
tomarily resulted from political concerns, even though these political
concerns are sometime manifested in socio-economic or moral-cultural
28
Marwan M. Kraidy 29
terms. The paramount political concern is the continuity of the rule

of al-Saud. The mass media’s role in the process of regime survival
and consolidation has grown over the decades since the founding of
modern Saudi Arabia, and ‘reforming’ the media sector has become a
major political issue in Saudi Arabia since the emergence of television
in the kingdom. Since then, successive kings have regarded television
as a key instrument to hold on to power. The royal family has since
the 1960s monopolized television broadcasting via its absolute con-
trol of the Saudi state, banning critical coverage of its members and
other instruments of power like the military and police.
The political struggle over the structure and content of television in
Saudi Arabia often takes the form of a moral-cultural war. In a country
that prides itself on being the cradle of Islam, and where a puritani-
cal interpretation of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabiyya operates as
the official ideology of the state, television is especially susceptible to
censorship based on concerns about its impact on cultural identity, rela-
tions between men and women, and moral values. These concerns are
permeated by religious discourse, whether by the government seeking
to shroud policies in religion, or by critics of television posing as moral
guardians standing between the sacred realm of Saudi Arabia and the
corrupting influence of the West. Finally, like in many other countries,
Saudi television policy – and therefore reform – always invokes the
trope of socio-economic development and the important role of televi-
sion in that domain. Television also serves to promote national unity
and move forward with a modernization plan. Even today, promoting
national cohesion is a primary objective of Saudi media policy. With a
surface of nearly 2.2 million square kilometres (approximately 830,000
square miles), Saudi Arabia has a large national territory – the world’s
fourteenth largest nation-state. Its population of 27 million people
(including between 5 and 6 million foreign residents) dwarfs the other
Gulf petro-monarchies. In terms of population density, however, Saudi
Arabia ranks 205th worldwide at 11 inhabitants per square kilometre
(or 29 per square mile). Television is an important instrument of national
unity in such a sparsely populated and tribally fractured territory.
National media and supranational influence
Saudi Arabia’s socio-political order has rested on a long-standing

alliance between the al-Saud and the al-Shaykh families, which gives
30 Television Reform in Saudi Arabia
the former supremacy in politics while awarding the latter leadership

in the domains of religion, education and culture. As a result of this
cleric-political collusion, the Wahhabiyya state influences Saudi
media policy. Since the inception of television, clerics have held
sway over television content, and their influence grows in times
of crisis when the political legitimacy of the al-Saud is shaky. For
example, after the storming of the Grand Mosque of Mecca by armed
militants in 1973, clerics pressured the Minister of the Interior,
who in turn pressured the Minister of Information, to prohibit the
presence of Saudi women as newscasters on television (an issue that
remains salient and emerges every time there is political instability
in the kingdom). But as Saudi Arabia grew more integrated in the
larger, pan-Arab media space, clerics lost some of the power to
determine what Saudi viewers watched. This has led to clerics being
increasingly vocal about television, making policy pronouncements
sometimes backed by religious edicts that are external to state insti-
tutions explicitly tasked with media regulation like the Ministry of
Information.
Saudi media cannot be understood in isolation from the wider
Arab world because of the privileged status of Saudi Arabia in the
realm of Arab media. Two factors confer this status on Saudi Arabia:
wealth and Wahhabiyya, which, as we shall see, sometimes work in
tandem, and other times work in opposite directions to influence
the process of media reform. With its vast energy resources, relatively
large population and limited entertainment opportunities outside of
private homes, Saudi Arabia constitutes an important target for pan-
Arab media programmers and producers and an important locus of
advertising spending. In addition to Saudi Arabia’s special economic
position for Arab media, the country is important for Arab media at
large because of the particular philosophy of the role of television in
society espoused by Saudi rulers, which puts the media in the service
of a puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabiyya
and the resulting media structure, policies and regulations.
The satellite era has brought new social and political challenges
that the Saudi cleric-political regime has sought to tackle under the
mantra of media reform. One of these challenges affects many Arab
countries, including Saudi Arabia: the decline of state broadcasters
combined with the rise of a transnational and hence virtually uncon-
trollable pan-Arab media space have reduced the influence of Arab
Marwan M. Kraidy 31
states and the effectiveness of their television policies. Consequently,

many states have embarked on a process of liberalization – understood
in the narrow sense of allowing privately owned satellite channels
to operate within strict political constraints – with the twin goals
of reaching their own national viewers and projecting transna-
tional influence. This process of liberalization is often rhetorically
incorporated under the umbrella of ‘reform’.
Rather than elaborating developments in Saudi and Saudi-owned
media that happened during the first decade of the Arab satellite
revolution, 1991–2001, an era which has been amply researched and
documented, this chapter (after a brief description of Saudi media
before 2000) will proceed to focus on the phenomenon of Saudi
media ‘reform’ during the second decade of the pan-Arab media
revolution, 2001–11. This chapter concludes that the primary purpose
of media reform is to deepen and broaden government control of
television socially (the entire family), technologically (multime-
dia convergence), geographically (all regions of Saudi Arabia) and
ideologically (to cover the entire spectrum).
Saudi media, 1962–2000
The Saudi Ministry of Information was established in 1962 (Rugh

1980). Saudi television broadcasting started in 1965, after Prince
Faysal Bin ‘Abdulaziz had issued a decree in that respect in 1962,
prompting the Council of Ministers in 1963 to approve the plan to
bring television broadcasting into the kingdom. A primary motiva-
tion stemmed from a consideration of television as an important
instrument of modernization and its perceived role catering to a
growing Saudi professional class that experienced television while
travelling in Egypt and Lebanon. Secondary reasons for the establish-
ment of television included the desire to foster national cohesion,
to counter hostile propaganda from Egypt, mostly reaching Saudis
through Gamal ‘Abdulnaser Voice of the Arabs radio, in addition to
plans to use television for educational and developmental purposes.
The introduction of television to Saudi Arabia was vehemently
opposed by militants who considered the medium to be ‘un-Islamic’.
Activists in 1965 marched on the Saudi television building to shut
it down. While trying to subdue the militants, Saudi security forces
shot dead a prince whose brother took revenge ten years later when
he assassinated King Faysal in 1975 (Boyd 1999). Overall, however,

television served the royal family well in December 1979, by dem-
onstrating, after days of conflicting accounts, that armed militants
who had stormed the Grand Mosque were in the custody of Saudi
security services (Trofimov 2007). In the aftermath of that major
crisis, official desire to tighten control on the media was manifest
in a July 1981 royal decree that reordered the Saudi Higher Media
Council and put the interior minister, Prince Nayef Bin ‘Abdulaziz,
at the leadership of a new committee tasked with supervising Saudi
media policy (Kraidy 2010).
The Gulf War of 1991 catalysed the creation of offshore Saudi-
owned satellite channels, and in the following years Saudi princes
and business moguls expanded their stakes in pan-Arab television
industries, with Shaykh Waleed al-Ibrahim launching from London
the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC). The British capital was
by then emerging as an Arab media capital in its own right, with
many opposition politicians, dissidents and businessmen launching
Arabic-language media there. Some of these activists first used faxes
to disseminate anti-monarchy messages, then started appearing from
London on Al Jazeera and other channels to attack the royal family
on the air. These developments compelled Saudi authorities to
expand their regional media capabilities.
Saudi moguls other than Waleed al-Ibrahim, like Prince al-Waleed
bin Talal and Saleh Kamel, also invested in media ventures. Starting
in 1993, al-Waleed bin Talal embarked on an ambitious series of
media acquisitions, partnerships and new ventures that is still going
strong at the time of this writing, including his Rotana conglomer-
ates and a stake in LBC-Sat that has grown over the years (Kraidy
and Khalil 2009). A religious channel, Iqra’, was also launched in
1998 to cater to the religious conservatives in the kingdom. As this
period of expansion appeared to be losing momentum, the attacks of
11 September 2001 would create a new impetus for media growth
and media reform in and by Saudi Arabia.
Saudi media reform, 2001–11
The Saudi governance system as a whole, including the media policy

model that had prevailed in Saudi Arabia, came under severe strain
after it became known that the majority of the 11 September 2001
Marwan M. Kraidy 33
attackers were Saudi citizens. The Saudi media policy regime geared
at once at internal control and external projection of influence, in
which the state retains full control of television internally while
making use of Saudi media tycoons as proxies to do its bidding trans-
nationally, needed to be changed. Under tremendous pressure from
the United States to reign in al-Qaeda-affiliated militants, which
compounded domestic concerns to counter indigenous radicals
who by then had mounted several terrorist operations within the
kingdom, King Abdullah initiated a series of reforms, one of which
focused on the media sector.
The post-9/11 environment, including the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq, exacerbated the polarization of Saudi politics to a dangerous
level, and media reforms were designed to counter Jihadi discourse,
help control and arrest radicals (al-Qaeda), and at the same time to
co-opt the comparatively moderate opposition (which occupies an
ideologically broad and dynamic spectrum). The Saudi monarchy
struggled to maintain a moving equilibrium between activists from
several camps – the Sahwa firebrands, liberals and conservatives. In
this struggle for control, media reform, through the provision of
key media resources to these groups, enabled the al-Saud to remain
central arbiters in the national political game.
The second Saudi boom: media reform, 2000–7

In the first half of the 2000s, Saudi authorities established, allowed
or encouraged several new media ventures. A batch of private media
enterprises arose. A religious channel, Al Majd, began test broadcast-
ing in 2002 and expanded into a full-fledged grid within a year,
addressing religious conservatives. The year 2002 saw the advent of
the liberal daily newspaper Al-Watan. In 2003, a Saudi-dominated
consortium of investors launched Al Arabiya, an all-news satellite
channel based in Dubai, now part of MBC group, with a liberal
agenda. Al Arabiya’s agenda was to counter Al Jazeera’s editorial
line which was then highly critical of Saudi Arabia’s rulers (this has
changed after the leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia reconciled in
2007). At the same time, the MBC Group and al-Waleed’s Rotana
were given full licence to expand into major media conglomerates
(see Kraidy and Khalil 2009, for details).
In addition to these privately owned ventures sympathetic to
the al-Saud, the reform of government media capabilities became a
priority, under the purview of the state-run Broadcasting Service of

the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (BSKSA), the national body in charge
of all television activities. In 2004, in the wake of terrorist attacks
on Saudi soil, the Ministry of Culture and Communication set up
Al Ekhbariyya, an all-news channel run from the capital Riyadh,
making the Saudi government a player in the game of pan-Arab
all-news channels, at least within Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials also
began drawing plans to revamp Saudi television at the technical,
aesthetic and human resources levels.
Saudi TV now has five channels: it incorporates Saudi Channel 1,
which in 1976 switched from black and white to colour broadcast-
ing; Saudi Channel 2 (English-language) launched in 1983; Saudi
Sports channel, launched in 2003; Al Ekhbariyya, launched in 2004;
and Ajyal, a children’s channel, launched in 2009. As in the 1980s,
changes in television policy reflected the government’s desire to
be able to provide coverage at a time of crisis. Al Ekhbariyya was
launched as part of wide-ranging television reforms that included
revamping Channels 1 and 2, and launching a sports channel, all
designed to attract Saudi viewers back to state television in the
wake of their migration to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. A 2004 survey
published in Arab Ad indicated that these efforts were partly suc-
cessful, revealing that 82 per cent of Saudi households watched Al
Jazeera, compared to 75 per cent for Al Arabiya and 33 per cent for
Al Ekhbariyya (Saudi Arabia Media Survey 2004).
Modernizing Saudi media: media reform since 2007

More recently, under the leadership of Minster of Culture and
Information ‘Abdulaziz Khoja, the kingdom has embarked on an
ambitious project of reforming its broadcasting policy, renewing
programming, upgrading facilities and training human resources,
with the declared objective of making Saudi television the first
choice for Saudi viewers. Hence the first full-scale modernization
of Saudi television since its founding got underway in 2007, under
the guidance of a committee of experts at the Ministry of Culture
and Information. During that year’s Hajj season, which came in
December, Saudi television rolled out a set of innovations, which
included the incorporation of live news reporting, after decades of
in-studio talking heads using pre-recorded news stories. The changes
first became apparent in the morning news bulletin on the first
Marwan M. Kraidy 35
Saturday of December (al-Khalify 2007). A Saudi television official

proudly announced to the press:
We sought the expertise from LBC and other networks to train the
technicians and presenters … changes include new logos, putting
all four channels in a bouquet. The new signals will be changed
as well as the quality and quantity of the programme and news.
(Hawari 2008)
Perhaps more importantly, the on-screen demeanour of the anchors

changed to become more fluid and less formal, and ‘more modern’.
Live shots from well-known places in Riyadh were also incorporated
on the screen (al-Khalify 2007). In addition, new programmes (up to
ten) were designed to lure Saudi viewers away from the myriad satel-
lite channels and back to the national channels. One programme,
called Masrah al-Telefizion (The Stage of Television), was to feature
audience participation, a first for official Saudi television.
According to Muhammad al-Qazzaz, a high-ranking official in
Saudi television and an advisor at the Ministry of Culture and
Information, the modernization plan is premised on the assumption
that after more than 15 years of a pan-Arab satellite television
race which has seen ferocious competition and a decline in moral
standards, the ‘Saudi viewer longs for a return to authenticity’
(al-Khalify 2007).
In 2009, the Ministry of Information and Culture announced a
major modernization effort focused on four fronts: the establish-
ment of production and transmission facilities in all regions of the
kingdom, migration of all television broadcasting to High Definition,
the progressive establishment of digital transmission for terrestrial
television, and the archiving of television and radio materials dating
back to the mid-twentieth century. Two years after digital transmis-
sion started on a small scale in 2007 (al-Khalify 2007), the reforms
announced in 2009 clearly had the objective of bringing Saudi
media into the digital era (Saudi Arabia has adopted 720p as its High
Definition standard, with the idea that it would upgrade to 1080p).
The reform drive included a focus on local and regional program-
ming within Saudi Arabia. According to an official at the ministry,
the agenda was to ‘establish local media that serve all the regions
of the country’ (al-Hamady 2009). Though the Saudi Ministry of
Information and Culture until recently operated around 150

transmission sites across the country, 6 of the 13 provinces did not
have any radio or television production structures (which existed only
in Riyadh, Dhammam, Qasim, Jeddah, Medina, Mecca and Abha).
Substantial funds were devoted to the establishment of television
production infrastructure throughout Saudi Arabia, with the aim
of having one High Definition facility combining radio and tele-
vision studios with editing facilities in each of the other provinces
of Tawuq, Hail, Jazan, Baha, Najran, Arar and Joaf. For example,
Dhammam received production studios at a cost of $26 million, and
Jeddah obtained a new digital radio facility that cost $31.5 million,
while $33.5 million were spent on local television centres in three
provinces. In addition, $7.5 million were spent on the renovation
of a radio studio in Riyadh and $30 million were dedicated to the
archiving drive (Cherian 2009).
At the same time, Saudi Channels 1 and 2, and Al Ekhbariyya, were
getting redesigned logos and wide-ranging technical upgrades. On
18 December 2010, the minister also announced the launch of five
new channels, including two channels dedicated to the Qur’an and
Sunna, one focused on promoting Saudi Arabia’s global economic
role, one dedicated to ‘cultural dialogue’, in addition to children’s
channel Ajyal (Abdullah 2010).2
The politics of Saudi media reform
There are occasional periods when media policy is tightened or

relaxed, because, as Boyd put it, ‘television always reflects what the
Ministry of Information believes to be the mood of the country’
(1999: 163). Media policy has shown consistency of focus in the
50 years that television has existed in Saudi Arabia. Since the 1960s,
censorship guidelines have prohibited sexually arousing scenes,
women with revealing clothing, women dancing, or scenes which
‘show overt acts of love’, drinking alcohol, betting and gambling,
attacks on any of the ‘Heavenly religions’, criticism or mockery
of other countries and their rulers, criticism of the House of Saud,
references to Zionism and excessive violence (Shobaili 1971, quoted
in Boyd 1999: 164). These guidelines are implemented with slight
variations. In the case of the Egyptian movies shown on Saudi televi-
sion, unmarried actors acting a married couple are prohibited from
Marwan M. Kraidy 37
sitting on the same bed at the same time and in the same room with
the door closed; no women should appear on the screen during
Ramadan, and parents cannot be seen kissing their children from the
other sex (Index on Censorship 1992, quoted in Boyd 1999: 165). In
light of the geopolitical realignments occurring in the Middle East in
the wake of the occupation of Iraq in 2003, Israel is discussed in a
somewhat more favourable light, especially on ‘liberal’ and offshore
channels like Al Arabiya.
As previously discussed, the Ministry of Information is not the
only site where television policy is discussed. When they feel side-
stepped by the royal family on matters of media policy, Saudi clerics
feel empowered to make consequential public statements about the
television industry. In September 2008, during the holy Muslim
month of Ramadan, several Saudi clerics were critical of Ramadan
programming, especially of a Turkish series dubbed into Arabic,
which showcased an egalitarian and relatively bold romantic rela-
tionship between a young married couple. The series, called Nour
(Light) in Arabic, had caused a commotion in Saudi Arabia, with
reports of women neglecting their professional or familial duties to
watch the show, and others warning of the danger that the show
posed to the numerous Saudi viewers who were enthralled by it. One
of the main problems was that MBC, the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based
channel, aired the show. The first official pronouncement came when
Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti issued a religious edict condemning Nour
as ‘un-Islamic’ (Kraidy and Khalil 2009). Though accusations against
media moguls of corrupting society are not new in Saudi Arabia,
clerical attacks were particularly harsh during Ramadan 2008. In
mid-September 2008, Shaykh Saleh al-Luhaydan, head of Saudi
Arabia’s highest juridical authority, stated on a radio programme that
the owners of television channels airing programmes considered to
be immoral or debauched may legitimately be killed.
The same political imperatives and moral-religious concerns that
are at the foundation of the Saudi censorship guidelines elaborated
in the 1960s found their way into a joint Saudi–Egyptian effort to
rein in pan-Arab satellite television. On 12 February 2008, Arab
information ministers adopted a satellite television charter during
an emergency meeting in Cairo. The document is broad-ranging,
covering news, political shows, entertainment and even sports
programmes. It is also restrictive, giving Arab governments tools to
sanction satellite broadcasters who attack leaders, harm national

reputation or air socially unacceptable content.
In the weeks before the meeting, the Saudi information and culture
minister (along with his Egyptian colleague) lobbied other ministers
to vote in favour of the document. Momentum towards action began
in the wake of the summer 2006 war in Lebanon. When hostilities
broke out, Egyptian and Saudi leaders first condemned Hezbollah’s
‘adventurism’, but back-pedalled in light of Hezbollah’s resilience and
mounting civilian casualties of Israel’s onslaught. In the meantime,
Hezbollah’s Al Manar climbed to the top ten in pan-Arab ratings, and
live talkshow hosts struggled to prevent callers from heaping verbal
abuse on pro-US Arab regimes. An Al Manar viewer called the Saudi
king ‘a pig’ – perhaps the ultimate insult – before he was discon-
nected. From the perspective of the Saudi monarchy, reining in this
unruly transnational media space became a priority.
Indeed, the Arab Satellite Television Charter (ASTC) echoes Saudi
censorship guidelines. By penalizing content that allegedly promotes
sexual activity and alcohol consumption, the ASTC placates socially
conservative Islamists who for years have advocated such restrictions.
By purporting to protect ‘Arab identity from the harmful effects of
globalization’, it appeals to both Arab nationalists and Islamists. And
by prohibiting content that would ‘damage social harmony, national
unity, public order, or traditional values’, the charter justifies
authoritarian rule. Finally, the charter has a populist provision,
stipulating Arab viewers’ rights to information, including the right
to watch sports competitions on free-to-air government channels
even when commercial channels hold exclusivity agreements. In
addition to reasserting the rights of state television channels, this
gives the charter some street-cred with Arab publics. The char-
ter has been controversial. The director of the Saudi information
ministry, ‘Abdullah al-Jasir, was compelled to explain that the charter
‘distinguishes between incitement to violence and resistance to
occupation’ (al-Barraq 2008).
Conclusion
The principal objective of media reform in Saudi Arabia is to pre-

serve the political status quo. In effect, changes in media structures
and practices have enabled the monarchy to expand and deepen
Marwan M. Kraidy 39
its media reach within the kingdom and beyond its borders. This
breadth and depth of the cleric-political regime’s media presence –
and assumed influence – becomes clear when one reviews media
reform measures of the past ten years.
This way, the expansion of local and regional broadcasting
facilities and programming into all regions of Saudi Arabia reflects
the al-Saud’s desire for their media reach to cover the entire territory,
while at the same time catering to tribal, sectarian and other local
specificities.
In the same vein, the government’s declared desire for every
member of the typical Saudi family to choose a Saudi television
channel as their preferred channel – the main objective of the mod-
ernization drive, as articulated by Minister of Culture and Information
‘Abdulaziz Khoja, was to ‘make Saudi television the first choice of
the Saudi family’ (al-Ruways 2009) – echoes the desire to penetrate
deeply into the Saudi social structure, and to fend off alternatives that
may attract some groups – say young men – that Saudi authorities
cannot control.
Similarly, one may interpret the aggressive move towards digitizing
the entire television apparatus in the kingdom, from transmission to
archiving, as reflecting the desire to have a solid offering that,
taking advantage of multimedia convergence afforded by digitiza-
tion, can cross over from television to other platforms, including
YouTube, Facebook and DVDs. The same concern can be seen in the
first formal pan-Arab regulatory text – the Arab Satellite Television
Charter – which reflects attempts by Arab governments to reassert
control over an unwieldy transnational media scene that in addition
to television is witnessing an explosion of ‘small media’ like mobile
telephones, blogs and social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook
and their indigenous versions.
A final, and perhaps most important, element of this ‘full spectrum
influence’ – all regions, all members of the family, all media –
is that the process of media reform enables the maintenance of a
Saudi and Saudi-controlled pan-Arab media field that covers a very
wide ideological spectrum while remaining sympathetic or at the
very least not hostile to the Saudi regime. In that context, awarding
media licences and permissions is a great tool in the hands of the
monarchy to stay in control of the equilibrium between the various
social and political factions in the kingdom. For example, the fact
that, by January 2008, Al Ekhbariyya had ten female anchors,

including three Saudi women (Hawari 2008), against the wishes of
Saudi conservatives who militate in favour of taking women off the
air completely, was ‘compensated’ in 2010 by the announcement
that, out of the five planned new channels, two would focus on the
Qur’an and the Sunna. This spectrum ranges from Iqra’ and Al Majd
at one end, and LBC and MBC at the other end. So we can add ‘all
ideological spectrum’ – radical-conservative-centrist-liberal – to the
all-encompassing geographical, social and technological purview of
Saudi television reform.
In that environment, where media reform serves to tighten govern-
ment control of the media, Minister of Information and Culture
Khoja’s declaration that his agenda was to turn ‘radio and televi-
sion into independent public institutions’, and that a committee of
experts has already forwarded recommendations to the royal office
(al-Hamady 2009), has to be considered with a healthy dose of scepti-
cism. Saudi Arabia’s media reform combines political repression with
economic liberalization.
Notes
1. The Islamic Awakening (al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya) was a dissident movement
led by charismatic preachers, some of whom had no formal training in
religious doctrine, and therefore no official connections to the Saudi
religious establishment.
2. Besides this, there were 40 applications for the five privately owned FM
radio licences made available by the ministry, after MBC controlled the
FM radio broadcasting in the kingdom for several years (al-Hamady
2009).
Bibliography
Abdullah, Sarah (2010) ‘Saudi TV gets a face-lift’, Arab News, 16 January.
Al-Barraq, N. (2008) ‘‘Abdallah al-Jaser: satellite charter distinguishes between
incitement to violence and resistance to occupation’, al-Hayat [Arabic],
20 February.
Al-Dywaihy, ‘Abdullatif (2010) ‘Regional television channels … we started
with them so why not return to them?’, Al-Watan [Arabic], 28 January.
Al-Ghamdy, Qinan ‘Abdullah (2009) ‘Television network and clear objective:
satellite channels and the Saudi arena’, Al-Watan [Arabic], 14 October.
Al-Hamady, Yusef (2009) ‘Saudi Arabia consolidates local media by launching
satellite channels for the regions’, Asharq al-Awsat [Arabic], 29 October.
Marwan M. Kraidy 41
Al-Humairy, Balkis (2008) ‘It rose up against itself … for sixty minutes …
Saudi television celebrates its symbols’, Al-Hayat [Arabic], 14 October.
Al-Khalify, ‘Abdullah (2007) ‘Saudi television wears a new “robe”: after
executing biggest modernization of channels since its inception’, Asharq
al-Awsat [Arabic], 30 December.
Al-Mutairy, Raja Sayer (2009) ‘A sixth channel for Saudi Television’, Al-Riyadh
[Arabic], 24 October.
Al-Ruways, S. (2009) ‘Khoja: our objective is to make Saudi television the first
choice of the Saudi family’, Al-Riyadh [Arabic], 11 October.
Al-Shahry, M. and al-Hudhaify, A. (2009) ‘770 thousand television, radio and
electronic materials archived’, ‘Okaz [Arabic], 16 November.
Bady, Ibrahim (2007) ‘Saudi Arabia … channels’ market exposes viewers’ iden-
tities and ideologies’, Al-Hayat [Arabic], 18 June.
‘Beginning of IPTV digital television service’ (2010) Al-Watan [Arabic],
25 April.
Cherian, V. (2009) ‘Saudi TV’, 12 September [online].
Dawud, F. (2009) ‘The Gulf: shutting down channels and laying off workers …
and relying on the Lebanese market’, Al-Akhbar [Arabic], 6 April.
Hawari, W. (2008) ‘At long last, Saudi TV gets a bold makeover’, Arab News,
11 January.
Kraidy, M. M. (2010) Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public
Life (Cambridge University Press).
Kraidy, M. M. and Khalil, J. F. (2009) Arab Television Industries (London and
New York: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan).
Rugh, W. A. (1980) ‘Saudi mass media and society in the Faisal era’, in
W. A. Beling (ed.), King Faisal and the Modernization of Saudi Arabia (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press), pp. 125–44.
‘Saudi Arabia launches four new television channels’ (2009) Assafir [Arabic],
12 May.
Saudi Arabia Media Survey (2004) Arab Ad, October.
Sawady, ‘E. (2010) ‘O defender of religious channels … answer the following
questions’, Al-Watan [Arabic], 25 April.
Talon, C. G. (2011) Al-Jazeera: Liberté d’expression et pétro-monarchie (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France).
Trofimov, Y. (2007) The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest
Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda (New York: Doubleday).
3
The Other Face of Qatari TV
Broadcasting
Hugh Miles
Al Jazeera is the best-known channel in Qatar, but state broadcaster

Qatar TV (QTV) is the main source of national TV news for most
Arabic speakers in the tiny Gulf state. Even though they are con-
nected by fibre optic cables and their studios are just a short walk
apart, the two channels differ in many ways and relations between
them are not as warm as they could be.
While QTV flies the Qatari flag and is clearly branded as the official
national broadcaster, Al Jazeera plays down its dependence on Qatar
and likes to present itself as an independent operator. Al Jazeera’s
focus is on international breaking news and iconoclastic talkshows.
QTV’s outlook is more like what one would expect to find emanating
from a conservative Gulf state, with extensive airtime given over to
covering national events and news from an official, pro-government
perspective.
Special attention is paid to the quadrumvirate who run most things
in Qatar these days – the Emir, Sheikh Hamad Khalifa al-Thani, his
wife Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Misnad, Heir Apparent Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and prime minister Sheikh Hamad Bin
Jassim Bin Jaber al-Thani. Tellingly, although both channels are
financed and run by the Qatari government and three royal family
members now head Al Jazeera’s top management, when QTV refers to
the Emir or other royal family members, it uses their full royal titles
starting with ‘His/Her Royal Highness’. But Al Jazeera refers to the
Emir simply as the ‘Emir of Qatar’, a sign the network is distancing
itself from its paymaster and a reflection of Al Jazeera’s comparatively
complex, problematic relationship with the state of Qatar.
42
Hugh Miles 43
Besides news, QTV features a variety of scientific, heritage, sporting,

historical and religious shows. Unsurprisingly in a country that by
some calculations is now the richest in the world, there is also a close
focus on business news, and the latest updates about Gulf stocks and
shares roll throughout much of QTV’s programming. Pre-recorded
musical interludes are common and Gulf Arab singers and orchestras
often perform for half an hour or more.
As in Kuwait, QTV persists with the quaint habit of mentioning at
the end of the main evening news bulletin the names of any Qatari
nationals who passed away that or the previous day. In such a tiny
country this cultural custom, which is related to the Muslim custom
of three days of mourning, serves both a valuable social function,
letting Qataris know the news of someone’s passing, while also
serving to reinforce the status quo by sending the message that the
existing political structure is concerned about its citizens.
Despite the lacklustre appearance of a lot of its programming
as an unreconstructed Arab state broadcaster, for years QTV has
played a leading role in informing and entertaining Qataris. Since
Qatar has never had any private TV channels, from 1970 when QTV
began producing and transmitting its own programmes (colour
transmission since 1974) until the arrival of satellite TV, QTV had
a powerful monopoly on Qatar’s TV audience. Then in 1993, when
Qatar Cablevision1 brought 31 satellite TV channels into Qatari
homes, the TV spectrum was suddenly dramatically broadened and,
over the next four years, four highly attractive new digital satellite
pay-TV Arabic platforms went on air – ART/1st NET, Orbit, Star Select
and Gulf DTH/Showtime – along with dozens more free satellite
channels, further expanding the viewer’s choice.
Despite the plethora of media available today, QTV is still widely
viewed by Qataris, as well as by other Arabic-speakers inside Qatar.
The network fields about 800 staff, about 45 per cent of whom are
Qataris; other nationalities include Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians
and Lebanese, as well as Pakistanis, Indians and some Westerners.
Together with Qatar daily radio, QTV provides the best source for
national news, while Al Jazeera, in contrast, has never sought to
report internal Qatari issues.
Historically QTV and Al Jazeera, like two different siblings, have
had a difficult yet intimate relationship. Al Jazeera depended heavily
on QTV engineers and technical expertise at its outset in 1996, but
44 The Other Face of Qatari TV Broadcasting
since then there has been little crossover of staff. The influential
Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now the guest-host of
Al Jazeera’s flagship religious show, made his television debut on
QTV back in 1970 and since then there has been some exchange
mainly at senior management levels. But generally over the years,
QTV and Al Jazeera have operated separately.
Partly this is accountable to the fact that the two channels have
such a different identity: Al Jazeera the radical upstart, QTV its steady,
conservative counterpoint. But according to Qatari media sources,
the differences between the two channels have been exacerbated
by the government’s decision to back Al Jazeera at the expense of
investing in QTV.
‘Before the rise of Al Jazeera, the Qatari government funded QTV
properly. Since then the budget of Qatari media as a whole, including
QTV, has been cut down to very little,’ commented veteran Qatari
journalist Professor Ali Al Hail, an ex-BBC correspondent who has
worked for QTV as both a newscaster and a consultant and is now a
columnist at Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. ‘The focus has only been
on Al Jazeera.’
QTV’s budget is not public but is likely to be a fraction of the
$2 billion a year that Al Jazeera Arabic is estimated to receive. QTV also
receives a fillip from local businesses running ads on its popular reli-
gious chat-shows and soap operas, but evidently it lacks the budget as
well as the production values, stars, guests and glamour of Al Jazeera.
Since 1996 QTV has outsourced production of all its soap operas to
independent producers around the Arab world and, as a result, for
years many Qatari media personnel have been feeling hard done by.
‘Qataris, especially in the media, feel alien to Al Jazeera – they don’t
feel it is a Qatari production. This is a legitimate feeling,’ commented
Professor Al Hail. ‘Now there is an acrimonious relationship between
QTV and Al Jazeera, as people at QTV as a whole, especially the
Qataris, feel they have been alienated and isolated and brushed aside
by Al Jazeera.’
After intense lobbying by QTV staff, as well as growing inter-
national pressure from the Arab Spring, the Qatari government
appeared to take notice of its critics in November 2011 when
it announced the raising of the salaries of all Qatari government
employees by 60 per cent, with retrospective effect to September
2011. Furthermore, plans are now afoot for an entirely new QTV
Hugh Miles 45
channel to be launched as soon as March 2012. The new QTV

channel is expected to be more entertainment-based, similar to
MBC 1, leaving the original QTV in its role as the official channel
of the state. Much of the infrastructure for the new QTV channel
is already in place and rumours are circulating of large sums being
spent on the latest media technologies and salaries for international
Arab staff.
This new channel will add to the bouquet of public-sector chan-
nels Qatar already broadcasts: the Second Programme features ten
hours of mainly English-language foreign drama daily as well as news
bulletins in English and occasionally French; a Qur’an channel; an
international satellite channel featuring almost exactly the same
content as QTV except with more global views on account of its
transnational audience. During the recent unrest in Egypt the QTV
satellite channel was used by the Qatar foreign ministry as a means
to contact and round up Qatari nationals. Baraem is a high-quality
Arabic children’s channel that serves the largest and most neglected
segment of the Arab TV audience, the under-fives; and Al Dawri wa
Al Kass (‘The League and the Cup’, in Arabic) is a sports channel set
up in 2006 to broadcast mainly football.
Although each channel targets a different audience, all of them
support the Emir’s agenda and his plan for developing his long-
secluded country as it takes its first steps onto the world stage.
Thanks to its gas wealth, Qatar has economic security for years
to come, but it still faces dangers, both without and within. Qatar’s
principal external danger, underpinning all the leadership’s thinking,
is its unstable and overbearing neighbours. A war between Iran and
the Arabian Gulf countries would put Qatar in the front line and
there are recurrent tensions between Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE,
on account of the al-Thani’s split from Bahrain, even though this
happened in the distant past. Bahrain and Qatar recently ended a
long legal battle over the Hawar islands, but Qatar’s decision to stand
by the al-Khalifa family and send five hundred troops to Manama
during the recent unrest is a significant development and a reflection
of the Qatari conviction that the fall of Bahrain would be the first
episode in a Persian project that would see Qatar follow soon after,
as Qatar is closer to Iran than Bahrain.
In the short term the Emir has made clear that the US is Qatar’s
national security guarantor against external threats and Qatar hosts
a large US military base in its desert. The media have also played a
strategic role: Al Jazeera enhanced Qatar’s strategic position in the
world by increasing its popularity and influence. In the long term
the Emir knows that only the Qatari people can ensure his country’s
future, which is why he and Sheikha Mozah have been busy
developing a world-class education system designed to maximize the
potential of each child and prepare them to be useful, productive
and responsible citizens. The media have promoted and marketed
the educational and social policies that the Emir and his consort
have put forward, simultaneously developing Qatari civil society
while attentively preserving the political status quo.
But persuading Qataris to follow his remarkably assertive policies –
hosting Al Jazeera and the US airbase, promoting women’s education,
leading the Arab world against the Libyan and then Syrian regimes –
has not always been straightforward. Qatar is a conservative country
where as recently as 20 years ago the idea of sending children abroad
for education was anathema. In the early 1980s when the Emir was
Qatar’s Minister of Defence, a group of ordinary Qatari students sent
for education in the US came back as fundamentalist religious zealots
who rejected the West and refused to work for Western companies.
The Emir believes in a kind of fundamentalist Islam, based on
historic tribal principles entrenched in religion, in which the good
of the community is paramount and social cohesion comes first. In
this system, the leader strives always to keep the community together
through consensus-rule, rather than splitting it through voting. This
system has a democratic element, in that there is a process of con-
sensus following consultation, but it is not one man one vote. It is,
however, progressive and has changed, even in the last generation,
to be less like a traditional Bedouin system and more like a corporate
arrangement where the directors of the board – who are heads of
the branches of the family, the leading Ulama and to a lesser extent
the leading merchants – have to coalesce around the candidate
or policies they think most capable of governing the country. But
building a popular consensus is only possible if people are engaged
and informed. This is a task for the national Qatari media and above
all QTV.
Just as Al Jazeera has significantly widened the parameters of
debate in Qatar, as elsewhere, QTV has helped open up Qatar to
outside influences, which the Emir knows is vital if his people are
Hugh Miles 47
to be able to compete in a globalized world. But though the media

are used to introduce Qataris to foreign ideas, it would be a mistake
to think it had any intention of Westernizing them. The Emir is
strongly attached to his Arab and Islamic identity, and sees Western
parliamentary democracy as entirely unsuited to rule a patchwork of
tribes, cultures and religious identities in the Gulf. Neither Al Jazeera
nor QTV advocate Westernization, although both networks strive to
raise women’s awareness of their role in society in keeping with the
Emir’s Islamic views. On both channels women are well represented
and often appear unveiled.
But there is a danger to Qatar less obvious than its external threats,
which in the long run could prove just as deadly: that Qataris will
become so complacent about their wealth and prosperity that they
will lose touch with their roots, their values and even reality. The
Emir’s father, Sheikh Khalifa, always feared that if Qatar opened up it
would end up like the UAE or Saudi Arabia – countries he believed had
lost their way by letting themselves be run by, or for, foreigners. His
cardinal principle was that he would never do anything to dilute his
people’s bloodline which is why he tried to keep them secluded from
the outside world. But the new-look high-rise Doha with its ever grow-
ing skyline shows that Qatar is developing very much like the UAE,
and some worry that Sheikh Khalifa’s nightmare may yet come true.
The Emir’s solution to the danger of complacency has been to
encourage competition between individuals, organizations and even
his own family. Unlike other Arab leaders, he leads by example,
telling his own children and wives that he would take 10 to 12 years
to pick his Crown Prince and then choose him on merit. As a result,
Sheikha Mozah made education her top priority. She established
the Qatar foundation which began by educating her own children,
and had all her sons taught by private tutors. They became the best
educated of Sheikh Hamad’s more than 20 children, and the Emir
chose her son Sheikh Tamim to be his heir. Such a competitive
method – unique in the Gulf region – explains why by all accounts
Sheikh Tamim is such a high-calibre heir and so acceptable to the
Qatari people.
The media have played an important role in marketing this com-
petitive vision on a national level among the nation’s youth. Qatar
has poured money into football, as well as squash, golf, motor racing
and tennis. Sport as a means to promote competition and a national
consciousness is the thinking underpinning both the Al Jazeera

sports channels and Al Dawri wa Al Kass.
Though the Emir is often labelled a ‘maverick’, in fact his policy-
making is actually extremely pragmatic and his message has been
remarkably consistent. So far he has been extraordinarily successful
at keeping his country on the right course. Qatar is the richest
country in the world and yet Qataris appear to be coping better with
their riches than their neighbours, much to their leadership’s credit.
As a result there is strong popular support for the Emir and evident
gratitude to him for what he has brought to Qatar.
So while many Arab leaders these days are huddled in their majlis,
terrified of the mob, the Emir remains as accessible as he has always
been, with a bullish confidence based on his faith in God, his nation,
his tribe, and a shrewd assessment of the material facts. But sudden
change is an attribute of the al-Thani, and in the event that the Emir
is absented from power for whatever reason, the situation within
Qatar is likely to become unstable. In the past people of the Gulf
trembled when they heard news of Qatari political developments as,
since Sheikh Mohammed al-Thani founded Qatar as a separate entity
from Bahrain in 1878, its rulers have usually been overthrown either
by being treacherously killed or by being forcibly removed from their
thrones following a family dispute. Keeping up the balancing act on
both the internal and international stages will require more than
good media management.
Note
1. The first Wireless Cable Television System in Qatar, inaugurated by Qtel, is
widely known as Qatar Cablevision (QCV).
Bibliography
Miles, H. (2005) Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World (London:
Abacus).
Gulf States Newsletter (2011) 35(909), 30 September.
Qatari Embassy in Washington DC website, www.qatarembassy.net/media.
asp.
Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, http://english.mofa.gov.qa/details.
cfm?id=114.
‘Qatar streams state radio, TV via new website’ (2011) Text of report in English on
Qatari newspaper Gulf Times website by Andy Sennitt, published 31 May.
4
Reforming Egypt’s Broadcasting
in the Post-25 January Era: The
Challenges of Path Dependence
Tourya Guaaybess
Introduction
Under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, many in Egypt criticized the

nepotism prevailing in the broadcasting sector. After the ‘25 January
revolution’, criticism increased significantly and was voiced, for the
first time in many years, by employees of the state television who
demanded publicly a real reform of broadcasting in Egypt. Since
then, meetings1 and studies2 on the evolution of state broadcasting
multiplied. In Egypt, as in Tunisia, it seems that great efforts are
displayed to reform the state media. Local and international NGOs,
media professionals’ associations3 and UNESCO are taking very seri-
ously the project to build new media institutions that are politically
more open, and economically more rational and efficient. In fact,
if we focus on Egypt, reforms and changes had already been under-
taken by the previous rulers. Egyptian audiences had somehow been
exposed to critical viewpoints and a variety of opinions even though
this was far from being satisfactory and could not justify the colossal
waste and corruption within the Egyptian Radio and Television
Union (ERTU). Even if rulers have, at times, fostered progress and,
at other times, have been obstacles to change, such ‘stop and go’
policies have punctuated the past 15 years and cannot be ignored.
Indeed, the forthcoming reforms in the huge and cumbersome
state media institution will not emerge from scratch: they have to
make do with the available resources, the existing structures, their
internal functioning, and the existing social groups, competencies
and habits.
49
50 Egypt’s Broadcasting in the Post-25 January Era
Changes since the revolution are real, but not deep
The revolution of 25 January in Egypt seems, so far, and given the

changes already seen, to have put the country on a track which can
lead it to a real political opening. It came at a very specific time in the
recent history of Egypt. First, the country was coming out of another
round of parliamentary elections which, like the previous ones, drew
domestic and international criticism for widespread irregularities.
Second, presidential elections were due and each day passing made
closer the perspective of seeing Mubarak’s son being progressively
imposed as the obvious new president. And third, after a few years of
relative press freedom, which at times may have surprised the Egyptians
themselves, the government started to clamp down heavily on media.
At least on public media, since what we may refer to as ‘social’ media
(Facebook, Twitter) could not be controlled as efficiently. The revolu-
tion emerged at the juncture of these three sets of constraints on the
population, not to mention the general economic and social context,
the evolutions in other Arab countries and more broadly the inter-
national context – which was one of unprecedented crisis.
What is striking is the speed with which, after the overthrow of
Hosni Mubarak, demands were made and changes carried out in the
media sector. On 11 February 2011, Mubarak stepped down. Osama
el-Sheikh was still at that time the head of the ERTU, but Anas
el-Fiqqi, the Minister of Information, resigned and was placed under
house arrest. On 24 February both were taken into custody. During
this transitional period, state TV was still under the control of the
government and interference continued as Ahmed Shafik, still prime
minister, did not tolerate criticism. Then, on 26 February, although
el-Fiqqi was not replaced by a new minister, General Tarik el-Mahdi
became transitional head of the ERTU.
On 3 March, Essam Sharaf was called by the Supreme Council of
Armed Forces (SCAF) to form a new cabinet. The next day, a Professor
of Media at Cairo University, Samy el-Sherif, was appointed head
of the ERTU.4 On 6 March, Essam Sharaf received candidates for
the new cabinet; the Ministry of Information was disbanded and
a Ministry of Communications was created. On 7 March, the new
cabinet were sworn in before the leader of SCAF, and Maged Othman
became Minister of Communication and Information Technology.
The date 30 March is crucial in the restructuring and reorganization
Tourya Guaaybess 51
of the press and printing houses, with Decree 451/2011 changing

the management of Dar el-Tahrir, Dar el-Hilal, the Rosa el-Youssef
institution, Al-Ahram institution, Al-Akhbar and MENA (Egypt’s press
agency). On 31 March, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf received the new
head of the ERTU, Samy el-Sherif, to discuss a plan for the future
development of the body and a reshuffle of senior officials, among
other issues (financing, corruption, creation of a union, etc.). Two
days later, on 2 April, the prime minister appointed new heads for
the TV sector, the news sector and the radio sector.
As we can see, it took exactly one month for the new cabinet to
bring down the pillars of the information system set up by Mubarak,
and to start building up – apparently – a completely new logic for the
functioning of media in Egypt.
The so-called Arab Spring is a fact in Egypt: it put a formal end to
the Mubarak era, but we are not sure yet as to where it may lead in the
future, and it did not solve all issues at once. The broadcasting sector
is an interesting prism through which to observe the effervescence
and hopes, but also the tensions and the contradictions, which cross
Egyptian society. The neighbourhood of the Maspero building, the
headquarters of the ERTU – the 43,000-employee state-broadcasting
institution – near Tahrir Square, is one of the strategic meeting places of
the ‘revolutionaries’. Demonstrations and strikes from the employees
of Maspero were common in the year following the revolution.
Broadcasting professionals and journalists were protesting for real
changes – the end of corruption, of outrageous salary discrepancies
and nepotism, which were distinctive features of the old system.5
The fact that the opposition came out into the open from ‘insiders’,
in other words from the employees themselves, on such a scale and
with such determination, is something totally new. The major inno-
vation is that open conflict is now possible; the hope is that open
conflicts lead to discussions, and discussions to negotiations, which
make real progress possible. Under Mubarak, changes in the broad-
casting sector carried out by the rulers without either negotiation
or dissent was the usual modus operandi. Even if these changes were
meant to modernize the Egyptian broadcasting system, they barely
reached their goal because of bureaucratic ‘bad’ habits and other
features of path dependence. This has to be taken into consideration
as the reforms to come cannot ignore what has been done over
past decades.
An ambiguous policy in the past
Addressing the Egyptian broadcasting and public policy in this sector

