Why is Al-Jazeera, the satellite television channel transmitting from Qatar—a small, relatively obscure Gulf Emirate—so popular, so powerful that it is starting to change the face of Arab TV news broadcasting? Al-Jazeera's impact is so powerful because until ten years ago TV journalism as we know it did not exist …

(This story was published in the February 2001 issue of Digital Studio magazine and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors. For background on Dubai Media City, please see "The Dubai Digital Broadcasting Miracle," by Abdallah Schleifer, in our last issue.) An evening dominated by a spectacular firework display marked …

CAIRO March 22, 2001: Showtime, one of the Middle East's main contenders in pay television, announced today that it is adding eight new premium sports, news, entertainment, and documentary channels to its bouquet. The network is now the exclusive regional carrier of the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel, which covers both …

CAIRO, EGYPT  With its March launch of the Al-Awael bouquet, ART (Arab Radio and Television), acting through its platform management company Arab Digital Distribution (ADD), has positioned itself as an across-the-board competitor, rather than Arabic-language niche player, in the Middle East's pay-TV arena. In the words of ADD Chairman Sheikh Saleh …

In the Arab world, satellite use is growing rapidly after a slow start. Despite the fact that many of the Middle Eastern countries share a common language, culture, religion, and geography, there are many social differences and diverse political ideologies; however, today almost all Arab countries allow the public to access …

MUMBAI, INDIA:  The new book "Satellites over South Asia: Broadcasting Culture and the Public Interest" (Sage Publications, India), authored by David Page and William Crawley, was released in India in December 2000. It sparked an involved discussion at a Mumbai panel on the role of Indian broadcasting within the South …

This article is based on a presentation at the conference "The Ethics of Journalism: Comparison and Transformations in the Islamic-Western Context," under the auspices of German President Johannes Rau (Bellevue Palace, Berlin, 29-30 March 29-30, 2001), organized by the German Institute for Middle East Studies (Deutsches Orient-Institut), Hamburg, and the …

This article is based on a presentation at the conference "The Ethics of Journalism: Comparison and Transformations in the Islamic-Western Context," under the auspices of German President Johannes Rau (Bellevue Palace, Berlin, 29-30 March 29-30, 2001), organized by the German Institute for Middle East Studies (Deutsches Orient-Institut), Hamburg, and the …

If globalization can be described as having the following features: the worldwide interconnection between societies, cultures, institutions, and individuals; the compression of time and space; and the loss of national sovereignty, then it is not difficult to appreciate the centrality of the media to these processes, especially when you look at …

Extract from a thesis submitted to the Journalism and Mass Communication Department, The American University in Cairo, June 1998 Introduction When Marshall McLuhan spoke of the global village, he clearly had the web of electronic networks that encircle the world in mind. Certainly, instant communication on a world- wide basis …