4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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Web Watch
CNNarabic.com
CNN's Arabic Web site, launched a couple of months ago, was received without much fanfare by the Arabic media. Indeed, Arabic- language news services barely seemed to register the emergence of a potential rival in the cyber-world.
CNNarabic.com
For CNN, though, this was uncharted territory. Very few international media companies offer Arabic services. The leading example, of course, remains the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)'s Arabic service, which is also available on the Web at bbcarabic.com. In terms of cyber-news, the BBC site and Al-Jazeera TV's Web site, aljazeera.net, remain the more detailed players carrying news in Arabic.
CNNarabic.com was launched in the midst of what the Bush administration terms its "war on terror," and its arrival coincides with an escalation of violence in the Palestinian occupied territories. The launch was also preceded by increased talk, within international circles, of the need to address moderate Arabs and Muslims around the world, of the need to create bridges of understanding and dialogue and -- it must logically follow -- the need to talk to Arabs in their own language. The new CNN site is, therefore, part of a bigger picture.
According to its own "About us" section, CNNarabic is administered by the network's Dubai bureau by experienced journalists "from the region." It attempts to offer "international news from an Arab perspective."
To an extent, they seem to be achieving this. Despite the limited number of stories on the site compared to English-language CNN.com, there is something of a timid attempt to write stories from what could be regarded as a mainstream Arab point of view. This was quite evident earlier this week, in the site's coverage of Israel's invasion of Ramallah and the siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who is referred to as "president of the Palestinian Authority" and "president" by the Arabic Web site and merely as "Palestinian leader" by English-language CNN.com.
CNNarabic carried lead stories with such headlines as "5 Palestinian security men killed in cold blood," -- a story about the massacre of five men whose corpses were found in a security building in Ramallah on Saturday. The article went on to explain: "Israeli forces killed five Palestinian security men in cold blood. Their bodies were found strewn next to each other with bullets in the heads on Saturday in Ramallah."
Significantly, this massacre did not develop into a story on CNN's main Web site, which continued to carry such stories as "Arafat says he is under siege."
On Sunday, while CNNarabic's lead headline was "A defining battle at Arafat's headquarters," English-language CNN.com's was "Terror attack at Tel Aviv café, 29 wounded" (although the second story also appeared on CNNarabic, of course).
Even when the siege was mentioned on English-language CNN.com, it was described in very different terms than those used in its Arabic equivalent. "The latest assault [the gun battle at Arafat's headquarters] comes in the wake of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Saturday which injured 29 people," read the main English-language story -- very much in keeping with the American media strategy of linking the war on Ramallah directly to suicide bombings and not to occupation.
Similarly, CNN.com's coverage of the reaction of Arab officials and the many demonstrations on Arab streets were only available through a link from the main gun battle story. But CNNarabic, whose editors -- at least for now -- seem to be trying to avoid traditional Western biases, covered the demos as a separate story which could be clicked on from the main site.
CNN's Arabic-language news stories, however, tend to be much shorter than the average English-language story on CNN.com, and thus provide far less in the way of detail.
CNNarabic is divided into sections which imitate the layout of the mainstream English- language CNN site. A side-bar leads surfers to the Main Page, Middle East, World, Business, Science and Technology, Entertainment, Sports and Weather sections. The number of subsections are, however, limited compared to those available on the English- language site.
For the time being, the political section of the site is obviously receiving more attention and is the only one being updated frequently throughout the day. Other sections of the site, notably the entertainment and sports sections, do not receive as much attention and seem not to be updated regularly. Moreover, it seems no effort is being made to cover Arab events in these sections. Arab sports and Arab culture are completely absent, so that these sections come across as more of a selected translation of the main (English) Web site into Arabic.
And the weather section is nothing but a link to CNN's main weather site -- in English.
In general, there is far less material and far less variety on the Arabic site so far, which suggests that it is largely meant to cater for those Arabic-speakers who are only interested in political and breaking news.
Despite CNN's status in the international media, its Arabic Web site will take some time to establish itself as a competitive cyber- news site in the Arabic-speaking world. It is not comprehensive enough in its coverage of events, or intelligent enough in its depth of analysis, to be the Arabic news Web site of choice. It is definitely worth a visit, however -- especially in such times of crises when news-hungry Arabs are surfing all over the Web.
Reviewed by Amina Elbendary
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