is not an easy task as the rulers were very supportive of the expansion
of national media but, at the same time, showed little concern towards
the opening of this sector to pluralism, which one could reasonably
expect from broadcasting endowed with a mission of public or social
service (Atkinson and Raboy et al. 1998; Tracey 1998). In short, the
Egyptian rulers have been at the same time and since the beginning
the most passionate and possessive defenders of the broadcasting
sector. The result is that Egypt has had, in the history of media, one
of the most prestigious broadcasting sectors and the one which once
exerted the strongest influence on the Arab broadcasting landscape,
precisely thanks to the incentive of public policy implemented in
this field. The downside of this active policy is ‘over-control’, which
over the years weakened this sector that was once dominant. In the
current context where Arab countries have adopted the market econ-
omy and strive to display liberal political and economic practices,
huge audiovisual organizations like the Egyptian Radio and Television
Union are somewhat outdated. The final blow for its previously
unrivalled standing was the transnationalization of broadcasting
flows (thanks to satellite technology) which led to the great success of
Lebanese channels in the Middle East and, more importantly, allowed
the wealthy Gulf countries to become progressively major actors on
the broadcasting scene from the mid-1990s on (Kraidy 2007). This
chapter will address the aggressive policy pushed forward by the pub-
lic authorities, and its limits. Their will to transform the broadcasting
institution and make it more efficient was hindered by their constant
interventionism. This constant weight of habits, routine, inertia, has
to do with path dependence, which is defined below.
‘Path dependence’ as a paradigm to analyse Egyptian

national broadcasting
We will begin this section with a brief overview of path depend-

ence; even though the term can seem remote from our topic, what is
important is the logic behind it.
Path dependence is a concept which was first developed by econo-
mists trying to understand – broadly speaking – various economic
Tourya Guaaybess 53
or industrial systems (these can be simply a firm) which had more

than one equilibrium possible, and where the equilibrium which
was reached was not the ‘best’, but simply the result of the process
which led to it. Taking the example of a firm and the organizational
choices it makes, path dependence helps in explaining why a part-
icular (technological, industrial, organizational, etc.) solution is
adopted even though better alternatives exist and are known about.
In the first instance, ‘path dependence means that where we go next
depends not only on where we are now, but also upon where we
have been. History matters’ (Leibowitz and Margolis 2000: 981). If we
consider public policies, Palier and Bonoli (1999) suggest that path
dependence implies that the choices made at the onset of a specific
policy force future decisions and developments in a certain direction.
Reforms are then always constrained within an established dynamics;
radical change becomes very difficult to implement, because of the
stickiness implied by path dependence.
There are many causes explaining path dependence. One of the
main reasons is increasing returns (the more a choice is made, the
greater the returns or the benefits). Paul Pierson (1997) identifies
four characteristics of economic or social phenomena displaying
increasing returns. Large fixed cost is the first: when initial costs are
high, it makes sense to keep investing in a given technology; the
idea is close to economies of scale. The second is learning effects and
increased know-how, which encourage a firm to keep a given choice
(or solution) for a long period of time. The third is coordination
effects: one firm’s benefits from using a technology are increased if
other firms adopt the same technology (because, for instance, the
market grows). The fourth is adaptive expectations, where a firm tries
to guess what the other firm’s choice will be, to adapt, in which case
one firm’s decision is linked to many firms’ choices – change becomes
very slow. These four characteristics point to the idea of inertia and
persistence of behaviours or phenomena beyond rationality or cur-
rent will: processes have a strong deterministic component.
Pierson states that three types of political process display increas-
ing returns: collective action (the coordination of many individuals’
actions, which get all the more efficient as individuals get used to
‘getting together’); the cognitive process, by which political facts are
collectively interpreted and legitimized; and the process of institut-
ional development, which is often sticky (as institutions and their
internal rules get established, it becomes increasingly costly with

time to change these). These are major obstacles to government
policies, and they often prevent sweeping change.
From the factors of inertia highlighted above we can see that the
outcomes of decisions (policies, firms’ choices) are not necessar-
ily guided by optimality. In this respect, there are different forms
of path dependence. Roe (1996) identifies three forms of path
dependence: the weak form implies a choice between several satis-
factory choices; the choice of an institution is made and becomes
‘embedded’ because it was made, but other choices would have been
satisfactory as well. The semi-strong form implies an ‘inefficient’
path: in hindsight, a society could have made a better choice in
terms of institutions, but a change today involves various sorts of
costs, and so no radical change is implemented, only a superficial
one, because the costs of change outweigh the benefits. We have a
strong form of path dependence when nothing is done even though
it is worthwhile to change: public choice is constrained by lack of
information (on the alternative choices for instance and their feasi-
bility), or by the power structure (influential groups block change)
and so on. Leibowitz and Margolis (2000: 985) also identify three
forms of path dependence which are close to Roe’s in their spirit.
This concept has been incorporated in the methodological toolbox
of social sciences to analyse cultural, social or political phenomena.
Among these phenomena, social policies, institutions and their
functioning, political decision-making processes, the structure of
power and relations among social groups, are particularly interesting
for our topic.
If we consider the Egyptian broadcasting system, trying to use
the path-dependence paradigm we could say that we are faced with
either the semi-strong or the strong form, the weak form being
excluded because obviously large parts of society consider that the
current system is not satisfactory. We think that the Egyptian broad-
casting system exhibited a strong form of path dependence, or, to use
the words of Leibowitz and Margolis, ‘that there exists some feasible
arrangement for recognizing and achieving a preferred outcome’
(2000: 985) to the current unsatisfactory model – still, too little was
done about it. The concept of path dependence, while showing the
sticky and deterministic nature of established institutions or poli-
cies, helps in clarifying where the obstacles to change lie. This broad
Tourya Guaaybess 55
analytical framework provides a useful toolbox for understanding

national broadcasting policy in Egypt.
Huge projects as a sign of path dependence in Egypt
The historical background of the ERTU shows that the launching

of huge projects is without any doubt a path-dependence feature of
Egyptian public policy in the broadcasting sector, as described below.
Despite its relatively limited financial resources, the Egyptian state
always injected considerable amounts of funds into its broadcasting
sector, the justification lying more in the a priori political will to
appear a leader on the regional scene, than on a carefully planned
industrial project.6
From its very inception, broadcasting has been considered as a
strategic sector – and treated as such – by the Egyptian state. When
television began in 1960, radio had been under the umbrella of the
state since 1952, when the Republic of Egypt was proclaimed by
the revolutionary regime (Amin 2009). Since its establishment in
1970, the ERTU has been the sole authority governing all radio and
television in Egypt. The radio system was already colossal, and the
mouthpiece of the Nasserist ideology. Television under the state’s
umbrella rapidly followed suit, serving the socialist ideology of Nasser
as a tool to promote social and economic development goals (Nasser
1990). In the 1970s, under Sadat’s rule, within the political context
of the infitah or policy of opening, the savoir-faire of Egyptian talent
led to the expansion of Egyptian broadcasting productions, especially
through the export of drama or musalsalat (El Emary 1996).
The state’s intention and policy are clear: from 1960 to 1963, no
fewer than three channels were launched: a general channel, a cul-
tural channel targeting urban and educated elites and a third channel
using French and English. This dynamic policy was also evident in
the expansion of Egypt’s coverage by television signals, which became
available to most Egyptians by the end of the 1970s: by then, 98 per
cent of the Egyptian territory was covered thanks to microwave sta-
tions (Boyd 1993). The ascendancy of the state over broadcasting
was nevertheless a bearable weight; when compared to its Arab
counterparts, Egypt’s broadcasting was indeed creative, prosperous
and entertaining, and it is widely known that the Egyptian dialect
or ‘amia is understood across the Arab world. But the harmonious
and prosperous 1980s gave way to the more tumultuous 1990s, a

transition decade where Egypt, once perceived as the media centre
of the Arab world, was faced with the fierce competition of – often
new – challengers.
In this decade, three overlapping phenomena took place: regional
competition became a reality and millions of dish antennas mush-
roomed on the roofs of even the most humble dwellings; states
undertook huge projects in the media sector; and internal (domestic)
claims for opening the broadcasting sector to actors from civil society
emerged loudly in the context of globalization. All three intertwined
aspects spread and unavoidably led to reforms and ‘adjustments’ to
the state broadcasting policy in the 2000s.
At the beginning of the 1990s, President Mubarak unveiled his
programme based on a two-pillar policy: the progressive engagement
in Egypt of a democratization process and the adoption of economic
reforms in the form of a structural adjustment programme supervised
by the IMF (Trip and Owen 1990). Important sectors of the economy
were privatized to prove the adoption by Egypt of the principles
of a market economy. The broadcasting sector, namely the ERTU,
remained an exception, since – according to official justifications –
it was a strategic sector having a key role vis-à-vis national identity,
national cohesion and national security. In a country of more than
60 million inhabitants, television is all the more important as the rate
of illiteracy stands at 33.6 per cent.7 The problem for the authorities
was that this liberalization programme coincided with the emergence
of satellite television and the widespread use of direct-to-home satel-
lites, which allowed an exponentially increasing number of people
watching dozens of exogenous channels. How could a modern state
like Egypt justify maintaining a state broadcasting sector, getting
costlier each day, when private channels like the Saudi MBC, ART or
the Lebanese LBC grew to provide fierce competition in what was its
preserve – entertainment? What could Um al-dunya do to live up to
its reputation?8
One of the major actions of the Egyptian state in face of this
tough competition was to invest in costly projects in the media
field. Of course another option to confront the situation could
have been to find the reasons for the success of the other chan-
nels, but these reasons might have been related to their content,
which would have questioned deeply the strategy adopted by the
Tourya Guaaybess 57
Ministry of Information. The continuing modernization of the

Egyptian broadcasting capacities appeared all the more crucial as,
in the Arab media scene, its cultural and media historical centrality
was threatened by rising regional operators, often coming from Gulf
countries, and more particularly from an old rival on the political,
cultural or religious front: Saudi Arabia.
Egypt had begun to beam the programming of its main chan-
nel via the pan-Arab Arabsat satellite during the 1990 Gulf War
(Weinensborn 1992). At that time, a specific sector within the ERTU
was created encompassing the satellite channels. Less bureaucratic
than the other sectors, it seemed to conform more with the rational
principles of efficiency, even though it remained unwieldy when
compared to other private transnational televisions. Adding to local
terrestrial channels launched in the decade 1985–95 in order for
state television to attract national viewers, and to abide by the main
vocation of a national television to pursue social and developmental
goals (El-Shal 1994), more commercial channels were launched: Nile
TV, and the encrypted ESC2 and Nile Drama. These specialized chan-
nels prefigured the adoption by the state of a liberal recipe: namely
the segmentation of the market, which is one of the features of
today’s Arab media space (Guaaybess 2012). Through Nile Drama,
Egypt wanted to imprint within the regional Arab broadcasting
market its supremacy in fiction. But even this obvious domina-
tion was, little by little, eroded to the benefit of its Syrian rivals
(Salamandra 2008) and later – in the 2000s – Turkish dramas dubbed
into Arabic on Arab transnational channels such as MBC. After the
launch of Nilesat, thematic and commercially oriented channels –
the Nilesat bouquet (comprising a sports channel, a cultural channel,
a family and children’s channel, a news channel and so on) – were
launched in 1998.
The Nilesat satellites exemplify perfectly the ambitious, unre-
strained design of the Egyptian public authorities; they were the first
national Arab satellites, as repeatedly stated in official communiqués:
‘This is a very important moment for Egypt and the Arab world. This
launch gives us a very advanced satellite that will serve the whole of
the Arab area, bringing culture, enlightenment and entertainment,’
Nilesat’s then-president Amin Bassiouni said before the launch of
Nilesat 101. ‘The launch of Nilesat is a cultural step forward that
marks Egypt’s entry into the 21st century with great confidence in its
media capabilities,’ according to the former Minister of Information,

Safwat El-Sherif. ‘It also marks Egypt’s entry into the age of space
technology as a pioneer state that seeks to affirm its Arab identity.’9
The contract between the ERTU and the French–British consortium
Matra Marconi SA from whom the satellites were ordered was trans-
ferred to Nilesat Corporation, a joint-stock company. Launched
in 1998 and 2000, Nilesat satellites 101 and 102 cost respectively
$170 million and $140 million. Equipped to transmit 96 television
channels and 400 radio stations, these then state-of-the-art satellites
were followed by a second generation of satellites, the first being
Nilesat 201 launched in 2010.
In terms of prestige, Nilesat contributed to restoring the aura of the
Egyptian broadcasting sector, but it was also to be a pivotal regional
platform which would attract the investment or other forms of
capital flow required to make the whole project profitable, through
the renting of Nilesat satellites’ transponders. The Egyptian Satellite
Company is located in the media free zone, in 6th of October City,
on Cairo’s periphery; the media free zone is briefly discussed below.10
At the same location, the government completed its media arsenal
with the construction of Media City Production – an ambitious,
fully equipped, complex of studios (Omar 1995). It covers an area of
about 3.5 million square metres comprising studios, outdoor shoot-
ing areas, a five-star hotel and a leisure park.11 The cost to build this
so-called ‘Hollywood-on-the-Nile’ was about 1.5 billion Egyptian
pounds, more than 400 million USD at that time.
The third factor relates to internal opposition. Contrasting with
the 2011–12 protests, the most visible of which involved the broad-
casting professionals themselves, the battle at the end of the nineties
was more in the political sphere and came from businessmen or
leaders of the political opposition who intended, at the least, to
have a bit more space on national TV, and for the most ambitious
to set up their own private channel (Guaaybess 2003). If we consider
television as a key element of the public space in Egypt, the nodal
question was how, in the context of globalization of communication
and the mutation of the Arab media landscape, this symbolic political
arena came to be unlocked little by little, and opened up to actors of
civil society. In field research conducted in 1997 and 2001, including
interviews with the leaders of all the political parties of the opposi-
tion and the Muslim Brotherhood, all clearly denounced the hold of
Tourya Guaaybess 59
the rulers over television. They condemned the gatekeepers of the

party in power, the National Democratic Party (NDP), which exerted
control over their appearance on TV by different means (censorship,
cancellation of pre-recorded programmes, arbitrary editing, etc.).
Arguing that such behaviour was now irrelevant in the era of
Al Jazeera and of transnational channels available to all Egyptians,
this coalition of all parties (except the NDP, party of the former presi-
dent) led by Ibrahim Dessouki Abaza from the Wafd Party, strove to
reform the law to put an end to the state monopoly and accelerate
the opening up of the broadcasting sector. The forthcoming reform
of the state broadcasting sector would benefit from these actions, the
effects of which, even if imperceptible, were to question the status
quo. Concerning the status quo, the rather strange and conservative
attitude of the authorities which seemed not to understand that their
policy was ill adapted to the current environment was due to their
attachment to an old-fashioned way of doing things in an institu-
tion over which they had full control – which is a feature of path
dependency.
But the official authorities soon learnt that prohibition and
censorship were far from being relevant tools to keep their grip on
the broadcasting sector. They reinforced these defensive reactions
with proactive reforms to display an apparent privatization of the
broadcasting sector (Napoli et al. 1995).
The proactive strategy and its limits
The regulation of the ERTU

The proactive strategy used to control national broadcasting in
general consisted in launching reforms in this sector. This solution
seems paradoxical at first sight. It is precisely why it is more efficient
than censorship, which gives a less positive image than the appealing
façade of reforms and liberalization.
Let us take a look at the internal organization of the Egyptian Radio
and Television Union. In 1966, various decrees established radio,
television and broadcasting engineering as distinct sectors under the
authority of the Ministry of Guidance (which was replaced by the
Ministry of Information in 1989). The ERTU was created by decree in
1970. Law no. 13 of 1979 (modified by Law no. 223 of 1989) set out
the mission of the ERTU and created a new organization whereby the
ERTU was divided into five main sectors: general secretariat, radio,
television, engineering, and economic and financial matters. The
1979 legislation also set out the main bodies governing the ERTU: the
General Assembly, the Board of Trustees and the Board of Managing
Directors. The Board of Trustees is the key governing body (establishing
action plans, approving internal statutes and the code of ethics, etc.).
The chair of the Board is appointed by the president, and his deputy
is appointed by the Minister of Information. The other members of
the Board are appointed by the prime minister, the president and the
president of the General Authority for Information. Since Law 223 of
1989, the Board of Trustees must have its decisions approved by the
Minister of Information, the latter having a veto right on any decision
of the Board. The General Assembly includes, besides the members of
the Board of Trustees, representatives of a dozen ministries, repre-
sentatives of Al-Azhar and other experts appointed by the Minister of
Information, and is chaired by the latter.
Hence the law of 1979 did not just state that the ERTU lies within
the government sector: it made sure that the highest authorities of
the state exerted a close control over its activities. The law of 1979 also
stated that it was forbidden for private individuals or organizations
to create a TV channel. This is precisely what the opposition move-
ment mentioned earlier questioned. It is important to say that in
terms of regulation for the broadcasting sector there are two regimes:
the regulation we have just mentioned for public broadcasting,
and the regulation of the free zones falling under the jurisdiction
of the General Authority for Investments, which authorizes, or not,
new businesses to set up – and these businesses include the private
satellite channels which are required to locate within the free
zone. There is no regulation dedicated to private broadcasters
comparable to the one governing the ERTU. There lies a great
challenge: the opening up of the terrestrial (that is, Hertzian)
network to private broadcasters. Some progress was seen towards
the end of the decade 2000–10, with the establishment of a plan
allocating the frequency spectrum by type of use (the Egyptian Radio
Spectrum Allocation Chart). While some segments of the spectrum
are allocated to TV broadcasting, nothing is said about what type of
broadcaster uses these frequencies. So far, the only user is the ERTU,
and it does not seem particularly motivated to leave some room for
private-sector broadcasters.
Tourya Guaaybess 61
The apparent decentralization of the national

broadcasting authorities
Interestingly, the first direction in which the reforms went was
towards decentralization. Thereby, from a purely government organi-
zation, the ERTU was supposed to evolve and was meant to become
the centre of a network of public companies open to private capital.
This smooth and apparent change of status was a way for the govern-
ment to attract investment in this sector, which was becoming more
sophisticated and costlier over the years. But, basically, there was a
clear continuity in the sense that the ERTU, which represented all
state radio and television and which had a monopoly on terrestrial
broadcasting, ran the media free zone and remained directly and
organically linked to the government.
One of the focal points of the reforms was undoubtedly the financ-
ing of the broadcasting sector. This can be seen clearly in the structural
financial presence of the state within the media free zone and EMPC
(Egyptian Media Production City). EMPC production infrastructures
were not fully financed by the state. Their financing depended upon
a private company, 40 per cent of the shares of which were held nev-
ertheless by the ERTU. But the other investors were mainly public
financial institutions (banks and insurance companies), private indi-
viduals being a small minority. The official statements relating to the
financing of the production company by small shareholders cannot
hide their very marginal weight. The same reasoning applies to the
financing of the Nilesat satellites and of the ‘private company’ operat-
ing the satellites and related ground infrastructure. The shareholders
of this company were the ERTU (40 per cent), two government-sector
industrial companies (25 per cent) and two government-sector banks
(15 per cent), the 20 per cent remaining being raised through a public
offering. A second offer open only to selected investors was carried out
in February 2000 to finance Nilesat 102.
A state-controlled privatization
The second striking trend of changes is the possibility given to
private players to own a private media, be it a TV channel or a
radio station. To avoid losing its monopoly or at least its dominant
position over the domestic broadcasting scene, the government con-
fined the activities of the private channels to the media free zone.
One of the most critical factors explaining this U-turn is linked

to the economics of the regional broadcasting landscape (Kandil
2000). Indeed, a year earlier – in 1999 – Jordan had announced
with great publicity that it was going to establish a tax-free zone
where it would build a Media City, on the periphery of Amman. The
goal was to attract European and above all pan-Arab media groups
wishing to relocate from Europe to the region, avoiding their
home countries where the regulations were too restrictive. Drawn
into this new kind of competition, Egypt announced in January
2000 that a free zone would be created near the Media City and
Nilesat’s terrestrial base. This was just a few months after Amman
had made its declaration, and a few months before Dubai made its
own. Again, it was out of the question for Egypt to lose its position
as a regional leader (a position built at great cost over the previous
decades) and, for that purpose, the government stood ready to
devote all necessary resources, even adapt the legal framework, in
order to let the private broadcasting industry flourish not too far
from the Pyramids. As the former Minister of Information put it,
‘the target is not to privatize the Egyptian TV; we wish to give it a
little bit more freedom’.12
It seems clear from the above that one could not speak of a real
opening up of the broadcasting sector. First, authorization was
required to set up a TV channel, which was a way to filter out any
channel likely to show some form of political ambition, or which
might be set up by individuals likely to bypass the tacit code of the
prevailing mores. As a consequence, the actors who set up the private
channels were invariably close to the state. Their profile was often
that of a businessman (sometimes politician as well) more willing to
own a TV channel than to go into politics (Guaaybess 2011). Second,
they must locate in the free zone and beam through the Nilesat
satellites. Since the free zone is under the jurisdiction of the General
Authority for Investment, the setting up of a channel requires a
licence from it.
After 2001, several private channels were launched in Egypt after
obtaining the necessary authorization. All had to operate within the
Media City, and hence contribute to financing the two satellites and
the infrastructures put in place. Dream TV was the first private satel-
lite channel, launched in November 2001. Al Mehwar, which was the
second private satellite channel, went on air in February 2002. It is
Tourya Guaaybess 63
noteworthy that the presidents of the ERTU, Nilesat and the Media
Production City all sat on Al Mehwar’s board.
Two private radio stations were launched in 2003 – Al Noujoum
(Arabic music) and Nile 104.2 (Western music). They cannot broad-
cast news and are received only in Cairo and the surrounding area
(Amin 2009).
In 2007, billionaire Naguib Sawiris launched OTV channel; one
year later Al-Sayyid Al-Badawi – another prominent businessman,
who owns Sigma Pharmaceuticals, which is among the ten largest
pharmaceutical companies in Egypt – created Al Hayat satellite
channel (entertainment programmes and soaps). These channels are
not all-news channels, and, in the case of Sawiris, it was only after
the downfall of Mubarak that he articulated some kind of social
ambition.13
Conclusion: path dependence and conflicting dynamics
This overview of Egyptian policy in the broadcasting sector shows

that the government constantly sought to attain two objectives. On
the regional front, the government was competing for leadership
and visibility to attract foreign capital, and probably prestige. On the
domestic front, the government was willing to modernize its infra-
structure and more broadly the media sector while at the same time
retaining control over broadcast (and other) media.
Many decisions were made to reach these two objectives, but
the deep logic of the system was hardly moved. Several aspects
of the government’s investment in the media sector reveal path
dependence and constrain future policies. The size of the ERTU, the
complexity of its organization, the central role it has, along with
its being deeply embedded in the state’s power structure make it
difficult to reform, and its monopoly over the terrestrial network
a long time to remove. There is also an economic reason. Let us
consider briefly the current policy forcing private actors wishing to
set up a TV channel to locate in the free zone and use its facilities,
and Nilesat, and the demands to see the terrestrial Hertzian network
opened to private actors. In the digital age, the terrestrial network is
the fastest and most efficient way to reach the largest number of
Egyptian viewers; if it were open to all, then it is doubtful that many
Egyptian business people would still wish to settle in the free zone
and use Nilesat. We see here a typical sign of path dependence:

opening up the Hertzian network carries the risk of depriving the
state of much needed resources to absorb, at least partly, the huge
cost of past investment. This is an important factor constraining
policy, even if we do not take into account the political question of a
pluralistic public space. The final aspect of institutional path depend-
ence is linked to representation. The government’s statements
vis-à-vis broadcasting have constantly sought to affirm its leading
role, and the media sector has always been linked to great ideals like
national unity, international leadership, ‘entry into the twenty-first
century’ and so on. These forced its policy into undertaking huge
and costly projects. Departing from this rhetoric would allow a
change in policy, but it would also be recognizing a failure (at least
partial), and accepting that very large investments were made at a
loss – which appears highly improbable.
But the objectives pursued are tricky in the media sector: they gen-
erate feedback which threatens path dependence and goes against
the initial aim of the policy decisions. Improved technology will
introduce gaps in the government’s fence; the illusion of political
opening creates incentives to fight the red lines and push them back –
and in this respect, the regional (and international) goals act to hold
back the government’s hand, a bit, if it intends to clamp down on
dissident voices.
The situation then becomes uneasy. All the more so as we must
mention another competing – and essential – path dependence,
which is less on an institutional level, more on an individual and
social level. In a previous work (Guaaybess 2012), we showed that
there is a focal figure which has always been present in the media
sector, ever since the first newspapers were published at the end of
the nineteenth century and until the bloggers of today: that of the
benevolent intellectual and/or journalist committed to social justice –
a commitment from which he/she gained legitimacy in the public
space. This legitimacy provided some kind of protection, at least
enough to be a dissident voice. Despite the inertia and the tight
control exerted by the power over the media institutions, dissidence
always managed to be heard: in the daily and more often weekly
press14 and on the satellite channels. Here, the personalities who
‘count’ are numerous, and have very different roles: we can quote of
course intellectuals such as Hamdy Qandil or Mohammed Hassanein
Tourya Guaaybess 65
Heikal, written-press professionals such as Hisham Qassem (founder

of the Cairo Times, and hired by a group of businessmen to launch
Al-Masry al-Youm) or Ibrahim Eissa (at the roots of the famous weekly
Al-Dostour). Many hosts of political talkshows also contributed little
by little to push back the red lines, such as Mona el-Shazly or the
Adeeb brothers, culminating in famous bloggers such as Karim Amer,
Wael Abbas or Asmaa Mahfouz, and many others, less well known,
but who supported the most prominent dissident voices.
One may ask: which path will prove stronger? In fact, by introducing
the modernizing reforms mentioned, the government introduced
path-shifting changes which were reinforced by the structure of
Egypt’s society and its history. Exogenous shocks combined with
these (Tunisia, the international context, etc.) to initiate the dynamics
of change. The system will keep moving, but very slowly:
Actors who seek to move in new directions find that their

choices are constrained by the existing set of institutional
resources. Institutions limit the field of action, they preclude
some directions, they constrain certain courses. But institutions
also favor the perception and selection of some strategies over
others. Actors who seek to introduce change require resources to
overcome obstacles to change. This exploitation of existing insti-
tutionalized resources is a principal component of the apparent
paradox that even (and especially) instances of transformation
are marked by path dependence. Such a view does not preclude
the possibilities of changes that are far-reaching and dramatic.
(Stark 1994: 66)
The pace of change may be increased by so-called ‘coordination

effects’ and ‘adaptive anticipations’ – namely governments keeping
an eye on what the neighbours do to adjust, if need be. Should one
among these initiate an effective liberalization, then this could have a
positive effect on the institutional reforms in Egypt.
Notes
1. To quote one international conference on this issue: ‘Paris international
conference in support of Tunisian and Egyptian broadcast media’, organ-
ized by UNESCO at its headquarters in Paris, 31 May 2011.
2. Among the reports see Mendel (2011) and Barata Mir (2011).
3. The Media Revolutionaries Front is an activist movement formed after
the fall of former President Mubarak. They fight against corruption
and want state media to be cleansed of Mubarak partisans. The Media
Professionals Coalition (IMPC) is a group of media experts from Maspero
and private media. Their goal is to propose policy recommendations for
reforming the ERTU.
4. Samy el-Sherif, accused of being too loyal to the former regime, was
forced to resign in June 2011 and was replaced by an interim director,
General Tarik el-Mahdi.
5. Al-Masry al-Yom, 8 February 2012, ‘Maspero employees protest military
control’.
6. The former head of the news sector at the ERTU, Abdelatif el-Manawi, con-
sidered that the channel Nile News had the ambition to compete with other
pan-Arab all-news channels. Interview with the author, 23 January 2011.
7. The World Bank (2012): World Development Indicators.
8. Sometimes, Egyptians refer proudly to their country as Um al-balad or
Um al-dunya, which means ‘mother of the world’.
9. See Al-Ahram, 30 April–6 May 1998; see also Negus (1998).
10. See Joe Khalil’s chapter, below.
11. See EMPC official website: www.empc.com.eg/
12. Al-Ahram Weekly, 24 February–1 March 2000.
13. In Guaaybess (2011) we show that the relationship between the state and
these businessmen was more complex than plain ‘clientelism’.
14. We can quote in particular a weekly column in Al-Ahram Weekly, written
by Yunan Labib Rizk (a history professor), in which he often dealt with
great figures of the past, as if to discreetly remind the readership that
a free press is possible in Egypt because the past is very rich with great
and respected figures. In this respect, the launch of Al-Masry al-Yom
by, as a key shareholder, the grandson of Tawfiq Diab, who happens to
be a wealthy businessman, can be interpreted as a disguised but real and
efficient form of dissidence.
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Napoli, J., Amin, H. Y. and Napoli, L. R. (1995) ‘Privatization of the Egyptian
media’, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 18(4), Summer,
39–57.
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models of press management and control’, Journalism Monographs, 124,
December.
Negus, S. (1998) ‘Media mismanagement’, Middle East International, 574,
8 May, 8–9.
Omar, H. N. (1995) ‘Media City: Egypt’s Hollywood’, Business Monthly, July,
16–18.
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des systèmes de protection sociale’, Revue Française de Science Politique,
49(3), June, 399–418.
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Review, 109, 641–68.
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in a fluid pan-Arab market’, in D. Ward (ed.), Television and Public Policy
(New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 265–81.
Salamandra, C. (2008) ‘Through the back door: Syrian television makers
between secularism and Islamization’, in K. Hafez (ed.), Arab Media: Power
and Weakness (New York: Continuum), pp. 251–62.
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pp. 63–101.
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Cairo), pp. 3–13.
5
The Lebanese Broadcasting
System: A Battle between Political
Parallelism, Commercialization
and De-facto Liberalism1
Sarah El Richani
The Lebanese media system in general, and its broadcasting system

in particular, has long been regarded as a unique and interesting case
in the Middle East due to the avenues of freedom it has enjoyed, the
pluralism and diversity represented, and the early introduction of
privatization.
Yet despite the apparent pluralism and the relatively high number of
private broadcasters, the fragmentation of the Lebanese media system
has been often lamented. A recent study of Lebanese television (Nötzold
2009) has corroborated the widely held claim that Lebanese television
in both content and form is stuck in its ‘communal trenches’ from
where it serves its elite owners, rather than the public.
Indeed, the Lebanese media system has inescapably ‘taken on the
form and coloration of the social and political structures within
which it operates’ thereby mirroring and reinforcing the fragmenta-
tion and the general weakness of the state (Siebert et al. 1956).
The small and saturated local advertising market particularly in
terms of political communication has made those links with the
political elite all the more necessary. This has essentially rendered
the system externally pluralistic, where diversity is represented on
the level of the system rather than within each media outlet and
where effectively each major political or religious group has its own
outlet. Yet, the size of the market has also propelled some stations
to pluralize internally, particularly with regards to non-political pro-
gramming so as to reach beyond their traditional partisan audiences
and thereby attract more advertising.
69
70 The Lebanese Broadcasting System
The advent of satellite TV can also be seen to have propelled

commercialization in so far that it has allowed a few successful
Lebanese television stations to reach beyond the Lebanese market
and secure advertising from the lucrative Gulf market.
‘Political money’ from political and confessional leaders as well as
reportedly from other states by way of investments or ‘donations’,
however, remains essential to the subsistence of most Lebanese
media corporations.
Against this backdrop, this chapter explores both the ‘de jure’ and
the ‘de facto’ realities of the Lebanese broadcasting-sector system, for
both the state role in terms of laws and policies and the reality on the
ground are necessary to fully understand the workings of Lebanese
broadcasting (Fandy 2007: 67). The chapter also explores dimensions
of political parallelism in the Lebanese media, or the extent to which
the media system reflects the major political divisions in society,
as well as sheds some light on an attempt to converge towards
a more commercial, catch-all media despite the intense political
battle, of which the media are an intrinsic part (Hallin and Mancini
2005: 21–2).
On media laws and the ‘rule of law’
The end of the 15-year civil war in 1990 heralded the reorganiza-
tion of the audiovisual landscape culminating in the Audio-Visual
Law 382 passed in 1994.2 The law led to the formation of the
National Audio-Visual Council (NAVC) which in turn ‘awarded’ 3
licences in line with what Kraidy calls ‘an obsessive formula
of confessional balance’ (Kraidy 2005: 288). Nonetheless, this
made Lebanon the first country in the Middle East to establish
a regulatory system for permitting private radio and television
broadcasting to be both produced and distributed within its borders
(Rugh 2004: 202–4).
By granting licences to political leaders or ‘les fromagistes’,4
however, the law broke the monopoly of the airwaves promised to
the state-owned Télé Liban5 (TL) till 2012, thereby sidelining the
embattled state broadcaster. With a yearly budget of nearly $4.5m,6
Télé Liban was naturally unable to produce content and programmes
that would attract audiences and advertisers and compete with
channels with more than five to ten times its budget.
Sarah El Richani 71
Table 5.1 Owners and religious or political affiliations of Lebanese channels
TV channel Religious or Effective owners

political affiliation
NBN Shi’ite Family members and close

associates of a Shi’ite Za’im and
Speaker of Parliament Nabih
Berri
Murr TV Greek Orthodox Al-Murr family
LBCI Maronite Christians Pierre Daher and family, plus
other shareholders including PM
Najib Mikati. LBCSat is owned
by Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin
Talal
Future TV Sunni Muslims The Hariri family and associates
Al Manar Shi’ite Hezbollah-affiliated shareholders
Télé Lumière Catholic Church Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs
and Bishops
New TV Sunni Muslims Tahsin Khayyat and family
OTV ‘Al Lubnaniah Maronite Christians Public trading company with
Lil I’Lam Sal’ largest stake affiliated to Free
Patriotic Movement
Public broadcaster Lebanese Lebanese state
(Télé Liban) government
The four competitors initially licensed represented key political

and confessional groups (Rugh 2004: 202–4) (Table 5.1). The National
Broadcasting Network (NBN), often jokingly dubbed the Nabih Berri
Network – after its effective owner the Shi’ite Za’im7 and Speaker of
Parliament and head of the Amal Party Nabih Berri – was to repre-
sent the Shi’ites. Future TV, owned by the influential Hariri family,
represented the Sunni Muslims. Murr Television (MTV) was owned
by a Greek Orthodox Christian family, Al-Murr, and the Lebanese
Broadcasting Corporation, formerly owned by the Lebanese Forces,8
was seen to represent the Christian Maronites.
Later, Al Manar, which began broadcasting in 1991 and is closely
linked to Hezbollah, was also granted a licence. Meanwhile Télé
Lumière, set up by the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops
in Lebanon as not-for-profit television, continues to broadcast
without a licence and uses the frequencies from Télé Liban.
Despite the requirements stipulated in the law for licence

applications, several members of the National Audio-Visual Council,
which consists of ten members equally appointed by the parliament
and the Council of Ministers, have spoken9 of the political pressures
the council was subjected to.
Indeed, some TV stations, such as New TV (Al Jadeed), purchased
in 1992 by a wealthy Sunni businessman and a Hariri rival Tahsin
Khayyat, were refused a licence despite having met all the require-
ments. In 2000, four years after it was shut down, New TV won a
legal suit it had filed and was finally granted a licence.
In 2006, OTV, affiliated to Christian Maronite General Michel
Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement, was also granted a licence.
‘Had there been no political side behind the application, surely the
licence wouldn’t have been granted this easily and of course now if
a group of people with all the resources and conditions apply for a
licence it is not necessary that they will obtain it,’ said the Director
of News and Political programmes at OTV.10
This brings to the fore the important factor of the ‘rule of law’.11
The outdated Lebanese media laws and the book of specifications
for TV and Radio corporations12 may be seen at times to contradict
international legal obligations regarding free expression in so far
that harsh penalties are stipulated for even slight violations. One
example is including ‘objectivity’ as one of the legal requirements.
Although objectivity remains an important journalistic aspiration,
including this vague and arguably unattainable quality might have
led to the penalization of most Lebanese channels, had the law been
implemented.13 The harsh sanctions include closing the station for a
period of three days upon the first violation, and for three to 30 days
upon the second contravention within the same year.
Another clause, Article 13, which disallows a natural or legal entity
to directly or indirectly own more than 10 per cent of the totality
of the company’s shares, was circumvented by distributing the shares
to family members and close associates, thereby maintaining full
control over the broadcasting corporation.
Political money and power
Despite efforts and discussions aiming to amend the media laws, there
is a consensus, however, that the problem lies in the implementation
Sarah El Richani 73
of the law, which stems from the general weakness of the state,
which in turn is due to several factors including the nature of the
political game and the general strength of the non-state actors who
directly or indirectly own media corporations.
A clear manifestation in this regard is chapter ten of the Audio-
Visual Law, which stipulates that the Ministry of Information can ask
the Court of Publications to stop the company from broadcasting for
a period of three months to two years or even annul the company’s
licence if the company is seen to have acquired funds that it could
not prove to have legitimately acquired.
The total advertising market in Lebanon, according to several adver-
tising companies interviewed, ranges between $100m and $180m,14
with 15–20 per cent going to advertising agencies, and another 15
per cent going to media representatives, leaving circa $50–55m in
advertising revenues for all the channels in Lebanon.15 This there-
fore points to the subsidies that media outlets in Lebanon receive
from a variety of sources, locally and internationally. The director of
political programming at one TV station is clear: ‘A simple arithmetic
formula makes it clear that we need one or twofold the advertising
expenditure to sustain the media corporations we have. How do they
continue? There are other sources of political money.’16
According to the then Minister of Information,17 who was intent
on implementing the administrative issues within the law, NAVC
advised him not to exert much effort in imposing the law as the
broadcasting corporations are stronger than the council and the
ministry and that sanctions proposed by the council and acted upon
by the minister would not be imposed.
A recent case18 perceived by NAVC and the minister to have
incited sectarian feuds and civil strife is a case in point. Despite the
report prepared by NAVC and the minister‘s intent to effectively
impose the law, the popular political programme was not held
accountable because the majority of the ministers in the Council
of Ministers were opposed to taking any measure against the
programme.19
At other times, however, laws and clauses were imposed at the whim
of the political leaders and against media seen to be agitating against
the state. During the Syrian hegemony over Lebanon – from 1990 to
200520 – Article 68 of the electoral law on electoral advertising was used
to shut down MTV, which was at the time vocal against the Syrian
presence in Lebanon. The closure of the station was undoubtedly

politically motivated and the decision was reversed soon after the
withdrawal of the Syrian troops. The station successfully relaunched
in 2009.
There has also been a series of para-legal cases where de-facto
powers have intervened to silence media corporations and journalists.
A string of assassinations in 2005 claimed the lives of prominent
journalist and MP Gebran Tueni and a columnist, Samir Kassir, and
left May Chidiac, a political talkshow host, maimed.21 Several media
outlets belonging to the Future media family were forcefully closed
for a period of three days by armed fighters in May 2008.
‘In times of chaos, regulation is suspended.’22 Compromise
and settlements therefore emerge as an important specificity of
the Lebanese media and political system, which is governed by a
delicate balance of confessional and political interests and consider-
ations. Whereas many cases of ‘false news’, ‘slander and defamation’
are resolved in court; despite delays, several politicized cases often
end in conciliation outside the courts or are granted amnesty such
as in 2000.23
While the director of NAVC laments the state’s absence of a
‘media vision or policy’,24 it is worth noting that, as in Italian,25 the
Arabic language has just one word for both ‘politics’ and ‘policy’:
siyassah. Policy is therefore rendered as a political process, which in
a pluralistic context as in Lebanon is based on compromise rather
than ‘policy; which is based on a functional, administrative, output-
oriented and technocratic logic’ (Nohlen 2003: 309).
Indeed, just as in other countries, ‘successive regimes and govern-
ments left the development of the country to unbridled capitalist
initiative. On the occasions when planning was implemented, private
interests applied pressures to make the plans ineffective ... [as] the
traditional leaders had no interest in seeing their constituencies
develop, fearing this would rob them of the mainstay of their power:
the blind tribal or quasi-tribal allegiance of their followers’ (Salibi
2003: 190), the political and confessional ‘elite cartel’ intervened to
weaken a potentially ‘social adhesive’ state broadcaster to protect
their own interests.
Pithily put, Télé Liban seems to mirror the Lebanese state: weak,
impoverished and peripheral to the political/sectarian tug of war.
There were several attempts to revive the channel, the last of which
Sarah El Richani 75
was a detailed five-year plan submitted early in 2009 to the Council

of Ministers. The plan, however, was not approved due to financial
reasons, as well as what Mitri labelled as ‘a subliminal message’, where
if the public media are strengthened it would come at the expense
of the private media all owned by these political-confessional lead-
ers. ‘LBC; AL Manar, OTV, MTV are more powerful than me in the
council of ministers.’26
Political parallelism and commercialization
In such a highly politically parallel state of affairs, questions about

the autonomy and professionalization of the journalistic body arise.
While generalizing about professionalization across the variegated
Lebanese broadcasting sector (Hardy 2008: 55) and beyond its nor-
mative character is empirically unsound and unfair even, Lebanese
media professionals are often regarded as skilled professionals and
are in demand across the region. It is, however, the ethics of the
profession and ‘lack of responsible journalism’ that is often cited as
a cause for concern (Pies 2008: 174). Despite a call by the Minister
of Information in 2009 for a new code of ethics and professionalism,
the pervasiveness of political money has rendered a good number of
journalists ‘mortgaged to the politicians who pay them’.27
Furthermore, the absence of a professional union representing
workers in the audiovisual private media28 renders the journalists
even more susceptible to intervention and pressure and therefore
forces them to toe the line set by the news directors, who play
the role of gatekeeper and are often close to the political owner or
backer of the outlet in question. In 2009,29 several Lebanese media
corporations from across the spectrum discharged staff members en
masse purportedly due to the financial crisis, although there were
claims that some of the discharges were politically motivated.
The instrumentalization, or the extent to which journalism is pen-
etrated or ‘controlled by outside forces who use them to intervene in
the world of politics, or for commercial purposes or even for both’,
is clearly visible in the content, particularly in times of deep politi-
cal crisis (Hallin and Mancini 2005: 33–7). A study which conducted
content analysis of newscasts and political talkshows revealed that
‘Al-Manar and LBCI30 are the stations that identify strongest with
the sect of their majority stakeholders but also with that of the
majority of their audiences, and that Al-Manar, Future TV, NBN, are
the stations with the closest link to a politician or a party and have
the highest percentage of expressing political views close to this
politician in their news bulletin with Al-Manar serving as the most
blatant example’ (Nötzold 2009: 340).
Another related result of the high political parallelism of the
Lebanese broadcasting landscape is the hypothetical partisanship of
audiences, particularly regarding political communication, which
Chantal Mouffe likens to ‘a kind of autism’ and where audiences
consume only the media that reinforce their beliefs (Carpentier
and Cammaerts 2006: 968). Audience ratings, however, show that
there is no longer a leading TV show but leading programmes
and that ‘when presented with well-crafted programs, viewers will
watch television programs that do not cater to the particularistic
ideologies of their confessional group’ (Kraidy 2005: 288–90). Despite
the fact that many partisans still prefer to consume the political
programmes which represent their views and beliefs, some Lebanese
channels have challenged that by resorting to a necessary mixed
strategy where they employ staff and guest-hosts from across the
spectrum to ensure a wider audience. Indeed, successful political
talkshows and newscasts on the more moderate stations have proven
that ‘media consumption is a bundle of connections between identi-
ties, texts and institutions’ (Kraidy 2005: 290).
Also, and in a clear response to the market logic, a few chan-
nels have chosen to mainstream and present more catch-all and
objective content. LBC for one has also successfully penetrated the
Gulf market by broadcasting the profitable and successful rendition
of the Endemol television format Star Academy, which began in
2003, as well as other game and entertainment shows and series aired
during the holy month of Ramadan, for instance. Prior to the 2005
assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri, ‘a turning point’31 for Future
TV,32 the channel succeeded in appealing to a wider audience and
also offered successful entertainment formats such as Superstar.
The leading LBC, rated first33 overall in Lebanon also in its news-
casts and political talkshows, has spearheaded the ‘convergence’34
towards a liberal-style media; however, it is facing a legal battle over
ownership against the political movement which initially launched
the station. An indictment was issued in October 201035 in favour
of the Lebanese Forces (LF) Party; however, on 29 February 2012,
Sarah El Richani 77
Beirut’s Prosecutor’s office dismissed the lawsuit by the LF citing that

