TBS continues its month-by-month record of events in the Arab and Islamic satellite world as reported in the press and by BBC Monitoring. December 2004 to May 2005 December 7 MBC Children's Channel Walid al-Ibrahim, president of Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Center's board of directors, announces that the station …
Read More »Resource Documents: ERTU Code of Ethics
1. It is prohibited to broadcast any program that includes negative statements about religions or beliefs. 2. It is prohibited to broadcast any program that creates any disputation among different religious groups. 3. It is prohibited to broadcast any program that criticizes the state national system. 4. It is prohibited …
Read More »Broadcasting and American Public Diplomacy
When Americans became aware that the prestige of the United States after 9/11 had declined seriously in the Arab world, many called for an intensified public diplomacy effort in the Middle East in order to reverse that decline. Reacting to that concern, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible …
Read More »Blending in: Arab Television and the Search for Programming Ideas
From the 1890s until the 1950s, the inventors of television thought of it as a means for disseminating information in a fashion similar to print, radio, and film. By the early '60s, media use and consumption emerged as a cultural concern in the debates on the "consumer society." The '70s …
Read More »U.S.-Funded Sat Channel Al-Hurra Launches to Mixed Reviews
Whether you love or hate the idea of a US-funded, Arabic-language satellite news station broadcasting to the Arab world, Al-Hurra - which launched regionally in mid-February - appears set to stay the course. When asked about what the channel had to prove in order to secure its annual funding from …
Read More »CNBC Arabiya – the Debut
Of all the many shiny and twinkly things in today's Dubai, CNBC Arabiya, the ingénue on the Gulf's satellite stage, may be the shiniest and most twinkly. After only ten weeks of full-time operation (CNBC Arabiya went on air officially on July 27, 2003), the channel believes that it has …
Read More »Stop Press: Al Jazeera Gets New Manager
As of the last week of October 2003, Al Jazeera has a new manager. And the choice, former Baghdad bureau chief and correspondent Waddah Khanfar, is significant. During the Iraqi war, he reported from Kurdish-controlled territory in the north; with the collapse of the Baath regime, Khanfar took over the …
Read More »The Eighth International Conference of the Arab-US Association for Communication Educators (AUSACE)
The 2003 annual conference of the Arab-US Association for Communication Educators (AUSACE), held for the first time in Dubai, was once again a great success. More than forty AUSACE members - both scholars and media professionals from the Middle East and the US - presented original academic papers and/or provided …
Read More »Globalization of Indian Satellite TV Marks 25 Years
October 15, 2002 marked 25 years since the advent of satellite TV in India. Its globalization impact across the populous country has both changed the way Indians perceive the world outside and prompted the Indian satellite and cable industry to cross frontiers with world programming. The national television channel Prasar …
Read More »Courting Al-Jazeera, the Sequel: Estrangement and Signs of Reconciliation
Feb. 20, 2002: When TBS reported from Doha in October about the affiliation between CNN and Al-Jazeera, both sides were describing their resource-sharing agreements as mutually beneficial, a good example of what two major broadcasters can do when they work together. Three months and one Osama bin Laden interview later, there was …
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