The Charter of Arab Media

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

On February 12, 2008, Arab information ministers arrived at a draft document they dubbed an “honor” charter concerning Arab satellite channels, consisting of twelve articles. Mr. Anas al-Fiqi, the Egyptian Minister of Information, read the text of the document before the media and promised that Egypt would be the first to implement it. The document is controversial because it touches on vital matters that would affect the space of freedom of expression that some Arab satellite channels provide to the Arab citizen.

I begin by noting that most Arab satellite channels are official channels (that is, affiliated with governments) or semi-official ones run by individuals or groups from the ruling political system, or strongly supportive of it. By elimination, then, when Arab information ministers see a flaw in the performance of Arab satellite channels, they are pointing to the non-official ones. The assumption is that those zealous for freedom of opinion and Arab traditions are keen to keep their channels within what they consider the foundations and principles of national and moral commitment.

Some of the Document’s Provisions

There are controversial provisions the document included, which I summarize as follows:

The document calls for freedom of expression, but adds that this freedom must be exercised in accordance with “awareness and responsibility in a manner that protects the higher interests of Arab states.”

The document calls for respecting states and their leaders by refraining from “addressing their leaders or national and religious symbols with defamation.”

The document demands “respect for the privacy of individuals and refraining from violating it in any form, refraining from incitement to hatred or discrimination based on race, color, sex, or religion, and refraining from broadcasting any form of incitement to violence and terrorism, while distinguishing this from the right to resist occupation.”

The document calls for the necessity of commitment “to the religious and moral values of Arab society, and refraining from broadcasting anything that offends the Divine Being, the heavenly religions, the prophets, the [religious] schools of thought, and religious symbols, and refraining from broadcasting or scheduling material containing obscene or explicitly sexual scenes or dialogue.”

Refuting the Provisions

The provisions above are highly contentious and stir up many concerned people, and draw the attention of analysts who study the movement of Arab regimes and peoples. Below are some features of the controversy:

First: freedom of expression and its relation to awareness and responsibility. It is very difficult for anyone in the world to believe that Arab governments are keen on freedom of expression and call for respecting it. The Arab citizen, from the ocean to the gulf, suffers from the suppression of freedom of expression, and is fully aware of the dangers involved in speaking one’s opinion freely and openly, and knows full well that Arab newspapers, magazines, and bulletins do not engage with free opinion except within the limits imposed by the ruling system. And at the global level, international organizations concerned with human rights and freedoms bear witness that Arab governments possess a high level of proficiency in suppressing opinion and freedom of expression.

As for the Arab document’s statement about the necessity of binding freedom to awareness and responsibility, it lacks a precise definition of terms. What do they mean by awareness and responsibility, and who determines their meanings? Will the matter be referred to a council of thinkers, judges, arbitrators, or professors of philosophy, logic, and political science to agree on a clear, unambiguous formulation? Or will each government determine, within its own sphere of influence, the meaning of both awareness and responsibility? As for the matter of the higher interests of Arab states, it too is very thorny, and has long stood as a great obstacle before the development of Arab thought and its advancement in various fields. To this day, and according to historical evidence, what Arab governments mean by “higher interests” is the interests of the Arab regimes, not the interests of the Arab nation or the Arab peoples. Arab regimes consider their own interests to be the interests of the nation, and this is not necessarily true — the interests of the regime may contradict the interests of the people. I, as an Arab citizen, believe that it is in the interest of the nation and of the Arab states individually that the currently existing Arab regimes disappear, because they constitute major obstacles in the way of human and civilizational progress and construction. Are the Arab regimes prepared to open official media outlets for a public and free discussion of this important and fundamental issue?

The Arab person no longer has the energy to hear the phrase “higher interests” of the state, the people, or the nation, having heard it so much in the past, and his experiences have proven to him that the “higher interest” is, in most cases, the victim.

Second: criticizing leaders and national and religious symbols. The Arab citizen has always collided with media that lend an air of sanctity, greatness, and genius to Arab leaders, but he found an opportunity, in a small handful of Arab satellite channels, to express his opinion about these great geniuses. Arab governments find in this opportunity a major flaw that must be corrected — by cutting it off at the root and punishing the satellite channels through which the Arab opens his mouth. It is clear to this day that Arab rulers do not want to descend from their lofty heights and acknowledge that they are human beings who err and succeed, and that they have both supporters and opponents.

This is a matter that reflects a problem in Arab traditions, which consider criticism to be abuse and insult. It is difficult for the “Arab mentality” to accept criticism, substituting for it flattery and hypocrisy. This is not an absolute rule, but it is a phenomenon that obstructs candor and clarity, and negatively affects the desire for progress and the achievement of accomplishments at both the material and moral levels. And from Arab heritage: the higher a person rises in his position or social standing, the more sensitive he becomes to criticism, and the stronger his desire grows for revenge against his critics. For this reason it was not strange that Arab rulers arrested their critics, tortured and killed them, and persecuted their families and children, depriving them of their daily bread.

