The Farce of Arab Media

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The media is supposed to be a fourth estate, exercising the role of a watchdog looking out for people’s interests, and conveying facts to them without distortion, falsification, or hypocrisy, but it seems this expectation no longer holds, because media everywhere in this world is no longer free media serving all people, but rather media mostly funded by powerful or wealthy parties concerned with promoting themselves, their ideas, and their policies.

Media may appear free on the surface, but the direct and indirect funding parties impose conditions in advance on the media outlet and its workers — the editor-in-chief especially — to abide by their wishes. It is clear at the global level that media serves sources of influence, even at the expense of the poor, the destitute, the toiling, and the downtrodden, and that in recent decades media has become a sword hanging over people’s necks rather than a tool in their hands.

Media’s decline to the level of deceiving people extends to the Western world as well, because Western media outlets are intellectually and culturally influenced by certain parties, and are able to continue broadcasting or printing thanks to the advertising trade media practitioners conduct with major capitalist companies. These are outlets with political, social, and cultural positions that seriously affect their objectivity and their willingness to convey the picture as it truly is to the general public.

Western media, in its majority, adopts predetermined positions toward many issues, such as the Palestinian cause, the attack on Iraq, the liberation of the Arab human being, and Islamic thought, and is often biased. Arab media, on the other hand, is in its majority mendacious and misleading.

If we compare Western media and Arab media, we might find the comparison centers on the manufacturing of position versus outright deception. Western media, in its majority, adopts predetermined positions toward many issues such as the Palestinian cause, the attack on Iraq, the liberation of the Arab human being, and Islamic thought, and is often biased. Arab media, in its majority, is mendacious, misleading, falsified, and cheap, and the greater part of it has put itself in the service of the despotic, backward, unjust ruler who plunders people’s wealth.

Because Western media focuses on predetermined positions, it can be objective and professional in conveying correct information about issues on which no predetermined position has been set, such as fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, or glacier collapses in the Arctic Ocean. Arab media, however — in its majority — cannot be trusted on core issues, nor on issues of the environment, women, the development of weapons of mass destruction, resistance, or terrorism.

The absence of trust in Arab media is due to a number of factors, including:

1. The Arab human being has grown accustomed to hearing lies from his own media to the point that he has begun to shy away from listening to news bulletins and following cultural and dialogue programs. The Arab has become saturated and gorged on hearing news of the Arab regimes’ victories and the “great” achievements they continually accomplish. The Arab hears one thing and sees something different on the ground — so which does he believe: his ears or his eyes? He believes his eyes and disbelieves his ears. Arab media has, in general, painted itself an ugly picture, to the point that Arabs often repeat that there is no truthful news in the newspaper except the death notices and condolences.

2. The Arab is well aware that there are usually no independent Arab media outlets concerned with informing people of the facts. There is the regime’s media, which never stops directing praise, commendation, and reverence at the Arab ruler — who is, in the depths of the Arab citizen’s awareness, a charlatan, a swindler, and a hedonist, who cares nothing for the state but only for his own private interests and the interests of his cronies among the hypocrites and con men. If the ruler is of this character in the Arab’s awareness, what character must the one who has devoted himself to promoting him possess? And this media dependency extends to the “independent” outlets, which cannot withstand the pressures of the political regime and its security apparatuses, and so submit to its will.

3. Ordinary people have no trust in the majority of newspaper and magazine editors, or the editors of news bulletins on Arab channels. The prevailing impression among them — an accurate and precise impression — is that if most editorial officials were not hypocrites, forgers, and going along with the regime’s policy, none of them would have reached their position of responsibility. This type of official is always ready to sell himself and his conscience in exchange for whatever money he receives from his backers.

It is one of the ironies of the Arab arena that satellite channels usually host newspaper or channel editors-in-chief to speak on Arab issues, knowing in advance — as the public also knows — that the guest will pontificate and lie in proportion to the blessings he receives in exchange for pawning his conscience. This may represent the very peak of the collapse of trust-based relationships in the Arab arena.

Mutual trust is no longer the basis for building relationships in the Arab arena — suspicion has become the basis instead. What nation can Arabs build if suspicion is the hallmark of mutual relations? Nations do not live by relationships of mutual suspicion, but by relationships of mutual trust, which usually pave the way for collective action, mutual cooperation, and a sense of shared destiny.

