10 - 16 May 2001
Issue No.533
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 10 - 16 May 2001 Issue No.533 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Hype and hypocrisy
The Arab press has yet to transcend its role as a mouthpiece for Arab governments. And if the revolution in information and communications technology has opened up a margin of freedom still to be exploited, for the time being the Arab media is as unable as ever to accommodate either the experience of the past or the challenges of the present.
One clear example of this failure is the Arab media's discourse on the Palestinian issue, characterised by an emphasis on rhetoric. Rather than address the international community, the press prefers to regurgitate the kind of rhetoric it has been feeding Arab public opinion for decades.
Internationally, there exists a marked lack of sympathy with the Palestinians. To combat this, the Arab press should be engaged in providing the kind of information its Western counterpart chooses to ignore. Yet what do they do? They endlessly repeat what they believe the Arab public wants to hear.
From Sabra and Shatila to Israel's response to the Intifada: why do Arab satellite channels consistently fail to inform the world about these tragedies? The Arab media, surely, should be engaged in ensuring that these events become an inherent part of the international conscience. It should be disseminating information about these tragedies in as many languages as possible. Yet rather than fulfil this obligation, the easiest course is taken, i.e. to exclusively address Arab public opinion. Meanwhile, Westerners, along with many others around the world, remain unexposed to the Arab perspective and ignorant of Arab concerns.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is a professor of mass communication at Cairo University.
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