Look at themselves? Arab and Palestinian leaders now convulse over Arab satellite channels because they open a space for citizens to accuse the leaders of what they accused the people of, and they work to shut these channels down.

As for national and religious symbols, there is a problem there too. Who are these symbols and who determines them? Someone who is a symbol to one person may be a disgrace to another; someone who is a patriot to you may be a traitor to me; someone who is a genius to one party may be a ridden fool to another, and so on. The same dialectic applies to religious symbols, in that many “clerics” now serve the sultan more than they serve God, and fear the intelligence services more than they fear the Lord of the Worlds.

Third: the privacy of individuals and incitement to violence and terrorism. Certainly we, in the Arab homeland, are in dire need of respecting the privacy of individuals and refraining from interfering in their affairs, and touching their activities and personal relationships, and many people wish to develop new social habits at the expense of habits that obstruct individual progress and feed off individual creativity. But the Arab information ministers have failed to notice that the ones who most poke their noses into people’s private affairs are the Arab intelligence services. Arab rulers want to know the minutest details about every Arab citizen: about his mother and father and the degree of their affection or discord, about his friends and companions, his sister and relatives, the food he eats, the type of perfume he buys for his fiancée, and on which side he sleeps. Perhaps some Arab satellite channels occasionally touch on a person’s private life, and this is not permissible, but this mention does not constitute even a small fraction of the transgressions committed by the Arab intelligence services against people’s private affairs. Arab intelligence services sometimes arrest the children of wanted persons, or expel their daughters from public jobs, and deprive them of the basic necessities of life.

As for the matter of incitement to violence, it has its justifications, provided we know what violence the Arab information ministers are talking about. Are they talking about the violence of Arab regimes against citizens and opponents, or the violence of suppressing and blocking opinion from others? Or violence in confronting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the American occupation of Iraq? And the word “terrorism” itself needs a definition, especially since ruling regimes practice a programmed, legally-cloaked terrorism against the Arab citizen. The Arab citizen fears the Arab intelligence services more than any other party, because they hunt him down, pursue him, and have deadened his heart over time.

The Arab information ministers said nothing about incitement to submission and the acceptance of humiliation. There are Arab satellite channels that contribute directly to killing the spirit of resistance in the Arab citizen, distracting him with trivial matters or cheap entertainment, and doing nothing to develop his awareness of people’s causes, whether at the level of the state or the nation. There are Arab satellite channels whose degrading, defeatist, and submissive programs are capable of defeating Arab armies poised to meet the enemy, and one senses that these channels are more Israelified than the Israelis and more Americanized than the Americans.

I believe the Arab public agrees with what is stated in the document about the necessity of refraining from broadcasting feelings of hatred among people across the length and breadth of the Arab homeland. But it must be pointed out here that it is the Arab regimes that feed hatred among Arab peoples, in the service of political purposes, and that feed tribalism and clannishness as part of a divide-and-rule policy meant to prolong their hold on power. Who fed the hatred between Jordanians and Palestinians, between Algerians and Moroccans, Yemenis and Omanis, Qataris and the Arabs of Najd, Kuwaitis and Iraqis, Lebanese and Syrians, etc.?

Fourth: this fourth point is very important, but its application requires establishing a moral framework crafted by the nation’s scholars, not by the rulers. There is no trust in the rulers such that we could say they are trustworthy to craft a lofty, clear moral framework that people would abide by. It is rather noticeable that channels with religious and nationalist orientations do not slide into moral decay or obscenity; instead, it is those with submissive, disorienting orientations, working to degrade the Arab citizen, that adopt programs of an improper, low standard, and these are channels owned by princes, power-brokers in government, or those close to the regime.

Who Is Being Targeted?

I tried to survey the Arab satellite channels in order to identify those that trouble the sleep of Arab regimes. Among the well-known channels watched by the Arab citizen, three stand out: al-Jazeera, al-Manar, and al-Aqsa. There are other channels such as al-Rafidain and al-Zawraa, but they do not yet enjoy a high viewership rate. Al-Jazeera is a news channel that reports the news faithfully, and opens the field to different points of view, to the extent that it sometimes hosts Zionists. Al-Manar is a nationalist, patriotic, religious channel working to rouse Arabs and Muslims in confronting external invasion and internal backwardness, and it grants opportunities for the opposing view, to the extent that it broadcasts what Geagea and Jumblatt have to say. As for al-Aqsa, it tells the tragedy of Gaza and incites Arabs and Muslims against the Zionist invaders, and exposes Arab weakness in confronting Israel and its collaborators.

The Crisis of the Leaders

In this world, whose space has been compressed by means of communication and the flow of information exchange, Arab rulers feel their impotence, and have come to know that their patterns of governance have long since had their day. And the more the world closes in on them, the more they set about seeking new measures to strangle the Arab citizen, hoping in this to remain in power. They are psychologically crisis-ridden, and find before them nothing but measures that hasten their own demise. They do not heed the historical wisdom that says rising pressure produces an explosion.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “وثيقة الإعلام العربية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.