‘the statute of limitations has run out’.36 The LF have consequently
appealed this decision taken by their ‘political foe’s niece’,37 as Pierre
Daher, the current owner and director of LBC, continues to claim
that he purchased it in full in 1992, when the party was persecuted.
Depending on how the battle plays out, we may be witnessing
the further commercialization of LBC, closely followed by MTV and
Al Jadeed, or its return to the Lebanese Forces Party, although the
latter seems improbable in light of the latest change of government
in Lebanon and the amount of money and influential shareholders
involved,38 despite the fallout between Prince al-Waleed bin Talal
and Daher in April 2012.39 While the launch of the LF’s web TV,
LFTV,40 in July 2011, may have indicated that the party had come
to terms with the need for a settlement with the ‘Sheikh of LBC’, its
closure less than a year later41 and the latest decision against them
has left the LF vowing LBC will return to its ‘rightful owners’.
Conclusion
While it is true that there is a relatively high number of diverse

private broadcast media in the country, these commercial/partisan
enterprises both reflect and reinforce the social fragmentation afflict-
ing the nation.
The Lebanese broadcast system as described above is one which
reflects a high degree of political parallelism, where television
stations are directly linked with social and confessional groups,
Zu’ama, neo-Zu’ama and political parties or movements. The few
attempts at severing or at least toning down their links to coalitions,
‘spiritual families’ (Salibi 2003: 217) or parties have left these stations
without a licence (Al Jadeed), forced to shut down (MTV) or facing a
legal battle (LBC).
While some argue that this reality has led to the lax application
of the laws and has therefore allowed the tradition of freedoms in
Lebanon to remain intact and rendered its media system a de-facto
quasi-liberal one, calls for amending the laws, bolstering the rule
of law and strengthening the public broadcaster continue to be
sounded, although it is not expected that they will materialize.
Meanwhile, the media’s reliance on subsidies and backing from
the elite cartel, who have over the years contributed to limiting the
state’s power and interfered to hinder the rule of law, have made the
media all the more captive, thereby violating another article from
the broadcasting law, which stipulates that the ‘audiovisual media
are free’.42
Still, it can perhaps be argued that the representation of the diverse
players on the broadcasting landscape may be regarded as a prag-
matic arrangement that avoids what Mouffe calls the ‘democratic
paradox’ between pluralism and integration and the possibility
of a Habermasian universal rational consensus. Mouffe argues that
rather than institutions which ‘would reconcile conflicting inter-
ests and values, the task is to envisage the creation of a vibrant
“agnostic” public’ space of contestation where different hegemonic
political projects can be confronted’ (Karppinen 2007: 497–8).
The sidelining of the public broadcaster, arguably a space where
conflicting views may have been reconciled, and the presence
of different political projects on the broadcasting landscape may
therefore be contributing to what she calls the ‘vibrant “agnostic”
public space’.
While this may well be the case, the Lebanese broadcasting land-
scape during recurring times of crises undoubtedly descends from
the ‘agnostic’ to the ‘antagonistic’ space. It is this cacophonous
scene, with a few exceptions, that makes former prime minister Salim
Al Hoss’ often-repeated statement all the more resonating: ‘In
Lebanon there is a lot of freedom, and very little democracy.’
Notes
1. Several of the statements made by interviewees in this chapter are taken
from a forthcoming and larger work on the Lebanese media system from
a comparative perspective. The work by the same author will be published
in 2013.
2. The full text of the Audio-Visual Law 382 can be accessed here:
www.ministryinfo.gov.lb/en/Main/MediaLaws/ActNo.382/Thefulltextsoft
helawsofpublications2.aspx
3. Layla El-Zubaidi, Walking a Tightrope: News Media and Freedom of Expression
in the Arab Middle East. A Report for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Middle East
Office Beirut, 2004, www.boell-meo.org/download_en/media_study.pdf
4. President Fuad Chehab, credited with attempting to strengthen the state,
referred to the Zu’ama or the political/confessional elites as les fromagistes,
in reference to their appropriation of the state to sustain the clientelistic
and patronage system.
Sarah El Richani 79
5. TL began as a private enterprise when a company founded in 1954 later

merged with its commercial competitor. TL remained partly owned by
private investors till 1994, when the state purchased the remaining
50 per cent of the shares from former PM Rafik Hariri. The television has
faced financial troubles culminating in a brief closure in 2001 and the
dismissal of a large number of staff.
6. Author’s interview with Wassef Awada, Assistant to the General Director
of TL on 14 October 2010.
7. The term Za’im (pl. Zu’ama) is commonly used in Lebanon to refer to
leaders who were traditionally large landowners and offered protection
and patronage.
8. The Lebanese Forces is a Christian movement which was founded dur-
ing the civil war as a militia. In 1994, and following the end of the civil
war, the party was dissolved and its leader Samir Geagea was incarcer-
ated, until his release in 2005 with the withdrawal of Syrian forces from
Lebanon.
9. The author held a series of interviews with several members of NAVC as
well as its director in September 2010, January and May 2011.
10. Author’s interview with Jean Aziz, Director of News and Political pro-
grammes, 29 October 2010.
11. The concept, though initially coined by A. V. Dicey, can be traced back
to Aristotle and encompasses that no one should be above the law, and
it must apply equally to all. It is essential to good governance and, as put
by Tom Paine in 1776, ‘the Law is King’ (Bingham 2010: 8).
12. The Book of Conditions for the broadcast media can be accessed at:
www.ministryinfo.gov.lb/en/Main/LicensingFoundation/Bookofconditio
nstypicalofthenewsmediaand.aspx
13. All prime-time newscasts begin with an editorial introduction which not
only offers analysis of the main headlines but also carries the station and
its backer’s position of events that day.
14. Exact figures regarding advertising spending in Lebanon do not exist.
The figures according to the rate cards are inflated and there is a large
discrepancy between the recorded and the actual figures ‘due to big
client discounts, inflated rate cards and/or big barter deals estimation’,
so while TV expenditure in 2009 was $756m, the actual expenditure was
$54m. The circulated number for 2010 was $180m, www.iloubnan.info/
technology/actualite/id/57701/theme/1078/titre/Advertising-spending-
in-Lebanon-up-15-to-$180m-in-2010
15. Medium-sized channels require $15m per year.
16. Author’s interview with Jean Aziz, Director of News and Political
programmes, 29 October 2010.
17. Author’s interview with Minister of Information Tarek Mitri, 21 May
2011.
18. The show in question was Marcel Ghanem’s leading political talkshow
programme on LBCI. The live episode broadcast on 14 October 2010
featured several reports as well as interviews with victims and relatives
of the May 2008 events as well as youths from the Sunni areas that were
attacked by Hezbollah and Amal fighters.
19. Author’s interview with Minister of Information Tarek Mitri, 21 May
2011.
20. The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976. With the Ta’ef accord, and till
2005, when the Syrian army withdrew from Lebanon, Syrian influence
over the Lebanese political landscape was at its height.
21. In June, September and December 2005, blasts killed Samir Kassir and
Gebran Tueni, and left May Chidiac severely injured. The perpetrators
remain unknown and have not been brought to justice.
22. Author’s interview with NAVC Director Abdulhadi Mahfouz, 25 May 2011.
23. Author’s interview with lawyer Nizar Saghieh, 19 October 2010.
24. Author’s interview with NAVC Director Abdulhadi Mahfouz, 25 May 2011.
25. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, a former finance minister, once noted that
Italian has just one word for both politics and policy: politica. In Italy,
politics never stops, and so policy is sidelined. ‘Bored by Brussels’,
www.economist.com/node/16693617?story_id=16693617
26. Author’s interview with Minister of Information Tarek Mitri, 21 May 2011.
27. Author’s interview with Professor Nabil Dajani, 26 January 2011.
28. The state broadcaster TL’s staff have a professional union.
29. The National, 14 October 2009, www.thenational.ae/news/world/
middle-east/lebanons-media-forced-into-layoffs?pageCount=0
30. Although LBC provides special programming such as game shows and
series during the holy month of Ramadan, they cover church Mass on
Sundays as well as during Christian holidays. Media and Communications
Professor Nabil Dajani has called LBCI a ‘forum for the Maronites and the
Patriarch; if he sneezes, they report it’. Author’s interview with Professor
Nabil Dajani, 26 January 2011.
31. Author’s interview with Najat Sharafeddine, FTV News anchor and producer/
presenter of Transit, a show on media coverage. Interview conducted
on 6 June 2011.
32. Since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Future TV has
become more and more partial in its coverage, and its link to the Future
movement more flagrant, and has therefore dropped in the ratings. Some
political parties in Lebanon, such as Hezbollah, the movement’s political
adversary, refused to appear on Future TV particularly during times of
intense crisis. The Future TV network is currently restructuring and there
is talk of a possible merger between Future News and Future TV.
33. This is according to the Stat Ipsos, a market research and statistics com-
pany specialized in qualitative and quantitative research and advertising
research. It should be noted, however, that the official ratings issued by
Stat Ipsos are in fact disputed in Lebanon, with some citing a conflict
of interest with regards to the funding it receives as well as the non-
representative placing of the decoders as well as their absence from
some areas, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, that is, the densely
populated southern suburbs and the south of Lebanon.
Sarah El Richani 81
34. Conversion in the field of broadcasting took place in the 1980s and 1990s
and is often referred to as the ‘commercial deluge’ where the public-
service monopolies were displaced in favour of the dual systems, in
which commercial media are increasingly dominant. According to Hallin
and Mancini, the differences among their three models have diminished
substantially over time with media systems converging towards the
liberal model, as exemplified by the United States and where commercial
media reigns, the public-service broadcasting is weak and the links
between political parties and the media have been severed or weakened.
35. The indictment accused the owner and executive Director of LBCI
Pierre Daher of ‘misuse of trust, fraud and embezzlement’ and
requested the imprisonment of Daher and another shareholder (Ra’ef
Bustani). The indictment also held LBC and its eight affiliated com-
panies – LBC International, XYZ Limited, Lebanese Media Company
Limited, Lebanese Media Holding Limited, LBC Plus Limited, LBC Sat
Limited, Pack Limited and LBC Overseas Limited – partly responsible.
The indictment was appealed and the case was subsequently dropped
in February 2012. The LF have appealed the decision at the Court of
Cassation.
36. The Daily Star, 2 March 2012, ‘LF’s court case against Pierre Daher dismissed’,
http://dailystar.com.lb/Article.aspx?id=165240#axzz1vX4Mm0R8.
37. The Lebanese Forces website article on the case: ‘Nabih Berri’s niece,
Judge Nada Dakroub, after 17 months delay, dismisses the case to the
advantage of Daher citing that the statute of limitations has run out’.
(Arabic) www.lebanese-forces.com/web/MoreNews.aspx?newsid=197579
38. LBC Satellite TV and Productions and Acquisition (PAC) are owned by
Prince al-Waleed bin Talal who owns Rotana. In 2007 Rotana and LBC
Sat merged and in 2010 Rotana announced the sale of 9.09 per cent of its
shares to Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, with the possibility of doubling
these shares in 18 months. It is worth noting that bin Talal purchased
a stake of NewsCorp in November 2007. LBCI, the terrestrial channel,
has several influential shareholders, including current Lebanese Prime
Minister Najib Mikati.
39. In April 2012, Daher’s fall-out with al-Waleed bin Talal reached its
height, with the latter liquidating PAC and replacing LBC Europe
with Rotana Films. LBCI issued a statement: ‘LBCI sets the record
straight on PAC feud’, on 25 April 2012, www.lbcgroup.tv/news/27811/
lbci-sets-the-record-straight-on-pac-feud, where they reject the ‘false-
hoods’ claimed by Lebanese Media Holding (LMH) in its 11 April 2012
statement. The LMH statement claimed that LBCI’s ‘failure to pay for
programming produced by PAC and the ensuing dispute with the head
of LBCI and former-head of PAC and Rotana TV, Mr. Pierre El Daher,
have resulted in the inability of PAC to pay the salaries of its employ-
ees, and continue to sustain the ongoing costs of production and
operations’. LMH, which is part of Rotana, included PAC, LBC Sat, LBC
American and LBC Europe.
40. The Daily Star, 27 July 2011 ‘Lebanese Forces launches own web-based
TV’, www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/Jul-27/Lebanese-Forces-
launches-own-web-based-TV.ashx#axzz1lEZn5xes
41. An-Nahar, 10 April 2012: ‘Closure of the Lebanese Forces’ web TV due to low
audience rates’, www.alintiqad.com/essaydetails.php?eid=59602&cid=87
42. Article 3 of Law 382.
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6
Syrian Television Drama:
A National Industry in a
Pan-Arab Mediascape1
Christa Salamandra
The 2000s in Syria has coincided with the presidency of Bashar

al-Assad, who intensified the economic liberalization process begun
by his father, Hafez al-Assad, a decade earlier. With its newly formed
private production companies feeding numerous pan-Arab satellite
stations, Syria has developed the Arab world’s foremost fictional
television industry. Its key product, the miniseries, or musalsal, domi-
nates popular culture in the Arab world. As the nation’s largest and
most prominent media industry, television drama serves as a use-
ful vantage point from which to examine the Syrian government’s
enduring role in private media production. While the broadcast scale
has expanded beyond the nation, the state continues to control the
conditions of operation. This complex production context involves
a paradoxical mix of complicity and critique.
Industry or activity?
The Syrian drama series has a venerable history. In 1967, TV pioneers

Ghassan Jabri Hani al-Rummani and Faisal Yasiri produced the first
Syrian Ramadan musalsal, The Misers (al-Bukhala’), a dramatization
of ninth-century author al-Jahiz’s classic Kitab al-Bukhala’. Over the
following two decades, the Syrian state developed a small but dis-
tinctive musalsal industry. The genre, referred to in Syria simply as
‘drama’, eclipsed the sahra (literally, ‘soirée’) made-for-television film
to become the country’s chief cultural export. From the mid-1990s,
privatized production and satellite technology converged to produce
Syria’s ‘drama outpouring’ (al-fawra al-dramiyya). An average of 30
83
84 Syrian Television Drama: A National Industry
Syrian musalsals aired on numerous pan-Arab satellite stations each

Ramadan (Salamandra 2005). These compete with a roughly equal
number of series from Egypt, and a smattering of Gulf and Lebanese
productions. This expansion has fractured audiences, replacing the
annual media events that once united the Syrian nation in the act
of viewing and responding, with niche products aired on a range of
networks.
Syrian drama stars, directors, screenwriters and producers have
played a leading role in the rise of pan-Arab satellite media (Salamandra
2011). Variety channels such as the Saudi-owned and Dubai-based
MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) and Abu Dhabi’s Infinity
offer Arab viewers a host of formats, such as game shows, situation
comedies, reality programmes, talkshows, music videos and cooking
shows, but the musalsal stands out among them, in both production
volume and audience response. Syrian productions, both less expen-
sive and more technically refined than their Egyptian counterparts,
now lead the fictional market. A rising number of Gulf Cooperation
Council GCC-owned pan-Arab entertainment channels – including
several specializing in drama – now buy Syrian series.2 Increased
demand transformed the television community from a handful of
socially marginal and financially struggling – yet steadily working –
state-employed professionals to an array of private production
companies and a star system. Syrian actors have become regional
celebrities and even tourist attractions for Arab visitors who often
approach them with praise and cameras in Damascene restaurants and
cafés. Distinctions between creative and technical workers grow, while
a transnational industry of fan literature, in print and on the Internet,
enhances the fame and social legitimacy of a few (Weyman 2006).3 The
rest endure the insecurities of a flexible labour market, and an unstable
geopolitical situation.
Despite its regional prominence, the Syrian industry lacks a stable
infrastructure. Some television creators argue that the term ‘indus-
try’ (sina‘a) is a misnomer; drama production is merely an ‘activity’
(nashat) that could vanish at the slightest downturn. Screenwriter
Najib Nusair points to the black garbage bags Syrian producers use to
distribute funding as a symbol of this precariousness:
They take a garbage bag, put money in it, and distribute it to the
screenwriter, the actors, equipment rental, and that’s it; nothing
Christa Salamandra 85
else. Practically all Syrian drama now is financed from the Gulf,
and it is basic, it’s not like there are big, complex companies
with capital and stocks. Bank notes come in a black bag and get
distributed. And this is related to infrastructure. The infrastructure
we have amounts to a camera and editing machine. This is all we
have. And you have seen, you went to the filming locations,
these are real sites they rent from the black bag, natural places:
cafés, houses, hospitals … it’s built on relations not of industry,
but of simple commerce. There are no advertising companies
interfering, it’s a sector on its own, separate. The production
companies are just investments: you buy musalsals the same way
you buy Nescafé … this year there were 38 Syrian series; next year
there might be zero. So there is nothing you could call an infra-
structure, nothing. There’s the garbage bag, what we call the black
bag, what they put money in, and make drama.4
Economic liberalization without democratization leaves drama

creators controlled but unsupported. While censorship persists,
public-sector involvement in production shrinks. GCC satellite net-
works now finance or purchase most dramas and receive exclusive
Ramadan first-broadcast rights in return. Series are aired through-
out the year, but it is the coveted holy month prime time that
makes fortunes and reputations. The Syrian state has left its drama
producers to fend for themselves in a competitive market. Unlike
Egypt, Syria does not limit the number of foreign musalsals its state
television stations air. Nor does it promote packages of Syrian series
to GCC networks, as the Egyptian Ministry of Information does for
its national industry. With only a single private satellite station,
Syria has no national drama market comparable to Egypt’s array of
channels. Syrian producers argue that this lack of state regulation or
protection exposes them to the caprice of Gulf business practice.
For Syria’s cultural producers, the drama stakes are high. The field
encompasses much of the country’s intellectual and artistic commu-
nity. Industry figures note that when political parties were banned
in the 1960s, activists became writers and journalists, but continual
restrictions on press freedom and new employment opportunities
have rendered them TV makers. Many of the country’s leading direct-
ors, writers, actors, visual artists and photographers use television
work to supplement meagre incomes from more ‘serious’ endeavours.
Yet they understand the global reach and social significance of the
musalsal. Syrian drama creators believe in the power of their mass
medium to transform Arab society, and often see themselves at the
vanguard of a modernizing process. They seek to shed light on issues
difficult to broach in non-fiction media, hoping to spark discussion
and, ultimately, social and political transformation. But, as they are
keenly aware, they operate in commercial conditions not of their
own choosing. Paradoxically, liberalization and globalization con-
verge to increase production and expand audiences, but threaten to
constrain social critique and derail reformist impulses. More drama
is produced, and aired to wider audiences, than ever before in Syrian
TV history. Volume potentially dilutes influence; viewer choice
widens and impact narrows. Additionally, prominent outlets like
MBC foreground costume drama, creating hierarchies of broadcast
in which social drama is relegated to lesser time slots and secondary
channels. As they cope with the vagaries of conservative GCC
broadcasting, and the growing competition for audiences, drama
creators reflect on what they feel they have lost, expressing nostalgia
for an era of state control and national broadcasting. Economic
liberalization, lack of regulation and continued censorship converge
in what is, industry figures argue, the worst of both worlds. Yet drama
creators endure, and often flourish, evoking the very challenges they
face in the works they produce.
Accommodation, transgression and commitment
Syrian drama creators have developed a distinct set of conventions and

a broad range of subgenres, including historical, contemporary social,
comedy, folkloric and the science-fiction-like ‘fantasy’ (fantaziya).
Syrian audiences read all of these forms as social and political
comment – sometimes as critique, sometimes as propaganda. Viewers
habitually speculate over why the regime encourages or permits parti-
cular themes and representations (Salamandra 1998). Messages in
historical and fantasy works are subtle and ambiguous; those con-
veyed in contemporary series are less equivocal. Comedies and social
dramas, favourites with Syrian audiences, make explicit reference to
the present condition and its discontents.
One programme in particular, a satirical sketch programme
launched in the early days of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, reflects the
wax and wane of the new president’s reform policy. In 2001, Syria
International (Suriya al-Duwaliyya), a leading private production
company with strong links to the regime, commissioned two
of Syria’s leading young comics to come up with a new show,
Spotlight. The result daringly lampooned sectarianism, regionalism,
Islamic revivalism, state corruption and the mukhabarat (intel-
ligence services). According to Spotlight director Laith Hajjo, the
series’ creators buttressed their risk-taking with the president’s 2000
inaugural address, which called for a new era of transparency and a
campaign against corruption. As Hajjo relates, ‘the producer didn’t
really know what we were up to. We kept telling the censors that,
look, the president said X, so we’re following that policy’ (Dick
2007). Spotlight’s fortunes, much like those of the reform project it
satirized, peaked and fizzled over the next four years. Artistic infight-
ing, accusations of co-optation and mushrooming competition
pushed Spotlight from centre stage in Syrian mass cultural life. Yet like
the reforms promised during the ‘Damascus Spring’, the brief flower-
ing of reformist discussion that marked Bashar al-Assad’s first months
in office, Spotlight and programmes like it have spurred change.
Public debate has broadened, and the boundaries of taboo have been
considerably blurred. Recurring Spotlight characters, like the Spray
Can Man (al-Rajul al-Bakhakh), have inspired protesters active in the
2010–11 pro-democracy protests.5 Hajjo notes that, at the very least,
the series underscored the contradictions of state rhetoric:
The director of [state] television himself was changed, because he

agreed to air Spotlight. That was a real action, because it confirmed
that, in the end, censors are unable to be open or free. When
a director is fired because he agrees to air certain sketches, this
shows that we’ve hit our boundaries. We’ve discovered that this
freedom they’re talking about doesn’t exist.6
Spotlight was at the forefront of efforts to lend a fresh satirical edge

and technical sophistication to social and political critique and
has enhanced levels of visual literacy in Syria and the wider Arab
world. With acclaimed works like Spotlight in their repertoire, Syrian
television creators engage transnational audiences to socio-politically
committed mass culture. Yet the Gulf Cooperation Council – largely
Saudi and Emirati – domination of the pan-Arab TV market has
prompted certain thematic shifts, notably a religiosity that often

sits uncomfortably with Syria’s largely secular and socially progres-
sive artistic community. With the perceived failure of socialist and
Arab nationalist ideologies, constructs of Islamic authenticity have
become the dominant mode of anti-colonial, anti-imperial critique
(Salamandra 2008). In an effort to be relevant and responsive, some
television drama creators respond to the Islamizing current by
inflecting their works with religion, a move others dismiss as pander-
ing to ‘prevailing values in the societies of the oil states’ (Bilal and
Nusair 1999: 8). Thrillers depicting militant Islam, historical epics of
the Islamic empire and folkloric evocations of Old Damascus attract
large-scale funding and international media attention.
Others, like Spotlight’s creators, challenge both the Islamic tendency
and the neoliberal moment. Syrians continue to produce contemporary
urban social dramas addressing ‘our problems’, as Arab viewers put it.
These programmes find loyal audiences and critical acclaim in Syria
and beyond. They reflect an enduring secular, socialist tradition in
an age of commercial nostalgia. Damascus is known as the birthplace
and ‘beating heart of Arab nationalism’ (qalb al-‘uruba al-nabid), and
many Syrian television makers cling to Arab socialist ideals. The
senior generation, including esteemed directors Haytham Haqqi,
‘Ala al-Din Kawkash and Ghassan Jabri, were trained in the former
Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc nations and passed on a social realist
aesthetic to their young apprentices, who have transformed it with
fast-paced, slick camera work and high production values. The form
is considerably updated; the social concern remains central. Dramas
often take the state to task – usually gingerly, sometimes more openly –
for not living up to its social welfare rhetoric. In Syrian musalsals
aired during my ethnographic fieldwork period in Ramadan 2006,
urban marginality – both social and physical – formed a significant
theme. One series, Echo of the Soul (Sada al-Ruh), portrayed patients
in a humanistic experimental psychiatric facility. The protagonist, a
young doctor returning from a residency in Great Britain, transfers
patients to a hillside mansion overlooking the city, where the life
stories he uncovers reflect the social and political traumas of recent
Arab history. Another, the Open Courtyard (Fusha Samawiyya), shed
sympathetic light on another group of outcasts: single adults. In
a society where marriage and children are a hallmark of, if not
requisite for, successful adulthood, unmarried people face various
forms of social stigma and legal disadvantage. Yet their plight is rarely
invoked in discussions of social problems. In Open Courtyard, divorced
women, struggling artists, impoverished bachelors build an unlikely
family in their shared Old City house. The series attacks Syria’s
Ottoman-derived, Islam-inspired personal status law, which grants
fathers custody of boys from the age of 13 and girls from the age
of 15 in divorce cases. Both series show complex, endearing characters
facing – and more rarely overcoming – social and economic hardship.
Other works depicted the alienating poverty of the informal settle-
ment, a pet cause for reform-minded scriptwriters. Damascus is largely
absent from the scholarly literature on shantytowns, and is rarely
invoked in discussions of urban blight. Yet the United Nations
estimates 40 per cent of Damascus dwellers, and over one-third of
the total urban population in the Arab world – 57 million people –
live in informal settlements, ‘haphazard neighbourhoods’ (al-harat
al-‘ashwa’iyya) as they are referred to in Arabic (UN 2006, 2008).
Also called mukhalafat – literally: violations – these unregulated,
often illegal settlements share the afflictions of (sub)urban poverty
in much of the Global South: deficient infrastructure, crowding,
hazardous construction, inadequate services, unemployment and
crime. Like informal districts elsewhere, they house recent migrants
from the countryside, a phenomenon signalled in drama through
rural dialects, clothing and the drinking of mate, a practice brought
by emigrants returning from late Ottoman-era sojourns in Latin
America. For many, these settlements that ‘encircle Damascus
like a bracelet’, as one screenwriter put it, have become not a
first stop to urban integration, but barriers to upward, or inward,
mobility. Drama makers depict haphazard regions as sites of crime and
cultural dissolution, in contrast to the traditional or popular quarters
(harat sha‘abiyya) that they associate with high moral values and
contiguous social relations. They are shown not as enduring tradition,
but as a product of state corruption and neglect.
Syrian drama confronts audiences with the consequences of neolib-
eral policies in stark social realism. On-location filming distinguishes
the Syrian industry from its studio-based Egyptian counterpart; series
set in poor neighbourhoods require months of filming in narrow,
crumbling alleyways and tiny dilapidated houses. These works
bring drama makers and their audiences into intimate contact with
what are, for most middle-class Syrians, dangerous nether regions
on the margins of consciousness. In Rasha Sharbatji’s Gazelles in a

Forest of Wolves (Ghazlan fi Ghabat al-Dhi’ab), the cottage industries
of an informal economy prove as haphazard and precarious as the
settlement itself. In one telling scene, a young woman carries her
hollowed-out courgettes to market, to sell – through a middleman –
to middle-class women, who stuff them with meat and rice, and call
them their own. A cyclist balancing a tray of food on his head wob-
bles his way through the crowded marketplace knocking her to the
ground, smashing her vegetables and destroying days of labour. The
Sisyphean struggle to carve out a secure existence renders settlement
dwellers vulnerable to power and corruption. This arrives in the form
of a prime minister’s delinquent son. Behind the smoky windows of
his silver Mercedes, Samir prowls the neighbourhood, finding easy
prey among youth seeking a way out of poverty and social stigma.
These struggling university students face an unpromising future;
a powerful patron seems to offer a leg up. Yet like the political system
itself, Samir takes without giving: in the end, his lackeys get no more
than broken hairdryers in return for their pandering.
The second series depicting (sub)urban poverty, Waiting (al-Intizar),
forms the focal point of my fieldwork. The script’s co-authors, the
above-quoted journalist Najib Nusair and novelist Hassan Sami
Yusuf, are Syria’s highest-paid screenwriters, with a reputation for
artistic ‘depth’ (‘umq). Directed by Spotlight’s Laith Hajjo, Waiting
revolves around a Robin Hood figure and a low-level journalist. Both
are sons of the haphazard hara, neighbourhood, in which most of
the action takes place. Episode one begins with a pulsating set of
establishing images, taking viewers from the heart of elite downtown
Damascus, through increasingly downscale areas, and finally out to
the run-down suburb of Dwaila‘a. Here ‘Abbud, an orphan whose
house the camera never visits, robs clothing from boutiques in the
city’s wealthy districts and distributes it among his neighbours in
the dead of night. Two orphaned brothers eke out a living polish-
ing middle-class floors; one leaves to make his fortune in Dubai, but
returns with little more than cosmopolitan pretensions and curry
recipes. Their next-door neighbours, the four beautiful daughters of
vegetable seller Abu As‘ad, try different paths out of Dwaila‘a, but
marriage, prostitution and affairs with wealthy married men all back-
fire. Journalist Wa’il remains loyal to the low-paying state newspaper;
his wife Samira urges him to try Al Jazeera. His socialist ethos appears
delusional. Given results of kleptocratic Ba‘thist rule, and the harsh

realities of economic liberalism, most Waiting characters, like so
many urban Syrians, turn to the informal economy, as public-sector
employment shrinks, and private-sector jobs require connections.
Wa’il waxes romantic about the neighbourhood’s goodness and
humanity; Samira rails against its dirt and danger, a position the series
producers share, and underscore in its dramatic turning point. While
playing soccer in the area’s only available clearing – a rubble-strewn
lot at the edge of a busy highway – the couple’s youngest son is
struck by a minivan and blinded.
The series’ central concept is a myth of departure – most charact-
ers are waiting to move on from a neighbourhood, and a state of
being, they perceive as a mere way station to a better life; most,
it is implied, will never leave. This frustrating limbo symbolizes
what Waiting’s creators see as the Arab condition. Self-improvement
through education, the solution Arab drama of an earlier generation
once offered (Abu-Lughod 2005a, 2005b), has lost credibility after
decades of expanded university access has failed to stem growing
levels of underemployment. Bearing witness to abuse and suffering,
and taking the system – often vaguely defined – to task, becomes a
preferred dramatic strategy. Cynical Syrian intellectuals speculate, in
hushed tones over coffee, that the ‘powers that be’ (al-sulta) permit,
even commission, such depictions to appear liberal, and at the same
time remind viewers that resistance is futile (cooke 2007).
Drama creators certainly do not perceive themselves as state mouth-
pieces. But they concede that all they can do is expose problems,
suggest causes and provoke discussion. Rather than pointing to tradi-
tion or illiteracy, Gazelles and Waiting blame structural inequality, and
the ruling elite that perpetuates it, for social and economic ills. The
recourse to ‘illegality’ among the weak is used to underscore the state
violence of the powerful. Power is exposed, resisted, but not overcome,
in drama as in everyday life. In Gazelles the villainous Samir, thought
to have been murdered by a young woman he harasses, secretly sur-
vives, recovers abroad, and returns to Syria and his dastardly ways. In
Waiting, engagements are broken and marriages fail, a drug addict falls
off the wagon, and ‘Abbud is murdered by a rival. Happy endings, it
seems, are difficult for drama creators to envision.
Depictions of quotidian struggles in poor urban areas contrast
ever more sharply with the heroic and the folkloric Syrian offerings
crowding the Ramadan airways. Neither Gazelles nor Waiting won

a coveted Ramadan time slot on any of the GCC stations, perhaps
due to a delayed production schedule. Both appeared on the Syrian
state satellite station, and Gazelles was aired on the country’s first
private satellite station, the now defunct ShamTV. Both garnered
an enthusiastic local following, and post-Ramadan rebroadcasts on
stations such as MBC and Infinity met with positive reviews. Their 2006
Ramadan competition included MBC’s celebratory biopic of Khalid bin
al-Walid, a hero of the Islamic conquests, and part one of the folkloric
Old Damascus tale The Neighbourhood Gate. Here the broadcast flow
undermines authorial intent. The juxtaposition of Gazelles’ corrup-
tion, and Waiting’s quiet desperation, with the splendour of Islamic
empire and the nobility of anti-colonial struggle appears to buttress
the Islamist cause, one anathema to Syria’s largely secular TV makers.
Contemporary social dramas do not paint pretty pictures. Collectively,
Syrian drama contrasts a degraded present with a magnificent past.
Drama creators are aware of this contradiction, yet remain com-
mitted to exploring social issues, however they fall in the broadcast
flow. They see themselves as artists first, but maintain an activist role,
however obliquely. As Waiting’s director Laith Hajjo puts it:
Drama has a responsibility on all levels: social, political and

economic. It doesn’t solve problems; it exposes them. I never
think of myself as a social reformer, that’s not my task. Art was
never intended to reform society or fix its problems, but to shed
light on those problems, to point to them, however small, so that
people will begin to ask why, and try to solve them. Without this
function, art is, in my opinion, vacuous and insignificant.7
Dramas depicting conditions in the informal settlements of Damascus

have become a recognized subgenre of ‘ashwai’yyat drama, vying in
popularity with the ‘Old Damascus environment’ (bi’a shamiyya)
series that have captivated audiences ever since MBC showcased its
five-part The Neighbourhood Gate (Bab al-Hara) in a key Ramadan time
slot. Amid the flow of costume history and folkloric nostalgia, direc-
tor Samir Husayn’s City Depths (Qa‘ al-Madina) of 2009 takes a close
look at the experience of urban poverty. The same year, Marwan
Barakat’s Summer Cloud (Sahabat al-Saif) brought viewers into the
most dilapidated neighbourhood ever depicted in Syrian drama
to explore the plight of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees, and social

problems such as child sexual abuse and cybercrime. Samer Barqawi’s
After the Fall (Ba‘d al-Suqut) of 2010 follows the rescue of trapped
apartment dwellers after the collapse of their poorly constructed
residence.
Conclusion
Drama makers strive to maintain artistic integrity and promote social

and political transformation, but they must do so through the very
institutions and structures they seek to reform. Series like Waiting
and Gazelles are subject to levels of censorship from governments
(Syrian and GCC) and television stations. Each Ramadan, Syrian TV
creators and producers push the limits; states, Islamists and others
attempt, with varying degrees of success, to rein in or co-opt them.
Critical treatments of society and politics surface through layers of
interference. These messages join a cacophony, a swollen televisual
flow that threatens to drown them out. Nevertheless, social drama
creators continue to critique the conditions of neoliberalism, in
which they believe collective welfare gives way to individual ambi-
tion, and the disrupted social relations and frustrated ambitions
of the haphazard neighbourhood become ubiquitous. As Waiting’s
screenwriter Najib Nusair puts it:
Today, society is like any piece of cake: if everyone takes a bite,

eventually that’s it, it all goes, is lost. Meaning individual salva-
tion destroys society more than crime, and other things that are
illegal. Individual salvation in society is like someone taking his
piece from the society, and then letting it burn. Insha’allah it will
burn, it’s nothing to us.8
In form, content and conditions of production, Syrian television

drama reflects the dilemmas of Arab cultural politics. Its creators both
accommodate and challenge the forces shaping social and political
life in early twenty-first-century Syria: economic liberalization, grow-
ing Islamization and persistent authoritarianism. Transformations in
the industry throw into relief the limits of its apparent autonomy, as
regional market forces merge with shifting yet unyielding ideological
strictures. Despite, indeed in response to, these conditions and
constraints, Syrian drama has bequeathed a televisual language of

comment and critique to a young generation of activist artists.9
Harnessing digital technology and operating anonymously, these
new voices move well beyond the limits imposed by the established
stakeholders of the satellite era. Satirical works lampooning both the
Syrian regime and fellow citizens flood the Internet, echoing and
building on the drama industry outpouring.
Notes
1. This chapter is a revised version of an article that was originally published
in 2011 as ‘Spotlight on the Bashar al-Asad era: the television drama out-
pouring’, Middle East Critique, 20(2), 157–67.
2. The Gulf Cooperation Council consists of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.
3. The distinction between creative and technical work in media industries is
often described as above and below the line. See Stahl (2009), pp. 58–63.
4. Author interview, 19 July 2006.
5. Al-Zaman al-Wasal, http://zaman-alwsl.net/readNews.php?id=20481
6. Author interview, 17 October 2006.
7. Author interview, 17 October 2006.
8. Author interview, 19 July 2006.
9. For a discussion of artistic dissent in the Syrian uprising, see Della Ratta
(2011) and Salamandra (2012).
Bibliography
Abu-Lughod, L. (2005a) Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt
(University of Chicago Press).
—— (2005b) ‘On- and off-camera in Egyptian soap operas: women, televi-
sion and the public sphere’, in F. Nouraie-Simone (ed.), On Shifting Ground:
Muslim Women in the Global Era (New York: The Feminist Press at City
University of New York), pp. 17–35.
Al-Zaman al-Wasal (2011) ‘The regime chases the Spray Can Man from Homs
to Damascus’ (al-nizam yalhathu wara’ al-rajul al-bakhakh min hums ila
dimashq), http://zaman-alwsl.net/readNews.php?id=20481, 20 July.
Bilal, M. and Nusair, N. (1999) Syrian Historical Drama: The Dream of the End
of an Era (al-drama al-tarikhiyya al-suriya: hilm nihayat al-‘asr) (Damascus:
Dar al-Sham).
cooke, m. (2007) Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press).
Della Ratta, D. (2011) ‘Creative resistance challenges Syria’s regime’,
Aljazeera.com, 25 December, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/
20111222162349451619.html
Dick, M. (2007) ‘Syria under the spotlight: television satire that is revolutionary
in form, reformist in content’, Arab Media and Society, 3, www.arabmediasociety.
com/countries/index.php?c_article=120
Salamandra, C. (1998) ‘Moustache hairs lost: Ramadan television serials
and the construction of identity in Damascus, Syria’, Visual Anthropology,
10(2–4), 227–46.
—— (2005) ‘Television and the ethnographic endeavor: the case of Syrian
drama’, Transnational Broadcasting Studies, 14 (Spring/Summer), 1–22.
—— (2008) ‘Creative compromise: Syrian television makers between secularism
and Islamism’, Contemporary Islam, 2(3), 177–89.
—— (2011) ‘Arab television drama production in the satellite era’, in D. I. Rios
and M. Castañeda (eds), Soap Operas and Telenovelas in the Digital Age: Global
Industries and New Audiences (New York: Peter Lang), pp. 275–90.
—— (2012) ‘Prelude to an uprising’, Jadaliyya, 17 May, www.jadaliyya.com/
pages/index/5578/prelude-to-an-uprising_syrian-fictional-television
Stahl, M. (2009) ‘Privilege and distinction in production worlds: copyright,
collective bargaining and working conditions in media making’, in V. Mayer,
M. J. Banks and J. T. Caldwell (eds), Production Studies: Cultural Studies of
Media Industries (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 54–68.
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(Nairobi: United Nations Environmental Programme).
—— (2008) United Nations Economic and Social Council, Press Release: ‘UN
ECOSOC Regional Meeting on Sustainable Urbanization Opens in Bahrain.’
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Weyman, George (2006) ‘Empowering youth or reshaping compliance? Star
Magazine, symbolic production, and competing visions of Shabab in Syria’,
unpublished MPhil thesis in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, University of
Oxford.
7
‘We Cannot Let it Loose’:
Geopolitics, Security and Reform
in Jordanian Broadcasting
Naomi Sakr
What makes structural reform truly structural? Arab broadcasting

appeared to undergo major structural shifts with the growth of the pan-
Arab satellite market, which forced Arab governments to rethink their
national broadcasting policies. The policy Jordan adopted was one that,
if expressed in headlines, could potentially be labelled as structural
reform. It promised an end to the state monopoly, a licensing system for
private terrestrial stations and a revitalized public broadcaster, equipped
to face a new era of competition. Such a welcome for reform accorded
with Jordan’s reputation as enjoying a more open and responsive
political system than the neighbouring dictatorships, whose oppressed
populations erupted in anger in 2011. One analyst summarized this
reputation in February 2011 by drawing comparisons with Egypt under
its recently ousted president Hosni Mubarak. The Jordanian regime
can be harsh, he wrote, but does not resort to the ‘daily thuggishness’
of Mubarak’s Egypt. Its establishment press is ‘restrained but not
Orwellian’. Its elections have been manipulated and its parliament
marginalized, but only up to a point, and its top figures are ‘not as
impervious’ as the Egyptian leadership in Mubarak’s final days.1
Indeed, signs of responsiveness to pressure for broadcast reform
emerged earlier in Jordan than in most other Arab states. They even
predated the 1999 accession of King Abdullah, who is often credited
with pushing for modernization of Jordan’s media. Plans were first
articulated in 1996 to turn the government-controlled Jordan Radio
and Television Corporation ( JRTVC) into a commercial entity and
open the sector to some private activity; they then resurfaced in
1999, with talk of creating a new regulatory body to replace the
96
Naomi Sakr 97
Ministry of Information (Sakr 2002: 121). There is also evidence that

the concept of a free zone for media enterprises, adopted across the
region in 2000, actually originated in Jordan even though it was not
implemented there before Egypt, Dubai and Bahrain had put their
own media free zones in place. In Jordan the idea was prompted by
the dual aims of attracting investment by Arab satellite companies
looking for alternatives to expensive European bases and boosting
job opportunities for skilled Jordanians. Ironically it was delayed
because, unlike the authoritarian regimes who launched their zones
by decree, Jordan’s media free zone plan was contained in a draft law
that was referred to parliament, which declined to act as a rubber
stamp (Sakr 2001: 111). As the free-zone saga appeared to testify, any
initiatives by the Jordanian government in the broadcasting sphere
would be bound to stimulate national debate.
However, the existence of debate tells us little about decision-making
structures. Any attempt to assess the depth of structural reform in
Jordanian broadcasting has also to evaluate the structures that drive
policy-making and implementation in all areas of national political
and economic activity. As was pointed out in the introduction to a
global overview of 20 years of transformations in national television:
markets, technological developments and policies ‘operate in political
and historical conditions that affect the nature of the institutions and
structures of television as well as the nature of policy-driven liberali-
zation and its wider impact’ (Ward 2008: ix). This chapter therefore
begins by comparing scholarly assessments of the way Jordan’s
national political and economic macro-structures have influenced its
wider liberalization processes. It goes on to review three strands of
broadcasting-sector reform mentioned above. The first strand encom-
passes steps taken to open the sector to private activity. The second
involves licensing during the decade prior to the January 2011 launch
of the privately owned Ro’ya TV and the third has to do with internal
reform of the JRTVC. The chapter concludes by evaluating the impact
of macro-structures and national institutions on Jordan’s broadcasting
structures, to assess how far these have changed.
National structures and their implications for reform
The question as to which national structures have most influenced

political liberalization in Jordan has elicited a range of answers. Most
98 Reform in Jordanian Broadcasting
scholars note the state’s propensity to co-opt the country’s political

elite through distribution of benefits and privileges. There is a basic
consensus around points summarized by Julia Choucair-Vizoso
(2008: 45), to the effect that the Hashemite monarchy’s ability
to secure foreign aid, because it represents an ‘oasis of stability in
a deeply troubled region’, gives it the funds to create a ‘cohesive
support base and security establishment loyal to the existing political
order’. Where analysts diverge is on whether this distributional
power has ever been used as leverage to advance political liberaliza-
tion and whether it results mainly from external or internal political
configurations.
Taher Kanaan and Joseph Massad (2011), attempting to explain
Jordan’s ‘democratic deficit’, test a model that identifies regional
conflicts as a major explanatory factor in democracy deficits
across the Arab region (Elbadawi and Makdisi 2011: 2). They show
how Jordan’s rentier characteristics, whereby the need for internal
tax-raising is minimized, are linked to its geopolitics. They find
that foreign-security rents from the US and Arab donors, aimed
at influencing policy outcomes, have been used inside Jordan to avert
popular mobilization. They conclude that the ‘Arab–Israeli conflict,
with its attendant foreign power interventions’, is an important
region-specific factor in accounting for Jordan’s lack of progress
towards political reform (Kanaan and Massad 2011: 111). But they
also note country-specific factors, among which they include the
power of the monarchy – a phenomenon that, according to studies of
Jordan’s political economy, can be interpreted in alternative ways.
For example, is it the monarchy as an institution that affects
Jordanian politics or is it the personality of the king? Marwan
Muasher, a former foreign minister and deputy prime minister
of Jordan, writes of King Abdullah’s efforts at ‘striking a balance
between the traditional elements and the reformers’, arguing that
‘the king faces a formidable task any time a reform process is ini-
tiated, as he must confront, or address, or co-opt the traditional
constituency of the regime’ (Muasher 2011: 22). Muasher suggests
that these entrenched traditional elements were empowered by the
regime to start with, as a survival tactic, and now they have ‘no
qualms’ about turning against their ‘creator’ when their interests
are threatened (Muasher 2011: 1). Shadi Hamid accepts that, for
many, King Abdullah is the very ‘embodiment of the notion of
Naomi Sakr 99
the reform-minded, modernizing monarch’ tussling with deeply

conservative forces (Hamid 2010: 122). Hamid’s diagnosis of Jordan’s
failure to democratize lies not with the ‘regime, the state, or even
the monarch’ (2010: 124), nor with ‘ruling elites, electoral laws or
mismanaged policies’ (2010: 122), but with the institution of the
monarchy. When Jordan’s king dissolves parliament or appoints
prime ministers, he is merely deploying the powers invested in him
by the constitution. This constitution gives the monarchy absolute
powers to determine the formal and informal rules of political
activity, including the nature of political opposition, and is nearly
impossible to change because constitutional amendments require
the approval of the senate and all senate members are appointed by
the king (2010: 125–9).
The possibility remains, however, that elites do hold sway in
particular sectors. Broadcasting is a sector where political interests are
always to the fore, and where business interests are also engaged when
there are profits to be made from the sale of advertising space or sub-
scriptions. Oliver Wils, who draws on network theory to explore the
behaviour of Jordanian economic elites in patterns of state–business
relations, finds that, despite changes in network memberships and
characteristics over time, networks serve multiple purposes beyond
distribution of rents (Wils 2004: 156). They provide channels not
only for conflict regulation and information exchange but also for
access to ‘major political decision-makers of the palace elite’ (2004:
156). Importantly, the political advantages of maintaining network
linkages and their exclusivity sometimes prove more important than
‘gaining partial material benefits’ if the latter would risk severing
network ties (2004: 155). Hence, Wils argues, it is possible to discern
a high degree of collusion and cooperation between Jordan’s leading
businessmen and senior bureaucrats, marked by formal negotiation
on the one hand and individual, informal rent-seeking on the
other, in a way that is continuously used to protect privileges and
manipulate reform policies (2004: 134).
These varying emphases – on external pressures, kingly campaigns
for modernization, constitutional absolutism, and collusion among
networks of businessmen and bureaucrats – inform the narratives
presented in this chapter. There are practical reasons for keeping
them all in mind simultaneously. One is the quandary pinpointed by
Choucair-Vizoso (2008: 62), that the privatization and administrative
reform needed to make Jordan more competitive internationally

poses a threat to the monarchy’s support base. The other has to do
with this chapter’s assumption that underlying political and eco-
nomic structures and institutions are key to understanding change
in the broadcasting sector. The aim is to benefit from an institu-
tional perspective without succumbing to institutional determinism.
As Hamid states (2010: 131–2), ‘Institutional approaches account
quite well for the stickiness and pseudo-permanence of institutional
arrangements. What is lacking, however, is a compelling theory of
institutional change.’ While data on changes within a single sector
would not be expected to produce an overarching theory, they may
help to locate forces that contribute to authentic structural reform as
well as those that act against it.
Tackling the government monopoly
Liberalization of broadcasting in Jordan has been a protracted

process. Exactly how protracted is indicated by the fact that, as
popular uprisings spread across the Arab region in 2011, King
Abdullah directed the Jordanian government to set up a committee
to formulate a national media strategy. The resulting strategy was said
in May 2011 to have two main aspects. One would be the training of
journalists. The other, more relevant to liberalization and structural
reform, would be ‘[d]evelopment of the legislative environment to
meet international standards’.2 Since King Abdullah himself had
issued very similar instructions to a previous government more than
ten years earlier, the first thing the 2011 directive indicated was a lack
of progress during the intervening period. The second was the rec-
ognition that Jordan’s media laws did not accord with international
norms. The third was that, whatever progress towards liberalization
was achieved over the preceding decade, it did not include the
relinquishing of government control over the media sector.
Back in June 2000, the king’s directive on media reform was
enshrined in instructions to Ali Abul-Ragheb, the prime minister
the king had just appointed to replace Abdel-Rauf Rawabdeh. On his
accession in 1999, Abdullah had instructed Rawabdeh to promote
democracy and press freedom and boost efficiency in the public
sector, but Rawabdeh had resisted on all fronts (Muasher 2011: 5–6).
In his letter of designation to Abul-Ragheb, the king was explicit
Naomi Sakr 101
about media privatization and the distinction between government

and state. He wrote: ‘The official media should not be affiliated
with any individual or government but should be the media of a
state and a homeland … I hope that the government will continue
to privatise the media sector so as to boost its independence and
emphasise the principle of equality and equal opportunity.’3
Abul-Ragheb’s positive response came when his cabinet moved
swiftly to amend an article in the law governing JRTVC. The article
as it stood gave the cabinet authority to rescind JRTVC’s monopoly
within limits. The cabinet amended the article to extend the possibil-
ities for private local and foreign investment in radio and television.4
Parliament then passed a draft law ending JRTVC’s monopoly status
and bringing private-sector representatives onto the corporation’s
board in readiness for it to become an independent entity.5
Months later, however, parliament was dissolved and parlia-
mentary elections were indefinitely postponed. The most notable
reason was the September 2000 outbreak of the second Palestinian
intifada, which fuelled government determination to contain
unrest among Jordanians of Palestinian descent and avoid dis-
harmony in Jordan’s relations with the US (Schwedler 2002a).
Parliament’s dismissal in June 2001 was part of a crackdown on
all expressions of dissent. Chronologically, Jordan’s October 2001
Penal Code amendment, which tightened repression in the name
of anti-terrorism, followed the 9/11 attacks in the US. In practice,
however, the ground had already been prepared for such measures
well before 9/11, in response to factors like the intifada, which were
closer to home (Najjar 2008: 228). The government took advantage
of a two-year suspension of the country’s elected legislature to pass
a raft of temporary laws. Many of these were roundly condemned
as flouting the country’s constitution (Schwedler 2002a; Muasher
2011: 6). It was in these unpropitious circumstances, when any crit-
icism of ‘friendly nations’ was liable to be prosecuted in the State
Security Court, that Abdullah appointed a new body to take over
from the Ministry of Information and bring a fresh approach to
the media sector. Under a temporary law introduced in December
2001, the 11-member Higher Media Council (HMC) was tasked
with supervising the organization of the media sector, drawing
up media policies and ‘creating a favourable climate for private
sector investment’.6
Abolishing the Ministry of Information took time. The HMC,

headed by a former foreign minister, Kamel Abu Jaber, found itself
on a collision course with the temporary law-makers of the executive
branch of government (Sakr 2007: 21–2). The Cabinet Legislation
Bureau took until end May 2002 to endorse a draft law presented by
the HMC, under which the information ministry’s responsibilities
could be transferred.7 Even then the transfer failed to take place,8 and
in July Abu Jaber resigned.9 When the HMC was nominally revived
in December 2002, by royal decree, it was as a consultative body,
not a body with executive powers. Headed by a former Minister of
Information, Ibrahim Izzeddine, its mission was to cooperate with
ministers to develop a model that ‘encourages independent media
institutions and creates a professional environment’.10 The context
for the HMC’s revival provides additional clues as to its real purpose.
Just weeks earlier, in late October 2002, the regime had launched a
national unity initiative under the slogan ‘Jordan First’. As slogans
go, this was hardly one that encouraged free speech. Instead it served
to smear any support for Palestinians or Iraqis, or any criticism of
state policies, as ‘unpatriotic’ (Schwedler 2002b).
King Abdullah reportedly linked the ‘Jordan First’ campaign with
his plans for reorganizing the media when he personally delivered a
ten-page document to the revived HMC at an hour-long meeting in
January 2003.11 He is said to have described the media as a ‘power-
ful tool to develop the campaign’. The document stated that a new
media system should be administratively independent and based
on pluralism and respect for other viewpoints in a free, creative and
responsible manner. It talked of national goals, the need for accurate
representation of the kingdom’s aspirations and identity, and the
importance of attracting investment.12
By the time Jordan had a parliament once again, after the elections
of June 2003, it also had an Audiovisual Commission, created under
Provisional Law 71 of 2002 (the Audiovisual Media Law) to handle
the licensing of private broadcasters. In a regional climate poisoned
by the US-led invasion of Iraq, Abdullah sought to steer his country’s
politics from the top by changing the prime minister for the third
time in four years and instructing the new appointee to follow a
detailed reform programme. Once again his instructions referred to
building ‘responsible press freedom … [and] media that embody our
vision of change’.13 On 25 October 2003, after the king had spent two
Naomi Sakr 103
days with his new prime minister in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba to
decide together on cabinet appointments, a cabinet downsizing was
announced through the scrapping of certain posts (Abdallah 2003).
Among the casualties was the Ministry of Information, even though it
was referred to all through the Audiovisual Media Law.14 The ministry
was abolished by a royal decree on 13 November, with the minister’s
powers and responsibilities handed to the prime minister.15 But the
abolition did not cut the Audiovisual Commission loose from govern-
ment control. Under the Audiovisual Media Law, the commission’s
task was merely to check that applications for broadcasting licences
met technical and administrative requirements. Article 18(a) of the
law stated that decisions about whether to approve or refuse an
application lay with the Council of Ministers.
Licensing of private broadcasters
Licensing of broadcasters is a fraught issue in an age when the excuse

of spectrum scarcity, used in the analogue era to ‘legitimise’ (Ward
2008: x) limits on the allocation of frequencies and thus on competi-
tion, no longer serves. Jordan was one of the first Arab countries to
face the anomaly of Internet radio escaping national broadcasting
regulations. AmmanNet appeared on the scene in November 2000,
describing itself as the Voice of the Community, launched by local
journalist Daoud Kuttab with moral backing from the mayor of
Amman and money from UNESCO and other bodies.16 In the digital
era marked by the arrival of AmmanNet, it became increasingly
obvious that any licensing controls truly devised in the public inte-
rest would need to be transparent, financially fair (in relation to
licensing fees) and open to challenge. The licensing system created
alongside Jordan’s Audiovisual Commission was found lacking on all
these criteria.
Article 18b of the Audiovisual Media Law dashed hopes for
transparency and right of appeal by authorizing the Council of
Ministers to ‘refuse to grant broadcasting licences to any entity
without stating the reasons for such rejection’. Instead of promot-
ing a ‘favourable climate for private sector investment’, which the
Higher Media Council had been ordered to create in December
2001,17 the 2002 law seemed to do the reverse. It created uncertainty
for potential investors, deterring them from risking the financial
losses that would be incurred in making an unsuccessful application.

In similar fashion, the licensing bylaws, set out in Decree No. 163
of 2003, seemed to do the opposite of ‘encouraging independent
media institutions’, even though this objective had also been put on
the Higher Media Council’s agenda18 by the time the bylaws were
issued. Decree 163 imposed a multi-tier fee structure for licences,
which envisaged higher charges for broadcasters planning to air
news bulletins or political programmes. This was combined with
variations according to the size of transmitter or its location. Thus
the minimum deposit for an FM radio station with a transmitter
below 5kW outside the main cities was set at JD10,000 ($14,000),
rising to JD15,000 in Zarqa and Irbid and JD25,000 in Amman, but
rising again by a further 50 per cent for any station seeking to broad-
cast politics or news (Lamloum 2006: 18). Under Articles 11 and 12
of the bylaws, a television licence could cost as much as JD100,000 or
$140,000 (Nötzold and Pies 2010: 54). In other words, the law made
no direct provision for community radio, which in principle would
warrant a much lower licence fee.
In a further blow to transparency and predictability, content
restrictions contained in the law and its bylaws were vaguely worded,
persuading broadcasters to err on the side of caution and giving
the authorities the prerogative of interpretation. The restrictions
repeated those already contained in the country’s penal code. Article
20 of the law required licensees to refrain from broadcasting any-
thing that ‘might disrupt national unity’ or ‘offend the Kingdom’s
relations with other countries’.19 Article 6 of the bylaws banned
‘immoral’ programmes. Together they prohibited transmission of
programmes that ‘undermine’ religious beliefs, the values of the
nation, the nation’s heritage or social unity (Lamloum 2006: 18).
Interpreted in light of the ‘Jordan First’ campaign, launched in
October 2002, phrases such as ‘national unity’ and ‘national values’
implied that any criticism of the government’s domestic or foreign
policy was unpatriotic.
Once the licensing process got under way, applicants for both radio
and television licences had widely differing outcomes depending on
who they were and what they planned to broadcast. The law had
explicitly tilted the playing field away from private investors and in
favour of government departments and institutions, including JRTVC,
by exempting all of the latter from paying fees (Article 19 2006: 17).
Naomi Sakr 105
Thus the armed forces had no difficulty in setting up a station called

Radio Fann and the police followed suit with Amen FM. Private
bodies complained that Amen FM monopolized traffic reports com-
ing from police sources and refused to share them with other radio
stations.20 Other stations playing popular music started up relatively
quickly. These included Mood FM, Beat FM and Play 99.6. They also
included Rotana FM, owned by international entrepreneur, media
mogul and Saudi ruling family member, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal,
who seized the opportunity of Jordan’s opening to start Rotana’s first
FM radio station there in 2005. Three years after the bylaws were
issued, the Audiovisual Commission announced on its website that it
had issued 22 licences, including 14 for FM radio stations (of which
eight were then on air), three for satellite channels, two for cable
channels and two for ‘re-broadcasting’ stations. It had issued just one
licence for private terrestrial TV (Audiovisual Commission 2006).
The story of that unusual television licence gives an insight into
the reality of the approval process and whether it fostered an
attractive environment for media investment as urged by the king.
The licence was awarded in May 2005 to a channel belonging to the
Jordan United Company for TV Broadcasting, subsequently known
as ATV. Its owner was Mohammed Alayyan, publisher of Jordan’s
Al-Ghad newspaper and licence-holder for a radio station called Fun
FM, who also applied to broadcast ATV by satellite and offered
JD2m (US$2.8m) to the state broadcaster, JRTV, to use the frequency
of JRTV’s sports channel, Channel 2, for terrestrial transmission of
ATV.21 ATV was envisaged as a general entertainment and family
channel that would buy in popular Western programme formats
(Sakr 2007: 10) while also covering news and current affairs, especially
news in Jordan. Its managing director, Muhannad Khatib, planned
a daily three-hour breakfast show, two half-hour news bulletins per
evening and three current affairs shows per week (Khatib 2006).
Aware of the challenge in terms of investment in bureaux, personnel
and uplinks, Khatib and his colleagues sought advice from the UK’s
Independent Television News (ITN) and logistical support from
Middle East News, an offshoot of the Saudi-owned Dubai-based
pan-Arab broadcaster MBC (Khatib 2006). Start-up, which Alayyan
had originally planned for late 2005, was delayed to 2006 and
then 2007. Millions of dinars were invested in building studios in
Amman and recruiting Jordanian staff, who left lucrative jobs with
prominent pan-Arab channels because they valued the chance to

launch their country’s first independent national terrestrial television
channel.
Of the many uncertainties ATV faced, the question of how its
reporters would be treated by state press institutions was by no means
the least. There was, for example, no guarantee they would be allowed
to join the local journalists’ union, technically reserved for print
journalists, despite the legal requirement for Jordanian journalists to
be registered with the union in order to practise journalism. That is
to say, the law controlling journalists’ right of collective representa-
tion had not kept up with the legal ending of the state’s monopoly
on broadcasting. In the end, however, these points of law were not
tested because ATV’s licence was withdrawn a few hours before it was
due to go on air.22 ATV was all set to go live on 1 August 2007, six
weeks ahead of the start of Ramadan programming (an annual high
point for viewers and advertising), when the Audiovisual Commission
pronounced its paperwork incomplete. Since the Commission was
only an emissary for the cabinet, the intervention was devastating;
it meant the channel was suspended in limbo until the government,
which had approved the licence two years earlier, decided to approve
it a second time. Since the head of the Audiovisual Commission,
Hussein Bani Hani, was out of the country, the person assigned to
halt ATV transmissions was his deputy, Faisal Shboul, who was then
also director general of ATV’s potential competitor, JRTV. Shboul said
that ATV’s planned satellite channel was not covered by ATV’s April
2006 arrangement to lease a channel from JRTV.23
The halting of ATV was a shock in some respects. Alayyan, married
to a relative of King Abdullah, had seemed like a safe pair of hands to
pioneer private television in the kingdom. He had already launched
the highly profitable classified advertising paper Al-Waseet. Al-Ghad
had become a reputable daily, earning Alayyan a seat on the Board
of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.
When the licence was queried, he sold ATV almost immediately,
reportedly for more than JD15m,24 to a brand new company called
Al-Ajayeb for Investments. Al-Ajayeb, run by two Jordanian lawyers
with no track record in business, had been registered the very day
after ATV’s licence was withdrawn. Muhannad Khatib later told
Al Jazeera that the company must be a ‘front for some other
operation’. ‘It’s all so mysterious,’ he said, describing the sale of ATV.
Naomi Sakr 107
‘We don’t know who bought it, how it happened, how much was
paid, who received the money and was it received or not’ (Khatib
2007). Khatib had resigned by then and staff who remained were
destined to spend long periods without pay. To add to the mystery,
ATV, complete with debts then estimated at JD62m ($87m),25 was
sold again in 2008 for an undisclosed sum. This time it went to Arab
Telemedia Group (ATG). ATG’s head, Talal Awamleh, son of Arab
Telemedia’s previous owner, had worked with ATV prior to its sched-
uled launch and saw benefits in acquiring its assets. When he came
to buy the company, however, it transpired that the government
owned a 13 per cent stake. This caused the launch to stall yet again
because, according to Awamleh, he was pressured to buy out the gov-
ernment share at an ‘unreasonable’ price.26 In 2010 the government
said it would buy ATV from Awamleh, but then changed its mind.
Ministers of state who took part in the purchase negotiations insisted
that ultimate responsibility lay with the prime minister himself.27
Although shocking from a commercial perspective, the rise and
fall of ATV accords with changing trends in Jordanian politics in
2005–7 and the shift back to a preoccupation with security, which
put the General Intelligence Department in the driving seat on
media policy (US State Department 2010). Jordan had started 2005
on an upbeat note with the drafting of a National Agenda intended
to get to grips with reform. A year later that had all changed. The
bombing of three hotels in Jordan in November 2005, by an arm
of al-Qaeda in Iraq, left 60 dead and at least 115 injured. In early
2006 the Islamist Resistance Movement, Hamas, gained a majority
in Palestinian elections, creating a dilemma for Jordan in its
relations with Western donors who refused to deal with Hamas. By
July that year, the Jordanian government was claiming a national
consensus around ‘loyalty and nationalism’, and ‘national security’
in a document entitled ‘We are all Jordan’. The change in climate
may serve to explain why the 2007 municipal elections were not
independently monitored, being supervised by appointees of the
ministries of municipalities and the interior, and why the prime
minister who oversaw the parliamentary elections later admitted
they were rigged (Muasher 2011: 16).
Indeed, the prevailing censorship and self-censorship can also be
seen in events affecting AmmanNet. AmmanNet, which had started
broadcasting terrestrially in the capital area in 2005, changed its
name in January 2008 to Radio Al-Balad. Soon afterwards it faced

penalties for reading out a listener’s comment that implied corruption
on the part of MPs (Dajani 2008). The station issued an apology to
parliament, describing the incident as a mistake.28 Significantly it
was not only MPs who had raised a legal case against Radio Al-Balad
for broadcasting the comment. The Audiovisual Council did likewise,
alleging that the comment had put the station in violation of the law
and its licence.29
Modernizing JRTVC
It is evident from statements by influential people that their view of

JRTVC as an arm of state security underwent little change over the
decade discussed in this chapter. That attitude forms a backdrop to
repeated attempts inside the corporation to modernize its image and
revamp its programming, and is arguably a reason for these attempts’
limited success.
Taleb Rifai’s appointment as information minister in June
2000 signalled openness to media privatization on the part of
Ali Abul-Ragheb’s new government at the time. Rifai, former
chief executive of the Jordan Cement Company and a believer in
investment promotion, had directed the country’s first large-scale
privatization and restructuring scheme. In pushing through the
legislative change needed to end the JRTVC’s 32-year monopoly
and reduce its board from 15 to nine, including four members
from the private sector, Rifai intimated that he did not intend to
stay for long as chair of the board.30 Leading journalists expressed
hope that reform would free JRTVC and other government-owned
media from ministers’ persistent interference and end the culture of
‘incompetent people’ being appointed to JRTVC jobs through ‘family
connections’.31 JRTVC had around 3200 employees at the time.
Yet undercurrents of resistance to change were not limited to
those at risk of unemployment. As the region felt the impact of the
second Palestinian intifada, Rifai’s own comments on media reform
acknowledged that Jordanian media and national security were
‘strongly welded together, to the extent that it may seem impossible
to pull them apart’. He said a certain level of political development
was needed for the ‘powerful link between national security and
media’ to be severed.32 Nevertheless, Rifai deemed it worthwhile in
Naomi Sakr 109
November 2000 to back the appointment of 32-year-old Nart Bouran

as director general of JRTVC. Bouran, who was later recruited to
top jobs with Abu Dhabi TV, Reuters and Sky News, lost no time in
rationalizing JTV content across its three terrestrial channels, send-
ing out feelers to start a movie channel and upgrading the schedules
for the start of 2001. But while JRTVC was readied for change,
Jordan’s political scene was changing around it. Rifai moved to the
tourism ministry and conservative forces managed to sideline the
Higher Media Council. Barely 19 months after its downsizing and
re-formation, JRTVC’s board was changed again to put information
minister Mohammad Adwan at its head, in place of Philadelphia
University president Adnan Badran, in an obvious backtracking on
the reform process. ‘The information sector is part of the security of
any country,’ Adwan confirmed. ‘We cannot let it loose roaming to
find its path by itself.’33
Like Bouran, subsequent heads of JRTVC showed they had a
vision as to how the corporation could better serve its viewers. In
2003, Ayman Safadi tried for a shake-up of Jordanian drama produc-
tion and in 2004 he got cabinet approval for a two-year restructuring
and modernization plan covering technology, finance and program-
ming, with the aim of enabling JRTVC to compete in an increasingly
crowded pan-Arab media marketplace.34 Speaking later as editor of
Al-Ghad and close colleague of ATV’s editorial team, Safadi (2006)
summed up his assessment of JRTVC’s television component, JTV,
with the words: ‘They will never live up to the challenge.’ Mustafa
Hamarneh, former director of the University of Jordan’s Centre for
Strategic Studies, known for its candid and controversial opinion
polls, became chair of the JRTVC board in July 2004. According to
Hamarneh, JTV realized it needed to challenge authority if it wanted
to establish credibility with its audience, which required it to get
much more involved in domestic news (Marks 2006). Harmaneh
conveyed the same message to Jordan’s MPs, echoing the king’s
words when he explained the urgency of turning the corporation
‘from a government into a state TV that would be open to all
political and social powers on the basis of equality’ and seek to
‘entrench pluralism’.35 Thus JTV started 2006 with a new logo and
programme schedule, staff freshly back from training courses abroad,
redesigned sets and a new name for the main channel: Al Urdunieh
(The Jordanian).
Three months into 2006, however, it was ‘all change’ again, with
the resignation of the entire JRTVC board, who expressed satisfaction
at their achievements in expanding free speech and innovation but
warned that there was ‘still a long way to go’ to complete the mod-
ernization and restructuring process.36 The new board was chaired by
a government minister – the Minister for Public Sector Reform – and,
as apparently dictated by the media-security link, included a brigadier
and the head of the Armed Forces Moral Guidance Directorate (Sakr
2007: 33). The new director general was Faisal Shboul, who had spent
the previous seven years at the head of another government-run
media body, the Jordanian national news agency Petra. As George
Hawatmeh, former editor of the Jordan Times, explained at the time:
‘The government might well feel that the station is its television
station, that there is still a vertical relationship with the people who
operate it’ (Marks 2006).
When it was Shboul’s turn to leave JRTVC at the end of March
2008, he claimed credit for a rise in revenues, caused by an increase
in viewership in response to a shift towards more programming on
local issues. Arab Advisors Group (an Amman-based telecoms and
media technology consultancy) reported that nearly 44 per cent
of viewers in the kingdom watched JTV, while the corporation as
a whole predicted an almost doubling of revenues from JD5.4m
in 2006 to JD10m in 2008.37 Hala Zureikat, who became JTV’s first
female head in September 2007 and was later to advise the JTV
competitor Ro’ya TV, said it was the job of a public broadcaster to
focus more on local issues than international ones (Nötzold and
Pies 2010: 55). She maintained interactive youth programmes such
as El Haki Elina (It’s Our Turn to Speak), inherited from the 2006
relaunch, and experimented with qualitative internal audience
research, through focus groups rather than surveys (International
Media Support 2008). But JTV definitions of ‘local’ were not shared
by everyone. The US State Department’s 2009 Report on Human Rights
Practices: Jordan declared that, when covering ‘controversial subjects’,
JRTVC ‘reported only the government’s position’. Local artists and
producers accused JTV of ‘boycotting’ them in buying drama series
for Ramadan.38 A prime-time evening show giving prizes during
Ramadan 2009 was condemned as an hour-long commercial devoid
of ‘cultural substance’ or even entertainment value.39 Instead of
increasing between 2008 and 2009, IPSOS Jordan figures suggested
Naomi Sakr 111
that the proportion of Jordanians watching JTV declined to 42 per

cent,40 while an Arab Advisors Group survey in 2010 found that
only 24 per cent of respondents in Jordan said that they watched
terrestrial TV.41
Indeed, government assumptions about a continuing vertical
relationship with the management of JRTVC, to the detriment
of its programming, can be inferred from both the government’s
choice of directors and their rapid turnover. Jarir Maraqa, who took
over as JRTVC director in 2009, objected to an MP’s criticism of
JTV reporting and was rumoured by local press-freedom advocates
to have ordered the network not to host the MP. In January 2010
the cabinet relieved Maraqa of his post and assigned his duties to
Saleh Qallab, the new chair of JRTVC’s board. Qallab, a former
information minister, had revealed his approach to media freedom
in 2003 when, on being appointed as first director general of the
Saudi-owned news channel Al Arabiya, he asserted ‘We are not going
to make problems for Arab countries.’42
Importantly, alongside the government’s top-down relationship
with management, backed by direct treasury control over public
funds allocated to JRTVC, researchers at the Al-Quds Centre for
Political Studies in Amman found a complementary set of security-
media relationships, which they described as ‘soft containment’. The
study, conducted between October 2008 and February 2009, found
that JRTVC was the biggest single employer of journalists and media
professionals in Jordan, with 21 per cent of the total, but that 69
per cent of the sample (consisting of 1382 professionals inside the
country) were either barely satisfied or totally dissatisfied with JTV
(Al-Quds Centre 2009: 6, 14). The corresponding figure for Radio
Jordan was 53.4 per cent. When asked which issues would expose a
journalist or media professional to harassment, the most frequently
cited issues were ‘criticism of security departments’ (73.9 per cent)
and ‘national unity’ (73.1 per cent), while the top three sources of
harassment were said to be influential personalities (69 per cent),
government, excluding security departments (60 per cent), and secu-
rity departments (43 per cent) (Al-Quds Centre 2009: 11). The soft
containment identified by the study ranged from harassment, which
might include a summons from the security services, to inducements
such as grants, jobs, gifts, customs waivers, medical treatment and
foreign trips.
Conclusion
The story of broadcasting in Jordan is studded with the names

of talented individuals who tried to implement King Abdullah’s
purported vision of a pluralistic broadcasting landscape, where all
elements of society would be represented and the public broadcaster
would serve the state rather than the government or any individual.
A number of professionals left good jobs abroad to help develop
Jordanian broadcasting and others left Jordan to shine in jobs
elsewhere. If the kingdom made minimal progress towards broadcast
reform between 2000 and 2010, as the evidence suggests, these
people are not to blame. Instead, based on the analyses of Jordan’s
democracy deficit discussed in the introduction, reasons should be
sought in regional conflicts and external geopolitical pressures, the
powers of the monarchy, and elite alliances that straddle business
and the state bureaucracy.
Examined in the light of successive regional crises, the on-off
uncertainty of broadcast liberalization becomes easier to understand.
Repeated backtracking on promised reforms is seen to stem from
the king’s frequent changes of prime minister and cabinet, appar-
ently prompted by efforts to steer a country with a large Palestinian
population through the vicissitudes of dependence on Western
allies of Israel and co-existence with fractious Arab neighbours. Thus
regional conflicts prompted the king to use his constitutional pow-
ers in a way that, despite his talk of reformist agendas, demonstrated
a lack of trust in civil society and a preference for ruling by decree
(Pelham 2011). The contradiction was finally acknowledged in
June 2011 when King Abdullah announced a vague intention to
cease designating prime ministers and allow them to be elected.
In the meantime, however, any claim that Jordan had opened its
broadcast market to fair business competition by ending the state
monopoly and creating a licensing agency was undermined by the
chain of command, whereby the agency took its instructions from a
prime minister chosen by the king.
It may be impossible for entities to modernize internally when
they are embedded in a network of other institutions, formal
and informal, which see change as a threat. This was the case for
Jordan’s state broadcaster, which went through successive attempts
at restructuring but was never under the same top management for
Naomi Sakr 113
long enough to see the process through. True restructuring of JRTVC

required parallel reforms in other parts of the media sector, including
the licensing of effective competition, controls on content and rules
on union membership for broadcast journalists. It also, to use former
information minister Adwan’s phrase, called for ‘letting the informa-
tion sector loose’ from ties with elites of the security establishment,
who were shown to meddle in broadcast activity by coercion and
containment.
Notes
1. Nathan J. Brown, ‘Jordan: not on the brink but in crisis’, 22 February
2011, www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/?fa=view&id=42693
2. Hani Hazaimeh, ‘Development of legislative environment included in
new strategy’, Jordan Times, 12 May 2011.
3. Letter dated 19 June 2000, English translation at www.kingabdullah.
jo/index.php/en_US/royalLetters/view/id/155.html
4. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Cabinet moves to bust gov’t monopoly on broad-
cast media’, Jordan Times. 10 July 2000.
5. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘JRTVC board to be announced this week’, Jordan
Times, 31 October 2000.
6. Jordan Times, ‘Media Council to meet Sunday, set bylaws’, 21 December
2001.
7. Jordan Times, ‘Jordanian Committee approves draft media legislation’,
28 May 2002.
8. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Where the Higher Media Council fits in the push to
liberalise the press’, Jordan Times, 7 June 2002.
9. Loubna Khader, ‘Higher Media Council trips over in Jordan as Abu Jaber
resigns’, The Star (Amman), 23 July 2002.
10. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Higher Media Council revamped Monday following
royal decree’, Jordan Times, 3 December 2002.
11. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘King instructs HMC to set up media system’, Jordan
Times, 9 January 2003.
12. Ibid. and Alia Shukri Hamzeh,’King says media-related legislation should
ensure freedom of expression’, Jordan Times, 14 April 2003.
13. Letter dated 22 October 2003, English translation at www.kingabdullah.
jo/index.php/en_US/royalLetters/view/id/152.html
14. E.g. The law makes the Director of the Audiovisual Commission account-
able to the Minister of Information (Article 8), and states that the
Commission is ‘financially and administratively affiliated’ to the Minister
of Information (Article 3b).
15. See p. 2 of the Memorandum on the Audiovisual Media Law of the Kingdom
of Jordan, released by Article 19 in London, March 2006.
16. http://en.ammannet.net/?page_id=111
17. Jordan Times, ‘Media Council to meet Sunday, set bylaws’, 21 December
2001.
18. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Higher Media Council revamped Monday following
royal decree’, Jordan Times, 3 December 2002.
19. English translation from Article 19 Memorandum, 2006: 20.
20. Daoud Kuttab, ‘In the service of the community’, Jordan Times,
24 September 2009.
21. Jordan Times, ‘Channel 2 to become first private terrestrial TV station’,
31 October 2005.
22. News of the withdrawal came through during a press launch for ATV.
23. Citing Shboul, blogger Batir Wardam wrote: ‘Believe me, there will be
a 4th, 5th and 100th justifications’ to stop ATV ‘tackling controversial
social, economic and political issues that are not allowed to be discussed
in JRTV and other official media outlets’. See ‘The lie of media freedom
in Jordan: ATV as an example’, www.jordanwatch.net, 24 August 2007.
24. Mohammad Ghazal, ‘ATV general manager quits post’, Jordan Times,
25 September 2007.
25. Jordan Business, ‘The death of ATV’, 7 March 2010, http://en.ammonnews.
net/article.aspx?articleNO=6916
26. Quoted in ibid.
27. Mohammad Ghazal, ‘ATV employees protest “wrongful termination”’,
Jordan Times, 3 March 2010.
28. Mohammad Ghazal, ‘Local radio station says House ban lifted’, Jordan
29. Mohammad Ghazal, ‘Radio Al Balad sends letter of apology to Lower
House’, Jordan Times, 9 March 2008.
30. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘JRTVC board to be announced this week’, Jordan
31. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Media reps meet information minister for talks on
privatisation’, Jordan Times, 23 June 2000.
32. Alia Shukri Hamzeh ‘National security concerns pervasive factor in media
performance’, Jordan Times, 27 October 2000.
33. Alia Shukri Hamzeh, ‘Jordan: where the Higher Media Council fits in the
push to liberalise the press’, Jordan Times, 7 June 2002.
34. Just under half (46.3 per cent) of all homes with a television in Jordan
had satellite in 2002. By 2010 the figure had risen to 97.5 per cent
(Eutelsat 2002, 2010).
35. Jordan Times, ‘Hamarneh briefs MPs on JRTVC’s policies’, 24 January 2006.
36. Jordan Times, ‘JRTVC board submits resignation’, 9 March 2006.
37. Jordan Times, ‘JRTVC revenues, viewership increase’, 4 March 2008.
38. Thameen Kheetan, ‘ATP says it will not deal with current JRTVC admin-
istration’, Jordan Times, 26 August 2008.
39. Daoud Kuttab, ‘In the service of the community’, Jordan Times,
24 September 2009.
40. Khalid Neimat, ‘42.4 per cent of Jordanians watch JTV – survey’, Jordan
Times, 19 January 2010.
Naomi Sakr 115
41. Rebecca Hawkes, ‘Free-to-air satellite most popular in Jordan’,

RapidTVNews, 21 September 2010.
42. Peter Feuilherade, ‘Al-Jazeera competitor launches’, BBC News Online,
20 February 2003.
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8
Tunisian Media under the
Authoritarian Structure of Ben
Ali’s Regime and After
Joan Barata
Introduction
The Arab world has witnessed in the 1990s and the 2000s the
emergence of a new and progressively competitive private audiovisual
sector. In Tunisia, national media in general, and broadcasting in par-
ticular, has been reformed in a specific way. The ‘demonopolization’
of the broadcasting system showed how former president Ben Ali has
had a patrimonial relationship vis-à-vis Tunisian media.
Zine el Abidine Ben Ali took control of Tunisia through a non-
violent coup d’état in 1987, and became the second president of the
country after the French colonization. The political and personal life
of Ben Ali does not correspond to the typical evolution of a member of
the national elite who is predestined to assume high responsibilities
within a specific political or economic system. Ben Ali was not a
representative of the Tunisian bourgeoisie, but an ambitious police
officer who reached some power within the Tunisian security services
and was subsequently able to occupy important political posts, as
Ambassador to Poland and Minister of State in charge of Internal
Affairs, and who was finally appointed as prime minister by the first
Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. In fact, this position facilitated
Ben Ali’s access to total power after a series of manoeuvres to declare
the medical and permanent incapacity of President Bourguiba.
The political life of Ben Ali is not, however, the story of a single
person. Ben Ali and his second wife, former hairdresser Leila Trabelsi,
publicly formed a visible and united team in which politics and fam-
ily and economic interests were mixed and inextricably intertwined
117
118 Tunisian Media under Ben Ali’s Regime and After
for decades. The first and most important ambition of this Ali–Trabelsi
new-rich clan was to become the most important high-class ruling
family of Tunisia, thereby accumulating a huge amount of political
power, social influence and wealth. This clan, indeed, was formed
not only by the couple, but also by a series of siblings and all kinds
of relatives with an unstoppable appetite for power and money, and
who helped to complete this typical image of a mafia-type family
structure (Nair 2011). This structure contaminated all the institutional
levels, to the extent that it can be said that from 1987 to 2011, corrup-
tion was the basic and most important modus operandi of the whole
institutional Tunisian system, from the bottom to the top. This cor-
rupt system reached as well most of the Tunisian economic sectors,
through a very complex clientelist system in which the interests of
the wide Ben Ali–Trabelsi clan were directly involved and played a
central role.
Finally, it has to be pointed out that during his mandate Ben
Ali was able to dominate the bulk of what can be called Tunisian
civil society, as he had complete control over a series of vital
and central organizations such as the main ruling party (RCD,
Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique, a mere instrument
for social domination) and the UGTT syndicate.
To summarize, apart from the typical instruments that most
authoritarian political systems normally have in order to guarantee
a strict control over all the spheres of life, Ben Ali was also able to
establish a very complex system in which most aspects of Tunisian
politics, economy and social life were under direct control. This posi-
tion of absolute control combined both ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres,
to the extent that Ben Ali’s regime not only became a dictatorship
but a predatory system in which a single clan converted a whole
country into a family business.
As may be understood, media outlets also played a very impor-
tant role within this structurally corrupt system. Ben Ali was able to
establish a media system to the complete service of his wide interests,
guaranteeing a high degree of social control and manipulation of
public opinion, as well as the existence and consolidation of a very
profitable media environment for some privileged and well-connected
stakeholders.
To varying degrees, media sectors in Arab countries can be
analysed as instruments serving several specific political interests.
Joan Barata 119
This is a common trend that was already in place during the time
of colonization and which has remained constant for decades until
now. Any study of the Arab media landscape should therefore
acknowledge this factor of intense politicization of the means of
mass communication. This politicization can eventually be con-
nected to the aims and objectives of national regimes, but also to the
interests and position of political parties or political figures. Such a
connection can still be made within the processes of democratization
seen in several countries (referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’). Moreover,
in the Tunisian case, as has already been stressed and will be shown
in more detail, most media outlets played a specific role in terms
of being part of the complex Ben Ali–Trabelsi network of political,
private and family interests.
Of course, a key factor which should be analysed as well is the influ-
ence of large emerging transnational Arab television channels (mostly
distributed through satellite) in these closed and controlled national
public spheres, interfering with the monopolistic domination on
imagery exerted by national governments such as the Tunisian one.
The Tunisian media landscape in the time of Ben Ali
A general overview: between loyalism and family ties

One of the most relevant trends of Ben Ali’s regime is the way in
which it was able to gain the support of most Western and par-
ticularly European democracies. Until 2011 Ben Ali was seen by
successive French, Italian or US governments as a very useful ally and
the perfect safeguard for Western geopolitical strategies in the region,
as well as other broader interests. To express it in a few words, Ben
Ali was able to guarantee political and social stability in a certain part
of the Maghreb, something really valuable from a European perspec-
tive, and at the same time did not hesitate to leave a portion of the
Tunisian business arena for some designated foreign stakeholders.
A clear first example of the above-mentioned ideas is related to the
entrance within the Tunisian media landscape of foreign channels in
the early 1990s. After a visit of French president François Mitterrand
in 1989, the public television channel France 2 was authorized
to broadcast free over the air in Tunisian territory. Almost at the
same time, in 1990 Canal Horizons Tunisie (as part of the French
group Canal Plus) and ART, a Saudi digital platform offering several
channels (headed by a national director general, well connected to

the Tunisian establishment), were both authorized to ‘compete’ with
the state television monopoly which had been in place until then. It
has to be outlined that those authorizations were granted on a com-
pletely discretionary basis, and within the framework of a contract
or ‘convention’ with Tunisian authorities which established very
important content conditions and restrictions, particularly regarding
political information and, of course, sexual content. In fact, the latter
were precisely the reasons that justified ten years later, in 1999, the
cancellation of the broadcasts of France 2.
Tunisia has had, even during Ben Ali’s time, a large number of
newspapers, magazines and other publications, most of them in
private hands. However, it must be stressed that the central role that
has been played by the press public sector, which includes newspa-
pers such as La Presse, which is probably the most important one in
the French language, and other print media such as Essahafa or Le
Renouveau (in this last case, the newspaper was actually in the hands
of the ruling party). As can be imagined, these state-controlled media
just provided the ‘voice’ of the official governmental discourse, being
thus pretty far from what is generally considered as public service
media. In the case of the private press, most media outlets followed
an editorial line in perfect compliance with government interests
and points of view as well, to the extent that they were also controlled
by stakeholders either from Ben Ali’s family, or having connections
with the government. The most relevant example of such a phenom-
enon is probably the media group Assabah-Le Temps (owner of two
newspapers and three magazines) which ended up being ‘acquired’
by one of Ben Ali’s in-laws, Sakhr el Materi, and the newspaper
Al Chourouk. This being said, it is also true that there existed a very
limited and marginalized amount of ‘independent’ media outlets
in this sector, basically linked to opposition political parties and
organizations. Of course, these modest and small printed voices were
subjected to a particularly strict control and censorship and should
be seen as minority options within the Tunisian public sphere. The
most relevant examples in this area are provided by the newspapers
Al-Tariq Al Jadid, Al Mawkif and Mouwatinoun, among others.
Concerning radio and television, the panorama can be described
in similar terms. Tunisian private broadcasting is dominated by the
activities of some key members of the family clan. Sakhr el Materi,
Joan Barata 121
the above-mentioned powerful son-in-law of Ben Ali, was the owner

of Princess El Materi Holding, a conglomerate which controlled,
among other important businesses in several strategic sectors,
Zitouna FM (which was a station apparently devoted to preserve
religious values, following at any rate the political directives coming
from the president’s palace). At the same time, Ben Ali’s daughter
Cyrine was the owner of one of the most important radio stations,
Shems FM, as well as the publishing group Havas Tunisie and the
most popular Internet service provider Planet. Finally Belhacen
Trabelsi, the brother of Ben Ali’s influent wife, established a very solid
group with many important business areas (Karthago Group) which
controlled Radio Mosaïque and Cactus, a company which produced
audiovisual content for the state broadcaster. In the specific area of
television, after the liberalization process of 2003, two main private
stations had been operating in the country, both controlled in sev-
eral ways by the Ben Ali–Trabelsi family: Nessma TV is the result
of the good relationship between Ben Ali and Italian former prime
minister Silvio Berlusconi, which was allowed to export to Tunisia his
broadcasting business model based on the idea of bread and circuses,
and Hannibal TV, which was controlled until the revolution by Larbi
Nasra, a relative of Ben Ali’s first wife.
Of course, the public broadcasting sector should not be forgotten
in this rapid panorama. The Établissement de la Radiodiffusion-
Télévision Tunisienne, which was the former audiovisual
monopolistic entity (before the liberalization), was divided in 2006
into two separated public entities, one managing the television
public stations (Tunisie 7 as the main national state television and
Canal 21) and the other integrating four national and five regional
state radio stations. It has to be stressed that these public media
constituted typical examples of state-controlled media, that is to say,
media outlets with no degree of editorial independence and no clear
and pre-established public service remit. Their only mission was to
provide the government and Ben Ali himself with a powerful and
directly managed tool to disseminate messages and content which
would allow a more than reasonable control over the formation of
public opinion.
Finally, two important agencies contributed to shape the mecha-
nisms of the control of media and journalists within the Tunisian
public sphere.
The Agence Tunisienne de Communication Extérieure (ATCE) had

the mission to decide on and distribute the funds for advertising to
the myriad of existing public entities and public companies. It is
obvious that this was indeed a very powerful instrument to control
private media outlets to the extent that those which might have
critical and independent positions were automatically excluded from
this important funding system. In addition to that, ATCE had been
using the so-called deep-packet inspection technology in order to
have access to emails, to trace Internet navigation and more broadly
to control private online communication activities of journalists,
activists and whomever could be considered as dangerous for the
regime’s stability (Naïr 2011). Moreover, ATCE had the power to have
direct access to Internet service providers’ equipment in order to
perform its activities. Thus, ATCE became one of the most powerful
repressive instruments in the hands of the public authority. However,
at a more formal level, ATCE activities in the area of Internet surveil-
lance had been assumed by another entity, which was the Agence
Tunisienne d’Internet (ATI). It had a monopoly on the provision of
wholesale Internet access services, Internet addresses in Tunisia and
the national domain tag, dot tn. Although these powers were not
necessarily intrusive and anti-democratic, ATI had certainly been
exercising both intensive and widespread control over Tunisian
Internet traffic, including management and censorship of content,
in following the needs and instructions of ATCE.
Secondly, the press agency Tunis Afrique (TAP) was the official and
the only agency which was authorized to operate in the country and
therefore the sole source of domestic information for different media
(without prejudice to, of course, some ‘informal’ sources used by
minority independent media and activists). TAP basically provided
the news content for private outlets, in parallel with the activities
of the state broadcasting system and therefore guaranteeing full
political control of most of the public sphere.
Freedom of speech restrictions
The constitution of the Tunisian Republic (CT) was approved in 1959,

even though it has been subject to occasional ad hoc modifications,
including as recently as 2008. Most of these modifications have
introduced more restrictions on the rights of citizens. Indeed, scant
Joan Barata 123
attention is paid to the protection of human rights and citizens´

