The Road Not Traveled One of the most intriguing Arabic-language television dramas in recent years was The Road to Kabul (2004), which told the story of the Arab and Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Or rather tried to tell, since The Road to Kabul never made it past episode eight. The state of Qatar, …

Nearly everybody agrees that reality television in the Arab world has changed the way we, as viewers, relate to television. This programming genre has been the center of much debate ever since the first group of reality participants was locked up in a villa. These views can be divided in …

Chalaby, Jean K. (Ed.). Transnational Television Worldwide: Toward a New Media Order. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. 264 pages. Paperback. ISBN 1-85043-548-0. $24.95. Reviewed by Ralph D. Berenger When legendary American broadcast news pioneer Edward R. Murrow first saw a demonstration of television in the 1940’s as an extension of radio, he …

Islamists have been some of the most ardent foes of reality programs on Arab television, forcing MBC’s Al Ra’is (Big Brother) off the air and staging protests or boycotts against LBC’s Star Academy and Al Wadi (The Farm). But now it seems at least some Islamists have decided to adopt a different approach: If you can’t …

The neo-conservative Weekly Standard has called it “the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East.”(1) New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman enthused that it was the closest thing to democracy the Arab world has ever seen.(2) Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Suadais, imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, has denounced them as …

Anyone who visits Lebanon will be struck by the excessive Lebanese use of space: Urbanisation literally is filling the space perpendicularly, up into the skies and the mountain ranges, and horizontally, as sprawling resorts or “developments” eat up huge chunks of the coast in Beirut and Doura, where two dumps …

(This article is based on a presentation at the Foreign Policy Research Institute on 19 April 2005). News in the Arab World Before the Age of Satellite TV Little more than a decade ago there was no such thing as television journalism in the Arab world. State-owned national television channels …

In the Middle East, as elsewhere, politics sometimes receives an unexpected jolt that produces unanticipated consequences. This has happened during the past decade as information and communication technologies have become more pervasive and influential. This process is accelerating. A key factor in this expansion of reach and power is the …

The famous Arab news network Al Jazeera has been considered one of the most important de facto “Arab political parties.” Since most Arab countries have not yet established functioning democracies, relevant institutions, such as political parties and a parliamentarian opposition, are still rudimentary. To many observers, Arab satellite television seems to have …

In its nine-year history, the Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera has been the subject of much debate. From glorification to vilification, the station has been described as “radical” by its detractors and as an “alternative” medium by its admirers (El-Nawawy & Iskandar, 2003, Miles, 2005). Since the launch of …