Report on Arab Media Treads Lightly

“Nine color pages of Renoir paintings followed by a picture of a roller-skating horse . . . Just think, nine pages of Renoirs! But that roller-skating horse comes along, and the final impression is that both Renoir and the horse were talented.” Thus did literary critic Dwight MacDonald ridicule

Tweet

Email

Print

Life magazine’s “attempts at popular education” in his 1960 essay, “Masscult & Midcult.” His point was that we should deplore any medium that cannot properly order its messages.

How tame MacDonald’s juxtaposition seems today, when anyone with a TV remote can click from an angry preacher denouncing moral decadence to “Telephone,” the latest video from Lady Gaga, in which she plays a freaky sexpot inmate in a creepy women’s prison who escapes to join Beyoncé in a diner, where they gleefully poison all the customers. Long accustomed to such indigestible contrasts, we Americans just shrug and keep on surfing.

But is everyone in the world so wearily postmodernist? Not according to a report issued last month by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies (CIS) at Cambridge University. Titled Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East, it surveys some of the better known Islamic, Christian, and Jewish TV channels in the region, with an eye to how well they address the concerns of ordinary people struggling to stay true to their faith while coping with rapid, unsettling change.

A leading vector of change is, of course, Arab satellite TV, which now carries over 500 channels in a state of disorder that would give Dwight MacDonald the fits. At one point the report states that this wide-open mediascape leads to a “‘schizophrenic’ culture” in which it is “easy for viewers to flick between a religious channel and a music clip channel.” To their credit, the authors do not shrug at this but rather declare it a topic in need of analysis.

But unfortunately, their report provides no such analysis. In part, this may be due to the underdeveloped state of market research in the region. Even when Arab media companies keep track of audience and budget figures (most do not), they prefer not to reveal them — part of what Habib Battah of the Journal of Middle East Broadcasters calls a “tradition of non-disclosure.” Recently the Nielsen company has opened a Middle Eastern branch, but so far there is still no objective ratings system. Therefore, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that even the biggest Arab media companies remain basically vanity operations run by Gulf billionaires.

One such billionaire is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, benefactor of CIS. Like Rupert Murdoch, who just bought nine percent of his company, Alwaleed should have more than a passing interest in the schizophrenic culture of Arab media, because it exists within his own music and entertainment company, Rotana. Reputed to be the largest in the Arab market, Rotana operates two satellite TV channels devoted to racy (Arab) pop music and one, al-Resalah, devoted to religion.

According to the CIS report, the mission of al-Resalah is to “serve Islam and change young people’s ideas about terrorism.” But apart from a passing reference to appearances by celebrity preachers Amr Khaled and Tarek al-Suwaidan (the Kuwaiti businessman who is also the channel’s general manager), the actual religious programming on al-Resalah is not addressed. Indeed, the only program mentioned in the report is “The Leaders’ Training Academy,” modeled on “The Apprentice,” an American reality show in which aspiring business types vie for the favor of Donald Trump.

It is disappointing to see such cursory treatment of the prince’s own religious channel, because al-Resalah has been criticized for hosting guests who spew hatred at Israel and the West. To be sure, the sole source of this criticism is Steven Stalinsky of MEMRI, an organization known for a certain selectivity with regard to the evidence. But if Prince Alwaleed is really devoted to helping Muslims deal with cultural schizophrenia, then it would behoove him to demand more from an academic institution bearing his name. At the moment, there’s more information about al-Resalah on Wikipedia than can be found in this report.