rights in general, the references to which are brief, superficial and
clearly inadequate.
With specific reference to the right of freedom of expression
and freedom of information, Article 8 limits itself to establish that
‘Freedom of opinion, expression, of the press, of publication, of
assembly and association are guaranteed and exercised under the
conditions defined by law.’ It has to be stressed that the content of
this constitutional precept does not meet the minimum standards
needed to protect fundamental human rights. While it appears
to establish certain rights, at the same time it acknowledges the
virtually unlimited political discretion of the legislator to limit them.
The only minimum guarantee was the requirement that the law
doing so should be an ‘organic law’ (Article 28 CT), that is, among
the laws which are approved through a longer and more rigorous
process. However, this purely formal safeguard did nothing to firm
up such a generic and half-hearted recognition of the freedom of
expression and information, and lacked a hardcore commitment on
the part of the constitution to protect such freedoms from possible
illegitimate interference.
The second and very important instrument that should be taken
into account in order to understand the former media landscape in
Tunisia from a legal perspective is the Code de la Presse (Press Code),
Law 75–82, passed on 28 April 1975, which was amended several
times during Ben Ali’s time and has actually been one of the first laws
to be formally derogated and substituted after the Jasmine revolution.
We will outline below some of its basic authoritarian trends.
First of all, there was a very strict and complex regulation regarding
the obligation of copyright registration for newspapers, magazines
and other publications made available to the public. This obligation
was a strict condition in order to distribute these works, and failure to
accomplish such a requirement was punished with severity, including
fines and the administrative power to withdraw all available copies.
In addition to that, the publication of periodicals was also subjected
to a duty of prior notification to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The
law established a series of detailed requisites regarding the election
of the director of the media outlet, the labour structure, recruitment
of professionals, conditions to be considered an actual journalist,
etc. It also included very severe restrictions regarding the funding of
the media company in question, in particular in relation to foreign

investors. Failure to comply with these provisions was punished
again with very severe fines and in some cases with imprisonment.
Secondly, rights to reply and rectification in cases of inaccuracy
were regulated in very broad and vague terms. In particular, they
provided important powers for public authorities and officials in
order to attack and to ‘straighten up’ different kinds of informa-
tion that might be perceived as merely negative for their image
or reputation, no matter the degree of truthfulness. It has to
be outlined, as a very descriptive example, that any failure or
reluctance to comply with a reply requirement during election
times (within 24 hours) could send the director of a media outlet
directly to jail.
Finally the law included as well a very long series of possible crimes
that could be committed by journalists in the exercise of their pro-
fessional duties. The first and most important problem that should
be outlined in this area is the fact that some of these provisions are
worded in very general terms and do not have the degree of conci-
sion and certainty that criminal provisions should have, particularly
in the field of communication activities and basically in order to
avoid the so-called chilling effect or self-censorship. To summarize
this issue, the law includes crimes such as the ‘offence’ to members
of the government and public officials or the publication of non-
accurate news that might be a problem for public order. Cases of
defamation, as well, are included and regulated in very broad terms,
providing a very wide leeway for interpretation. Apart from the
crimes themselves, it has to be stressed that the punishments to be
imposed were disproportionate and really severe, to the extent that
imprisonment was an actual danger for any professional journalist
who did not exactly follow the directives of political correctness. As
a matter of fact, several international organizations had accused the
Tunisian government of using these broad legal provisions in order
to prepare and to articulate ‘artificial’ accusations against critical
journalists. For these and most of the other reasons already stressed
here, Tunisia was ranked 164th out of 178 countries in 2010 in terms
of press freedom.1
It has to be noted that in 2005 the press code was amended to
lighten some of its more restrictive provisions: the need to obtain a
receipt as a proof of legal depot was eliminated as well as some of the
Joan Barata 125
cases of defamation. However, these changes did not really alter its
really authoritarian profile.
Finally, another important element to be taken into consideration
is the fact that Tunisia has not had (until the end of 2011) a legisla-
tion regarding the different aspects of the provision of broadcasting
media services. Thus, obtaining a radio or television licence was
something that fully depended on the political discretion of the
government. Along the same lines, there was no legislation estab-
lishing the different rights and obligations of radio and television
operators. Thus the latter were subjected to the arbitrary control of
the government, basically through its administrative length’s arm,
the Office National de Télédiffusion (ONT). This body managed the
radio and television signal distribution monopoly (which continued
after the liberalization of television activities) as the state instrument
to control and to restrict access to the frequencies which allowed the
transmission of broadcast content.
Media liberalization
On 7 November 2003, Ben Ali decided to start the liberalization

process of radio and television markets, thus breaking the former mono-
polistic sector in which official state radio and television media fully
dominated the audiovisual public sphere. It is true that within the
past 20 years the Arab world in general has witnessed the emergence
of a new and progressively competitive private audiovisual sector.
The media liberalization process in the Arab world in general has
basically two perspectives. From an international point of view, the
emergence during the 1990s of new satellite transnational chan-
nels represented the start of a process of superposition of media
discourses and of course the creation of a new challenge for national
instruments of media control, to the extent that the domestic public
sphere began to be invaded by messages and content that could not
effectively be controlled. As is well known, this phenomenon basi-
cally includes the cases of Al Arabiya (from Saudi Arabia), Al Alam
(from Iran) and of course Al Jazeera (from Qatar). Even from outside
the Arab world, the US has been trying to reach these audiences
through a specifically targeted channel, Al Hurra, which seems to
be as influential and successful as local Arab channels. It has to be
kept in mind that 38 per cent of the satellite channels of the world
are owned by Arab stakeholders, whereas the Arab population only

represents 5 per cent of the world (Gazhali 2011). In addition to that,
it has also to be outlined that these channels have had an undeni-
able influence in the formation of public opinion in several countries
(as the so-called Arab Spring has recently shown, particularly in the
case of Tunisia), that are far from the physical and geopolitical origin
of the broadcasts, demonstrating a clear capacity to shape public
imagery and to influence social and political processes, creating thus
to some extent a seminal pan-Arab public sphere. Another important
factor that has to be kept in mind in this area is the fact that the
emergence of these new transnational channels has fuelled at the
same level new dynamics of economic competition, which can
be seen as well as a factor for the progressive introduction of a liberal
model within Arab societies in a sense that it would also foster the
assumption of new values of pluralism and media independence
(Guaaybess 2005).
From a domestic perspective, Tunisia is a clear case, and prob-
ably one of the most extreme cases in the Arab world, in which the
liberalization process cannot actually be seen as the introduction of
neither economic competition nor political and social pluralism. As
has already been shown, Ben Ali’s regime created an institutional and
economic system of dependences in which the interests of the family
clan, the political system, the party and the economic environment
of the dictator marked the rules of the game. The government had
several instruments to control directly and indirectly the public and
private sector of printed and audiovisual media. In the case of the
latter, it should be noted that the absence of any specific legislation
in this sector put in the hands of the government, through the
instrument of ONT, a complete discretionary power in order to give
and take away licences. To mention some examples, in the case of
Hannibal TV the licence was granted through an individual, direct
and ‘spontaneous’ decision of Ben Ali himself, whereas the text of the
conditions assumed by Radio Mosaïque as a radio service provider had
never been publicly disclaimed (Chouikha 2007). Moreover, commer-
cial television and radio stations were not allowed, according to their
licences, to broadcast current news programmes as well as any kind of
content that might affect public order. However, probably the most
outstanding element to take into account in order to understand
the intensity of government control over all kind of media outlets
Joan Barata 127
is the fact that the news director of any station had to be appointed
‘according to the government’. In parallel, several applications to
obtain a licence to broadcast had been filled by different persons
and private entities during Ben Ali’s mandate. In most of these cases,
the different administrative entities did not give any kind of response
and any attempt to challenge this attitude before the administrative
courts did not achieve any kind of success. To put this in figures, in
2011, immediately after the revolution, 75 pending applications for
radio stations were confirmed to exist.
The events of 2011 from a media perspective
Two major new laws regulating free speech and media issues in
Tunisia entered into force after the Jasmine revolution: Decree 115 of
2011, on the Press, Printing and Publishing, and Decree 116 of 2011,
on the Freedom of Audiovisual Communication and the Creation of
a Supreme Independent Body of Audiovisual Communication, both
dated 2 November 2011. The two decrees have been approved by
the interim government of Tunisia. While elections to the Constitu-
tional Assembly took place on 24 October 2011, at the beginning
of November the new institutions were not yet in place and in
operation, so decisions made at this time were still undertaken by the
former and provisional administrative and political structures.
As explained in more detail in another place (Barata 2011), two
months after former President Ben Ali’s departure, on 15 March
2011, the interim government constituted the Haute Commission
pour la réalisation des objectifs de la révolution, de la réforme poli-
tique et de la transition démocratique (HC). With regard to the media,
the HC had a technical sub-commission (sous-commission technique),
made up of three legal experts who have been solely responsible for
questions relating to the regulation of the media.
The main function of the Haute Commission was to reform the
Tunisian state through a process of legislative change. This reform
process has produced some relevant results, particularly in the field
of media regulation. Some important rules in the field of access
to information, political parties and election regime have been
approved during this period as well. Tunisia is the first country of
the Arab Spring that has been able to organize plural, open and
internationally accepted legislative elections within a reasonable
timeframe. A new constitution has to be drafted and approved by the

new democratic Assembly.
More specifically, the HC undertook the preparation of a pro-
posal for a legal regulatory framework in the field of freedom of
expression, press regulation and audiovisual media services regula-
tion, including the creation of an audiovisual regulatory authority.
The result of this work has now appeared in the official gazette
of Tunisia, in the form of the two above-mentioned decrees. The
process of drafting these decrees was more open, transparent and
participative (Barata 2012).
Another important new institutional body involved in commu-
nications reform has been the Instance Nationale pour la Réforme
de l’Information et la Communication (INRIC), set up at the end
of February 2011 by the second provisional government by means
of a law decree. The institution had only accepted a consultative
role, and was not seeking any kind of administrative profile. INRIC
has been presided over by Kamel Laabidi who, like other members
of this institution, is an outstanding communication professional
with democratic credentials. INRIC appeared to be a less technical,
less bureaucratic and more realistic organization than the sub-
commission of the HC, and less vulnerable to the influence of the
previous regime’s thinking and operational modes. Members of INRIC
had first-hand experience in the field of media and communications
and a more transparent approach. According to the recitals of the
two decrees, both have been approved after consultation from INRIC.
This means that the projects have been discussed among people with
different professional and political profiles, and that amendments
may have been introduced during the process. It has to be noted, as
well, that before the approval of the two decrees INRIC had already
recommended the government to grant several provisional licences
to a group of radio and television broadcasters which could be con-
sidered to be independent from the government and the status quo
private media companies.2
Conclusion: some issues for the immediate future
The dismantling of the authoritarian regime has meant the possi-

bility to dream of freedom of expression for those who work in the
media. After a long period of exercising their profession within the
Joan Barata 129
constraints of an authoritarian regime, however reluctantly, where

information was controlled, manipulated and, if unorthodox,
repressed by the state, journalists are now going through a true
catharsis. On the one hand, this leads to what could be con-
sidered a certain degree of anarchy in the profession. For many
journalists, escaping from the propaganda machine has meant
working freely for the first time, and being able to express the
criticisms and observations that until now they had to hold back.
In this context, the obvious risk exists that the finally liberated
journalist opts to become an activist instead of a reporter, that
is, a neutral observer who reports on, rather than influences, cur-
rent events. Concepts like professionalism, objectivity, rigour, the
following of professional norms and ethics, and the elaboration
and assimilation of editorial rules based on professional criteria
are completely new and still have not been fully understood and
taken on by journalists. Neither do journalists currently have the
opportunity of adequate systems or training mechanisms which
would help them to adapt to these new circumstances. In addition,
salaries and working conditions are precarious, a situation which
the revolution has not improved: indeed tensions may have even
increased in communication industries given that protest over
labour conditions is now possible.
New electronic media and social networking sites have played
a significant role in the process of revolution and political reform
in Tunisia. New technologies play an important part in a country
like Tunisia where, according to the latest reports, 18 per cent of
the population has a Facebook account, and where the high percent-
age of young people in the general population facilitates and
promotes the intensive and extensive use of mobile phones and com-
puters. To give a striking example, the impact of the young Tunisian
street vendor who set himself on fire in October 2011, sparking the
revolution, was hugely magnified by new technologies. One should
take particularly into account in such a context the ‘communitarian’
spirit of Tunisia as a Mediterranean society, which has benefited a lot
from the possibilities raised by new technologies.
Regarding conventional media, the process of ‘artificial’ liberaliza-
tion undertaken during Ben Ali’s time has created a media landscape
that should be transformed, complemented and regulated for the
first time according to democratic and pluralistic parameters.
However, traditional religious sectors seem to have taken a leading

role in the political transformation and democratic evolution of
Tunisia. How the complex and diverse network of political actors in
place in the country will finally shape a new democratic and consti-
tutional system is something that only the future can tell.
Notes
1. See Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index 2010: http://en.rsf.
org/press-freedom-index-2010,1034.html.
2. See, in this sense, www.tunivisions.net/cinq-nouvelles-chaines-
tv-tunisiennes-sont-nees,12693.html and www.tap.info.tn/fr/fr/medias/
5198-radios-privees-recommandation-pour-attribuer-des-frequences-a-12-
nouvelles-stations-inric.html.
Bibliography
Barata Mir, J. (2011) Political and Media Transitions in Tunisia: A Snapshot
of Media Policy and Regulatory Environment (Washington, DC: Internews),
www.internews.org/research-publications/political-and-media-transitions-
tunisia.
—— (2012) The New Tunisian Legislative Framework: A Focus on Press
and Audiovisual Media (Washington, DC: Internews), www.internews.org/
research-publications/new-tunisian-legislative-framework-focus-press-and-
audiovisual-media.
Chouikha, L. (2007) ‘L’audiovisuel en Tunisie: une libéralisation fondue dans
le moule étatique’, L’Année du Magreb II, 2005–6, published online in 2010,
http://anneemaghreb.revues.org/165.
Gazhali, A. (2011) ‘Médias et développements politiques au Maghreb et
dans le monde arabe’, text of a lecture presented in the Blanquerna
Communication School, Barcelona, October 2011, forthcoming 2012 in the
scientific review of the school, Tripodos.
Guaaybess, T. (2005) Télévisions arabes sur orbite: un système mediatique en
mutation (1960–2004) (Paris: CNRS Editions).
Naïr, S. (2011) La leçon tunisienne (Tunis: Cérès Editions).
9
Liberalization of the
Moroccan Broadcasting Sector:
Breakthroughs and Limitations
Aârab Issiali
Preamble
Morocco’s new constitution, adopted by referendum vote on 1 July

20111 as part of a dynamic drive that is still in progress, in Morocco
namely but to a much larger extent in the Arab world, and that is
commonly referred to by the somewhat artificial generic term of
‘Arab Spring’, introduced a number of new provisions and frame-
works to the institutional landscape of Morocco, a development that
will certainly have a significant impact on the media in general, but
more specifically on mass-broadcasting media.
The main articles of the new constitution address inter alia the
guarantee of better visibility and exposure for the opposition in
public broadcasting media (Art. 10), including during electoral con-
sultations (Art. 19). They also guarantee the freedom of expression,
as well as the ability to freely publish and disseminate opinions and
ideas notwithstanding any explicitly stated legal provision of a limi-
tative nature to the contrary (Art. 28).
Furthermore, the constitution sets out the rules and regulations of
organizing, regulating and controlling public media whilst guarantee-
ing the principles of linguistic and cultural diversity and respecting
the political pluralism of Moroccan society. The High Authority for
Audiovisual Communication (known as HACA) stands as a guarantor
of the respect of this diversity and this pluralism (Art. 165). Article
171, in turn, stipulates that an organic law shall define the powers,
composition and terms of governance of the institutions and bodies
mentioned in Articles 161 to 170, one of which being the HACA.
131
132 Liberalization of the Moroccan Broadcasting Sector
The new constitution equally carries the premises of a profound

institutional reorganization which will no doubt structurally impact
the organization and regulation of public media, namely through
a highly ambitious extended regionalization policy of which the
implementation mechanisms will be set into motion during 2012.
The aim of this preamble is to place the developments addressed
in this chapter within their historical context and to prognosticate
the profound restructurings of the media sectors in general and of
the radio and television sector in particular. This should not only
consolidate the liberalization process launched back in 2006, but will
probably and largely surpass it considering its new reference terms
and novel approaches which integrate the new socio-economic reali-
ties and demands that act as a driving force behind the social scene.
Introduction
The liberalization of the Moroccan broadcasting landscape has been

one of the highlights of the institutional and socio-cultural life in
Morocco over the first decade of the twenty-first century, a period
coinciding with the first ten years of King Mohammed VI’s reign.
The motivations and determining factors leading to this transfor-
mation in the governance of the Moroccan media landscape, the
mechanisms of implementing the liberalization process, the tangible
results achieved as well as the constraints and the delays hinde-
ring this process are all indicative of the dynamics underlying the
current transformation phase on the path to a democratic transition
in Morocco.
This chapter serves a primarily documentary and didactic purpose
in the sense that it will attempt to review the conditions in which
the liberalization of the radio and television sector in Morocco was
set into motion, as well as the modalities and mechanisms of this
implementation. Its second objective, rather descriptive and analyti-
cal, will focus on the pivotal element of this liberalization process
and of the regulation of the audiovisual landscape in Morocco: the
High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA). No less
important, the third axis is more forward-looking and aspires to
broadly put into perspective the future of the broadcasting land-
scape’s liberalization whilst taking into consideration all specific
endogenous conditions and determining external factors.
Aârab Issiali 133
General context of the broadcasting sector

reform in Morocco
The reform of the broadcasting sector in Morocco is part of a democ-

ratization process initiated some ten years ago. This process sought to
remove a blatant anachronism between, on the one hand, pluralism
as a doctrine upheld in the written media and reflecting the greater
political, partisan and syndicalist pluralism espoused by Moroccan
society and which has marked its customs since the first stirrings of
the institutional foundation of a modern nation, and state mono-
poly over broadcasting media on the other hand. This monopoly,
established early in the twentieth century, was only recently lifted
thanks namely to the liberalization of the Moroccan broadcasting
landscape.
As for the written media, observers concur on the current state of
effervescence generated by an upsurge in the number of titles as well
as the emergence of a so-called free or independent press that has
extended the scope of freedom of expression. The Moroccan press
also mirrors the public debates raging on about the key issues con-
fronting Moroccan society in ways that were unprecedented a few
years before. The media coverage of the proceedings and findings of
the Forum on Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) and the
debates on the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD)
are, for example, two cross-cutting themes that have been frequently
addressed in one way or another by the Moroccan media in recent
years but also under the circumstances prevailing at the beginning
of 2010, which gave rise to several attempts to assess the first decade
of King Mohammed VI’s reign.
This healthy impact on the development of the Moroccan pub-
lic landscape has certainly come across some stumbling blocks,2
a situation that generates a degree of scepticism among the circles
militating for human rights. However, these examples remain few in
number within a media environment that is more and more marked
by openness.
Background and contextualization

In pre-colonial times, Morocco followed the same development
process as many sovereign states faced with the emergence of a
broadcasting industry early in the twentieth century. As early as
1907, the Moroccan government affirmed its determination to lay

sole claim to this field when the Sultan Moulay Hassan issued a
royal decree stating that ‘the use of the wired and wireless telegraph
system shall remain a state monopoly throughout the Cherifien
Empire’.3
Radio broadcasting was introduced in Morocco under the
Protectorate and as such replicated the state monopoly which pre-
vailed at the time in the clear majority of European countries. Thus,
Radio Maroc was launched in 1928 as a public utility service operating
under the umbrella of the Moroccan Post and Telecommunications.
The television, on the other hand, appeared in Morocco in 1962
and immediately after that Radio Maroc became RTM, or Radio
Télévision Marocaine.
After independence, the state’s monopoly was further tightened
with the dahir (royal decree) of 18 May 1959 on the decolonization
of the media. This monopoly was further consolidated to become a
political weapon in the hands of the state through a string of legis-
lative texts, but mostly through a number of practices that became
common during the sixties. To name but one, political parties of that
era painfully came to realize the ‘government’s unwavering commit-
ment to control information’.4
The consolidation of the Moroccan authorities’ power in the
1970s established state control partially over the written media,
including the news agency Maghreb Arabe Presse and certain titles
of the former MAS Group, and totally over broadcasting media.
Freedom of expression gradually deteriorated in public political
circles. Paradoxically, it is this same difficult chapter that gave
birth to a crucial movement for the current liberalization and
modernization of the Moroccan media, spurred by role-players
from professional circles. From the 1980s, a movement shot into
action and managed to bring about the legal and institutional
reform of this sector.
Indicative of the contradictions inherent to this movement, the
creation early in the 1980s of the radio station Médi 1 is a true legal
anomaly since the law bans such creation in principle. This event
was replicated in 1989 with a new derogation to the law of mono-
poly and the creation of the television channel 2M.
In 1993, an important national symposium, called Infocom, made
it possible to come up with an entire set of proposals for the reform
Aârab Issiali 135
of the sector. As previously underlined by many observers, the

recommendations made by the Infocom symposium served as a first
formulation of what was to become ten years later the guidelines of
the sector’s reform.
The reform process thus set into motion continued with the arrival
of the alternative government in 1998. Several draft laws pertaining
to the restructuring of the Moroccan broadcasting landscape were
passed in succession. However, it was only in 2002 that the HACA
was created, heralding the end of state monopoly. Then in 2005 the
law on broadcasting communication was promulgated.
In 2005, the condition of the media in Morocco was classified as
‘difficult’ by the international NGO Reporters Without Borders, plac-
ing it in the fourth out of five categories.5 This NGO welcomed the
reform of the broadcasting sector in Morocco, considering that the
empowerment of a truly free Moroccan audiovisual landscape was
‘a first for broadcasting in North Africa unless the government cheats
on this test of democracy’.6
This viewpoint, which combined caution with a wait-and-see
approach, is largely shared by the role-players of Moroccan civil soci-
ety who would like to see proof of true and tangible progress before
speaking in definite terms about the impacts of such reform.
The liberalization of the broadcasting sector

The liberalization of the broadcasting sector and the creation of the
HACA fall right within the context of true but intermittent progress
and come as a response to the expectations of those either directly or
indirectly affected by this reform.
By creating the HACA, Morocco became the first country in the
Arab-Muslim region to choose regulation as a mode of governance
for the broadcasting activity. The challenge, as experienced by pro-
fessionals and by the institutional structures involved, is to make
sure that this liberalization becomes meaningful and real.
Legal framework
The freedom of broadcasting communication in Morocco is rooted
in a set of regulatory texts. It is therefore important to examine the
role that these texts, starting with the number one regulatory text,
the constitution, allocate to this issue and how they can serve as a
foundation for this freedom.
Freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are referred to in

Article 9 of the Moroccan constitution. Although the constitution
makes no specific mention of the freedom of broadcasting communi-
cation, it may be argued that broadcasting communication is but one
form of the freedom of expression. It is one of the manifestations of
this constitutional principle and its scope of application extends to
the audiovisually supported media.
Although the principle of the freedom of broadcasting commu-
nication has not been expressly provided for in the constitution,
the fundaments of this freedom and subsequently the end of state
monopoly and the liberalization of the sector are embedded in primary
law. Furthermore, Article 15 guarantees all citizens the freedom of
enterprise, a freedom that represents the foundation of the right to
invest in the broadcasting communication field, a matter that was
not possible under the regime of state monopoly. One might therefore
contend that maintaining state monopoly over the broadcasting
communication sector would be an anachronism in relation to free-
dom of enterprise.
On the constitutional front, lifting the state’s monopoly, a measure
accompanied by the liberalization of the broadcasting activity, becomes
a means to close the gap between the reality of this sector and the
essence of the country’s supreme law. By liberalizing broadcasting
communication, Morocco fell into step with the principles contained
in its constitution.
Law on press and publishing

Written press is governed by the royal decree of 15 November 1958
which was profoundly modified in October 2002 by Law 77-00. To a
large extent, these provisions govern only written press and publish-
ing except for the fourth chapter which addresses the punitive aspect
exclusively and deals with crimes and offences that may be committed
through the press or any other publishing tool.
Broadcasting communication is considered one of the publish-
ing tools through which press offences may be committed. Article
38 punishes the provocation of crime and offences and stipulates
clearly that actions giving body to this offence may be committed by
‘various means of broadcasting communication’. To determine the
means that may be used in committing such acts, the other articles
of the same chapter also refer to the provisions of Article 38.
Aârab Issiali 137
The media are therefore all subjected to the same punitive system,
regardless of the type or nature of the channel used. However,
attention should be drawn to a few nuances here. The most impor-
tant of these lies in the determination of who is liable and the
extent of their liability. Contrary to the director of a publication
who is considered legally accountable for everything published
in his paper, even articles carrying the by-line of a third party,
the director of a television channel is not considered responsible
for the statements made by guests invited to speak on air at his
station.7
The HACA or the cornerstone in the edifice of the

broadcasting sector’s reform
The dahir of 31 August 2002 creating the High Authority for
Audiovisual Communication represents, from a chronological point
of view, the cornerstone in the edifice of the broadcasting sector’s
reform. The objective of this decree was to create a regulatory author-
ity responsible for delivering broadcasting permits and ensuring
the respect, by private- and public-sector stakeholders, of the legal
obligations and any other stipulation of the specification sheets and
conventions to be concluded.
The dahir establishing the HACA comprises 23 articles grouped in
five sections. The first two set out the rules governing the two bodies
of the High Authority, respectively the Higher Council and the
Directorate General. The third heading addresses the penalties to
which the High Authority may sentence offenders, while the fourth
one contains financial-management stipulations.
The abolition of state monopoly

The lifting of state monopoly over this sector was a key step in the
liberalization process.8 The enactment of a law in this regard was
essential because this monopoly itself was set through a law that
needed to be equally repealed.
In fact, even though broadcasting communication was legally
subjected to state monopoly, the Moroccan broadcasting landscape
had already been liberalized in practice9 in what could be described
as a partial liberalization, allowing some private stakeholders to start
operating in television broadcasting, 2M TV, and radio broadcasting
through Medi 1 radio, Radio Sawa and even Casa FM radio.
Regulation on broadcasting communication

Promulgated by a decree on 7 January 2005, Law 77-03 is, according
to its preamble, an important milestone in the process of breaking
with the traditional management of broadcasting communication
which had for long evolved around a security-geared credo as well as
around archaic and approximate methods.
In tangible and practical terms, the fundamental contribution
of this law was to set out a framework which determines the guid-
ing principles and mechanisms necessary for the restructuring of
broadcasting communication and for providing new opportuni-
ties for private operators to operate within an environment that is
regulated by a specialized and theoretically independent institution
that guarantees the previously lacking conditions of fairness and
transparency.
This law consists of 85 articles. The two main headings of this
text determine the rules governing the private and public sectors
of broadcasting communication. The second heading, dedicated to
private broadcasting communication, determines the conditions to
meet and the procedures to follow in the allocation of licences and
broadcasting permits. The third heading tackles the public sector of
broadcasting communication. It determines the objectives of the
public sector which set it apart from the private sector, and describes
the new status of the RTM scheduled to be incorporated into a public
limited company called the Société Nationale de Radiodiffusion et de
la Télévision (SNRT). The fourth heading sets out the various obliga-
tions of operators and lays down the principles governing various
forms of advertising (sponsorship, teleshopping, direct mail). Finally,
the fifth heading determines sanctions that may be applicable in case
of offences.
The High Authority for Audiovisual

Communication (HACA)
Established as an independent administrative authority, the High

Authority10 benefits from a major advantage since it takes up its
duties as a ‘fully impartial institution’ under ‘the tutelary protection’
of the king.
The HACA equally provides a legislative service, working in tandem
with the government by prescribing the legal or technical standards
Aârab Issiali 139
to be used in measuring the audience of broadcasting media.

Additionally, and in the absence of laws or relevant regulations, it
lays down the rules necessary to ensure respect of the pluralistic
expression of thought and of fairness in ‘access to airtime’, especially
during election campaigns.
Most importantly, it plays a regulatory role by processing applica-
tions for the creation and operation of broadcasting communication
companies and granting the necessary permits, delivering the ensu-
ing frequency use licences and approving, where applicable, the
specification sheets of created operators of whom it would monitor
the activities.
It also performs the general task of monitoring compliance by
broadcasting communication operators with the sector’s applicable
principles and rules as well as with the terms of their respective
specification sheets.
The HACA receives complaints about the violations of laws and
regulations applicable in the sector or the damages suffered as a
result of the dissemination of information that is not only prejudicial
but also far removed from the truth.
Finally, the High Authority has the delicate power of issuing
sanctions for crimes committed by broadcasting communication
organizations, or, at the very least, of recommending the penalties to
the competent authorities.
Composition
The HACA is made up of two distinct bodies, which are the High
Council of Audiovisual Communication (CSCA) and the Directorate
General of Audiovisual Communication (DGCA).
The CSCA is made up of nine members, of whom five are appointed
by the king, two by the prime minister and two by the heads of the
two parliamentary chambers.11 Without being necessarily manned
by people with experience in broadcasting communication, the
structure of the CSCA is supposed to be the most representative of
Moroccan society and is habilitated to act and speak on its behalf.
The High Council of Audiovisual Communication represents the
deliberative body of the HACA. In order to assist it in its mission,
a decree dated 31 August 2002 made provision for the creation
of another entity which is the Directorate General of Audiovisual
Communication, the head of which is appointed by decree.
The DGCA plays a leading role in ensuring the day-to-day monitoring

of broadcasting services and implementing the decisions of the CSCA
to which it is hierarchically subordinated. In this regard, it ben-
efits from the assistance of controllers who fall directly under the
hierarchical authority of the Director General.
Operation mode
CSCA
The CSCA meets by summons from its president, who is appointed by
the king. The frequency of the meetings must be decided upon in its
rules of procedure. Article 11 of the royal decree creating the HACA
stipulates that the meetings must be held at least once a month.
The Council’s meetings can be convened by the president. It may
also be convened at the request of half the members of the Council.
The High Council may only hold valid deliberations if the quorum,
set out in Article 12 of the royal decree creating the HACA, is achieved.
Quorum is reached when five members, including the president, are
present. The decisions are taken by majority vote. The vote is secret
and the president holds the casting vote in case of a draw.
The implementation of the CSCA’s decisions is carried out by
the personnel and various departments of the DGCA and under
the authority of the Director General. The latter must, for example,
guarantee that the fines which may be imposed on offending opera-
tors are properly collected.
The HACA’s decisions may also be implemented through pub-
lication in the Official Journal. This publication is however not
automatic and it is left to the discretion of the CSCA to decide, as
the case may dictate, whether it is advisable to publish the decision
or not.
DGCA
The DGCA consists of several administrative and technical depart-
ments operating under the responsibility of the Director General. It
also has a special corps of inspectors who are in charge of recording
on paper and on site any breaches of laws, regulations and specifica-
tions sheets.
To be able to perform their duties in good conditions, the HACA
controllers enjoy a number of powers. They are authorized to record
programmes broadcast by different operators; they can collect all
Aârab Issiali 141
the necessary information from public administrations and operators

and may, if needed, launch investigations. If deemed necessary,
these controllers can request and obtain assistance from the judicial
police.
Violations of the terms set out in specifications and of regulations,
and violations reported by the HACA controllers in the line of duty
are brought to the attention of the Director General of broadcast-
ing communication. By virtue of Article 16, the latter is required to
immediately inform the president of the High Council who must
take note thereof, summon the Council for a meeting and task it
with deliberating on the decision to be taken on the case at hand.12
First tangible results of liberalization
Reconfiguration of the broadcasting landscape: ensuring

the compliance of current operators
From the day of its entry into service, and in accordance with the tasks
assigned to it by virtue of the new legal framework of broadcasting
communication, the High Authority has tackled the regularization of
operators already active in Moroccan territory to ensure their compli-
ance with the various stipulations of the new texts.
Thus and after completing the regularization of the second
national channel’s situation (SOREAD 2M),13 of Radio Méditerranée
Internationale14 and of the new Société Nationale de Radio et de
Télévision (SNRT,15 formerly known as RTM) within the time limits
set by the legislature, the High Authority finalized this exercise by
bringing into conformity Sawa radio station in May 2006, acting in
accordance with a specifications sheet signed on 17 May 2006.16
Delivery of permits
The same approach was applied to the case of Samaha media,
which had for several years been marketing the conditional access
services of Arabesque and Al Awael bouquets in Moroccan territory
and which became subjected to licensing when Law 77-03 came into
force. A regularization procedure was initiated by the High Authority
and was ultimately crowned with the granting on 28 June 200617 of
a marketing authorization for the said services.
Similarly, on 28 June 2006, the CSCA granted the company HK
Distribution18 a permit to market in Moroccan territory the conditional
access service labelled Showtime Bouquet, distributed via satellite by

the Dubai free-zone-based company Gulf DTH FZ-LLC.19
Licensing
At a later stage, the High Authority tackled the issue of licensing new
private operators. Thus, after a first exercise of devising processes
and project support systems in accordance with the two procedures
provided for by the law – the mutual agreement procedure and the
tender process to choose a candidate – the High Authority proceeded
on 10 May 2006 to grant ten licences to private radio stations and one
international news satellite television licence, as shown in Table 9.1.
Then in February 2009, the HACA delivered a second batch of
radio licences broken down as follows:
• Radio Mars (Radio 20): a theme-based radio dominated by the

theme of sports
• FM Radio Medina (Société Privée de Communication et de Loisirs):
a local radio station focused on the rural world
• Luxe Radio (Radio Veille): a radio station dedicated to the theme
of Moroccan craftsmanship
• Med Radio (Société Audiovisuelle Internationale): a theme-based
radio dedicated to mediation and to community life
The outcome of this second wave of licences triggered widespread

feelings of frustration among the project developers who were in
the running, and a certain disappointment among observers of
developments on the Moroccan broadcasting scene. Indeed, given
the length and complexity of the process of lodging and processing
this new wave of applications, which could run for up to 14 months,
the communiqué of the HACA, dated 23 February 2009, had a cold-
shower effect on the people involved. By refusing to grant licences for
the operation of broadcasting (TV) services on the terrestrial network,
and even fewer licences to operate radio services in the national terri-
tory despite the strength of the cases presented within the framework
of the call for bids on the new generation of licences, the very process
of liberalization has lost steam. The arguments put forward by the
HACA’s communiqué left observers unsatisfied and hoping for more
convincing arguments and a more conclusive analysis of the future of
broadcasting liberalization in Morocco.
143
Table 9.1 New licences granted by the HACA in 2006
Service Vocation Operator Coverage areas No.
TV National and international Médi 1 Sat 1

satellite television channel
of general information
Total 1
Radio Local community radio Radio ATLAS Marrakech 2
stations FM
Radio PLUS Agadir
Regional community radio Audience baseb 4
stations MFM Saïss, Fès-Meknès
MFM Souss, Agadir
MFM Atlas, Marrakech
Radio Kolinassa Casablanca
Multiregional music radio Hit Radio Maroc Audience base 1
stations Rabat,
Casablanca and
Marrakech
Multiregional community Cap Radio Audience base 1
radio stations the north,
the Rif and
the eastern
provinces
Multiregional theme-based Eco Média Audience base 1
radio stations (economy Radioc Rabat and
and finances) Casablanca
Theme-based Bizz FM Radiod Audience base 1
multiregional radio Rabat,
station (economy) Casablanca and
Fès-Meknès
Marrakech and
Agadir
Total 10
Notes:
a
This station was subsequently renamed Chada FM.
b
The concept of ‘audience base’ is an ad hoc concept of the HACA. It refers to a
geographical segmentation of the national territory into 12 audience bases defined by
criteria such as broadcasting means, socio-economic features and so on.
c
This station was subsequently renamed Atlantic Radio.
d
This station was subsequently renamed Aswat.
Consolidating professional ethics

The HACA’s mission of ensuring the respect of general rules of
professional ethics, as consecrated by the legislation in force and
described in detail in the specification sheets, has given rise to a host
of decisions of which a large majority were published in the Official
Journal and/or were the subject of communication and sensitization
campaigns.
For example, with regard to the protection of the dignity and image
of the human being, the regulator has ruled that the second television
channel (2M) should broadcast, in the same programming condi-
tions, a person’s right to respond, this person having been obviously
mistaken for another by a participant in a live show who attributed
to this person a statement he did not make.20 In the same vein, and
to preserve dignity and protect the identity of those involved in the
conduct of legal proceedings, a recommendation on the broadcasting
coverage of judicial proceedings was made public by the CSCA.
A guarantee of pluralistic expression

Following complaints lodged by political parties or associations for
the protection of human rights, the CSCA issued a number of deci-
sions which came to represent the first body of jurisprudence on this
subject.
The first decision of the CSCA in this regard constitutes a mile-
stone since it gave the political party le Parti de la Justice et du
Développement (PJD) an airtime window of one minute 30 seconds
on 2M to explain the position on South-East Asia’s tsunami attrib-
uted to this party by a speaker during a televised report aired during
the newscast. The CSCA deemed that the principle of a pluralistic
expression of ideas and opinions had not been respected in this case
because ‘through the statement of one interviewee, the televised
report subject of the grievance carried an explicit accusation of the
complainant party without requesting the latter to express its view
should it deem it necessary’.21
Other decisions followed, drawing out the broad lines of a more
stringent respect of pluralism by public stakeholders.
The CSCA has also endeavoured to formulate operational norms to
ensure the pluralistic expression of ideas and opinions in audiovisual
media in normal times22 and fair access by political parties to these
media during electoral campaigns.23
Aârab Issiali 145
Regulating broadcasting advertisement

The High Authority is also vested with the power to regulate the
broadcasting media advertisement market. Tasking the regulator
with the mission of ensuring compliance by broadcasting opera-
tors with the rules and regulations of advertising is an aspect that is
unique to the Moroccan experience.
To this end, the institution adopted three benchmarks that give
clarity to its practice in this regard and provide visibility to the
relevant broadcasting operators and advertisers: a legal reference sys-
tem, a strategic referential framework, and a pedagogical rather than
punitive practice of regulation by the regulatory entity.
Several complaints in this regard, lodged by a number of telecom-
munication operators, have been processed by the CSCA from the
perspective of the practice of advertising communication on broad-
casting supports, an aspect that represents the field of expertise of
the HACA.24
Conclusion
Despite the vast promises and hopes it gave rise to and the real
gains made in establishing an initial core governance of the sec-
tor, the liberalization of the Moroccan broadcasting landscape and
the regulation system of this sector, which is a key element in this
process, are still at a budding stage. The liberalization of the airwaves,
particularly in terms of radio services and in which a dozen private
stations have been operational over the past two years, has revealed
a strong public demand and enthusiasm for more media to cater to
the diversity of audiences and needs. However, this enthusiasm and
the successful launches of new media have only fuelled a more
ambitious demand for the same although everyone remains baffled
at the delays and even bottlenecks threatening to cast a discrediting
shadow on the entire process.
Needless to say, the tasks involved in the consolidation of this
process are enormous and necessitate the closing of ranks and the
convergence of the willpower and efforts of all role-players engaged
in this process.
One of the major obstacles weighing down on the process is the
fact that the regulatory authority remains a lone knight in the drive
to liberalize the broadcasting sector. A benchmark of successful
international experiences in liberalizing the broadcasting industry

through regulatory mechanisms has shown that success hinges as
much upon the effectiveness of the regulatory authority and the
clarity of its missions and prerogatives, as it does upon the alertness
of monitoring tools and the demands for accountability made to this
same institution by other relevant institutions: parliament, forces of
political opposition, consumer defence structures, etc.
In the case of Morocco, the weak link in the broadcasting sector’s
regulatory system seems to be a state-devised strategic roadmap
providing guidance and direction for the role-players, including the
regulator, on how to reconfigure the media landscape in accordance
with clear and consistent indicators and benchmarks. The logic and
effectiveness of regulation depend largely on the distinction between
the strategic roadmap, which falls within the jurisdiction of the state,
and the mission entrusted to the regulator, adhering to a clear speci-
fications sheet and subjected to monitoring and accountability.
Intrinsically, and in addition to this matter of principle that is
the distinction between the strategic roadmap and the regulatory
mission, our attention should be drawn to the attitude of the pub-
lic component of the broadcasting sector which represents one of
the many constraints hindering the liberalization process of the
broadcasting sector in Morocco. Beyond the inconsistencies and
aberrations of the internal governance of this pole, the delays in
delivering licences for the operation of private television channels
broadcasting on the terrestrial network did not cause that beneficial
jolt which public broadcasting services experienced every time lib-
eralization and regulatory mechanisms were put in place in a given
country. The examples of France, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, etc.
have shown that liberalization also leads to the revitalization and
to a boost in the dynamism of public services which end up doing
more than simply standing up to the competition of private enti-
ties. In fact, liberalization in such circumstances has provided an
opportunity to clarify the part and specificity of each party, under
the monitoring eye of the state which manages balances and issues
the appropriate arbitration decisions.
Finally, the future and fast-paced developments of the industry,
prefigured inter alia by the elements of technological convergence
(computer-telecommunications-content) and the shift from analogue
to digital broadcasting, call for debates, coordination, synergies
Aârab Issiali 147
and complementarities between all the stakeholders, and so far no

evidence of any of this can be seen in Morocco. The opening up of
the broadcasting landscape should not be limited to slogans or to
the role of a foil but should instead be guided and implemented
fairly and properly. Should this fail, the entire process may deflate
like a balloon and lose the exemplary effect that has warranted
significant interest both within Morocco and among Morocco’s
foreign partners.
The new constitution, approved by referendum on 1 July 2011,
entailed a deep change in the attribution of the legislative, execu-
tive and judicial powers. The powers of the king, for the first time
in the modern history of Morocco, are clarified and bounded in
the fundamental law. Given these changes, it seems natural that
the broadcasting system and its regulation evolve as well. The
overall media sector, and the information and communication sec-
tor, have been explicitly targeted within the government project
which was approved by the parliament in January 2012. The latter
embedded for the media sector general statements of principle, and
the will to implement a thorough and structuring reform on the
basis of the new constitution. It is only in the medium term and
on the ground that one will be able to evaluate the real depth and
the sustainability of these reforms in a sector experiencing drastic
transformation.
Notes
1. www.sgg.gov.ma/constitution_2011_Fr.pdf
2. Cf. for example the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), ‘Moroccan
press faces aggressive judicial harassment’, News Alert 2006, www.cpj.org/
news/2006/mideast/morocco18jan06na.html
3. Imane Ablou, Liberalization of the Audiovisual Sector in Morocco, research
project qualifying for the degree of the High Institute of Information and
Communication, Rabat, 2004–5.
4. Ibid.
5. The NGO ranks countries in terms of the press situation as ‘good’, ‘rather
good’, whether ‘sensitive issues’ exist, or whether the situation is ‘difficult’
or ‘very serious’. In 2005, conditions in Libya and Tunisia were rated as
‘very serious’, meaning worse than Morocco, while Egypt and Jordan faced
‘sensitive issues’, that is, were in a better position than Morocco.
6. Reporters without Borders, Morocco – 2005 Annual Report. Cf. www.rsf.
org/article.php3?id_article=13300&Valider=OK
7. French jurisprudence for example finds justification for this in the fact
that the censoring power that the director of a broadcasting medium
holds and which constitutes the foundation of his authority cannot be
exercised under these circumstances.
8. This step was taken after a decree was promulgated on 10 September
2002 repealing the provisions of the dahir of 25 November 1924 on state
monopoly over broadcasting and television, set by virtue of Article 55 of
the constitution.
9. However, the purely administrative nature of the basis of this liber-
alization form makes these exceptional cases that obey to specific/or
short-term determinants and are not in a position to embody an institu-
tionalized reform.
10. All information about the missions and decisions of the HACA can be
consulted on the website: www.haca.ma
11. The term in office of the CSCA members is not explicitly stated in the
case of the members appointed by the king. For the four members
proposed by the prime minister and the presidents of the two parlia-
mentary chambers, the decree specifies that they shall be in office for a
period of five years that is renewable once. For the current members of
the Authority, no renewal has been conducted since their appointment
in 2003.
12. For more detailed information see Issiali (2010) and Guaaybess (2010).
13. Cf. Specifications sheet of SOREAD 2M approved by the CSCA. CSCA
decision No. 14-05 dated 27 July 2005. Official Journal No. 5378 dated
15 December 2005.
14. Cf. Specifications sheet established by the CSCA. CSCA decision No. 15-05
dated 29 July 2005. Official Journal No. 5366 of 3 November 2005.
15. Cf. SNRT specifications sheet approved by the CSCA. CSCA decision No.
01-06 dated 4 January 2006. Official Journal N° 5400 of 2 March 2006.
16. Cf. SAWA specifications sheet established by the CSCA. CSCA decision
No. 10-06 dated 3 May 2006.
17. CSCA decision No. 36-06 of 2 Jumada II 1427 (28 June 2006) authorizing
the marketing of conditional access broadcasting services (BOUQUET
ALAWAEL/ARABESQUE) granted to SAMAHA MEDIA. Cf. www.haca.ma
18. CSCA decision No. 37-06 of 2 Jumada II 1427 (28 June 2006) authorizing
the marketing of conditional access broadcasting services (SHOWTIME)
granted to HK DISTRIBUTION). Cf. www.haca.ma
19. Recent changes in the upper management spheres of these operators
have led the HACA to issue a series of arbitration decisions to settle con-
flicts. The relevant decisions may be consulted on the following website:
www.haca.ma
20. Cf. CSCA’s decision No. 04-05 of 21 Dhul Hijja 1425 (1 February 2005)
dated 20 May 2005 by virtue of which a favourable response was given
to the request lodged by a PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement)
Member of Parliament to order SOREAD 2M to broadcast a right to
respond.
Aârab Issiali 149
21. Cf. CSCA’s decision No. 04-05 of 21 Dhul Hijja 1425 (1 February 2005)
dated 20 May 2005 by virtue of which a favourable response was given
to the request lodged by a PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement)
Member of Parliament to order SOREAD 2M to broadcast a right to
respond.
22. Cf. CSCA decision No. 46-06 dated 27 September 2006 on the rules of
guaranteeing the pluralistic expression of thoughts and opinions in
audiovisual communication channels outside electoral periods. Official
Journal No. 5480 of 7 September 2007, p. 37825.
23. These norms were adopted in principle by the CSCA on 18 April 2007
and should be the subject of a consultation process among the various
parties involved prior to being made public.
24. The Moroccan specificity in this regard gives rise to some tensions on the
part of advertisement professionals who are currently speeding up the
process of creating auto-regulation mechanisms within their own corpo-
ration. Similarly, the recent activation of the Competition Council should
theoretically take charge, either partially or totally, of any conflicts of this
nature.
Bibliography
Guaaybess, T. (2010) ‘La réforme des télévisions arabes, où en est-on?
Réflexions à partir du cas marocain’, Horizons Maghrébins, 62, September,
65–71.
Issiali, A. (2010) ‘La régulation de l’audiovisuel au Maroc: un choix irréversible
ou un alibi?’, Horizons Maghrébins, 62, September, 48–57.
10
Libyan Broadcasting under
al-Qadhafi: The Politics of
Pseudo-Liberalization
Carola Richter
The Libyan media system has been one of the most restricted and
government-tied systems in the Arab world. The wave of liberalization
during the 2000s – however limited it was in other Arab countries –
has almost completely skipped Libya. Despite the perceived need to
professionalize media production and pluralize public discourses,
exemplified by the great popularity of Al Jazeera among Libyan
audiences, the Libyan regime under Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi1 stuck to
its broadcasting policies of education and political indoctrination.
Until 2007, there has only been one Libyan TV channel, serving the
national as well as international audiences. However, in 2007, one
of Qadhafi’s sons, Saif al-Islam, was permitted to launch a new satel-
lite channel, Al Libiya (The Libyan) followed by Al Shababiya (The
Youth), which surprised some observers because they also aired criti-
cal reports and contested taboos.
While these developments seemed to mark the beginning of lib-
eralization in the broadcasting sector, I will argue that setting up
these new channels had been yet another step by the Qadhafi clan
to become publicly identified as the sole agents of possible change
in Libya without having to relinquish its power. As a manifestation
of this pseudo-liberalization, Al Libiya was nationalized in 2009 after
the level of publicized criticism had raised concerns within the con-
servative nomenclature of the regime.
A similar case of alleged liberalization can be found in the press
sector during the 1990s. Back then, Qadhafi himself launched the
‘inner opposition’ magazine La (No) in order to channel critical
discourse into one medium, whilst always being ready to close the
150
Carola Richter 151
magazine, which he eventually did in 1999 (Richter 2004: 68–9).

These mechanisms of pseudo-liberalization are typical of Qadhafi’s
way of dealing with the media and they also characterize the Libyan
broadcasting system since the 2000s.
In the first two parts of this chapter, I will provide a short his-
torical overview of the development of the broadcasting sector until
2000. In this context, the main governing bodies and institutions
structuring Libyan television’s policy and content production will
be identified. In the third part, I will focus on the attempts to
de-liberalize the Libyan broadcasting sector in the 2000s, revealing
the main arguments and policy implications behind these attempts.
In the last part, the uprisings in Libya in spring 2011 will serve as a
starting point to discuss possible developments in the Libyan broad-
casting sector.
Broadcasting in Libya: a history of dependency
Libya started off in the era of broadcasting in the 1930s when it

was still under Italian colonial rule. The Italians, who had already
replaced all Libyan newspapers with their own propaganda outlets,
installed huge speakers in major Libyan towns in 1937 in order to
broadcast shortwave transmissions from Rome (El-Zilitni 1981: 114;
Shwaeb 1980: 196). Only in 1939 did they allow the broadcast of a
daily 15-minute programme in Arabic on the newly founded Radio
Martinelli (Al-Sharif 2000: 37–8). The Italians set up a brutal colonial
regime that left no place for indigenous social development not to
mention the development of a Libyan broadcasting sector. Even
worse, until 1943, when the British military administration finally
suspended Italian rule, one-eighth of the Libyan population had
been killed or starved to death.
The British, however, replaced the imported Italian broadcast-
ing with their own imports supplemented with short Arabic news
programmes (Shwaeb 1980: 196). Politically, Libya became the
first African country to gain formal independence, under King Idris
al-Sanussi, in 1951, but in reality had to rely on foreign help in most of
the sectors, among them the media sector. While many well-educated
Libyans returned from exile and founded newspapers and magazines,
the broadcasting sector was neglected by the government. McDaniel
(1999: 233) concluded that the ruling Idris ‘monarchy was an
152 Libyan Broadcasting under al-Qadhafi
inward-looking regime and its intellectual grounding was in

19th-century spiritualism’. After the decline of British supremacy,
another foreign power – the United States – developed the media
infrastructure and introduced television. The first national radio
channel, Radio Libya, was set up in July 1957 by UNESCO and a US
company. The only television broadcasts available in the 1960s came
from Wheelus-TV, a channel set up on the huge US Wheelus airbase
close to Tripoli. Finally, with the help of US funding, the national TV
channel went on air on the seventeenth anniversary of Libya’s inde-
pendence in 1968, transmitting a three-hour mixture of educational
and religious programmes (Al-Sharif 2000: 67).
Qadhafi’s media ideology: from dependency

to permanent revolution
On 1 September 1969 the so-called Free Officers under the leadership

of Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi launched a coup d’état against King Idris
with the stated aim of liberating the country from (neo)colonial and
imperialist forces. A completely new era began with Qadhafi shaping
Libya’s development for the next more than 40 years. Hence, the
media sector was strongly shaped by Qadhafi’s philosophy and poli-
tics. Following the example of Egypt’s Nasser, Qadhafi immediately
seized all broadcasting institutions and attached them directly to his
Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) (El-Zilitni 1981: 121). All
of Qadhafi’s speeches were broadcast live on radio and television.
Furthermore, shortly after the revolution, two new radio channels –
The Holy Quran and Voice of the Arab Homeland – went on air,
and television broadcasting was extended from four to seven hours
daily. The instrumental character of the media in Qadhafi’s regime
was underlined by Article 13 of the new constitution from December
1969 which guaranteed ‘free expression of opinion within the limits
of the interest of the people and the principles of the revolution’ – an
extension that legitimized arbitrary interventions of the RCC in the
media sector (Mattes 1986: 45).
In the next decades, Qadhafi changed his policies several times,
trying to establish a truly revolutionary society. However, he never
really loosened his grip on the media as he regarded them as crucial
instruments in pushing national development and political par-
ticipation. In 1972, he had suppressed all existing newspapers, and
Carola Richter 153
by 1973 an administrative revolution had been proclaimed which

attached all media to so-called people’s committees. These commit-
tees were meant to represent local or professional entities, so as to
establish a direct popular democracy. As a consequence, in 1974 the
Ministry of Information was resolved and a new administrative body,
the Libyan Jamahiriya Broadcasting Corporation (LJBC),2 had to
fulfil its duties in the broadcasting sector.
Qadhafi spoke of a ‘jamahirization’ – a takeover by the masses –
and renamed Libya the ‘Great Jamahiriya’. His philosophy of a
permanent revolution – the ‘Third Universal Theory’,3 as he called it –
was codified in his ‘Green Book’ and affected directly the regime’s
approach to the media. In the chapter on the press he stated that
‘the press is a means of expression of the society and is not a means
of expression of a natural or a corporate person. Logically and
democratically, the press, therefore, cannot be owned by either of
these’ (Al Qathafi 1999: 37–8). As a consequence, starting in 1976
the newspaper system was completely restructured. Newspapers
were only allowed to represent special entities such as professional
syndicates or the people’s conference and to cover their news. The
broadcasting sector with its centralized structure, however, did not fit
too well into this policy of decentralized popular democracy. It had
to serve another goal of the revolution and became the centrepiece
of revolutionary political and social mobilization. The Five-Year-Plan
of Broadcasting 1976–80 intended to ‘develop a docile media instru-
ment’ (Al-Sharif 2000: 87). In order to widen the reach of television,
mobile broadcasting devices were installed so as to transmit pro-
grammes in remote areas. Colour TV was also introduced.
In his review of four decades of the Libyan revolution, Mattes
(2009: 5) argued convincingly that ‘the Libyan model of direct
democracy shows … the deficit which is typical for this model of
participation: the hyperactive state of participation of new, politi-
cally conscious citizens intended by Qadhafi was in reality always
a fiction of its ideal’. But although Qadhafi restructured his policies
and Libyan institutions several times and adapted them to new
circumstances, he never retreated from trying to transform Libyan
society according to his initial state model based on overall political
mobilization. In the late 1970s, he was particularly unsatisfied with
the participation of the masses and blamed ‘traditional structures’
and the mass media for this. Therefore, close followers of Qadhafi
set up Revolutionary Committees in order to speed up the slow

process of political mobilization. Eventually, in 1980 this move-
ment became the major political force in Libya. Making 1980 the
year of ‘Ideological Criticism on the Mass Media’ (Mattes 1986: 51),
Qadhafi abolished all bodies of media regulation and all forms of
institutionalized media and proclaimed that ‘our system of direct
popular democracy is, of itself, a sufficient broadcasting system’
(El-Zilitni 1981: 135–6). Consequently, the Revolutionary Committees
took over the national news agency, national and foreign broad-
casting, most parts of the press, newspaper distribution and related
activities, as well as cinema, theatre and culture (Al-Sharif 2000:
144). When the US–Libyan confrontation reached its climax in the
mid-1980s, the broadcasting sector was extended in order to reach
not only the Libyan people but also international audiences. Libya
participated in the regional Arabsat organization that launched
the first regional satellite in 1985. The country initially held a
share of 18.2 per cent of Arabsat, second to dominant Saudi Arabia
(McDaniel 1999: 242).4
However, in 1987 when the purely ideologically motivated strate-
gies of the Revolutionary Committees had brought the country to a
near economic breakdown, Qadhafi made yet another radical turn
in his general and media politics. In order not to lose its personal
legitimacy among the majority of the people, Qadhafi had to partly
turn away from methods of the cultural revolution implemented
by the Revolutionary Committees and limited their power. In par-
ticular, due to a shortage in goods and service supply, Qadhafi had
to introduce minor economic reforms and opened the country’s
borders. Emphasizing a new liberal attitude, he additionally set up
a human rights and press freedom charter (Mattes 2001: 55). In
1988, the central governing body of broadcasting, the LJBC, was
re-established. Libyan journalists and intellectuals enjoyed a short
phase of freedom.
This phase of permitted limited criticism did not end in 1993;
however, media and national development was severely retarded by
the United Nations sanctions imposed on Libya (Hinz 2005). The
sanctions were a result of Qadhafi’s and the Revolutionary Committees’
radical anti-Americanism in the 1980s and state-supported terrorism.5
The sanctions strongly affected the import of information technology
such as computers amongst other technical material. While newspapers
Carola Richter 155
suffered from a shortage of paper, television became detached from

the fast technological and professional developments that took place
in the 1990s. This became obvious in particular with the emergence
of Al Jazeera in 1996, which was soon one of the Libyan audience’s
preferred channels (see e.g. Elareshi and Gunter 2010). Libya managed
to launch its own satellite channel, Al Jamahiriya, in August 1996, but
was unable to compete with the journalistic and visual professional
standards of the pan-Arabic channels.
More importantly, the substantial sanctions prevented the neces-
sary expansion of the oil sector and therewith directly endangered
the financial and structural survival of the state. This critical situ-
ation could only be resolved through a rapprochement with the
United States, which required the rescinding of weapons of mass
destruction programmes. In this context, a liberalization strategy in
politics and the economy would be helpful to underline the goodwill
of the Libyan regime (Mattes 2009: 3).
The 2000s and the politics of pseudo-liberalization
Thus, starting in the early 2000s, Libya finally gave in to the pressure
to liberalize economically and politically, like many other Arab states
had done before. However, the Libyan approach to liberalization can
be described as yet another strategy to secure the power monopoly
by way of limited institutional restructuring and transfer of personal
responsibilities.
After Qadhafi managed to have the United Nations lift the sanc-
tions in 2003,6 he confronted his followers in the Revolutionary
Committees with concrete steps to economic reforms. St John
(2007) observed that ‘he stepped up the pressure in June 2003,
declaring the public sector a failure, calling for the privatization
of the economy, and pledging to bring Libya into the World Trade
Organization’. The appointment of Shukri Ghanem, an advocate of
privatization and liberalization, as prime minister in 2003 symbolized
his willingness to adapt to new circumstances. But, at the same time,
Qadhafi did not refrain from what the Libyan-American academic
Mansour Omar Kikhia (1997) called ‘the politics of contradiction’.
Already in 2006, after feeling pressurized by hardliners in the
Revolutionary Committees, he replaced Ghanem with a more main-
stream candidate, Ali Baghdadi al-Mahmudi (St John 2007). By then,
only the oil sector had been partly liberalized. In one of Qadhafi’s
detours, he criticized excessive dependency on foreign investments
and oil revenues. As a consequence, in November 2006 he made
joint ventures a must for investments thereby setting up obstacles
for foreign investors (St John 2007). St John concluded that ‘in the
interim, economic reform in Libya will remain a two-track, two-
speed process with reform in the oil and gas industry outpacing that
in other sectors’.
It, therefore, came as a surprise to most observers when in 2007 a
new, allegedly private TV channel and two newspapers were intro-
duced. This step seemed to point to a liberalization in the media
sector as well, because, until then, only the LJBC had been allowed
to launch channels. However, since the launch of the Al Jamahiriya
satellite channel in 1996 no concrete improvements had been made
by the Corporation. Despite various announcements, Al Jamahiriya
TV remained the only Libyan TV channel.7 Contrary to, for exam-
ple, the Lebanese channels, the Libyan satellite channel broadcast
exactly the same content as the single terrestrial channel in Libya.
While other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt
imposed filter technology on satellite channels or temporarily tried
to prevent people from installing satellite dishes, Libya refrained
from restricting the transmission and reception of foreign television.
However, this ambivalent policy in the broadcasting sector and the
media sector in general was not meant to be an opening strategy of
the Libyan regime. The alleged liberalization was instead connected
to the person of Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi and the idea of positioning
him as a new twenty-first-century revolutionary in the Libyan politi-
cal system.
In line with a rising new generation in some Arab regimes around
2000,8 Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi made use of this new symbolism of
young reform power at the start of the era after sanctions. His sec-
ond son, Saif al-Islam, was positioned as the role model of a new
reform-oriented Libya. By that time, Saif al-Islam (born in 1972) had
received a Libyan degree in architecture as well as an MBA degree
from an Austrian university. He then pursued a doctoral degree at
the renowned London School of Economics, focusing on the role
of NGOs and good governance. During these formative years, Saif
al-Islam had worked at the National Association to Fight Drug
Abuse, preparing himself for more responsible political positions in
Carola Richter 157
Libya. In 1999, he transformed this association into an organization

with comprehensive political, social and developmental goals. As a
result, the so-called Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity
Associations (GIFCA) and since 2003 the Gaddafi International
Charity and Development Foundation (GICDF)9 became de facto
an instrument of Libya’s foreign policy, paving the way to a new
international recognition of Libya. The successful mediation in the
Jolo hostage crisis in 2000, the negotiations regarding compensation
for victims of Libyan state terror of the 1980s and the negotiations
regarding the Euro-Mediterranean partnership made Saif al-Islam
appear as an influential and reliable reformer in the eyes of interna-
tional observers (Mattes 2005: 13).
At the same time, Saif al-Islam’s diplomatic activities were meant
to secure him a political position from which he could slowly extend
his influence over domestic developments. Mattes (2005: 12) con-
cludes that his father, Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi, therewith tried to pave
a way for a successor from his own family, circumventing the hard-
liners in the Revolutionary Committees. Thus, in 2005, the installed
tandem of prime minister Shukri Ghanem and Saif al-Islam was
meant to enforce economic reforms. However, their ambitious plans
failed due to the resistance of influential cadres in the Revolutionary
Committees (Mattes 2005: 16). After not succeeding in key domestic
policy sectors, Saif al-Islam made a detour by using the media sector
to gain influence.
In a widely recognized speech at the annual meeting of the
Youth National Organization in the summer of 2006, Saif al-Islam
criticized the current situation in Libya and in particular corruption
and pushed for a reform programme which he called Libya al-Ghad
(Libya for Tomorrow). According to newspaper reports, Saif al-Islam
said that this programme ‘aims to reconstruct the country all over
again and repair what bureaucrats have ruined along the years’,10
especially in education and infrastructure. With subsequent speeches
during the same year, he reinforced his intention to radically reform
society and redefine the revolutionary attitude of the Libyan regime.
He talked about transforming ‘the model of “Mao Tse Tung-China”
to the model of “Lee Kwan Yu-Singapore”; “Nasserism” to “globaliza-
tion” and from “the revolution” to “the state”’.11
However, his vision of reform was in line with Mu’ammar
al-Qadhafi’s recurring amendments to his actual politics but never
diverged from his initial aim to form a truly democratic and

participative model society. A newspaper commented:
The most important point understood from Sayf al-Islam’s speech

is that at the same time he is attacking corruption and the people
he referred to on more than one occasion as the fat cats, and the
practices of the revolutionary forces, and trying to place sufficient
distance between himself and them so that he would not be
linked with the disasters they caused in the past, he also affirms
his loyalty to the Jamahiriyah regime as a concept, a principle
and a value, as well as his loyalty to its leader Colonel Mu’ammar
al-Qadhafi.12
However, the promulgated reform programme did not result in

concrete steps but merely remained a form of publicized criticism.
In 2007, one year after his famous speech and in a first attempt to
institutionalize critical debate, Saif al-Islam declared the launch of
a whole set of new media institutions: two new newspapers (Oea in
Tripoli and Quryna in Benghazi), a radio station as well as a satel-
lite TV channel managed by his One-Nine-Company which worked
under the umbrella of the GICDF.13 Rumours said that the new TV
channel, named Al Libiya (The Libyan), had a 20 million USD budget
for the first year.14
Indeed, in 2008, there seemed to be signs that public taboos could
be slowly lifted in the new media, and discourses could be pluralized
in Libya. Some of the sensitive issues addressed on Al Libiya chan-
nel included social issues such as unemployment.15 The channel
also became attractive among Libyan audiences because it featured
programmes dealing with and discussing local issues. Despite its aim
of educating and mobilizing people, the Jamahiriya TV channel had
neglected audiences’ primary interest in local issues for years and
focused instead on international or national regime politics (Richter
2004: 82). Covering local problems was thus a first step for Saif
al-Islam to underline his positive otherness to the Libyans and his
willingness to reform domestic politics. In addition, Saif al-Islam’s
foundation published a CD with footage and statements of former
prisoners accusing members of the Revolutionary Committees of
committing torture crimes.16 Furthermore, St John (2008) reported
in November 2008 of ‘a rare event, a public [televised] debate
Carola Richter 159
between Qaddafi and senior government officials in which the latter

challenged the leader’s proposal’ as well as of a ‘female caller to a
radio talkshow [who] criticized both Muammar al-Qaddafi and Saif
al-Islam al-Qaddafi on the air’. Even another satellite channel aimed
at targeting Libyan youth, Al Shababiya al-Libiya (The Libyan Youth),
had been permitted to be launched by the al-Ghad Media Company.
And last but not least, in the early days of 2009, new professional-
looking websites close to Saif al-Islam, such as alwatan-libya.com
(Homeland Libya), started criticizing various Libyan policies, com-
mittees and officials.17
While these incidents indicated a new atmosphere in the Libyan
public sphere, Tamir Abu al-Aynayn from the Libyan opposition
in exile cynically concluded that ‘all the activities that took place,
including new newspapers or forums or associations, sprang from
one organization. Therefore, despite our appreciation of the steps
they took, this is a continuation of the policy of exclusion and
marginalization.’18 Another oppositional actor, Habib al-Sanussi,
coined the term ‘al-Ghad-Journalism’, meaning that the kind of
criticism broadcast was only possible by an organization protected
by Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi, presumably in order to vent tensions in
society.19
Indeed, Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi reacted quickly when he and the
hardliners in the regime saw this liberalization from above chal-
lenging the established political ties and social order. In April 2009,
Al Libiya aired the talkshow Qalam rassas (Bullet talk) featuring the
prominent leftist Egyptian political journalist Hamdy Qandil address-
ing the sensitive topic of Egypt’s relations to Hezbollah. Within a
few days after airing the show, the administration of both al-Ghad
satellite channels was transferred from Saif al-Islam’s company to
the official Libyan Jamahiriya Broadcasting Corporation and their
boards of directors were immediately ousted. Officially, this move
was explained as being only a formal step. However, rumours say
that Egypt’s President Mubarak was furious with the offensive dis-
cussion and directly called Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi asking him to take
appropriate measures.20 Within a few days, Al Libiya channel stopped
broadcasting, thereby proving that the liberalization had only been
a test balloon.21 Al Shababiya, however, was taken over into the
bouquet of the LJBC, providing the country finally with a second
official channel.
The hardliners used the backlash in the media sector further by

temporary banning Saif al-Islam’s weekly newspaper Oea in mid-2009
as well as from January to July 2010 and again in November 2010.22
Other sources claim that in January 2010 websites of the opposition
in exile as well as social media sites such as youtube.com had been
blocked due to what they said was a general increase of the hard-
liners’ influence within the regime.23 In a last move of de-liberalization
before the uprisings in February 2011 began, Saif al-Islam’s Charity
and Development Foundation ‘resolved in mid-December 2010 that
it would no longer promote human rights and political reform
in Libya’ (St John 2011). St John argues that the old guards in
the regime had posed an ‘insuperable obstacle’ to any attempt to
reform Libya. In order to appease this inner power circle, Mu’ammar
al-Qadhafi stopped buttressing his son’s activities. The withdrawal
from any critical domestic agenda came right after the foundation had
released a human rights report that urged the authorities to build up
civil society and lift their ‘stranglehold’ on the media. Furthermore,
the so-called Libyan Press News Agency, which had started as a new
offshoot of Saif al-Islam’s al-Ghad Media Corporation in January
2010,24 was forced by security guards to close its offices. Authorities
‘informed the officials in Al-Ghad company they no longer wished
to see the agency’s presence inside Libya’.25
The 2011 uprisings: revolutionary de/liberalization
After the toppling of long-term autocrats Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in

Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, uprisings started in Libya on
17 February 2011. Immediately, the national Libyan media situated
in Tripoli rallied around Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi. In particular, Saif
al-Islam, who had been seen by many as the proponent of democratic
reform, became one of the most publicly active supporters of his
father.
The official Libyan media were once again reunited under the
umbrella of fighting foreign ‘aggression’ and for ‘permanent revo-
lution’ as defined by Qadhafi. Even Al Libiya TV, Saif al-Islam’s
former station which had been closed by the authorities in 2009,
was reopened on 24 February 2011 in order to provide the Qadhafi
clan with a previously well-known moderate platform to further dis-
seminate regime propaganda. Saif al-Islam himself stated on air that
Carola Richter 161
‘forces conspiring against Libya are now aware that there is a real
and neutral media outlet that will relay the truth about what is hap-
pening in Libya’.26 At the same time, the two other channels under
the authority of the regime, Al Jamahiriya TV and Al Shababiya TV,
celebrated Qadhafi as the ‘Great Brother Leader’ in hour-long videos
and talkshows. The internalized habits of disseminating dull regime
propaganda were fully reloaded in the whole broadcasting sector.
On the other front, the rebels in the eastern provinces were keen to
establish their own media in order to finally circumvent the Qadhafi
clan’s media monopoly. As part of a quasi-revolutionary liberaliza-
tion of the broadcasting sector, several Internet-TV streams were
launched and the satellite channel Libya al-Ahrar (Libya of the Free)
went on air in May 2011. Mahmud Shammam, a prominent Libyan
opposition activist who was appointed information minister in the
Libyan Transitional National Council after his return from exile,
was the leading figure behind the new channel. It transmits from a
building in Doha, using the equipment and offices of the national
Qatari Al Rayyan channel. Shammam stressed the independence of
the channel and its distinction from the typical Qadhafi media: ‘We
founded the station to serve as a state rather than revolution channel.
In other words, its project is the future Libyan state after the regime
in Libya has been changed.’27 While this is yet to be proven by way
of content analysis, the satellite providers soon made their decision:
Egyptian Nilesat as well as France’s Hotbird satellite removed the
channels close to Qadhafi (Al Jamahiriya TV, Al Shababiya TV and
Al Libiya TV) from their responders, thus making them unavailable
to large parts of Arab and European audiences, and they welcomed
the rebels’ channel immediately.
Conclusion
Until 2011, the Libyan media system had never undergone a

liberalization allowing media producers to operate newspapers
or broadcasting channels independent from regime interference.
Neither were journalists able to push the limits of freedom of expres-
sion further than Qadhafi’s nomenclature allowed. Superficial signs
of liberalization like ‘privately owned’ media were simply meant to
create an impression of reform in order to further legitimize the rule
of the Qadhafi clan. The establishment of Saif al-Islam’s al-Ghad
media outlets has admittedly helped to professionalize the visual

presentation of television programmes and the adaptation of formats
to pan-Arab TV standards. However, this did not mean a change in
content or political approach by the broadcasting media in Libya.
While there was no slow liberalization of the broadcasting sector
in Libya in the past decade, the system literarily broke down after
the militant uprisings in Libya began in 2011. Until August 2011
and for the duration of the uprisings, two hostile entities domi-
nated the scene: Qadhafi’s propaganda media and the transitional
government’s counter-propaganda channels. However, after Qadhafi’s
channels had been taken off the major satellites, the main building
of the LJBC was bombed by NATO planes in July and finally, when
the rebels took over Tripoli on 22 August, the TV channels were
closed for good. Neglecting media liberalization in Qadhafi’s era had
thus been counteracted by the total abolishment of Libya’s main
media channels after the regime’s breakdown.
After Qadhafi’s death and a complete systemic transformation,
predictions about further developments in the media sector are dif-
ficult to make. In contrast to other Arab countries, the experiences of
Libyan journalists and audiences with a pluralistic media scene have
been limited and superficial. Processes of mutual learning will now
have to be supported by a flexible leadership which tolerates criti-
cism. Moreover, it is not yet clear whether the political and financial
dependency of the opposition’s media on Qatar and other donor
states may hinder or enhance the possibility of a smooth transition
of Libyan television into a pluralistic media system.
Notes
The English version of Arab newspaper articles or websites has been cited
according to the translation of Mideastwire.com.
1. The Latin transcription of Arabic names in books and newspapers is not
uniform. Especially the name of the former Libyan leader is transcribed
in multiple ways. A correct transcription would read al-Qadhdhafi. In the
text, ‘Qadhafi’ will be used.
2. According to Article 3 of the Law 91/1973 (renewed in 1988), the LJBC
shall prepare a guideline for the broadcasting system in the context of
the state’s policies in order to deepen revolutionary understanding, dis-
seminate Arab-Islamic culture and to contribute to an enlightened public
opinion. The LJBC was in charge of all national radio and television
channels, including content production in the four locations of Tripoli,
Carola Richter 163
Benghazi, Sirte and Sabha as well as the technical maintenance of the

transmitting stations all over Libya. As of 2003, the LJBC had about 2500
employees.
3 Referring to the supposed failure of capitalist and Marxist world orders,
Qadhafi claimed to present a ‘third’ way as being the ‘final solution to
the problem of the instrument of governing’ (al Qaddafi 1999: 5). To put
it in a nutshell, he abolished parties, voting and parliaments as a form of
dictatorship and opted for a very special form of direct popular democ-
racy flanked by revolutionary education.
4. In 2011 Libya held 11.2 per cent of the shares, making it the third largest
shareholder of Arabsat, see www.arabsat.com/pages/ArabLeague.aspx
5. The Libyan regime has been held responsible mainly for the La Belle dis-
cotheque bombing in Berlin in 1986, the bombing of an aeroplane over
the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, as well as the UTA Flight bombing
over Niger in 1989.
6. The sanctions were already suspended in 1999, but finally lifted in 2003
after Libya agreed to all US and UN demands. For details see Hinz (2005).
7. For example, there had been plans to establish a ‘Green Book’ channel
(Al-Quds al-Arabi, 8 October 2005, http://81.144.208.20:9090/pdf/2005/
10Oct/08OctSat/qds01.pdf) as well as an Islamic missionary channel
which remained plans only.
8. After the death of King Hussein of Jordan in 1999, his son was enthroned
as King Abdullah II. At about the same time, Mohammed VI of Morocco
succeeded his father King Hassan II. Furthermore, President Hafez
al-Assad died in 2000, and his son Bashar took over power. At this time,
none of these new regime leaders was older than 40.
9. The latter was founded in 2003 in Switzerland as an international non-
governmental organization. Since 1999 Saif al-Islam had been president
of the national Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations
(GIFCA), which can be labelled a predecessor of the GICDF.
10. Al-Hayat, 21 August 2006, http://international.daralhayat.com/archivearticle/
106599
11. Al-Quds al-Arabi, 18 October 2006, http://81.144.208.20:9090/pdf/2006/
10Oct/18OctWed/qds17.pdf
12. Al-Quds al-Arabi, 18 October 2006, http://81.144.208.20:9090/pdf/2006/
10Oct/18OctWed/qds17.pdf
13. One-Nine refers to the date of the revolution on 1 September 1969.
According to Mattes (2005: 10) the One-Nine-Group was a holding that
channelled investments into Libya and/or functioned as an investment
arm of the GICDF. Several companies firmed under the umbrella of
One-Nine, presumably also the al-Ghad Media Company.
14. Asharq al-Awsat, 16 August 2007, www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&
issueno=10488&article=432799&search=%C7%E1%DE%D0%C7%DD%
ED&state=true
15. See an example on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tNFLOv2-4A&
feature=related
16. Asharq al-Awsat, 31 July 2008, www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&

issueno=10838&article=480898&search=%C7%E1%DE%D0%C7%DD%
ED&state=true
17. Aljazeera.net, 6 March 2009, www.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive?
ArchiveId=1171188
18. Aljazeera.net, 10 November 2008, www.aljazeera.net/news/archive/
archive?ArchiveId=1161097
19. Aljazeera.net, 6 March 2009, www.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive?
ArchiveId=1171188
20. Al-Quds al-Arabi, 29 April 2009, http://81.144.208.20:9090/pdf/2009/
04/04-29/All.pdf. Other sources say that the channel was taken off the
air in the middle of an interview programme with a member of the
Revolutionary Committees; see www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/
libya/saif-qadhafi.htm. The actual reasons behind the shut down are not
clear yet.
21. In a hasty move, al-Ghad Media Corp. tried to transfer the channel
to Jordan and then to Britain to resume broadcasting under the name
Al Mutawassit channel, but never did. See Asharq al-Awsat English Edition,
20 January 2011, www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=5&id=19583
22. Aljazeera.net, 4 November 2010, http://aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
34F80A23-71FA-4F51-95C1-46BC27E7CBB1.htm
23. Asharq al-Awsat, 4 February 2010, www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=
4&issueno=11391&article=555777&search=%C7%E1%DE%D0%C7%DD
%ED&state=true
24. See Asharq al-Awsat English Edition, 20 January 2011, www.asharq-e.com/
news.asp?section=5&id=19583
25. Libyapress.net, 6 December 2010.
26. Speech on Al Libiya TV, 24 February 2011.
27. Asharq al-Awsat, 17 May 2011, www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&
article=622098&issueno=11858
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Al Qathafi, M. (1999) The Green Book, 3rd edn (Tripoli: World Center for the
Study and Research of the Green Book).
Al-Sharif, A. D. (2000) Activities and Developments of the Libyan Radio and
Television Broadcasting from 1939–1997 [in Arabic] (Benghazi: Center for
Media Research).
Elareshi, M. and Gunter, B. (2010) ‘News consumption among young Libyan
adults: are new satellite TV news services displacing local TV news?’,
Arab Media & Society 12, www.arabmediasociety.com/articles/downloads/
20101210211137_Elareshi.pdf
El-Zilitni, A. M. (1981) ‘Mass media for literacy in Libya: a feasibility study’,
unpublished thesis, Ohio State University.
Hinz, A. (2005) Die Sanktionen gegen Libyen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang).
[The Sanctions against Libya].
Carola Richter 165
Kikhia, M. O. (1997) Libya’s Qaddafi: The Politics of Contradiction

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida).
Mattes, H. (1986) ‘Die Entwicklung des libyschen Pressewesens 1969–86’,
Communications, 12(3), 41–60. [The Development of the Libyan Press Sector
1969–86].
—— (2001) Bilanz der libyschen Revolution. Drei Dekaden politischer Herrschaft
Mu’ammar al-Qaddafis (Hamburg: Wuquf) [Review of the Libyan Revolution:
Three Decades of Political Incumbency of Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi].
—— (2005) ‘Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi’, Orient, 46(1), 5–17.
—— (2009) 40 Jahre libysche Revolution: Mehr Erfolg bei der Machtsicherung
als bei der Landesentwicklung (Hamburg: GIGA Focus Nahost) [40 Years of
Libyan Revolution: More Success in Securing Power then in Developing
the Country], www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/
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(Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut) [The Media System in Libya: Actors
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development’, unpublished thesis, Ohio State University.
11
Algerian Public Authorities in
the Face of Transnational Media
Competition: Between Status
Quo and Deregulation
Belkacem Mostefaoui
In the spring of 2011, when social movements were sending

ripples of shock through political powers in Tunis and Cairo,
Algeria’s head of state decided to initiate consultations for ‘change’, a
motto trumpeted as the means and ways of coping with an unyield-
ing challenging of the authoritarian regime. The 1996 constitution
was one of the regime’s key fundamental texts subjected to review
within the context of a ‘broader free debate’, to quote the official
statement’s wording, along the same lines as a new draft law on
information.
Adopted by the Council of Ministers in one of its sessions in
September 2011, the draft document introduces a law addressing
broadcasting specifically and aimed at opening up the sector to
private investment. The text equally provides for the creation of
an ‘independent broadcasting regulator’. In November 2011, this
organic law was still being debated in the National Assembly. It
would be a fruitless exercise to try and gauge so soon the possi-
ble impact of this new piece of legislation on media use and the
paths thus opened for freedom of communication in the country.1
However, it is crucial that we touch on the methods of organizing
the debates leading up to the development of future legislation on the
subject. We will attempt to draw up a synthesis of the premises
that made it possible over the past two decades, and in the wake of
terrorism and the emergency state, to consecrate a media regulatory
regime that is unique in the world in that it allows ‘windows of open-
ness’ to private investment in the press, but tightly seals television
166
Belkacem Mostefaoui 167
and radio broadcasting. Our main theory is the following: the

new media which have been emerging since the early 2000s –
predominantly foreign ones – are behind not only the deregulation
of the Algerian media (broadcasting and the Internet) but also the
reorientation of public policies in this field. Certain indicators and
facts observed on the ground in recent years reveal the emergence of
new non-regulatory situations that further reinforce the de jure open-
ings created to allow the penetration of the productions of cultural
industries of multinational firms.
Review of a de jure ‘openness’: Information Act of

3 April 1990
In its constitutive order of 9 November 1967, Radio Télévision

Algérienne (RTA) was granted ‘monopoly over radio and television
broadcasting throughout the national territory. RTA alone shall have
the right to: operate the network of radio and television broadcasting
facilities, organize, maintain and, if necessary, modify such facilities;
produce and distribute programmes, and engage in co-productions
with any national or foreign organism.’ The article thus conse-
crates the full control by public authorities of radio and television
broadcasting.
The 1982 Information Code reinforced the bureaucratic nature of
this management by stipulating in its Article 5 that ‘the directors [of
mass media] shall have sole authority in implementing the directions
of the political leadership’. This translates into a concentration of the
media under state supervision, and the concentration of manage-
ment prerogatives in the hands of directors.
The official policy on information is clearly marked by three major
texts: on the one hand the Information Code, and on the other
hand two legal instruments created by the single party, the National
Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale – FLN), namely the
report on information policy and the brief resolution adopted by the
7th session of FLN’s Central Committee in June 1982. The laws and
the doctrinal texts that followed had as purpose to ensure that state
monopoly on media orientation became ironclad.
The drafters of the Information Code seem to have a peculiar
understanding of the right to information and the freedom of
imparting information.2
168 Algerian Public Authorities and Media Competition
These general conditions providing a framework for media activity

were further reinforced and consolidated with other elements per-
taining to the status of information professionals and to access to
information sources. The scope of a journalist’s action is circum-
scribed first by his responsibilities (to the state and to the revolution)
and then by his more political than ethical duties. Two articles serve
to root this premise: ‘[the journalist] shall practice his profession in
a way that is responsible and committed to fulfilling the objectives
of the revolution’ (Art. 35), and ‘by choosing an advocacy course
that serves the choices consecrated in the country’s fundamental
texts’ (Art. 42).
In 1986, ENTV (Entreprise Nationale de Télévision) was created.
Article 2 of the decree of 1 July states: ‘The company shall operate
under the supervisory authority of the Ministry of Information’, its
Director General, appointed by decree at a recommendation from
the minister, ‘shall implement the policy of the supervisory entity ...,
draw up programme schedules and oversee their implementation’.
The prerogatives and composition of the company’s advisory board –
covered in Articles 9, 14 and 15 – were not likely to reduce the scope
of power of the representatives of the supervisory authority.
Attempts to set up broadcasting regulatory bodies

The creation of regulatory bodies and the regulatory norms adopted
by public powers at the beginning of the 1980s were essentially
brought into force to counter what the political discourse of the FLN
in the late 1980s and early 1990s perceived as ‘waves of cultural inva-
sion’. The possible reception of other radio and TV stations via direct
telecommunication satellites was considered as a breach that had the
potential of consecrating a de-facto de-monopolization.
The first regulatory body set up in Algeria was the High Information
Council (HCI), formalized by the decree of 10 November 1984.
The HCI’s creation was intended to strengthen and coordinate
government action in the media field. Always within a monopoly
framework, Article 2 of the text assigns to this structure the responsi-
bility of ‘ensuring equality in the right to information for all citizens
and all regions of the country, and protecting the various compo-
nents of the social group, particularly youth, against any prejudice to
national identity and values’. The HCI’s membership was exclusively
made up of the representatives of state authority starting with the
head of state himself who presided over it. Other members included
the president of the National Assembly, the FLN party leader, the
prime minister and the ministers of the interior, foreign affairs, infor-
mation and culture, and national defence. The creation of the HCI
translated the government’s desire to regain control over media use
within society. In fact, the edifice of state monopoly over the media
had begun to crumble in the early 1980s. Stillborn, the HCI was no
more than an attempt by authorities to set up a structure to monitor
the field and issue measures likely to ‘shield’ citizens – especially
youth – from too broad an exposure to foreign satellite channels,
already gaining momentum at the time.
By a decree of 19 January 1985, a regulatory body specifically
designed for the broadcasting industry was created under the aegis of
the HCI. Made up of 12 members representing various ministries and
the inevitable party, the Inter-ministerial Broadcasting Commission
was primarily tasked with ‘orientation, planning and coordination of
programmes and the distribution of film and television productions’
(Art. 1). In more ample detail, Article 2 entrusts this Commission
with the ‘mission of examining and deciding on the annual pro-
grammes of film and television drama production and co-production,
of making recommendations and issuing guidelines on the content
of films to be made in order to guarantee adherence to our national
values, the country’s choices and aesthetical requirements; and of
drawing out guidelines in matters of purchasing and exporting films,
television series and other televised programmes while ensuring the
respect of the country’s values, principles and orientation’. While in
practical terms this new structure carried out no activity whatsoever,
its creation did reveal how deeply its designers wished to restore state
monopoly at a time when strong external turbulences were forecast
and threatened its very existence.
The Supreme Information Council

The broadcasting regulatory body governed by the Algerian
Information Act of 3 April 1990 marked a turning point in the state’s
power games in matters of freedom of communication, at least at
official levels. This law marked a break from the 1982 ‘Information
Code’ and all earlier regulatory measures of the field in the sense that
it carried the promise of an unprecedented openness of the broad-
casting field (Mostefaoui 1996). Indeed, the law represented the
next generation of instruments, after the February 1989 constitution,

intended to end FLN’s monopoly over public life. The decree pro-
claiming the state of emergency, dated 9 February 1992 – and still in
force, had shelved this piece of legislation.
Revisiting some of its points here enables us to better understand
the progress of media regulation in Algeria since all provisions that
followed from early 2000 referred to it, particularly those that finally
gave birth to the first regulatory body to adopt labour norms that
were the closest to universal standards.
The opening up of media use in society is enshrined in Articles
3 and 4 of the draft law. The text proclaims the press, radio and
television sectors as open to private stakeholders, cooperatives or
associations. As a newly established regulatory body, the Supreme
Information Council (SIC) was assigned critical responsibilities
and missions. Thus, Article 59 stipulates that: ‘A Supreme Council
of Information shall be created as an independent administrative
regulatory authority, enjoying a legal personality status and financial
autonomy.’
The authors of the 3 April 1990 Information Act dedicate the
entire body of chapter VI, all 17 articles, to the Supreme Information
Council (SIC). While section 59 may still sound more like a credo
and warrant smiles of scepticism from Algerian journalists (as well as
from analysts of the evolution of television production systems in the
country), it may also be perceived as the mainstay of a standard-setting
instrument worth investigating. In its preamble on the numerous and
diverse missions of the Council, the article solemnly stipulates ‘the
creation of a Supreme Information Council, an independent admin-
istrative regulatory authority, enjoying legal personality status and
financial autonomy’. The regulatory mission of the SIC covers all
media of the country whether they belong to the state, to political
parties or were privately owned. We will shed light here only on those
aspects of the Council that apply to television. Article 72 of the text
determines the composition of the Council: out of its 12 members,
appointed by decree, three are chosen by the head of state, three by
the president of the National Assembly and six are elected by absolute
majority by professional journalists from radio, television and written
media fields ‘with at least 15 years in the practice of journalism’.
The extent of the Council’s autonomy in relation to existing politi-
cal powers is therefore relative: it selects half of its members and
the other half is comprised of journalists who have long served as

minions of the ‘old regime’. The power to challenge the regime
and the autonomy of role-players in relation to power seem rather
weak. The SIC’s responsibilities include: ‘to determine the methods
of enforcing the rights to free expression for various currents of
thought, to ensure the independence and impartiality of public-
sector broadcasting production bodies as well as the respective
autonomy of the sector’s lines of occupation’.3 One important
prerogative of the SIC is that it ‘issues licences and develops specifi-
cations for radio and television frequency use’. The article adds: ‘The
cable distribution of radio, audio and television programmes, as well
as the use of radio frequencies, are subject to licensing and obey the
general conditions set by the administration after consultations with
the Supreme Information Council. This utilization represents a form
of private tenure of the state’s public domain.’
The executive decree of 7 April 1992 confers on the SIC the exclu-
sive prerogative of issuing licences to operate radio frequencies for
broadcasting radio/television programmes, as well as the cable-based
distribution of audio and/or television programmes’. By virtue of
the same text (Art. 7), the SIC is equally endowed with the power to
set the lifespan of licences granted whether the operator’s coverage
is national, regional or local. However, Article 9 of this text warns
that it remains up to the ministries of communications and tele-
communications to ‘set the volume of radio frequencies of which the
utilization is granted by the SIC’. Last but not least is the ability of
the institution to be party to legal proceedings (Art. 66). Even within
the Council, the first rules of conduct laid down for the organization
of activities grant an overriding power to the president chosen by the
head of state. Indeed, a decision dated 12 February 1991 and laying
down the rules of procedure within this authority gives the president
the power to introduce items on the agenda (Art. 5). Keeping in
mind connivance ties, it is highly unlikely that elected professionals
would display enough independence to resort to Article 6 which
allows them to only ‘recommend, in writing, the introduction of one
or more items on the agenda of a regular meeting, and submit the
proposal to the president at least four days prior to the said meeting’.
Similarly, in terms of the allocation of roles within the structure, it
is up to the president (Art. 25) to appoint the heads of four special-
ized committees (professional organization, ethics, development,
and the rights to expression, as well as the one dedicated to electoral

campaigns). Although ethical breaches by journalists who had been
far too long bullied into the straitjackets of the FLN/state unanimistic
media system were many from the first stages of the 1989/90 ‘open-
ing-up’ process, one can also detect in the SIC’s warning the espousal
of a position that betrays its alignment with authorities that resent
any outburst of press independence.
SIC, guarantor of the professionalization of written press

and broadcasting journalists
On the issue of drawing up trend-setting instruments, credit goes
to the Council for devising two major pieces. On 7 April 1991, the
SIC published a decision listing the terms and conditions to meet
in order to be issued with a professional journalist card. The text
addresses requirements for the election of the Joint Committee for
Professional Cards. This innovative Act, through which the authors
sought to create an autonomous body comprising members elected
by their peers (journalists and directors of media companies), laid
down the foundations of a novel framework organizing the mecha-
nisms of recognition of the professional journalist’s title. Mention
should be made of the fact that for journalists and managers of
media companies the only two conditions of eligibility for the com-
mission (Art. 5) are those of enjoying civil and civic rights and of
having practised journalism for at least five years. As for eligibility
for the card, Article 11 specifies two major requirements: proof of
professional practice, and for each candidate ‘a sworn affidavit to the
effect that journalism is his or her main, regular and remunerated
occupation’.
The second important legislative measure of the SIC was the deci-
sion of 8 May 1991 setting the conditions for the production and
broadcasting by television and radio undertakings of programmes
related to official campaigns of parliamentary elections in June and
December 1991. As the first experiment of its kind in the country
since independence, the SIC developed in this text the rules applica-
ble to broadcasting and fixed the number, duration, dates, times and
sequence of airing campaign-related programmes. By doing so, the
SIC took over the role of conductor of the election campaigns. This
experiment came, however, to an abrupt end with the interruption
of the electoral process.
In the wake of the 1990 Act, a series of regulations was passed and
repealed the monopoly system of television programming, while
monopoly over television broadcasting was reaffirmed. In the same
vein, the executive decree of 20 April 1991 creating the National
Broadcasting Company (Entreprise Nationale de Télédiffusion –
ENTD) as a public broadcasting establishment (TDA), assigned with
the task of ‘providing, in an exclusive capacity, the distribution and
broadcasting in Algeria and abroad, using all appropriate technical
means, of the programmes of public institutions and any organiza-
tion authorized to use the public domain’ (Art. 4). The role of service
provider entrusted to TDA acquires even more legitimacy in Article 3
of the institution’s specifications featured in annexure of the same
decree: if possible, TDA may be put in charge of ‘equally guaranteeing
the dissemination of other audiovisual communication services’.
Commercially geared public television in the face of

massive competition from foreign television stations
The statute of ENTV, dated 20 April 1991, states that: ‘the institu-
tion shall have, in the exercise of its activity, and as the case may
dictate, a public accounting system and/or commercial accounts’. It
is further stipulated that ‘in the course of its activity, the keeping of
records and the handling of funds arising from specifications-based
public service missions and obligations shall be subjected to the
rules of public accounting, while record-keeping and the handling of
funds arising from market output-related obligations shall be subject
to the rules of commercial accounting’. In terms of organization,
bureaucratic methods have prevailed over all attempts at innova-
tion. The only change worth mentioning was the creation of a sales
department.
The Établissement Public de Télévision (EPTV) is placed ‘under the
supervision of the authority designated by the Head of Government’
(Art. 2). The degree of its autonomy is defined by Article 3 of the
regulatory text: ‘Endowed with a legal personality status under pub-
lic law and enjoying administrative and financial autonomy ..., it is
governed by public law in its relations with the state and is consid-
ered as a commercial undertaking in its dealings with third parties.’
The noteworthy innovation at the time in the Maghreb context was
that, according to Article 4: ‘The institution shall provide a public
service mission as stipulated in its specifications.’ The appointment

of a director for the institution is a prerogative of the head of state
(Art. 10). Among the tasks assigned to this facility, Article 5 of the
Constitutive decision provides for the ‘guarantee of the independ-
ence and pluralism of information in accordance with constitutional
provisions and the decisions and recommendations of the Supreme
Information Council (SIC)’.
A flurry of propaganda messages through newscasts
Today, two decades after the adoption of the 1990 Act, the Office
Algérien de Télévision continues to operate in its programming –
at least the steered part of it – and in management under the direct
guidance of the country’s presidency. At the same time, this public
undertaking is somewhat ‘liberated’ from the specifications embodied
by the 1990 Act, particularly in its public service obligations. Its news
programmes are caricatures of state propaganda and remain sealed
tight to opposition voices. Even more, information programmes
continue to consistently omit terrorism-related events, so much so
that a ‘lapse of memory’ situation easily comes to mind. While these
acts are ‘condemned’ in long droning comments on the news, they
are never reported on and analysed according to basic journalistic
standards, and even less placed into a real perspective.
Election time is always a priceless moment to study the indica-
tors of non-compliance by state broadcasters with the cardinal rules
of fair treatment of the different election candidates. The 2009
presidential elections gave body to a valuable study by the Algerian
League of Human Rights (LADDH).4 Trend indicators were identi-
fied during these elections both on the radio and on television but
also in the newspapers (15 March/6 April 2009). The study’s authors
observed a breach of the electoral supervisory board’s regulations
which stipulate that candidates or their representatives ‘shall appear
before viewers three times a day for the duration of the campaign’
in segments of five minutes before and after the newscasts of 1300,
1800 and 2000 hours.
The authors’ attention was particularly drawn to the absence
of compliance with a basic rule despite the fact that it had been
enacted by the highly official National Political Commission for
Election Monitoring, namely the obligation ‘to give the floor to the
candidate (or his/her representative) three times a day, throughout

the campaign’.
In a statement at the end of the campaign, the representatives of
candidates – with the exception of Bouteflika’s – denounced ‘the
blatant bias of the national television subsequent to the airing of
the programme “Diary of the Presidential Elections” immediately
after the 8 o’clock news bulletin. In the programme, organizations,
associations and political parties campaigned for the candidacy
of Abdelaziz Bouteflika while other candidates were denied an airtime
opportunity to engage in electoral campaigning’ (p. 67). The study
added that an analysis of the footage taken of candidates betrayed
a clearly biased coverage. The authors state in this regard: ‘Footage
covering the movements of the candidate Bouteflika reached almost
120 shots. This volume is the largest recorded when compared to the
five other candidates whose footage was largely directed at filming
the public’ (p. 69). Further in the report, the authors commented:
‘Looking at the angle of the shots taken, our attention was drawn
to the fact that most shots were low-angle vis-à-vis the public. This
technique was exclusively reserved for the candidate Bouteflika
knowing how suggestive it is of sacredness and power’ (p. 70).
The ENTV, placed since 1999 in charge of propaganda discourses
singing the praises of authority representatives, and primarily those
of President Bouteflika, was also placed in hibernation in terms of
programme production. In fact, the rationale currently adopted
there tends to reduce ENTV’s public service mission to its most
rudimentary form.
A limited and mediocre national audiovisual production

According to ENTV’s Director General, speaking at a press confer-
ence in October 2005, the production of made in Algeria fiction
programmes is carried out by some 45 private companies. He also
stated that this executive production – of which he holds the
reins – costs about 800 million dinars (approximately, 100 dinars
equal 1 euro).
With the almost total withdrawal of public resources from the
production sector in the mid-eighties, Algerian professionals were
abruptly forced to seek the support of European and Arab partners.
The few rare talented filmmakers still active in the country often
describe the extreme difficulty they have to cope with this reality.
Nadia Cherabi, filmmaker, producer and university lecturer draws

the conclusion:
All production chapters are extremely expensive. Making a good

movie requires an average of 50 to 60 million dinars. And this is
a minimal estimate, yet, let’s be honest, it seems enormous and
out of proportion. Filmmakers need to come together within one
organization so as not to be scattered when they negotiate ben-
efits abroad such as developing film … because Algeria still does
not have a laboratory.5
In one of the many debates between professionals of the audiovisual

production in July 2010 – initiated in an attempt to create an
association – filmmaker Bachir Derrais exposed a number of thorny
issues and bureaucratic bottlenecks that de facto block the road to
any positive development:
Why are many of the films produced these last twenty years not
shown on ENTV? Most have been produced by the Ministry of
Culture and by ENTV itself. Is it some form of official censorship
or is it the sabotaging actions of petty television executives? We
already suffer the bane of having one single TV channel, but on
top of this our films are not shown there!
The filmmaker also pinpointed another element which saps audio-

visual production capacities: the piracy of audiovisual works. He goes
on to say:
It is frankly painful to see our films being sold for 10 DA (the price
of a bread baguette or a newspaper) in a compilation of 10 movies
in one DVDX. One can more or less understand when it comes to
American films, but our own productions … It is no secret to anyone,
it is the Islamists who are manipulating the DVD vendors.6
Does the new reference system explain such a statement?

The Ministry of Culture repeatedly proposed laws against piracy.
How can it be that today the kerbside seller of pirated DVD earns
three times more than a producer or a director? Last time, Rachid
Fares, one of my actors, brought me the sheet where the Copyright
Office (ONDA) summarized his copyrighted earnings for 2009: all

in all, he had made 368 AD. What an outrage!7
In the summer of 2010, a draft law laying down the general rules in
the filmmaking industry and activity was initiated. Although
approved by the Council of Government, the essence and the broad
lines of this text remain totally off-kilter with the reality on the
ground. It disregards the tremendous pace of penetration of for-
eign satellite channels in the country and ignores even more the
phenomenon of audiovisual piracy which places within reach of the
population – throughout the country – DVDs of myriad and recent
works. The authors of this law seem utterly disconnected from the
Algerian social reality. They confer wide powers on the Ministry of
Culture both in terms of ‘issuing licences to produce’ works, and of
their development and distribution.
Resorting to imported programmes and weight of football

broadcasting rights
In view of its economic status, EPTV was hit the hardest by the wave
of economic liberalization sweeping through the country in the first
decade of 2000. The 1988 law which determined its status as a ‘public
institution with an industrial and commercial activity’ also propels
the company into a hybrid status or an intermediary one.8
The compelling need to resort to imported programmes represents
a heavy burden on the channel’s financial resources and, more impor-
tantly, undermines the opportunities and ambitions of production
and programming against a backdrop of national cultural heritage.
It is in fact the strategic element of a close-to-home national televi-
sion (generator of images and mirroring society) – and only salvation
in this context of globalization – that public powers and company
managers have been ignoring. It is as if the broadcaster’s offering
in matters of entertainment (largely fiction) has no other ambition
than to compete with those of French and Arabic-speaking satellite
channels, many of which are financed by petrodollars. The results of
this policy are disastrous in terms of securing the loyalty of Algerian
viewers. Political pressures on the channel in matters of informa-
tion simply exacerbate the situation. It is becoming increasingly
inaccurate to qualify ENTV as a public television, and as a ‘national’
television. Indicators of the quality of information programmes, of
the poor quality of social programmes and their scarcity in the grid
betray a programming policy that is pitifully short on treating with
relevance and professionalism the profound changes experienced by
society and the trauma of the 1990s nationwide tragedy which still
remains little expressed.
The retransmission of international football competitions and
entertainment programmes ranks very high in terms of ‘consumer
appeal’ and is used in ENTV’s programming to counter the fierce
competition of foreign channels. However, and especially since the
2006 World Cup, the rights to broadcast competitions have begun to
be particularly taxing for the channel’s resources. With football being
crowned as the king of all sports and as an outlet for stress, especially
among frustrated youth, the public television services received as
its ‘roadmap’ an instruction to secure this at any price, and in large
supply flows. However, foreign channels offer much more than what
ENTV will ever be able to buy, and a large base of spectators, from
diverse socio-economic strata, prefers them. The 2010 World Cup in
Johannesburg conferred on this competition a surreal dimension for
two reasons. The Algerian team had qualified for the finals, and the
Qatari Al Jazeera had bought on 24 November 2009 from the Saudi
prince and owner the ART sports satellite package for the ‘modest’
sum of $210 million. And all of a sudden, Al Jazeera inherited the
exclusive rights held by the bouquet to beam, in North Africa and
the Middle East, the World Cup of 2010 matches, and after those
of 2006, those of 2014. In this game of Monopoly by financial and
Eastern media moguls, the Qatari channel had brokered a very large
and juicy deal.
The Algerian television was the only one in the Arab world to
purchase broadcasting rights. The trick played on ENTV, in light
of this new piece of information, was not only the jackpot it paid
in TV rights, amounting to almost $14 million, but also a snub to
whatever sovereignty the Algerian state television could pretend to.
In fact, on the eve of the World Cup launch, Al Jazeera decided, after
reaping the benefits of its contract with ENTV, to broadcast on its
entire bouquet all the matches involving the Algerian team, citing
the rather rational argument of not wishing to frustrate viewers in
other parts of the world. ENTV’s management did not hesitate to
issue a statement announcing its intention to appeal this decision
before FIFA.
An ‘upgrade’ of monopoly limited to expensive and

unproductive technical solutions
The recent expansion of digital terrestrial television in Europe is
evoked by Algerian broadcasting policy-makers as a panacea for
ENTV’s inexorable dwindling television audience ratings. The mul-
tiple technical virtues that the system holds, including the excellent
sound and image reception, particularly in a vast country like Algeria,
come to the aid of the possible solutions proposed by broadcasting
decision-makers in Algeria, at a time when oil proceeds allow the
conclusion of contracts – often highly enticing to senior state officials
and escaping all transparency.
In the past few years, professional and commercial meetings have
been ritually organized in Algiers on issues related to new tech-
nologies. The Algerian government being highly interested in digital
terrestrial television, Télévision d’Algérie (TDA) was introduced to the
market in 2002, first through a training programme for technical staff
and the acquisition of equipment with the help of a German con-
sultancy firm. What ensued was fierce competition between foreign
firms – mainly French, American and Japanese – highly interested
in the Algerian market. Three major stations have been set up since
in Tessala (Sidi Bel Abbes, West), Chréa (Blida, Centre) and KafLakhal
(Constantine, East). It is expected that 800 more digital transmitters
will be created throughout the country, TDA’s objective being to
equip nearly 80 per cent of the territory by the end of 2013.
At a business meeting in Algiers in June 2010, one of the ‘expert
representatives’ of a European firm manufacturing equipment
extolled in his speech the virtues of digital terrestrial television,
going so far as to claim that it could protect the Algerian popula-
tion from drowning in the deluge of foreign satellite channels. He
went on to say: ‘Digital terrestrial television allows a multiplication
of channels and can save the spectator from being at the mercy of
satellites. These satellites obliterate borders. They are the “harragas”9
of television. DTT gives a measure of control over the messages
conveyed by television.’10
Internet regulation attempts: forced openings and the

outsourcing market
It seems important to note that the evolution of the Internet –
whether in terms of its social usages or of its regulation by public
authorities – significantly determines the perception that one

can have of television production and its reception. Sociologist
J. L. Missika (2006) sheds light on the transformations triggered
by the interpenetration of the Internet by traditional media. For
him, the spirit, production modes, but also the perception held
of the Internet by citizens, have dramatically altered. In the case
of countries of the South, or at least in Algeria, an unprecedented
interlocking was observed in recent years between conventional and
new foreign media. The Internet has definitely opened before them
new penetration highways that are multiplying, at an unprecedented
pace (compared11 to the 1980s and 1990s), access paths into Algerian
society. While the fitting of households with Internet connections
is still lagging far behind, we can nonetheless assess the strength
and speed of Internet penetration through the network of Internet
cafés. The galloping numbers of facilities, the expanding base of user
profiles (age, gender, socio-professional status, etc.) and the enthu-
siasm observed for its use indicate the emergence of novel practices
that reflect new sociological realities in communication. The effects
induced by the new ‘communication explosion’ already translate a
dramatic break away from what was on offer and in practice only a
decade ago.
We totally concur with the observation that Castells expressed
with a certain methodological caution: ‘What is unfolding before our
eyes with this revolution of individual mass communication is akin
to the process of reconstructing of new political forms. It is still hard
to project where it is heading’ (2006).
The initiation of a ‘managed liberalization’ of the Internet in Algeria
is marked by the July 1998 government decree opening the Internet
service providing activity to private investment, which activity was
until then under the monopoly of the public institution known
as the Centre for Research in Technical and Scientific Information
(CERIST). Law 2000-03, ‘laying down the general rules on post and
telecommunications’, broadens the scope of the intervention of
private operators, including foreign citizens whose companies are
incorporated under Algerian law.12
The text triggered a debate over the issue of protecting individual
liberties. It provided for new licences to practise and for updating
specifications for ISPs. These have the obligation of storing their
customers’ emails for one year. Internet cafés have the obligation
to be fitted with security cameras. The law also provided for the
creation of a national organization for the prevention and fighting
of cybercrime. Internet penetration in Algeria occurs in a pattern of
boom and bust. The main obstacles to this expansion are a limited
telephone network – less than 10 per cent of the population has
a landline (attention is mostly focused on the rates of mobile
telephony subscriptions) – and the heavy bureaucratic procedures
that providers have to face. Nonetheless, since the enactment of the
2002 law, opening an Internet café requires a simple declaration of
commercial activity. At a sociological level, these collective facilities
dedicated to Internet access are like a remake of the satellite dishes
set up to receive foreign television channels. The first field surveys of
these uses have only recently been carried out (Taiebi 2011).
Web TV as new media for demonopolization and

public service?
In August 2010, some Internet users developed a unique solution to
the closure of ENTV to the problems of Algerian reality by creating a
website called www.eljournane.com. Links to Facebook and YouTube
are of particular delight to Internet users, especially the news bulletin
of which the title expresses a somewhat ironic humour: ‘ENTVrai’.13
The bulletin destroys all the taboos until now kept tightly under
wraps by state television. Thus, and smack in the middle of the
fasting month of Ramadan in the summer of 2011, videos were
broadcast of the trials of two workers in Ain El Hammam (Kabylia)
caught having lunch at noon by police officers. Images of the sit-ins
organized by citizens demanding their release were posted on the
Internet. Other similar images were released such as those of the
unemployed youth of the oil-rich region of Hassi R’Mel on hunger
strike as a way of demanding jobs. The news bulletin of this website
rejects the images broadcast by ENTV and receives videos and other
documents from Algerian web users cooperating with the project.
On its homepage, the site issued this invitation: ‘El mhatama (the
chained one) is making fun of us. You also can make videos with
your phones and cameras and upload them on YouTube to share the
info with all of Algeria. ENTVrai: information created by the people,
for the people.’ The site warns: ‘This is not a professional journalistic
news site, but a place where we discuss matters in a lighthearted
way, verging on the insolent even, and where we comment on
information. These are the news as seen by young Algerians, news

that are usually truncated, concealed, scattered and presented in
officialese and complicated jargon.’
To further compound these background deficiencies a statute
attempted in 2009 to provide a regulatory framework for the Internet
through an arsenal of repressive measures of its potential liberties.
Law 04-09 of August 2009 on cybercrime came as a battery of meas-
ures set out in Chapter IV, ‘to limit the access of parties disseminating
information that is contrary to public order or morality’. Beyond
the formula so widely adopted, it is feared that governments are
targeting the new forms and boundaries of freedom of communi-
cation generated by the Internet. The mainstay of physical access
to the Internet, Télédiffusion d’Algérie (TDA), a public organization
heading the technical network serving as the ‘canal’ of satellite com-
munications, has every opportunity to exercise this control through
a new single structure (Global Internet Exchange Point), serving as a
centralized gateway of Internet streams in Algeria. Algérie Télécom,
telephone service providers and Internet service providers are urged
by the law ‘to act without further delay to remove content they
allowed and that constitutes an infringement upon the law, to store
such content away or make it inaccessible as soon as they take note of
it, either directly or indirectly’. The firmness and speed of response
by security forces to this data are provided for in Article 5 of the Act
which empowers judicial police officers, ‘to conduct searches, includ-
ing remote ones’. When the law was enacted, jurists did not fail to
issue criticisms, if just by comparing it to the constitution which
recognizes in Article 39 the right to ‘the respect of correspondence
and privacy’. It was also noted that the text ‘forces service provid-
ers to store for one year various data related to navigation, such as
information necessary to identify users, either issuers or recipients,
the date and duration of each connection’, and even data relating to
the equipment used. There is no real guarantee that such data will
not be kept beyond that one year.
Despite being in the grips of an authoritarian political regime,
Algeria did not tumble ipso facto into the wave of social movements
that have been rocking, since December 2010, the Middle East and
North Africa. Notwithstanding this, a multifaceted challenge for
access to freedoms and for the establishment of the rule of law has
developed there. The onslaught of ‘Arab Spring’ images streaming
on the screens of Western and pan-Arab satellite channels beaming

into the homes of Algerians has probably given an edge to the
demands of Algerian citizens. Messages featuring on social networks
from Tunisia and Egypt in particular and spreading via the Internet
have already given body if not to actual demonstrations, but to the
inspiration among youth in Algeria for the opening of possible paths
to change.14
New media and Internet utilizations are decisive factors in the
Algerian society’s evolution and the nature of its state. However, it
may be wiser to put into perspective the capacity of these new media
to trigger significant change, and much less a ‘revolution’. At least
two factors may explain the ‘Algerian exception’ in the context of the
ongoing social unrest in the Arab world. The first one is that the deep
trauma caused by the national tragedy of the 1990s is such that it
strongly inhibits any impulse for liberation through violence, even
though riot movements (led mainly by young people) are rife in
the country. The second reason is that the repressive apparatus set
in motion, including against attempts at peaceful marches, namely
in the capital Algiers, exacerbates the use of violence as the only
means of negotiation and political and civil claims. The newsrooms
of satellite channels continue to demystify ‘the Voice of the Master’,
upheld for decades at ENTV, by inviting leaders of the Algerian oppo-
sition. However, viewers are fully aware that these are exogenous
channels. The mirages of ‘substitute authority’ acting by proxy do
not automatically work. Even when the medium of communication
is the Arabic language (France 24 outsmarting Al Jazeera this way),
the information and opinions expressed on the actual country in
the programmes of these channels remain on the periphery of the
actual news; they only occasionally run counter to state monopoly.
Furthermore, the particularities of a process of ‘Algerian implantation-
acclimatization’ of social networks observed in the ‘real society’ may
easily be perceived as charms laden with the promise of freedom.
A sign of the times, the draft organic law on information being dis-
cussed at the National Assembly devotes seven articles to electronic
media. Article 66 defines them as ‘any communication service oper-
ating online (web TV, web radio) designed for the public, produced
and disseminated in a professional capacity by a natural or legal per-
son under Algerian law holding editorial power over its content’. The
text thus attempts to regulate the activity: ‘The online information
activity is free. For purposes of registration and verification of

accuracy, it is only subjected to the filing of a preliminary statement
by the director managing the online medium. The implementation
of the provisions contained in this article shall be specified in regula-
tory texts.’
Another sign of the times was the launch of a web TV in October
2011 – without authorization – and with total funding from a public
works contractor, the Haddad Consortium, which benefited from the
juiciest government procurement contracts in recent years. Dubbed
Dzaïrwebtv.com, the channel’s programming focuses for the time
being on football.15
Conclusion: the mirages of freedom
Practically taken on lease by state power since independence, televi-

sion and radio – from which Algerian society never received any
public service – may brutally fall into the hands of the ‘new broad-
casting contractors’. The private press, which has been in existence
for two decades, is made up of a plethora of titles (90 private news-
papers as of November 2011), and is subjected to state control and
the pull of money (Mostefaoui 2011). The experience of corruption
in these media, less autonomous in terms of freedom of communica-
tion, is symptomatic of what the local conditions have in store for
‘the opening up of broadcasting’.
The extremely porous borders inexorably allowed by the Internet
carry the promise of a ‘new age’ in freedom of communication
which would make obsolete the struggle of citizens to free the media
operating within the country’s true public context and supported by
freedom of communication.
By blindly trusting and believing in these mirages of freedom,
Algerian society could run the risk of no longer recognizing itself
except through the lens of other nations and their transnational
corporations.
Notes
1. Articles 58, 62 and 63 of the draft law give a glimpse of the ‘inroads’ into
state monopoly: ‘The broadcasting activity shall be carried out by: public
institutions, public sector corporations and organizations, as well as by
private sector companies and organizations,’ and also: ‘A broadcasting

regulator is hereby established as an independent authority, enjoying
legal personality and financial autonomy.’
2. In essence, Article 3 guarantees that ‘the right to information shall
be freely exercised within the framework of the country’s ideological
options, the nation’s moral values and the orientations of political lead-
ership as they flow from the National Charter, subject to the provisions
of the constitution, in particular Articles 55 and 73.’ The text of the
constitution, as is the case in all one-party regimes, perfectly espouses the
doctrine of the FLN.
3. Article 59.
4. Monitoring the performance of Arab media during the Algerian presi-
dential elections of April 2009. Cf. the report at: www.la-laddh.org/spip.
php?article378
5. Nadia Cherabi: El Watan, 29 June 2010.
6. The Algerian filmmaker refers to a factual reality in Algeria within com-
mercial circuits. Since the ‘National Concord’ policy, followed by the
National Reconciliation Charter (2007) championed by Bouteflika, the
members of Islamist formations and the ‘redeemed terrorists’ have mas-
sively converted their activities into commerce that is largely informal.
7. El Watan, 16 July 2010.
8. Articles 44 and 45 of Act 88-01 dated 12 January 1988 on the framework
law of Economic Public Companies (EPC) explain the process by which
certain companies change from pursuing commercial and industrial
interests to become public economic operators.
9. ‘Harragas’ is the term used to refer to border-hopping illegal immigrants
(translator’s note).
10. El Watan, 16 June 2010.
11. Mostefaoui (1996). In this book, we considered as the ‘early age’ the
methods used to ensure access to foreign television channels, namely
via heavy accessories such as the satellite dishes purchased by citizens in
North Africa in order to escape the monopoly of state television.
12 Article 23 of the Act stipulates that: ‘Telecommunication networks may
be created and/or operated, regardless of the nature of services they
provide, in accordance with the conditions laid down by virtue of the
present Act and the regulatory texts drawn up for its implementation. Are
excluded from the provisions of this article all state facilities created for
purposes of national defence or public safety.’
13. A witticism translating a wordplay where ‘vrai’ (French for ‘true’) is
attached to the channel’s acronym ENTV (translator’s note).
14. This applies for example to the network www.nabni.com, a civil society
initiative which set as its objective inciting Internet users to pursue ‘spe-
cific measures to improve the daily life of Algerians’. The hosts speak of
tens of thousands of Algerians (in the country and abroad) who heeded
the call, with no fewer than 150 proposals put forth (El Watan, 8 June
2011). Early in December 2011, a first conclusion is drawn: the Algerian
public authorities did not step forward as an interlocutor in the queries

of the Nabni network hosts.
15. We will also mention the new organic law (12-05) for the informa-
tion sector of 12 January 2012 (number 12-05), in which a regulation
authority for the broadcasting sector is projected.
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12
Towards a Supranational
Analysis of Arab Media:
The Role of Cities
Joe F. Khalil
During the past 20 years, Arab media industries underwent a period

of tumultuous and unparalleled change. A cocktail of closely interwo-
ven changes – ranging from the introduction of satellite receivers to
web TV, the digitization of information to the development of multi-
platform networks, dramatic increases in mainstream media outlets
and the emergence of social media to the growth of large media
conglomerates – are combining to change the regional media. In this
chapter, I consider one rather unique aspect of Arab media as revealed
in the emergence of designated economic free zones dedicated to
the financing, development, production and distribution of media,
commonly referred to as media cities. Instead of simply limiting the
definition of media cities to this rather new definition, I use the term
to reflect on the relationship between Arab media and place, since
even before the emergence of these economic free zones, Arab media
were developed in cities like Cairo, Beirut, London and Rome.
There is enough evidence to suggest that Arab media’s relationship
to production and distribution loci reflects change and continuity.
Using the term ‘media city’, this chapter explores this relation-
ship and questions how these economic free zones are changing
the media landscape while at the same time reflecting continuity
in media policies. What is the nature and extent of the impact of
change and continuity on Arab media? This question and the ensu-
ing observations were prompted by a two-year fieldwork across the
Arab world in Beirut, Cairo, Amman and Dubai.
Why does it matter to reclaim the city in the analysis of Arab
media, particularly as the region moves into what many hope is
188
Joe F. Khalil 189
an era of increased media freedoms? A focus on media cities helps

draw parallels between regulatory media policies, institutional poli-
cies, creative labour and audiences, across the region. A discussion
of media cities also permits us to examine how through particular
policies Arab states were able to confine media activities to specific
physical and virtual parameters and to recover the concrete, local-
ized processes through which states, transnational companies and
civil society negotiate spheres of influence. It contextualizes our
evaluation of content, of biases, of perceived markets and audi-
ences. Focusing on cities allows us to identify a myriad of dynamics
between media investment, media labour and representations, which
are too complex and often result in contradictory effects. There are
moments and places of overlap between one or more of these func-
tions and this is precisely why there is a need to critically evaluate
the role of Arab media cities.
For many professionals, media cities have organically expanded,
and reflect the dynamics of business, technology and culture. There
is a tendency in that account to take the migration or location of
media ‘industries’ as a given, a function of economies of scale, infra-
structure or traditions. A master narrative repeated like old wisdom
refers to the establishing of Arab satellite television in the 1990s in
London as due to the existence of a robust British-based Arab creative
labour working for the booming Arab press of the 1980s and 1990s.
Similarly, the birth of Arab satellite pay-tv in Rome is reduced to
a natural techno-economic choice. After all, Italy was competing
to offer cheaper access to satellite in a newly liberalized European
telecommunications industry of the 1990s (Padovani 2004). One
explanation for the rise of Beirut as a media hub was a focus on a
cultural je ne sais quoi that incubates media activities, while Cairo’s
prominence as a media centre is often reduced to its historical domi-
nance in film production. While these explanations are valid, they
are partial descriptions and do not account for the complex vectors
related to place and media.
Against such a backdrop, this chapter explores the dynamic ten-
sion between place and media using media cities as a provocative
and useful construct which can help us discover the deeply con-
tradictory dynamics of Arab media. The study does not attempt to
compare ‘like with like’, city with city. Rather, through examining
policies and structures, it seeks to expose the wide range of relations
190 Towards a Supranational Analysis of Arab Media
between place and media. By the same token, this chapter does not
seek to provide any type of judgement, qualitative or quantitative,
on any media city’s respective performance or output. Its goal is to
understand how different policies affect media institutions in the
region, not to assess the respective merits of their actual strategies.
Of course, any type of empirical research into media cities needs to
be conducted from a specific perspective; a theoretical ‘lens’ must be
adopted through which the objects under scrutiny can be observed.
In this work, the ‘lens’ through which these media cities are scruti-
nized draws on communication scholarship, cultural geography as
well as political economy. The chapter falls broadly into four sec-
tions. The first provides the theoretical background and context by
introducing approaches to the study of place and media. Using the
role of place in the history of Arab television, the second section is an
overview of three stages of Arab commercial satellite broadcasting
and their links to particular cities. The third section attempts to place
Arab media hubs on a spectrum, before focusing on the Dubai model
and carefully examining its ten years in operation. The conclusion
points to challenges resulting from expanding competition, chang-
ing distribution dynamics and other factors.
Theorizing media cities
Within a discussion of continuity and change in the media land-

scape, communications scholarship dedicated to the study of media
production loci contributes to our understanding of the processes
through which the political, economic and socio-cultural spheres
shift over time and are gradually integrated in global processes. These
associated changes have ushered Arab media, particularly television,
into an era of globally integrated industries with specific locations as
strategic incubators.
In studying Arab media, some argue for a systems analysis of media
in the region (Boyd 1982, 1993; Rugh 2004) while others suggest
an institutional analysis of media with a focus on specific institu-
tions or media sectors (El-Nawawy and Iskandar 2002; Lynch 2006).
A more informed analysis acknowledges the multiple socio-cultural
and political spheres and offers a focus on content such as television
dramas (Salamandra 1998; Abu-Lughod 2005), industries (Kraidy
and Khalil 2010; Mellor et al. 2011) or policy (Sakr 2001, 2007;
Joe F. Khalil 191
Guaaybess 2005). What is significant throughout these debates is that

the role of media loci, the sites of production, has been rarely recog-
nized as a crucial element in the development of Arab media. Yet the
role and shape of these developments are by no means very fixed or
very clear, and neither are our theoretical models for explaining or
exploring Arab media on a global scale. The rapidity and the com-
plexity of change in the national, regional or global environments
during the past 20 years require a newer set of terms and vantage
points to complement these approaches, which often seem fixated on
national, comparative, institutional, regulatory or content analyses.
The studies of global media are broadly anchored in three tradi-
tions, each reflecting a particular historical era. The 1950s and 1960s
studies of media institutions remained focused on the national
contexts with questions about regulatory, economic, political struc-
tures, influences and implications. The 1970s and 1980s signalled a
shift towards comparative national media systems approach and the
exchange of cultural products between nations. Drawing upon new
theories from globalization, the study of global media in the 1990s
has shifted from a focus on locally or nationally based media systems
to an emphasis on information flow, and multi-directional flows.
Within this last strand of research, Straubhaar (1991) advances
a theory of ‘cultural proximity’, suggesting that the map of world
television has been expanding into what he calls geocultural or
geolinguistic markets. In his World Television (2007), he continues
to conceptualize television as a complex and multi-layered phe-
nomenon that involves texts, audiences, industries and regulations
affecting both local and global human activity. To that end, his
interest in complexity theory provides an understanding of ‘a sense
of complex possibilities, hard to predict exactly, but bounded by
certain factors, such as technology and economics, and patterned
by others, such as cultural formations like genres that flow among
television systems’ (Straubhaar 2007: 8). The increased attention to
place and flows is also echoed in Michael Curtin’s (2003) argument
that ‘contemporary television is transcending frontiers and disrupt-
ing conventional structures of domination’ (2003: 203). He suggests
that ‘media capitals’ such as Chicago, Hollywood and Hong Kong
are central hubs in global webs of information flow. Curtin’s ‘media
capitals’ are defined as transnational centres for financial and media
activities. He remains interested more in media flows than the loci
of media production, suggesting that ‘the study of media capital

directs our attention to complex interactions among a range of flows
(economical, demographical, technological, cultural, ideological)
that operate at a variety of levels (local, national, regional, global)’
(2003: 222).
When focusing more explicitly on the role of the city in analysing
the multiple economic, social, cultural and political vectors, Saskia
Sassen’s Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991) offers a valuable
framework built on ‘the ascendance of information technologies and
the associated increase of mobility and liquidity of capital’ (1991: 27).
By coining ‘Global Cities’, Sassen reflects a global division of labour
emerging in these strategic spaces for the production of complex
capabilities. This feature adds to the networking nature of the global
market and reveals a major difference between current markets and
the pre-1980s period of highly regulated national markets. Structurally
resembling one another, global cities (New York or London) and
regional cities (Buenos Aires or São Paulo) are distinguished by the
level of strategic functions and the scale of territorialized dynamics
and processes. Sassen’s ‘global cities’ stand at the juncture of strategic
functions and power inequality. Similarly, geographers Robins (1991)
and Massey (1992) define cities as meeting places. Migration, inter-
action and exchange do not only give these cities a local specificity
but also multiple identities, continuous processes and undefined
enclosures.
Borrowing from Curtin (2003), Arab media cities can be seen as
nodes, switchboards or sites for mediation of various local, regional
and international trajectories which vary in intensity. And building
on Sassen (1991), a new geography of centres and margins emerges
that strengthens existing inequalities and sets in motion a whole
new dynamic of inequality. Every single element of the nation-
state media model becomes subject to forces of disaggregation and
fragmentation. As a result, the characteristics of media supply are
continuously altering as well as the actual media ecosystem.
The last point to make in relation to the theoretical conception of
media city is that it can be perceived as nurturing the development
of media that transcend cultural, economic, political and social fron-
tiers, and disrupt established hegemonic arrangements. Examining
media cities helps direct our attention away from an emphasis
on comparative national systems, because media cities allow for
Joe F. Khalil 193
supranational media to flourish outside the nation-state geographies.

Based in media cities, media institutions are enabled to create a web
of funding, development, production and distribution vectors that
escapes the control of any one particular state. Examples of how
these links are constructed and held in play will emerge throughout
this chapter.
Partnering the rise of these media cities is a rise in uncertainty.
What is then the role of the state? What institutional policies and
regulations govern these cities? What are the conditions of the crea-
tive labour? What is the imagined audience? What are the spheres of
influence? What are the dynamics of media investment, labour and
representations? While answering these questions extends beyond the
purpose of this chapter, the following are useful vistas for discussion.
A history of media cities and Arab broadcasting
The story of Arab media cities, production and distribution loci,

can be traced to a popular dictum suggesting that ‘books are writ-
ten in Cairo, published in Beirut and read in Baghdad’. If anything,
this 1960s cliché points to the multiple functions of cities in media
development, production and distribution. With Lebanon as an
exception, the era was characterized by the state as major player
in establishing, funding and managing media institutions until
the 1990s.1
Escaping state control and benefiting from financial and tech-
nological incentives, private Arab media established themselves in
Europe. Starting in 1991, and for the next 20 years, satellite tele-
vision became a popular source of entertainment and information.
Until 2001, Arab satellite television developed at the intersection
of traditional media hubs, Beirut and Cairo, and European centres,
London and Rome. By the next decade, major Arab media repatriated
to newly developed economic media free zones.
The term ‘media city’ started to appear first in 1997 in association
with Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC), then with Jordan
Media City ( JMC) and Dubai Media City (DMC) both in 2001.
Through a historical overview, this section examines why issues of
place are critical for understanding the current dynamics of Arab
media, and how media cities as a construct could reveal the change
and continuity in media policies.
Traditional media cities: Cairo and Beirut
Up until the 1990s, Arab media were traditionally characterized

by stable, nationally bounded spheres of activity that were clearly
circumscribed by state monopoly, as well as media production and
distribution that emphasized processes of national outreach. With
the exception of Egypt and Lebanon, the policy logic of Arab media
was inward looking, focusing on the nation-state.
In Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser set the foundations for Egypt’s
broadcasting policy on two pillars: modernization/development
and national/regional propaganda. To achieve the second goal,
Egypt invested in broadcast technology, media development and
distribution. By the mid-sixties, Cairo had the most recent print
and broadcast facilities, purpose-built television studios and radio
broadcasts reaching as far as Baghdad. Broadcasts and publications
aimed to promote Nasser’s vision of Arab unity and nationalism. The
emphasis on Arabic was so strong making it ‘second only to English
as an international broadcasting language’ (Boyd 1999). Combining
quality and quantity, Egyptian media attracted regional audiences
through direct broadcasts or by supplying content in their own lan-
guage. With Sadat’s liberal infitah economic policies, the foundations
for a robust media production and marketing were completed and
remain the backbone of the country’s media policy. From the mid-
1980s, Egypt sought and later put into orbit its own satellite, Nilesat.
The unveiling of Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC) in 1997
came to support and encourage foreign investments which could
recoup the satellite’s costs and populate its frequencies.2 By 2001, the
government partnered with private actors, selecting few regime sup-
porters and granting licences to launch private satellite channels.
If Egypt’s media policy responded to political considerations first,
in Lebanon economic interests guided its media policy. Just as it tran-
sited goods and merchandise to the Arabian Gulf, Beirut provided the
coffee shops, the art galleries and the printing presses for Arab artists
and intellectuals. It mediated between East and West, Muslims and
Christians, the progressive nationalists and the traditional monar-
chist Arabs, and between a free media and a mercenary media. Within
Lebanon’s market economy, the government plays a marginal role in
encouraging media investments – even sometimes is seen as curbing
media freedoms. Local media are regulated by a 1962 press law and a
Joe F. Khalil 195
1994 audiovisual media law, both focusing on the licensing process

and less on regulating content. Regional media producing or operat-
ing from Lebanon are expected to abide by general laws regulating
business operations, filming and telecommunications licences. From
the onset, the state refrained from direct media ownership, leaving it
to private investors, political groups and foreign interests. With this
market logic, Lebanese media exported their products regionally fol-
lowing a principle of the least objectionable material. Although some
newspapers were occasionally banned, television productions of the
1960s and 1970s included dramas featuring classic Arab and world
literature using modern standard Arabic. And just like today, televi-
sion and film studios were offering their services to regional talent.
As a consequence, Beirut became an important base of operations
for media and advertising firms that wanted to package and promote
messages to the regional market. In part this is due to a dynamic edu-
cational and economic system which thrives on entrepreneurship,
and in part had to do with its geopolitical position as a haven for
political dissidents within a pluralistic society. It was this explosive
combination that made Beirut thrive as a regional media centre but
ultimately made it the playground for regional powers.
As the role of these cities in regional media production and
distribution became apparent, the 1970s witnessed two develop-
ments with severe impact on Beirut and Cairo’s media roles. First,
the Lebanese civil war (1975–90) was marked by the reappearance of
local unofficial print and broadcast media coupled with a relocation
of major media organizations and skilled creative labour to European
and Arab cities. Second, the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel
accelerated Egypt’s push towards a market economy, but, at the same
time, severed its relations with other Arab countries, making it suffer
a long boycott lasting until the end of the eighties. At the expense
of Beirut and Cairo, cities like Paris, London, Rome and Athens as
well as Dubai, Amman and Kuwait became new hubs for Arab media
production and distribution.3
Offshore media cities
From the early 1990s onwards a series of tremors, including glo-

bal market liberalization, the introduction of new transmission
technologies, political challenges and changing social attitudes,
triggered the beginnings of global media and telecommunications

industry restructuring. Developments such as the privatization of
European telecommunications companies, access to digital satellite
technologies, the end of the Cold War have offered unprecedented
opportunities for private media ownership and operation of Arab
print and broadcast outlets in Europe. This phenomenon known as
the ‘offshore’ media, has led to profound changes in the media land-
scape (Kraidy and Khalil 2010). The policy logic remained inward
looking but focused on developing an Arab-oriented content using
pan-Arab and international talents.
Although located far from the Arab world, these ‘offshore’
media benefited from unprecedented technological, creative and
operational facilities. For instance, Arab Radio and Television, Orbit
Communications and Showtime Arabia introduced digital broadcast-
ing, developed multi-channel offerings, and initiated a sophisticated
subscription system. Also, companies like Middle East Broadcasting
Centre (MBC) were able to combine British news and entertainment
practices with Arab culture. The outcome was fresh and attractive
programming in comparison with the stale national television
output. In brief, undreamed categories of products and services were
then possible, including news and entertainment.
A decade after pan-Arab newspapers, satellite television was intro-
duced to the Arab world from London and Italy. Unlike newspapers
which needed state approval for printing and/or distribution, satel-
lite channels were able to transcend state territorial control despite
attempts to ban or co-opt their broadcasts. This was coupled with the
development of content production networks in the Arab world, par-
ticularly in Lebanon and Egypt.4 Since then, Arab media have been
an example of ‘transnational media’, negotiating distinctive state
control, regulatory arrangements and economic interests.
Economic free-zone media cities
Entering the second millennium, the now mature ‘offshore’ media

were facing a changing environment marked by a European push and
an Arab pull, prompting a repatriation of Arab media. On one hand,
their European presence was becoming a financial and operational
liability. Alterman (1998) identifies an exclusively economic reason;
he suggests that this repatriation appears to be because of high taxes
Joe F. Khalil 197
and cost of living which rendered Arab offshore media operations

increasingly impractical. Similarly, Salamandra (2003) argues that
‘the relative importance of London as a production site is shrinking,
as global technologies make possible ... media organizations’ transfer
to the Middle East itself’.
These often-heated discussions of the strategic or ad hoc decisions
undertaken by Arab media frequently omit to mention the environ-
mental and market developments which can play a decisive role in
determining these actions. By focusing on economic or technological
perspectives, these explanations fail to account for two additional
dimensions. First, media producers and consumers increasingly
required more local and regional programming. As a result, Arab-
based channels like state-owned Egyptian Space channels were
gaining popularity. Starting in the mid-1990s, Lebanese-based chan-
nels like LBC and Future TV appealed to regional audiences, rising
stars and advertising dollars. By 2001, the Egyptian free-to-air satel-
lite channels entered the market offering an unparalleled mix of
music channels and entertainment with channels like Melody and
Dream TV.
Second, the political implications of the 9/11 events affected
Arab–Western relationships, including cultural and economic activi-
ties (Khalil 2006). There is enough evidence to suggest that Arab
media employees and their employers were subject to the same
wave of anti-Arab and Muslim sentiments that followed the events
of 9/11. Restrictions on travel, fear of repercussions and negative
stereotypes hindered Arab media operations in Europe. Financially,
the repatriation of Arab funds coupled with increasing oil revenues
needed reliable investment, particularly real estate, and marketing
opportunities such as media. Finally, Arab governments were facing
internal and external pressures for democratization. Economic free-
zone media cities provided investment opportunities and answered
the calls for a more open and inclusive media while accepting the
concerns of local governments. The creation of these media economic
free zones provided this negotiated place for political and economic
spheres of influence.
It is at this particular juncture that Dubai and Jordan offered com-
petitive hubs for media organizations. Dubai Media City started as a
government-led initiative to create an economic free zone dedicated
to media production and development. This was part of an overall
policy towards economic diversification with a particular interest in

knowledge-based economy. Preceded by Dubai Internet City, Dubai
Media City was officially established in January 2001. Jordan Media
City was the result of a government incentive for private investment.
Although the operation was announced in 2001, Jordan Media City
could not attract a magnate client until 2004. After examining vari-
ous options in Beirut, Bahrain and Dubai, Arab Media Corporation
Holding (AMC), owner of pay-TV multi-channel provider Arab Radio
and Television (ART), decided to invest and then become the princi-
pal owner of Jordan Media City.5
The Arab media cities today
Certainly the media policy logic is still inward looking, but an

industry-oriented approach is developing with a focus on local,
regional and global outreach. This interest in developing media cities
reflects the diversity often forgotten about the Arab media landscape
where private media investors, foreign and local governments, politi-
cal parties, religious communities and a large number of stakeholders
are sustaining media operations. In fact, a closer look at a map, if one
exists, of media cities would reveal a number of states, regions, capi-
tals and groups establishing or planning to have their own economic
free zones dedicated to media development. The list includes Syria,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Sudan, Iraq, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, but
also the Palestinian organization Hamas and the Lebanese Maronite
Church. Before reviewing key policy elements related to Dubai
Media City and its ascendance to an established operating model,
it is important to rearticulate a definition of media cities to reflect a
spectrum of policies that allow for supranational media to develop
outside the nation-state geographies, in free zones, yet directly or
indirectly dealing with, or through, nation-states. While attempts to
create supranational media policies through the Arab League have
failed (Kraidy 2011), supranational media commercial institutions
combine political, economic and cultural gravitas and are capable of
influencing national, regional and global structures, processes and
policies.
Today, Arab media cities echo a global tendency to create media
industries, commercial or not, that are based on interdependence
in international political, economic and cultural relations. This
Joe F. Khalil 199
involves the increased interconnectedness between traditional media

cities, and the emerging media economic free zones. While ‘offshore’
media cities have lost their appeal to many media organizations, they
remain a viable choice for ‘dissident’ or oppositional Arab media like
London-based Arab News Network or Al Mustaquilla TV.
To truly understand these relationships, media cities can be placed
on a spectrum purely for analytical purposes and in relation to state
policies and market involvement (Tables 12.1 and 12.2). On one
end of the spectrum, Beirut is a media hub with intensive regional
television productions but without a delineated zone of the city
even if, since the mid-1990s, there has been recurring talk about
institutionalizing a media zone. The Lebanese government plays lit-
tle, if any, role in encouraging media investments or in protecting
its freedoms. In practice, Lebanon’s approach to media is both very
historical and organic. It is perhaps at the intersection of economic
and political interests as well as socio-cultural practices that private
local and foreign investments are dedicated to media infrastructure
and education. As a result, Beirut is home to a large number of media
institutions loosely organized and interconnected with the broader
regional markets.
On the other end of the spectrum is Dubai Media City, standing as
an example of a government media policy. This umbrella institution
follows the principle of economic free zones: Dubai government pro-
vides both the buildings and the infrastructure for media operations
and attracts magnate tenants like Associated Press, Showtime, Sony,
MBC and others. Dubai Media City facilitates all aspects of govern-
ment relations with its tenants, from immigration to tax brackets, and
regulates tenants’ labour issues. So successful is the Dubai model, that
the UAE has five media free zones – the most so far in any country.
These are Dubai Media City and Dubai Studio City, Abu Dhabi’s
twofour54, Ras Al Khaimah Media City and Creative City Fujairah.6
Table 12.1 Media cities spectrum
Economic laissez-faire State planning
Media cities Beirut