4. Many people are averse to the dialogue programs held on Arab screens because they usually do not trust the discussants, who are mostly senior Arab intellectuals and academics. The reason is that the Arab no longer trusts an intellectual or academic, on the assumption that everyone is chasing after their own interests and is prepared to abandon the Arab homeland in exchange for these interests.

Here the Arab compares between Western intellectuals, who ventured into the field of raising people’s awareness, their writings leading to revolutions that curbed despotism and bent governments to the will of their peoples, and the Arab intellectual, whom the political regime employs to dress up failure, collapse, and the plundering of money, and who does not dare challenge the political and social system, preferring resignation and submission so as not to be harmed.

The Arab is well aware that schoolteachers and university professors do not rise to the level of responsibility in spreading awareness among pupils and students, out of fear of the security apparatuses, which brandish their various weapons in confrontation with free people. They fear for the salary without which they cannot manage their families’ affairs. The Arab intellectual — in general — is tamed and domesticated, always searching for clever dialectical arguments to justify to himself and others his failure to carry the trust.

5. The height of tragedy, for the Arab citizen, is to see a university professor on satellite television defending an Arab regime and justifying its acts. After all this failure that has befallen the Arab nation over decades, at various levels, there are still academics and intellectuals who see some good in the Arab political regimes. If the academic is a hypocrite, a charlatan, a liar, and a deceiver, then who in the Arab arena will fill the void?

If we track Arab media on the question of the Arab movement that an American named the “Arab Spring,” we would find it sharply divided into for and against. Whether the outlet is for or against, the truth never reaches the Arab citizen. Whoever is with the movement records successive, sweeping victories for those it favors, and whoever is against it records repeated, major defeats for those it despises — so where is the truth?

Tune your ear to some satellite channels and you would think the Syrian regime ended long ago, and that the Syrian army has been wiped out to the last man — they greatly exaggerate the regime’s losses. Tune your ear to other satellite channels and you would think the Syrian opposition has been completely eliminated, that it existed only to be defeated, and if the listener tracks the opposition’s death toll, he concludes the opposition has vanished entirely.

And if the Arab citizen is aware that the war in Syria is still ongoing and fierce, then who are these people still fighting each other, if the Syrian army has lost all its soldiers and the opposition has been crushed? Is it a war of ghosts, or a war of lies and mind control over people?

At the same time, we hear from every satellite channel its supposed concern for objectivity and professionalism in delivering information to people, while most satellite channels have contributed and continue to contribute to the destruction of the Arab homeland, because they feed mutual grudges and adopt one side over another in prolonging the war. This media charlatanism applies to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq.

Ramadi was “liberated” — according to some media outlets — repeatedly and completely, and two days later you hear that the Islamic State organization has occupied Ramadi. How can this be? And who lied first, pushing others to chase after his lie? And you hear that the opposition lacks weapons, and soon new weapons appear on some screens, used for the first time on the battlefield. And there are stations that deny the existence of financial support for organizations participating in the Arab movement, whether for or against, but no one answers how the fighters manage their living expenses if no funding exists.

In numbers: the war in Syria has been raging for four years now, that is, over 1,460 days, and if the opposition killed an average of fifty Syrian soldiers daily, the death toll of the Syrian army would equal 73,000 soldiers, and the opposition’s death toll would be the same number if fifty of its fighters fell daily.

These are devastating figures demonstrating the media’s lies and slander — not to mention the tens of thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of civilians killed by both warring sides. Some media outlets pump out news of the Syrian army killing civilians, and others see the opposition as the one doing so — so where is the truth?

As for Palestinian media, it is supposed to hold firmly to objectivity and media professionalism, in order to deliver the truth to people and earn their trust, and in order to instill a spirit of integrity in the hearts of those aspiring to liberation. A people that wants to be liberated must remain far from deception and lies.

To this day, after more than twenty years of disastrous failure by the political leaderships and the agreements they signed with the Zionists, some Palestinian media outlets still insist on continuing to mislead and praise the genius of those who signed the Oslo Accords, entangling the Palestinian people and leading the Palestinian cause into decline across the various Arab and international arenas.

And there are still intellectuals and academics who see in the agreements with the Zionist entity a political shrewdness that cornered him. The people of Palestine are not spared the deception of Palestinian media, just as Arabs are not spared the deception of Arab media.

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