Dubai is fast becoming a global media hub – but for whom? Dana El-Baltaji examines Dubai’s business-friendly media model and its implications for the future of media in the Emirates.

October 2007. Speaking to Arab Media & Society’s George Weyman in July 2007, Sue Phillips, London bureau chief for Al Jazeera International, reflects on the network’s first year and the changes and challenges that lie ahead.

Larry Register’s forced departure from the US public diplomacy channel marks a low point for American efforts at broadcasting to the Middle East, an entirely predictable debacle which likely puts paid to even the slender hopes that the station might turn itself around argues Editorial Board Member Marc Lynch.

The Arab Broadcast Forum both intentionally and inadvertently exposed some of the obstacles that continue to plague Arab World television media, as well as the conference’s own shortcomings. But its ability to critically examine these things?despite some flaws?demonstrates that the Arab media is at least on the right track, says Abigail Hauslohner.

Although recent changes in information technology, especially the growth of satellite television, have had an impact on Arab media, making national borders more porous, existing national political systems are still a dominant variable affecting the structure and behavior of Arab media, argues Editorial Board Member William A. Rugh.

Without a critical cultural examination of the multiple sides of the “Arabic” and “Arab” media terrain, the fervent attachment to the production of taxonomies to describe this terrain at a time of exponential transformation may provide little more than lines in the sand, claims Editorial Board Member Adel Iskandar.

Alan L. Heil Jr. documents the plethora of new public diplomacy channels broadcasting in Arabic, including France 24, Deutsche Welle, and Russia TV Today, arguing credibility will be crucial to success with audiences in an increasingly crowded market.

By scrapping Voice of America in the Middle East, the US has both undercut its own public diplomacy interests and the interests of listeners in the region itself, argues Laurie Kassman.

That Arab viewers accept this U.S. government-funded station as credible is a great victory, especially after being on the air little more than three years. That some Arab viewers find the assertions of advocates for freedom jarring to their ears is a price we will gladly pay, argues outgoing Broadcasting Board of Governors Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.

The inability of Sawa and Alhurra to speak with critical populations in the Middle East and their emphasis on the most trivial of American pop culture have marginalized the United States and prevented a reasoned and substantive conversation between the United States and the Arab world, says former VOA Director Myrna Whitworth.