Arab Media & Society

In February 2009, the popular Libyan Berber website Tawalt shut down under government pressure. Does this spell the end of nascent efforts to promote Berber language and culture online? Aisha al-Rumi investigates.

The Yemeni government’s refusal to let journalists and foreign observers into the Sa‘ada governorate has helped prolong and intensify the stop-go fighting that has plagued Yemen’s mountainous north since 2004, argues Maysaa Shuja al-Deen.

Absent participatory government, the film industry became a key political battleground in the late French empire. Historian Elizabeth F. Thompson compares struggles for control of the cinema in late colonial Fez and Damascus.

Being a business journalist has never been easy in the notoriously tight-lipped UAE. But will investors tolerate Dubai & Co’s culture of keeping quiet amid a global financial crisis, asks Contributing Editor Dana El-Baltaji.

The head of Saudi Arabia’s Sharia courts made waves during Ramadan when he said that satellite channel owners were liable for execution for airing “indecent programming.” But this controversy goes far beyond broadcast standards, argues Andrew Hammond.

Some feared the 2008 novel The Jewel of Medina would create the fiercest backlash among Muslims since the Danish cartoon scandal. So why hasn’t it? Shereen El Feki looks at the politics surrounding the book’s publication.

Jabbar al-Obaidi’s typology of the region’s media is a valuable contribution, writes John Measor, but imprecise analysis and failure to engage with existing scholarship undermines the work as a whole.

Unofficial translation of an alleged draft Egyptian media law published by Almasry Alyoum. It appeared on 9 July 2008 under the headline: “’Full text of AL-Fiki’s’ Bill, which the Government is preparing to present to the People’s Assembly in the new parliamentary session.”

The utopian vision of media freedom articulated by Jordan’s Princess Rym clashes with the harsh realities facing journalists around the Arab world, writes Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak.

Temporary crackdown or reverting to the repressive norm? Jeffrey Black examines the politics and legal basis of recent actions against Egyptian journalists.

Can a heavy web presence boost opposition electoral fortunes? Do individualistic bloggers make it impossible to deliver a coherent message? Pete Ajemian looks at the Internet strategies of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan.

Andrew Hammond looks at the structures of Saudi Arabia’s media influence and the formal and informal pressures it can bring to bear on media outlets to secure their desired coverage.

Contributing Editor Paul Cochrane looks at the historical origins and current techniques of Saudi influence on the Arabic media landscape.

Two years on, Nabil Kassem is still profoundly affected by his experiences in Sudan. What he witnessed there, and recorded in a film he made for Al Arabiya, were scenes of unspeakable brutality and untold suffering, scenes he thought would surely wake up an Arab public all too willing to let Darfur pass by. But 'Jihad on Horseback' never made it across the airwaves. In this highly charged interview with Lawrence Pintak, Kassem speaks of how Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir prevented the broadcast of perhaps the most provocative documentary film ever made by an Arab director.

I hesitate to call myself a journalist. Technically, I am one, but I haven’t broken ‘news’ since the day I took up my position on Time Out in Dubai. Still, I take comfort in knowing that most journalists in the emirate are equally frustrated working in a media industry that ‘makes nice, not news,’ reports Dana El-Baltaji.

It was not clear whether the ultimate point of the conference was to support Arab journalists in their struggle for protected freedoms, or to promote Siniora’s government�then under heavy fire�as democratic and free before a would-be sympathetic international audience, claims Abigail Hauslohner.

Do Arab newspapers say one thing in Arabic and another in English? Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy thinks so. She was a columnist for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat until she was abruptly dropped last year. One reason may have been her complaints about how her articles were being edited for the Arabic edition. Here's your chance to read one of her original op-eds alongside the edited version.

Marc Lynch traces the political impact of blogging in the Middle East arguing that Arab blogs have begun to exert real leverage meriting serious attention.

There are few media professionals in the Middle East who juggle as many commitments as Daoud Kuttab. Director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University, he is also a regular columnist for the Jordan Times and Jerusalem Post. But perhaps his greatest achievement is as founder and chief of the Arab World’s first online community radio station AmmanNet. So what has online radio achieved in Jordan? And where can it go from here? Co-Editor and Publisher of Arab Media & