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By
Stacey Philbrick Yadav
In a room not more than two square meters, a small black-and-white
television is perched uncertainly on top of a refrigerator,
a cable running through the corrugated tin roof. In this small
baqala, shelves stacked with tins of milk, dry biscuits,
and crates of eggs, six men sit around a large tray, eating
their lunch. After greeting me and inviting me to join them,
Khaled, the proprietor, asks without the slightest trace of
self-consciousness, “Tell me—why do you (all) hate
the blacks so much?”
To me, the question
comes out of left field, and I am at a bit of a loss for how
to respond. To the men in Khaled’s shop—a couple
of small-scale merchants like Khaled, the launderer from across
the street, the security guard from an institute in the neighborhood—the
question is a new one, and it has been weighing on their minds,
they tell me. Less than two months after the Yemeni government
killed more than 40 people in an effort to put down economically-motivated
rioting and looting in their own city, they are watching United
States law enforcement agents firing in the streets of New Orleans,
seeing Americans scavenging for loaves of bread and bottled
water in abandoned shops, and hearing the charges of racism
and benign neglect emanating from American politicians and activists.
They are asking themselves—and me—is this really
America?
Viewing Tragedy from Abroad
In the wake of Hurricane
Katrina, media critics in the US were aware that the Arab satellite
stations were airing what many saw as America’s dirty
laundry. Naming Al Jazeera specifically, one conservative urban
planning analyst noted at the time that it had, “gleefully
portrayed the Katrina suffering as… ‘America’s
original sin—racism.’”(1) And, indeed, some
activist organizations in the United States did celebrate
the exposure that international media outlets gave to issues
of poverty and inequality, juxtaposing them with the oft-maligned
mainstream media.(2) “US journalists may have been largely
silent on issues of race and poverty,” wrote one well-known
activist organization, “but the international press was
not.”(3)
I was not in the
United States to witness these arguments or anxieties from within,
but was instead in Sana’a, worlds away from the crisis.
In this country where 42% of the population lives below the
poverty line and one in five is chronically malnourished, I
walked through the streets of downtown Sana’a confronted
by a level of poverty and daily deprivation that was staggering.
At a roadside stop on the Sana’a-Aden road just a few
days before the hurricane struck New Orleans, I watched as a
toddler fought with a stray dog and a chicken over a torn piece
of bread in a garbage heap several feet high. Days later, satellite
images raised questions about dehumanizing inequalities not
alongside a highway in the Global South, but in the streets
and neighborhoods of the American South.
Perhaps most surprising
was the eagerness of Yemeni friends and colleagues to address
the topic—and to relate it to Yemen, another example of
the observation that satellite media “accentuate the global
but simultaneously stimulate the local.”(4) In late September,
sitting at a qat chew with a group of about 40 politicians,
journalists, and public intellectuals—the Sana’ani
chattering class, if you will—a member of the Yemeni Socialist
Party approached me. We had not been introduced, so he gave
me his name, took my hand in both of his, and then said quite
formally, “Please accept my condolences for Hurricane
Katrina and the suffering of your countrymen.” Trying
to situate this show of empathy within the range of reactions
I was seeing around me—to understand even the sheer scope
of interest in the topic—I asked the group as a whole
about their responses to the coverage.
In the discussion
that followed, as well as in subsequent chews over the coming
days, it became clear that this event was not simply about America
in America, but America abroad. As ‘Ali Saif Hassan, former
head of the Nasserist party and current chairman of the opposition
Political Forum, a local NGO committed to political and economic
reform, explained:
“I
thought that I knew America well, but what I saw [of the Katrina
coverage] on Al Jazeera showed me something from deep inside
American society, things I see in most Third World countries.
I learned about this [other] America from Al Jazeera.”(5)
Others in the room
spoke about the ubiquity of inequality, and the universal relationship
between race and poverty. Members of the Islamist Islah, in
particular, tended to take a long view of human history, perhaps
surprisingly linking the current crisis less to the particular
iniquity of the Bush administration or Godless Americans, than
to the fundamental human instinct to discriminate. What is it
about human nature, asked journalist Sayeed Thabit Sayyed, that
means that there are distinctions of inequality in the poorest
countries, like Yemen, and in the richest?(6) Without dismissing
tremendous global inequalities, he was moved by a sense of common
experience. Each person who spoke about Hurricane Katrina made
it clear that their awareness of inequalities of race and class
in America was heightened by the broadcast of often-grueling
images by Arab satellite stations.
While inequality
was an aspect of the Katrina tragedy highlighted by Arab satellite
stations, Arab broadcasters were not alone in discussing an
issue that also was at the center of debates in the United States
itself. The difference, I think, was that this message in some
ways went against what many see as the metanarrative of American
dominance and Arab alterity expressed, in particular, by Al
Jazeera.(7) As Sheila Carapico noted in late September,
US imperialism
is projected via a reputation for omniscience and omnipotence,
intelligence and power of epic proportions, great wealth and
ultimate invincibility. The teleological conspiracy theories
so rampant in the Arab world …are built on this parable
of indestructibility and foolproof information. Now it turns
out that it is not only Asian nations that lack early warning
systems to sound the alarm before disaster strikes; it is not
only Asians who have to smell the stench of death in the streets
for weeks or have to beg for basic necessities.(8)
In Sana’a,
it was like watching Goliath fall. The incredulity of Khaled,
at the corner baqala, was repeated in interactions
across class and gender, from political activists, to deputy
ministers, to the woman who cut my hair. As Adel Iskander has
explained, “the creation of a narrative of counter hegemonic
alterity along the post-colonial model helps propel Al Jazeera’s
image as an alternative voice that ‘represents the other’…”(9)
But what does it mean when representing this “other”
means representing poverty and inequality in America itself?
Anti-American? Anti-Democratic?
As Michael Hudson
noted in the inaugural print issue of Transnational Broadcasting
Studies, there is substantial concern in policy circles
that Al Jazeera, “while opening up new political space,
has created an opportunity for anti-American sentiments to be
voiced and, perhaps, anti-American activities to be encouraged.”(10)
Despite the fact that the net effect of Arab satellite viewing
does not appear to promote anti-American sentiments,
critics continue to lambaste Al Jazeera in particular, "for
being hopelessly biased and unfairly hostile to America.”(11)
Is Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Katrina aftermath, then,
simply an example of the subaltern periphery “speaking
back,” as some would have it, by celebrating the perceived
fallibility of a global hegemon? A special report by the University
of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy tracked
worldwide coverage of the Katrina aftermath and concluded that
their sample, “suggests that while much of the international
coverage of Katrina started out like our own, the tone and direction
of international coverage has gradually changed. Critical coverage,
ranging from pointed criticisms of the administration’s
climate policy to the perceived failure of the American social
safety net, have become stronger, while some alternative media
have even resorted to describing Katrina as an act of ‘divine
redemption.’”(12)
At the same time,
the major satellite stations also provided a venue for liberals
who “trashed the divine interventionists repeatedly.”(13)
In this way, Joseph Braude argues that the coverage—and
here he is presumably speaking mainly of the many call-in shows
and debates that dealt with the topic—provided an unforeseen
opportunity to “negate the legitimacy of al-Qaeda and
its ilk” by enabling viewers (and online readers) to voice
the opinion that New Orleans residents are “human beings
before they are Americans.”(14) Al Jazeera’s coverage,
in particular, has been described as, “respectful and
sympathetic, but not without a few tastes of irony.”(15)
Watching news coverage of the disaster at a child’s birthday
party in the Sana'a home of a family that fled Baghdad in the
wake of the 2003 invasion, a Palestinian guest asked in rhetorical
anger how the mothers were supposed to feed their children in
the flooded city. And where was the government? This, it would
seem, was a concern that resonated with her own experience and,
I imagine, with many of those who have been displaced in today’s
Middle East. But in her anger there was empathy.
It is therefore possible
to interpret the broadcast of American setbacks—alongside
more realistic images of American society in its racial, economic,
and regional diversity—as having “deepened the Arab
world’s factual, rather than imaginatively preconceived,
understanding of America.”(16) Indeed, Nabil al-Sofee,
one of Yemen’s most prolific journalists and editorialists
praised “Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and others like them,
(for treating) diversity as both legitimate and beneficial”
and suggested that this “may be the greatest contribution
of this media, and one we should admire.”(17)
Thus one of the core
questions inadvertently highlighted by Al Jazeera’s extensive
coverage of Hurricane Katrina is the role that such coverage
may be playing in creating a kind of transnational democracy
of information, as opposed to simply “undermining America’s
policies and reputation.”(18) One of the greatest contributions
of the satellite news stations may simply be the provision of
information. As Abdallah Schleifer suggested in the last issue
of TBS, “it is informed opinion that is of value—not
opinion for its own sake. Reporting from the field and reporting
the facts as they are in the field informs opinion.”