(traditional) Cairo
Media cities Jordan
(economic free zone) Dubai
Table 12.2 Economic free-zone media cities in Dubai, Egypt and Jordan
Dubai Media Egyptian Media Jordan Media

City Production City City
Location TECOM Cairo: media free Amman: media

Investments zone free zone
Ownership government public- and private (the Saudi
private-sector Dallah Group)
ownership
Year of 2001 ( January) 1997 (November) 2001
establishment
Subsidiaries/ Dubai International Playout Center
affiliates International Academy for
Film Festival Engineering and
Media Sciences
(IAEMS)
Types of services broadcasting, broadcasting, broadcasting,
production, production, production,
post-production, post-production post-production
office rental,
company
formation
Major clients CNN, CNBC, ERTU, MBC, ART, Al Majd,
MBC, Al Arabia Orbit, Thematic Rotana, LBC, NBC
Channels
Land area (sq m) 278,709 3,000,000 40,000
Number of 780 3000 850 (2008)
employees
(May 2011)
Total revenue Not available 258,323,000 1,500,000 JOD
EGP (2011) (2007)
42,403,644 USD 2,000,000 USD
Website www. www.empc.com.eg www.
dubaimediacity. jordanmediacity.
com com
Between Beirut’s laissez-faire policies and Dubai’s planned media

economic policies, Cairo stands somewhere in the middle of the
spectrum with Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC), the story of
which is intertwined with Cairo’s media legacy but also with Egypt’s
national security, political and economic interests. With public and
private ownership, EMPC has relatively succeeded in attracting
Joe F. Khalil 201
production activities but failed to house media organizations. Most

Egyptian private channels have two locations: main offices are in
Cairo, while their broadcasting and some of their production facili-
ties are at EMPC, thus creating a hybrid arrangement reflecting the
country’s mixed economic policies. Similarly, Jordan Media City is an
example of privatization policies. Originally conceived as a public/
private partnership, the project is owned by one company but leases
its facilities to various media organizations.
This next section provides a capsule summary of key policy elements
related to the economic free-zone media cities model with a focus on
Dubai and its evolution to date: how it originally materialized, key
elements in its policies and where it stands at the time of writing.
Key policy elements: the case of Dubai Media City
The Emirate of Dubai has adopted an economic policy that depends

less on natural resources and more on its geographic location, with
the establishment of free zones such as the Jebel Ali Port in 1979.
Targeting regional and global investors, Dubai aimed to become
a hub for almost everything between South-East Asia, Europe and
Africa. With its politically stable and economically liberal environ-
ment, Dubai has managed to compete with Beirut’s financial centre,
Egypt media production and North Africa’s tourist destination.
In January 2001, Dubai Media City was officially operational with
a cost around 800 million USD.7 In retrospect, Dubai Media City
was strategically positioned to benefit from its unique geopolitical
situation. By creating investment opportunities like DMC, Dubai
benefited from the repatriation of Arab money from the West after
the events of 9/11 and Iranian and Saudi oil revenues. With its motto
‘Freedom to create’, DMC has also provided a safe haven for many
creative talents escaping dire conditions in their own countries like
Lebanese, Egyptians, Iraqis and Syrians, who make up the core media
labour force.
DMC’s main clients are local, regional and international compa-
nies and freelance individuals in various media activities, including
publishing and printing, broadcasting, advertising and marketing
services, music, leisure and entertainment, and information agen-
cies, as mentioned above. Also, it sponsors two festivals to encourage
and promote production activities. The Dubai Film Festival has
become a gathering for Arab, Hollywood and Bollywood producers
and stars while the Ibda’a (creativity) Media Student Awards is

designed to acknowledge and sponsor young talents both locally and
internationally.
Media regulation
DMC has become an umbrella organization for a number of media
activities, projects and spin-offs; its growth is considered to be ‘very
organic’ (Al-Shoush 2006). Similarly, its organizational structure
has evolved organically from a government project to a private
subsidiary, TECOM Investments (Table 12.3). The latter is part of
seven member companies under Dubai Holding, established in 2004
to lead Dubai’s ‘large-scale infrastructure and investment projects’
(‘About Dubai Holding’ 2012). Although Dubai Holding is a private
company, it is majority owned by the ruling Al Maktoum family.
Particularly, Sheikh Mohamad Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler
and the UAE’s prime minister, envisioned these media free zone areas
as ‘symbols of the potential of the knowledge economy in the region’
(Anonymous 2002: 22).
The success of TECOM projects is an example of Al Maktoum’s
modus operandi: the government leads with an infrastructure ready
for private ventures. Investment has typically taken two forms. First,
freelance individuals and companies operating in DMC rent space
ranging from a desk to a complete building. In return, DMC acts
as the point of contact for all government-related activities includ-
ing visas, work permits and licences. Second, private investors may
develop buildings on DMC-owned land however DMC runs and
manages the property. For example, the average renting rates of
Table 12.3 TECOM profile
Ownership Dubai Holding Commercial Operations Group

Supervising authority Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority
Subsidiaries Dubai Internet City Dubai Media City
Dubai Knowledge Village Dubai International
Academic City
eHosting DataFort International Media
Production Zone
Dubai Outsource Zone Dubai Studio City
DuBiotech Enpark
Joe F. Khalil 203
privately owned buildings in the free zones have dropped around

61 per cent from 103 USD in 2008 to 49 USD in 2009 (Deulgaonkar
2009; Batool 2009).
Financial freedom and political restrictions

In spite of numerous efforts, the regulatory framework for companies
operating in DMC remains in limbo. DMC often acts as a mediator
in labour-related matters, while in content-related issues it has estab-
lished the Broadcasting and Publication Standards Tribunal (BPST)
in November 2003. On a number of occasions the tribunal was side-
stepped in favour of more traditional, local, means of mitigation.
The tribunal’s major achievement was devising a media code that
covers issues related to religious sensibilities, alcohol, smoking and
sex (Addington 2006). Whether in print or broadcast, the terms ‘self-
censorship’ or ‘responsible freedom’ are taken seriously; and Dubai
government’s promise to freedom of speech has been challenged.
The first issue of Focus On (FO!) magazine was its last. DMC managed
to shut it down for not adhering to its ‘business plan’: the magazine
featured a pullout of a semi-naked model, ‘Miss May’ (Addington
2005). Similarly, Geo, a Pakistani channel broadcasting from Dubai,
was shut down after a two-hour notice from DMC. Accused of violat-
ing the code, DMC claimed that Geo had interfered with the politics
of another country (‘Dubai Shuts’ 2007). In many ways, DMC has
successfully managed to provide an environment where media cor-
porations can enjoy competitive production costs; however, it has
yet to provide an adequate framework for exercising unmitigated
freedom of expression (Nicolson 2006).
DMC’s success rests on a package/offer that capitalizes on the free-
zone set-up. Companies or individuals have a 50-year exemption
from personal, income and corporate taxes. Unlike the rest of Dubai
where foreign nationals or companies can own a maximum of 49 per
cent, DMC offers 100 per cent business ownership in addition to 100
per cent repatriation of capital and profit. In addition, DMC partners
enjoy certain freedoms such as no restrictions on customs duties; no
restrictions on Internet sites and flexible labour and residency laws.
As a result, DMC aims to provide comparatively lower operation
costs. To promote their package, DMC set out to ‘attract big media
companies to establish their bases here’ (Abbott 2005). This translated
into offering additional incentives ranging from rent-free packages,
discounts on telecommunication bills and the name of the building.

The mission was accomplished with companies like Saudi-owned
MBC, and regional offices for Reuters and Associated Press. In fact,
DMC hopes ‘to be one of four or five global bases for broadcasting as
we move forward over the next few years’ (Sullivan 2001b).
Talent and human capital

Since its launch, the number of partners in Dubai Media City has been
on a steady increase: 99 companies in 2001, 880 in 2004, 1077 in
2005 to over 1200 in 2008.8 Despite the economic downturn of 2008
and the emergence of other competitors, Dubai Media City currently
comprises over 1400 companies and hundreds of media freelancers.
The total number of media employees working at Dubai Media City
and its affiliates’ entities is estimated at over 16,000 (Baldwin 2011).
The list of DMC-based companies today reads like a who’s who of
the global media industry. The community includes global media
giants such as Reuters, BBC, CNBC, MBC, Sony, Showtime and
Bertelsmann. DMC has also set up Media Business Centres to pro-
mote entrepreneurship in the region and a Sustainability and Support
Centre that provides free consultancy. These facilities are targeted at
freelancers and independent media professionals to better cope with
the global economic downturn (TECOM Investments 2009).
Conclusion
This brief foray into the history, policies and cultural geographies
of Arab media cities suggest new ways to study Arab media within
increasingly globalized media industries. Such an approach seeks to
understand media cities both as a home for supranational media
and their vulnerability to state hegemony in the form of specific
politico-economic policies. For, on the one hand, media cities have
succeeded in providing investment venues, developing creative and
cultural labour, acquiring the latest technologies and acting as nodes
of global and regional flows. Yet, as economic, political, social and
cultural conditions shift, media cities like Dubai are facing the chal-
lenge of maintaining their edge.
Although this preliminary study is limited by its focus on Dubai
Media City, it nevertheless attempts to discuss the economic media
free zones in relation to previous forms of media loci. Hopefully,
Joe F. Khalil 205
the analysis elicited from this inquiry will yield some productive
insights and point towards potential vistas for future research, even
if it fails – within the scope of a single chapter – to account for all
challenges and prospects that face media cities.
Defined as a spectrum for thinking about the relationships
between the loci of media organizations and media policies, the
Media City – as a concept – allows us to address these supranational
media organizations and their networked operations without fall-
ing prey to comparative systems of media policy analysis. It further
invites us to acknowledge issues of flow in media analysis without
discarding the multiple functions cities play in media development.
And finally, it encourages us to recognize the history of media cities
in anticipation of the inevitable changes that await the region in
the not too distant future. Environmental change signalled that the
development of new economic media free zones means that new
strategic directions are inevitable. At the same time, the Arab media
world to come will be very different from that in which the current
players grew up, given the changing geopolitical landscape ushered
in by the uprisings of 2011–12.
Notes
1. Lebanon is an exception because it enjoyed private/commercial ownership
of both print and television. The state owned two radio stations and a
news agency.
2. On 24 February 2000, a cabinet decree was adopted to create a free zone in
the Sixth of October City. Its main activities were to deal with art, drama
and other forms of media productions. EMPC is the media free zone’s
major component, covering a surface area of 3 million square metres.
Focusing primarily on television, advertising and film, it includes both
production and transmission facilities.
3. Paris, Athens, Amman and Kuwait City served during the late 1970s and
late 1980s as a refuge for Egyptian film and television and Lebanese print
and television. The productions were mostly private investments in Paris
and Athens but included state support in Amman and Kuwait City.
4. Programmes or programme segments were filmed in Cairo and Beirut,
then transported by plane and broadcast from these ‘offshore’ channels.
The same applies to print, where stories were filed from offices across the
region and compiled in Europe.
5. Please note that AMC is currently (2012) under liquidation.
6. Media activities are concentrated in the first three zones, while the latter
two try to find their niche tenants.
7. The figures vary between 700 million USD (Schleifer 2000), 816 million
USD (Arab Advisors Group 2004) and 1 billion USD (Sirri 2003: 2). It is
difficult to compare DMC to another media city because of differences in
scale, infrastructure and construction costs.
8. Figures compiled from various sources including press releases and
interviews.
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Conclusion
Tourya Guaaybess
Broadcast media in the Arab countries have always been under the tight
control of states, with the exception of the Lebanese case. The institu-
tions overseeing these sectors have always been state-controlled, and,
more precisely, ideological state apparatuses (Althusser 1976), in the
sense that the state seeks to maintain its domination over media.
Whereas state monopolies in Western Europe, established in the after-
math of the Second World War, were dismantled in the 1980s as the
idea of the welfare state was losing ground, these state monopolies were
untouched in the Arab countries (Ward 2008) until recently.
Two concomitant phenomena will progressively erode the relevance
of such an organization for the broadcasting sector. The first set of
phenomena is linked to the rise and domination of the liberal ideology
in the 1980s, which led many of the Arab countries to swiftly imple-
ment liberalization programmes under the auspices of the international
financial institutions. The second set of phenomena occurred at the
beginning of the 1990s and is linked to technological innovation
(satellites, cable networks, digital signals). The number of TV channels
technically and financially accessible to Arab viewers increased expo-
nentially while, at the same time, no significant change was to be seen
in the way domestic (government) broadcasting was managed.
Before the year 2011, marking the beginning of the Arab revo-
lutions which may engage the process of political opening, the
Arab regimes (with the exception of Lebanon) could be classified
as authoritarian, to varying degrees. Broadcasting institutions are
organically linked to the states. As a consequence, it would be mis-
taken to believe that national broadcasting can unlock a monolithic
209
210 Conclusion
political space. On the other hand, since one can consider that there
exists a structural homology between the political system and the
media sector (Bourdieu 1979), we can consider the government
broadcasting institutions as a prism or a gauge which allows us to
measure the degree of political opening. In other words, in such a
system, the media sector in a given country is the reflection of the
prevailing political regime.
Given these pressures stemming from the liberalization trend, the
2000s were a decade during which deep changes, sometimes ambi-
tious reforms, were implemented in most of the Arab countries.
These changes did not bring about an upheaval in the power struc-
ture. States were still dominating the scene, and were the supreme
authority in the national broadcasting sectors. Such a situation was
incongruous in the context of an all-out liberalization of the infor-
mation and communication industries in the region: technological
innovation dislocated territories and opened the way for private
operators to beam commercial private channels outside their borders.
Nevertheless, these changes are important and must be understood
and taken into consideration, because they are the base for future
reforms. They were not necessarily driven by democratic intentions,
but they have created hopes among the audience, and these hopes
will be difficult to ignore nowadays, at a time when the revolutions
brought one step closer the perspective of real political opening.
The managing by the state of broadcasting institutions was backed
by practical, pragmatic, justifications, and also by broad principles.
Let us see where we stand today with regards to these two sets of
arguments.
First, from a practical point of view, it was assumed that the
administrative structure set up by the state was better at managing
broadcasting, all the more so as financing had to be provided by the
state in a context where advertising was non-existent. The scarcity
of radio frequencies made it also appear preferable to make broad-
casting a government monopoly. Towards the end of the 1980s, as
advertising grew significantly as a financing source, and as satellite
beams began to bypass the terrestrial network to soon overwhelm
it, the pragmatic arguments put forth by the governments became
progressively void. There is no reason for which broadcast media,
like any other industrial sector, should be excluded from economic
liberalization. On the contrary, it appeared that a ‘liberal’ (that is, by
Tourya Guaaybess 211
the private sector) management of television could fit better with the
necessity of rationalizing expenses, and with the necessity to capture
the audience which will attract advertising revenues.
Despite these obstacles to the states’ involvement in the broadcast-
ing sector, the thrust of the chapters is that broadcasting is still under
the tight grip of the state in all the Arab countries, with the exception
of Lebanon. One significant change implemented to deal with the
fall in revenues stemming from the open competition is the setting
up of the tax-free zones, intended at attracting investments and leav-
ing a door open for the fast-rising satellite sector, significantly more
efficient at attracting much needed advertising revenues. These free
zones entailed as well a formal (legal) distinction between private
satellite channels and the domestic terrestrial network, a distinction
which remains a necessity as domestic broadcasting still acts as the
mouthpiece of the government.
But in the former, that is, the satellite sector, we have only seen
the economic side of reforms and liberalization: there is no politi-
cal opening yet as the old clientelist system prevails. Businessmen
(openly involved in politics or not) having enough to lose from a
confrontation with the state are the only actors able to set up their
television channel or radio station. Even more, in the case of coun-
tries as diverse as Tunisia, Libya or Saudi Arabia, ‘opening up to the
private sector’ benefits mainly members of the ruling families.
It appears that governments remain the controllers of the reforms’
efforts; they initiate reform, and control its pace in such a way as
to prevent any political competition from emerging, while at the
same time trying to generate the increased revenues needed to adapt
the infrastructure and the contents to a new environment. We can
divide countries into two groups in this respect: in the first group, the
government’s control is matched with ambitious industrial policies
providing strong incentives and clear support for the broadcasting
sector; these are easier to implement for wealthy countries (Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, the UAE), but other countries show enough political
will to overcome the financial obstacles ( Jordan, Morocco and above
all Egypt). In the second group, government control does not seem to
be compensated by an incentive policy to support local productions
(Syria, Tunisia under Ben Ali or Algeria, for instance).
The free zones we mentioned above are part of a modernization
trend seen all across the region and involving all segments of the
212 Conclusion
broadcasting sector. As suggested, the progress made in this respect

varies dramatically across countries and segments (ground facilities,
satellite fleet, content production, etc.). The modernization effort
also entails establishing regulatory bodies, for which the role and
the positioning vis-à-vis the state are yet to be determined, and also
the decentralization of broadcasting institutions, investments in
ambitious industrial projects, elaboration of incentive policies for
domestic and foreign investors, rationalization of production costs
thanks to the use of the new technologies, and so on.
Second, from the point of view of principles, the key argument is
the public service mission devolved to broadcast media. Before the
1980s, the public service model was dominant in Western countries,
except in the United States where broadcasting has been commercial
ever since its inception. The spreading of the liberal ideology along
with the increase in the number of channels and the deregulation of
broadcasting significantly weakened this argument along with the
idea of the welfare state (Georges 1988).
It is difficult to define with accuracy the concept of public service.
According to J. L. Missika, this idea reflects changing realities, as well
as diverse historical and national contexts; also, it can be used for so
many purposes that, in the end, it cannot be considered a unique
and intangible concept (Missika 1997: 14). In the Arab countries, the
state’s monopoly on broadcasting is backed up by national security,
the preservation of national identity and cohesion – the relevance
of which was clear after independence. Other missions were also
devolved to television and they relate to social development, that is,
the fostering and spreading of education, information and culture
for all.
These considerations remain topical today in the Arab region. The
idea that broadcasting has a key role to play in safeguarding national
identity and culture remains widespread among Arab states. In the
UAE, for instance, the ‘Emiratization’ policy via broadcasting (among
other means), presented by Muhammad Ayish, reveals the concerns
of public authorities. The same prevails for broadcasting’s role in
the field of education, echoing a long-standing recommendation
regarding the role of media in a given society, even if the relevance
of this thesis has never been really established. States may have a
point there, given the competition of norms that researchers pointed
out. Though it is difficult to qualify the scale of this competition,
Tourya Guaaybess 213
it seems that some Gulf countries’ norms are filtering progressively

across borders. This does not necessarily mean that societies are
becoming more conservative, it may simply be a by-product of eco-
nomic liberalism: serials sell at a higher price if they can bring more
advertising revenues, and these revenues are closely determined by
the wealth of the target audience to which they will be shown. It
would hence be financially unwise for a producer to spend too much
money on a serial which, during Ramadan, will not appear on Saudi
Arabia’s screens. In the Syrian case, for instance, Christa Salamandra
shows that this disequilibrium can weaken local producers by forcing
them to comply with the conservative Saudi norms in order to be
able to export their programmes.
State television appeared outmoded when the Arab satellite broad-
casting sector was open to competition in the 1990s and 2000s, by
contrast with the new satellite channels. But this does not mean that
the public service mission of broadcast media has become irrelevant.
After the dramatic proliferation of satellite channels during the past
two decades, which allowed audiences to see and get acquainted
with new content, it seems that this initial curiosity has been satis-
fied and shown its limits. The audiences’ tastes seem to push more
for ‘local content’, that is, productions closer to their everyday life
and preoccupations; flooded with new programmes, the audiences
have become more demanding. In this regard, national broadcasting
(that is, public channels mainly available on the Hertzian network)
has a valuable card to play. We can mention here the short-lived
experiment of the private channel Al Libiya, whose local content
was very much appreciated by the Libyan audience. Another very
different example is seen, among other countries, in Qatar, where
Qatar TV ironically enjoys a larger audience than Al Jazeera. Hence,
even in the present liberal age of broadcasting in the Arab countries,
governments are far from being offside; national broadcasting has a
serious growth potential when it tackles local topics. This is precisely
a key policy measure around which Arab states have been circling to
try and stay afloat vis-à-vis their audience.
In the end, Arab states are faced with the difficult task of countering
tough competition outside their borders, while at the same time safe-
guarding, inside their borders, national identity and social norms.
With the public service missions stated above, the viewer is con-
sidered as a citizen more than as a consumer. And each citizen has
214 Conclusion
the right to be informed in such a way as to be able to take part in

social life (Atkinson and Raboy et al. 1998; see also Tremblay 1990:
70). Hence, to speak of public service media, be they managed by the
public or by the private sector, means that they must be out of reach
of the arbitrary will and interests of both the ruler and the merchant.
This question is difficult to address and is the one being dealt with
by national broadcasting institutions. At a national level, regulatory
bodies for broadcasting do exist, and a great challenge is to define
properly their role and ensure their autonomy vis-à-vis those two
groups of actors.
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Era of Global Liberalization (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).
Index
Abdullah, King of Jordan, 96, 98, Al Hoss, Salim, 78

100, 101, 102, 106, 112 Al Hurra channel, 16, 125
Abu Dhabi Media Company, 15–16, Al Jadeed channel, 77
18 Al Jamahiriya channel, 155, 156,
Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp 158, 161
(ADMIC), 16 Al Jazeera channel, 5, 8, 9, 32–4,
Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority, 42–3, 46–8, 59, 90, 106, 125, 150,
16, 19 155, 164, 178, 183, 213
Abu Dhabi Radio, 14 Al Libiya channel, 150, 158, 160
Abu Jaber, Kamel, 102 al-Mahmudi, Ali Baghdadi, 155
Abul-Ragheb, Ali, 100, 108 Al Majd channel, 33, 40, 200
advertising, 18, 24, 26, 30, 69, 70, 73, Al Manar channel, 38, 71, 75, 76
79, 80, 85, 99, 106, 122, 138, 145, Al Mawkif (newspaper), 120
195, 197, 201, 205, 210–11, 213 Al Mehwar channel, 62, 63
Adwan, Mohammad, 109, 113 Al Mustaqilla TV, 199
After the Fall (Ba’d al-Suqut), 93 al-Qadhafi, Mu’ammar, president,
Agence Tunisienne de 150–62
Communication Extérieure al-Qadhafi, Saif al-Islam, see Saif
(ATCE), 122 al-Islam al-Qadhafi
Agence Tunisienne d’Internet (ATI), al-Qaeda, 33, 107
122 Al-Quds Centre for Political Studies,
Al Alam channel, 125 111
Al Arabiya channel, 16, 33, 34, 37, Al Rayyan channel, 161
111, 125 al-Rummani, Hani, 83
al-Assad, Bashar, 10, 83, 86, 87 al-Sanussi, Habib, 159
al-Assad, Hafez, 83, 163 al-Sanussi, Idris, King, 151, 152
Alayyan, Mohammed, 105–6 al-Saud family, 29–30, 33, 39
Al-Badawi, Al-Sayyid, 63 Al Shababiya al-Libiya (The Libyan
Al Chourouk (newspaper), 120 Youth) channel, 159
Al Dawri wa Al Kass (sports Al Shababiya channel, 150, 161
channel), 45, 48 al-Shaykh family, 29–30
Al Ekhbariyya channel, 34, 36, 40 Al-Tariq Al Jadid (newspaper), 120
Algerian Information Act, 169 Al Urdunieh (channel), 109
Algerian League of Human Rights, Al-Watan (newspaper), 33
174 Amen FM, 105
Al-Ghad (newspaper), 106 AmmanNet, 103, 107
al-Ghad Media Company (Libya), Aoun, Michel, General, 72
159, 160, 161 Arab Advisors Group, 110
Al Hail, Ali, 44 Arabesque (bouquet), 141
Al Hayat satellite channel, 63 Arab League, 8, 198
215
216 Index
Arab Media Corporation Holding British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), 16

(AMC), 198 Broadcasting and Publication
Arab Media Outlook, 18, 24 Standards Tribunal (BPST), 19, 203
Arab nationalism, 6, 88, 194 Broadcasting Service of the Kingdom
Arab News Network, 199 of Saudi Arabia (BSKSA), 34
Arab Radio and Television Network bureaucracy/bureaucrats, 51, 57, 99,
(ART), 16, 43, 56, 119, 178, 198, 128, 157, 167, 173, 176, 181
200 businessmen, 28, 32, 58, 62, 63, 65,
Arabsat, 57, 154, 163 72, 99, 211
Arab Satellite Television Charter
(ASTC), 11, 38, 39 Cactus, 121
Arab socialism, 55, 88 Canal Horizons Tunisie, 119–20
Arab Spring (Arab revolutions, pro- Canal Plus, 119
democracy protests, uprisings, Casa FM, 137
Jasmine revolution), 8, 31, 44, censorship, 29, 36, 37, 38, 59, 85–7,
49–51, 87, 100, 118, 121, 123, 93, 107, 120, 122, 124, 176, 203
127, 129, 151, 160–2, 166, 205, censorship guidelines, 36
209–10 Centre for Research in Technical and
Arab Telemedia Group (ATG), 107 Scientific Information (CERIST),
Armed Forces Moral Guidance 180
Directorate, 110 Channel 33 (UAE), 15
Assabah-Le Temps, 120 Chidiac, May, 74
ATV, 105–7, 109 City Depths (Qa’ al-Madina), 92
Audiovisual Commission (Jordan), clerics, 28, 30, 37, 39, 44
102–3, 105–6 clientelism, 10, 66, 78, 118, 211
Audio-Visual Law (Lebanon), 70, 73 CNBC, 200, 204
Audiovisual Media Law (Jordan), 103 CNN International, 16, 200
Awamleh, Talal, 107 Code de la Presse, 123
constitution: Algeria, 166, 170,
Badran, Adnan, 109 182; Jordan, 99, 101; Libya, 152;
Baraem (children’s channel), 45 Morocco, 131, 132, 136, 147;
Barakat, Marwan, 92 Tunisia, 121–3, 128
Barqawi, Samer, 93 Constitutional Assembly (Tunisia),
BBC Arabic Television, 16 127
Beat FM, 105 cultural proximity theory, 191
Ben Ali, Zine el Abidine, president,
117–21, 123, 125–9, 160, 211 Daher, Pierre, 77, 78
Bin ‘Abdulaziz, Faysal, Prince, 31 ‘Diary of the Presidential Elections’
Bin ‘Abdulaziz, Nayef, Prince, 32 (programme), 175
bin al-Walid, Khalid, 92 digitalization, 3, 35, 36, 43, 63, 103,
bin Talal, al-Waleed, Prince, 32, 71, 119, 146, 179, 188, 196, 209
77, 81 n. 38, 105 Directorate General of Audiovisual
blogs/bloggers, 39, 64–5 Communication (DGCA,
Bouran, Nart, 109 Morocco), 139, 140
Bourguiba, Habib, president, 117 drama, 10, 45, 55, 57, 83–95, 109,
Bouteflika, Abdelaziz, president, 175 110, 169, 195; see also musalsal
Index 217
Dream TV, 62, 197 free zones (economic free zones),

Du (UAE telecommunications 188, 196–8, 199, 200, 201
company), 18 free zones (media free zones), 10,
Dubai Media City (DMC), 16, 19, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 25, 58, 60–3,
193, 197–204 97, 142, 188, 193, 196–205
Dubai Media Incorporated, 15, 17, ‘fromagistes, les’, 70, 78 n. 4
18, 23 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN),
Dzaïrwebtv.com, 184 167–70, 172
Future TV, 71, 74, 76, 197
Echo of the Soul (Sada al-Ruh), 88
economic development, 14, 22–4, Gaddafi International Charity
25, 29, 55 and Development Foundation
Egyptian Media Production City (GICDF), 157, 158, 163 n. 9, n. 13
(EMPC), 61, 66, 193, 194, 200, 201 Gaddafi International Foundation
Egyptian Radio and Television for Charity Associations (GIFCA),
Union (ERTU), 49–51, 55–61, 63, 157, 163 n. 9
66, 200 Gazelles in a Forest of Wolves
Emirates Media Incorporated, 15, (Ghazlan fi Ghabat al-Dhi’ab), 90,
16, 22 91, 92, 93
Emiratization, 18, 21, 26, 212 General Authority for Investments
Entreprise Nationale de Télévision (Egypt), 60, 62
(ENTV), 168, 173, 175–9, 181, 183 geolinguistic markets, 191
‘ENTVrai’, 181 Ghanem, Shukri, 155
Equity and Reconciliation global cities, 192
Commission (IER), 133 Grand Mosque of Mecca, storming
Essahafa (newspaper), 120 of, 30, 32
Établissement de la Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),
Radiodiffusion-Télévision 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 93
Tunisienne (ERTT), 121
Établissement Public de Télévision Haddad Consortium, 184
(EPTV), 173, 177 Hajjo, Laith, 87, 90, 92
Etisalat, 18 Hamarneh, Mustafa, 109
E-Vision (cable television), 18 Hamas, 107, 198
Hannibal TV, 121, 126
Facebook, 39, 50, 129, 181 Haqqi, Haytham, 88
FIFA, 178; see also football Hariri, Rafik, and family, 71, 72, 76, 79
Five-Year-Plan of Broadcasting Haute Commission (HC), 127
(Libya), 153 Havas Tunisie, 121
FM Radio Medina, 142 Hawar islands dispute, 45
FM radio station (Jordan), 104 Hezbollah, 38, 71, 80, 159
Focus On (FO!) (magazine), 203 High Authority for Audiovisual
football, 45, 47, 177–8, 184 Communication (HACA,
France 2 channel, 119, 120 Morocco), 131–2, 135, 137–45
freedom of expression/speech, 10, 18, High Council of Audiovisual
19, 62, 72, 87, 122, 123, 128, 131, Communication (CSCA,
133, 134, 136, 152, 161, 171, 203 Morocco), 139–41, 144, 145
218 Index
High Information Council (HCI, Kikhia, Mansour Omar, 155

Algeria), 168–9 Kuttab, Daoud, 103
Higher Media Council, HMC
(Jordan), 101, 103, 109 Laabidi, Kamel, 128
Hotbird satellite, 161 La (magazine), 150
Husayn, Samir, 92 La Presse (newspaper), 120
LBC-Sat, 32, 35, 40, 56, 71, 75–7, 79,
Independent Television News (ITN), 197, 200
105 Lebanese channels (owners/
infitah (policy of opening), 55, 194 affiliations), 71
Information Code (Algeria), 167 Lebanese Forces, 71, 76, 77
Instance Nationale pour la Réforme Le Renouveau (newspaper), 120
de l’Information et de la liberalization (of broadcasting), 7, 9,
Communication (INRIC), 128 10, 31, 56, 59, 97, 100, 112, 121,
Inter-ministerial Broadcasting 125, 129, 131–7, 141–2, 145–6,
Commission (Algeria), 169 150–1, 156, 159, 161–2, 180,
Internet radio/web radio, 103, 183 210–11
Internet TV/web TV, 77, 161, 181, liberalization (economic), 9, 10, 40,
183, 184, 188 83, 85, 86, 93, 177, 210
investment, 58, 61, 64, 85, 97, Libya al-Ahrar (Libya of the Free)
101–3, 105, 108, 166, 180, 189, channel, 161
193–4, 197–202, 204, 211–12 Libya al-Ghad reform programme,
Ipsos, 110 157
Iqra’ channel, 32, 40 Libyan Jamahiriya Broadcasting
It’s Our Turn to Speak (El Haki Elina), Corporation (LJBC), 153, 154,
110 156, 159, 162
Libyan Transitional National
Jabri, Ghassan, 83 Council, 161
jamahirization, 153 licences/licensing: Algeria, 171, 177,
Jebel Ali Port (free zone), 201 180; Egypt, 62, 70; Jordan, 96,
Joint Committee for Professional 97, 102, 103–6, 108, 112, 113;
Cards, 172 Lebanon, 71–3, 77; Morocco,
Jordan Media City (JMC), 193, 198, 138–9, 141–3, 146; Saudi Arabia,
200, 201 33, 39; Tunisia, 125, 126, 127,
Jordan Radio and Television 128; UAE, 16, 18–20
Corporation (JRTVC), 96, 97, loci, production/distribution, 188,
108–11, 113 190, 191–2, 193, 204–5
Jordan United Company for TV Luxe Radio, 142
Broadcasting, 105
made in Algeria fiction programmes,
Kamel, Saleh, 32 175
Karthago Group, 121 Maghreb Arabe Presse, 134
Kassir, Samir, 74 Maraqa, Jarir, 111
Kawkash, ‘Ala al-Din, 88 Maronites, 71, 72, 198
Khatib, Muhannad, 105, 106 MAS Group, 134
Khoja, ‘Abdulaziz, 34, 39, 40 Maspero, 51
Index 219
Masrah al-Telefizion, 35 national identity, 13, 14, 20, 21, 22,

Médi 1 (radio station), 134, 137, 143 23, 25, 56, 102, 168, 212, 213
media cities, 188–206 National Identity Index (NII), 21–2
Med Radio, 142 National Initiative for Human
Melody channel, 197 Development (NIHD), 133
Middle East Broadcasting Center National Media Council (NMC,
(MBC), 16, 32, 33, 37, 40, 45, UAE), 15, 18, 21, 26
56, 57, 84, 86, 92, 105, 196, 199, National Political Commission for
200, 204 Election Monitoring (Algeria), 174
Middle East News, 105 national unity, 9, 29, 38, 64, 102,
Misers, The (al-Bukhala’), 83 104, 111, 194
Mitterand, François, president, 119 national values, 4, 29, 38, 47, 88,
mobile phones, 15, 39, 129, 181 104, 168
Mobile TV, 18 NATO, 162
moguls/tycoons, media, 32, 33, 37, Neighbourhood Gate, The (Bab
105, 178 al-Hara), 92
Mohammed VI, King, 132, 133 Nessma TV, 121
monopoly (state monopoly), 29, network theory, 99
43, 59, 61, 63, 70, 96, 100, 101, New TV, 71, 72, 158
105, 106, 108, 112, 113, 117, Nilesat, 57, 58, 61–4, 161, 194
119–22, 125, 133–7, 155, 161, 9/11, 5, 33, 101, 197, 201
167–70, 173, 179, 180, 183, 194, Nour, 37
209, 210, 212 Nusair, Najib, 84–5, 90, 93
Mood FM, 105
Moroccan Post and Oea (newspaper), 158, 160
Telecommunications, 134 Office Algérien de Télévision, 174
Moulay Hassan, Sultan, 134 Office National de Télédiffusion
Mouwatinoun (newspaper), 120 (ONT), 125, 126
Mubarak, Hosni, president, 49, 50, offshore media cities/channels, 32,
51, 56, 63, 96, 159, 160 37, 195–6, 197, 199, 205 n. 4
mukhabarat (intelligence services), 87 One-Nine-Company, 158
mukhalafat (illegal settlements), 89 Open Courtyard (Fusha Samawiyya),
Murr TV (MTV), 71, 73, 75, 77 88–9
musalsal, 55, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88; see Orbit, 16, 43, 196, 200
also drama Orbit-Showtime Network (OSN), 16
MySpace, 39 OTV, 71, 72, 75
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, president, 55, Pan Arab Research Centre (PARC), 24
152, 194 Parti de la Justice et du
Nasserism, 5, 55, 157 Développement (PJD), 144
National Audio-Visual Council path dependence, 10, 49, 51–5,
(NAVC, Lebanon), 70, 73, 74 63–5, 67
National Broadcasting Network pay-TV, 16, 43, 189, 198
(NBN, Lebanon), 71, 76 Planet (Internet service provider),
national cohesion, 9, 28, 29, 31, 46, 121
56, 212 Play 99.6 (radio station), 105
220 Index
press freedom, 50, 85, 100, 102, 111, Safadi, Ayman, 109
124, 130 sahra (‘soirée’), 83
Princess El Materi Holding, 121 Sahwa firebrands, 28–9, 33, 40
professional unions/syndicates, 75, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, 150,
106, 113, 153 156–61
public service, 7, 81, 120, 121, 146, Samaha media, 141
173–5, 181, 184, 212, 213, 214 Sami Yusuf, Hassan, 90
Saudi Mawarid, 16
Qadhafi, Colonel Mu’ammar, see Sawiris, Naguib, 63
al-Qadhafi Sawt Al Ashatie (radio station),
Qalam rassas (Bullet talk), 159 14
Qallab, Saleh, 111 Schiller, Herbert, 3, 4
Qandil, Hamdy, 64, 159 Shammam, Mahmud, 161
Qatar Cablevision, 43, 48 Sharbatji, Rasha, 90
Qatar TV (QTV), 42–8 Sharjah Media Corporation, 17, 18,
Quryna (newspaper), 158 23, 26
Shaykh Saleh al-Luhaydan, 37
Radio Al-Balad, 108 Shaykh Waleed al-Ibrahim, 32
Radio Fann, 105 Shboul, Faisal, 106
Radio Libya, 152 Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser
Radio Maroc, 134 al-Misnad, 42, 46, 47
Radio Mars, 142 Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber
Radio Mosaïque, 121, 126 al-Thani, 42
Radio Télévision Algérienne (RTA), Sheikh Hamad Khalifa al-Thani,
167 Emir of Qatar, 42, 47
Radio Télévision Marocaine (RTM), Sheikh Mohamad Bin Rashed Al
134, 138, 141 Maktoum, 202
Rassemblement Constitutionnel Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani,
Démocratique (RCD), 118 42, 47
Rawabdeh, Abdel-Rauf, 100 Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 44
reform, 7, 8, 10, 210, 211; Egypt, Shems FM, 121
49–65; Jordan, 96–113; Libya, 10, Showtime, 5, 16, 196, 199, 204
154, 155, 156–8, 160, 161; Morocco, Skynews Arabic, 16
133, 134–5, 137, 147; Saudi Arabia, Société Nationale de Radiodiffusion
28–40; Syria, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93; et de la Télévision (SNRT), 138,
Tunisia, 117, 127, 128, 129 141
Reporters Without Borders, 135 SOREAD 2M, 141, 148 n. 20,
Reuters, 109, 204 149 n. 21
Revolutionary Command Council Spotlight, 10, 87–8, 90, 94
(RCC), 152 structural reform, 96, 97, 100
Revolutionary Committees, 154, Summer Cloud (Sahabat al-Saif), 92
155, 157, 158 Supreme Council of Armed Forces
Rifai, Taleb, 108 (SCAF), 50
Rotana, 32, 33, 105, 200 Supreme Independent Body of
Rotana FM, 105 Audiovisual Communication
Ro’ya TV, 97, 110 (Tunisia), 127
Index 221
Supreme Information Council (SIC, United Nations, 89, 154, 155

Algeria), 170, 171, 172, 174 US military base (Qatar), 46
Suriya al-Duwaliyya (Syria US Wheelus airbase (Libya), 152
International), 87
Voice of the Arab Homeland (radio
TECOM, 16, 19, 200, 202, 204, station), 152
208 Voice of the Arabs (radio station), 31
Telecommunications Regulatory
Authority (TRA), 18 Wahhabiyya, 29, 30
Télé Liban, 70, 71, 74 Waiting (al-Intizar), 90, 91, 92, 93
Télé Lumière, 71 Wheelus-TV, 152
Third Universal Theory, 153 World Association of Newspapers
Trabelsi, Leila, 117 and News Publishers, 106
Tueni, Gebran, 74 World Cup, 178
Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP), 122 World Trade Organization, 155
Tunisie 7 (state television), 121
twofour54 (media free zone), 16, Yasiri, Faisal, 83
19–20, 199 Youth National Organization
2M channel, 134, 137, 144 (Libya), 157
YouTube, 39, 160, 181
UAE broadcasting organizations, 17
UGTT syndicate, 118 Za’im, 71, 79 n. 7
UNESCO, 49, 103, 152 Zitouna FM, 120

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National Broadcasting and State Policy in

List of Tables vii

Introduction: A Return to the National Perspective 1

9 Liberalization of the Moroccan Broadcasting Sector:

1.1 UAE national broadcasters 17

The study of national Arab broadcasting through the prism of states’

Muhammad I. Ayish is currently Professor of Mass Communication

Joan Barata is a Professor of Communication Law and Vice Dean

Sarah El Richani is a doctoral student researching the Lebanese

Tourya Guaaybess is an associate professor at the University of

Aârab Issiali is head of ISIC (Institut Supérieur de l’Information et de

Marwan M. Kraidy is Professor of Global Communication at

International Center for Scholars, his books include Reality Television

Hugh Miles is an award-winning freelance journalist and author of

Belkacem Mostefaoui is Professor at the Ecole nationale supérieure

Carola Richter is Assistant Professor for International Communication

Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and

Christa Salamandra is visiting professor at The Center for Middle

The 2011 Arab Spring confirms the importance of an analysis of Arab

Communication studies and Arab media1

Information and communication sciences or communication stud-

propaganda between the two world wars; it is also the product of

is necessary to reduce ‘the digital divide between rich and developing

From one trap to the other

regard. This book addresses precisely those countries which are

The analysis at the national level: a methodological

In this collective book, we have chosen to analyse media in their

to note that media free zones dedicated to the broadcasting sector,

National broadcasting as a gauge of political opening

Television authorities and government policies in the field

Arab broadcasting and government policies: the book

The topic of this book is national broadcasting in Arab countries. The

(country studies) with a twelfth transversal chapter dealing with

A large spectrum of countries is dealt with in the book, from the

Belkacem Mostefaoui defends this view as well. His close scrutiny

technological change in this field, are in fact a ‘path-shifting’ policy,6

The view of media in general and broadcasting in particular as a

This chapter discusses how institutional, technological and

Historical context: from radio in the 1960s to the media

broadcast transmissions were coming from Abu Dhabi (one black

in 2005 to replace Emirates Media Inc. as a private media company

Table 1.1 UAE national broadcasters

Broadcaster organization Services

Abu Dhabi- Abu Dhabi Media

Dubai-based Dubai Media Incorporated

Sharjah-based Sharjah Media Corporation

Ajman-based Ajman Dept. of Information

RAK-based RAK Dept. of Information

Fujairah-based Fujairah Media Group

also offered by the country’s leading telecommunications company

Broadcast operations in the UAE are licensed by the National Media

as part of local government-controlled information and communication

such content available to the public and irrespective of whether or

All Programmes, Advertisements, printed material and all other

(a) be indecent or contain pornography;

National broadcasters’ role in reinforcing national

Ever since the UAE was founded as a federation on 2 December

cultural and social traditions. In 2008, a national conference on