continued: "Looks Are Deceiving: The Arab Talk Shows and TV Journalism" by S. Abdallah Schleifer
page 2 of 2 / page 1

Of course the Arab satellite television channels (and we like to believe, as I will note in more detail later, the impact of the Adham Center for Television Journalism at the American University in Cairo) has turned that all around. During the most dangerous moments of the Intifada Al-Aqsa it was the Arab satellite channel correspondents and camera crews who were in the thick of the action. The European TV channels and TV news agencies relied to a great degree on a new generation of Palestinian video cameramen for their own coverage.

But perhaps the most important problem that delayed the emergence of television journalism has been the parochial nature of medium prior to satellite TV. An Arab print journalist, even in the worst years of state censorship, generally still had access to the Times, Le Monde, and the New York Times, which gave him or her something of a sense of internationally recognized standards, of the paramount importance of accuracy, of the virtues of detachment, of the obvious fruits of research. But until the age of satellites--which in the Arab world is but ten years--television transmission had a range of only 50 miles, which means the Arab TV broadcaster, often with no experience in print journalism and limited (if any) travel abroad, simply had no idea what international standards, based on the experiences of free TV journalism, were. There could be no creative borrowing and adaptation.

The Gulf War and the sudden access throughout the region to CNN coverage, for all its weaknesses and alleged partisanships, changed all of this. The creation of MBC was the first response, and to this day MBC, with its expensively constructed news bureaus throughout the Arab world as well as in major global capitals, has consistently provided the region with news shows built around its own field reports that meet international standards. BBC Arabic News was the next entry - not as successful as MBC if only because too much of the material was simply BBC reports translated and turned around for editing, so while BBC Arabic very much met international production standards and as such was a very positive experience, it lacked the warmth or cultural relevance of MBC's news. That lack of sensitivity to cultural relevance was one of the factors that contributed to its sad demise.

The banner of Arab TV news at international standards has also been picked up elsewhere. Nile TV's English- and French-language news under the formative leadership of Hassan Hamid took major steps to introduce the field report formula on Egyptian TV, as has ANN and the most recent satellite broadcaster, Dubai Business Channel. But it is here where Al-Jazeera deserves particular credit: in supporting the award-winning investigative journalism of its London bureau chief Yosri Fouda and the ongoing work of his colleagues generating daily field reports, reporting which has done far more for developing an informed public opinion than most talk shows put together.

TV field reporting is expensive and it is an acquired art. At the Adham Center for Television Journalism we are proud that over the past decade we have been able to train a small but serious cadre of young Arab journalists in this art, and these graduates apply their training almost entirely to the Arab satellite channels rather than the terrestrial Arab national channels. Al-Jazeera's Yosri Fouda is a graduate of the Center, as is Lamees El Hadidi, Al-Jazeera business correspondent and managing editor of Alam Al Youm. Hani Koneisy, formerly one of the few Arabic-language reporters (rather than translators) with the short-lived BBC Arabic TV service, and then an anchor with Abu Dhabi TV, is now, based in London, responsible for APTN's intensive and successful Middle East coverage. APTN's Nairobi bureau chief and Adham Center graduate Khalid Kazziha covers East Africa for the world. Last year when President Mubarak traveled two Egypt TV correspondents alternated in accompanying the President and providing both Arabic and English coverage. Both were graduates of the Adham Center, as indeed are a small but critical and growing number of reporters and producers at such Egypt TV channels as Nile TV, Nile News, and now even Egypt TV's terrestrial Channel 2. In Jordan, one of the Adham Center's most recent graduates, Dana Zureikat, has introduced the most demanding standard of field reporting to Jordan TV, editing her own pieces as well as functioning in the field as correspondent.

The recently established Orbit Field Production unit (OFP), which provides daily non-political news reporting on culture and entertainment for the three-hour Orbit Arabic language show "Al-Qahira Al-Youm" ("Cairo Today") is headed by Adham Center graduate Ali Belail and staffed with producer-reporters who are mostly his former classmates. The OFP is the brainchild of the veteran TV director Tarek El Kashaf, who is not only Orbit's Executive Director in Cairo but also an Associate (honorary faculty member) of the Adham Center, an honor he shares with Ted Turner, Peter Einstein, Sheikh Saleh Kamel, Hassan Hamid, Alex Zilo, Moataz Demurdash, Hamdi Kandeel, Milad Besada, Bob Jobbins, and Chris Forrester).

Besides the Adham Center MA graduates, there are many AUC alumni who have taken special courses at the Center and are to be found in Arab satellite broadcasting as well as other media. One such Adham Center affiliate alumni, Tamer Abdelaal, was signed on by Dubai Business Channel as their manager of production.

But all of this progress in the development of an authentic Arab TV journalism meeting international standards over the past decade has been overshadowed of late by the glitz and glitter of the public affairs talk shows. The talk shows are conveniently far less expensive to produce than ongoing, day-in day-out field journalism, and all too often they deflect attention from field reporting -- the very journalistic lifestream of an informed public opinion. And all too often, the new talk shows appeal to a popular taste for sensationalism and confrontation that is already, in its most extreme form, taking a terrible toll in the moral and aesthetic sensibilities of the West. TBS