Ironically, in parts
of the developing world where access to television and the Internet
remains limited, print journalists may be among the greatest
beneficiaries of satellite media. As journalist friends and
colleagues repeatedly told me (and as I could see myself when
reading their articles) the information provided in the basic
news coverage on international Arab satellite stations informs
their own writing and, to some extent, shapes their concerns.
In this vein, Al-Sofee, himself reliant on satellite media as
a principal source in his writing, has suggested that “these
stations have helped to an imaginable extent, by giving the
viewer—and here I’m speaking about the Yemeni (viewer)—the
opportunity to follow global debates and listen to
widely divergent opinions.”(19)
This outward orientation
is a part of what has driven a regional "demonstration
effect," by exposing viewers to democratic developments
elsewhere in the region, like Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution,
or Egyptian, Palestinian, and Iraqi elections.(20) Al Jazeera
and Al Arabiya’s conscious decision to increase their
coverage of American domestic politics over the past several
years, culminating in the Katrina coverage, may also be helping
to "provincialize" America in ways that have an impact
not only on how others view the United States, but also on how
they view their own prospects for democracy and development.
“Provincializing” America in the Developing
World
Government incapacity
and mismanagement are not new stories in Yemen. In fact, aside
from the grossest examples, they hardly make the headlines.
In February 2005, months before the hurricane struck, a report
from a Washington think-tank was making the rounds in Sana’a,
in which Yemen was labeled as a “failed state.”
While many took umbrage at the label, they were hard-pressed
to come up with a cogent defense against it. It was with many
of the same public figures that I would later discuss Katrina
and US policy failures, and while there was no sign of “rejoicing,”
there were a lot of questions about whether or not a country
that was so clearly ill-equipped to handle a crisis like Katrina
should be seeking to influence Yemeni economic and social policy,
much less reconstruct Iraq and Afghanistan.
If images of American
poverty and government inadequacy captured the imagination of
the nearly 50 million viewers of Al Jazeera, it may be in part
because they have helped to expose the contradictions of what
Dipesh Chakrabarty calls the “not yet” approach
to development. Ideas about democracy and development are articulated
by the industrialized nations, the US most of all, ”…
as a way of saying ‘not yet’ to somebody else. ...
(this)‘not yet’ exists today in tension with the
global insistence on the ‘now’ that marks popular
movements toward democracy.”(21) By showing that this
condition of suspension and incompletion-this “not yet”-exists
within a consolidated democracy, these images open the door
to Yemeni reimaginings of their own relationship with the United
States and the “developed” world as a whole. When
American development is seen as a work-in-progress, those viewing
it become less the objects of American and international development
goals, and more partners in an on-going process, however unequal
this partnership may at times be.
In the immediate
circumstances in which I watched this drama unfold, seeing the
putative bearers of development falter in the face of Hurricane
Katrina emboldened critics of US-led development strategies
and initiatives for political reform. In July 2005, the Yemeni
military rolled tanks into several cities in Yemen in order
to put down protests and rioting generated by petroleum subsidy
cuts that most saw as “imposed” by the United States
through international financial institutions. As police shot
rioters in the streets, the US Embassy’s deputy commissioner
of mission, Dr. Nabil Khoury, faced media ridicule for his role
in supporting the government’s actions. Sitting in qat
chews in the days following Hurricane Katrina, people repeatedly
drew a parallel between their government’s failure to
ensure both peace and prosperity and what they saw as America’s
failure at home. For Yemeni viewers of Al Jazeera, then,
Hurricane
Katrina has exposed the ugliness of America’s segregation
system, the ghettoes, racism, misery and poverty that lurk beneath
the surface of economic prosperity and social harmony.(22)
Suddenly, following
American wisdom in Yemeni policymaking seemed an even shakier
proposition.
None of this should
suggest, however, that satellite exposure to America’s
troubles at home can resolve tensions of democracy and development
abroad, or that its images of one American tragedy will critically
and permanently reconfigure attitudes in developing countries.
Recently returned from a trip to the US, 'Ali Saif Hassan, who
found this "other America" on Al Jazeera, was surprised
at what he had also learned from American television.
… What I saw on American television
when I was recently in Washington was the complicated process
of approving federal expenditure. ... If it takes that long
to get money to a state (like Louisiana) in America, how long
must it take to reach Iraq? Maybe now I understand some of the
difficulties that the Americans are facing in Iraq.
Nevertheless, as
these two visions of America collide, they give the viewer increased
and better-contextualized knowledge, and through that knowledge,
the ability to criticize, or empathize, or simply to better
understand. Information and exposure will serve simultaneously
to substantiate America’s critics, and in the best case,
to build understanding of the humanity of the ‘other.’
Equating this to mounting “anti-Americanism” in
any kind of reflexive sense would be a missed opportunity. Instead,
critiques emanating from the airing of such “dirty laundry”
should be considered the product of gradually more informed
opinion, a value to be promoted by all advocates of democracy.
It is worth recalling
that, “in an era of 24-hour satellite television and the
Internet, public diplomacy is about who Americans are and what
they do, not just what they say.”(23) Building a more
realistic image of American society—in its complexity
and, sometimes, its tragedy and ugliness—can help local
reformers to evaluate the advantages and limits of the advice
that they receive. Even if, at the end of the day, they still
choose to turn to the United States and Europe for assistance
in the planning and implementation of development projects,
as they likely will, it will be from a position empowered by
greater knowledge of the challenges facing democracies both
in and outside of the developing world, with—perhaps—the
more realistic expectation that we are all works-in-progress.
Stacey Philbrick Yadav is a visiting
instructor in Political Science at Mt. Holyoke College. She
conducted research in Yemen in 2004 and 2005, as a research
fellow at the American Institute of Yemeni Studies in Sana'a.
She is completing a dissertation on the impact of Islamist political
parties on agenda-setting and the terms of national debate in
a number of countries in the Arab world.
NOTES
1. Heather MacDonald.
“The Racism Charges Won’t Wash.” City Journal,
14 September 2005. The quotation regarding original sin is attributed
in the article to Carol Mosely Braun, and MacDonald lambastes
the media for perpetuating the cause of politicians and civil
rights activists, whom she sees as manipulating the crisis for
their own benefit.
2. For an excellent critique of the Western activists' construction
and perpetuation of Al Jazeera's "alternative" image,
see: Adel Iskander. 2005. "Is Al Jazeera Alternative? Mainstreaming
Alterity and Assimilating Discourses of Dissent." Transnational
Broadcasting Studies 1(2): 249-261.
3. “Katrina and Racism: The World View.” Tolerance.org,
19 September 2005.
4. Michael Hudson. 2005. “Washington vs. Al Jazeera: Competing
Constructions of Middle Eastern Realities.” Transnational
Broadcasting Studies 1(1): 122.
5. Ali Saif Hassan. 2005. Communication with author. Author’s
translation.
6. Sayyed Thabit Sayyed. 2005. Communication with author. Author’s
translation.
7. Iskander, op. cit.
8. Sheila Carapico. “Forecasting Mass Destruction, from
Gulf to Gulf.” Middle East Report Online, 29 September
2005.
9. Iskander, op. cit., 256.
10. Hudson, op. cit., 122.
11. William A. Rugh. 2005. “Anti-Americanism on Arab Television:
An Outsider Perspective.” Transnational Broadcasting Studies
1(2): 155. See, in particular, Rugh’s discussion of the
Zogby poll results showing that “Arab television viewers
who regularly watch Arab satellite TV tend to have a more favorable
opinion of America, not less, than those who do not watch it.”
12. Powers, Shawn. 2005. “The Aftermath of Katrina: An
Update of Media Coverage, International Reactions, and Public
Diplomacy.” University of Southern California Center on
Public Diplomacy Special Report, 20 September. Available online
at: http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php
13. Braude, Joseph. 2005. “Trivial Pursuit.” The
New Republic 233 (14):9.
14. Ibid.
15. Carapico, op. cit.
16. Abdallah Schleifer. 2005. “The Impact of Arab Satellite
Television on the Prospects for Democracy in the Arab World.”
Transnational Broadcasting Studies 1(2): 314.
17. Nabil al-Sofee. 2006. Communication with author. Author’s
translation.
18. Hudson, op. cit., 121.
19. Nabil al-Sofee, op. cit.
20. Marc Lynch. 2005. “Assessing the Democratizing Power
of Arab Satellite TV.” Transnational Broadcasting Studies
1(1):153-55.
21. Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial
Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 8.
22. Soumaya Ghannoushi. “The Corrosive Division in France.”
Aljazeera.net, 10 November 2005.
23. Richard N. Haass. “Storm Warning: How the Flood Compromises
US Foreign Policy.” Slate, 9 September 2005.
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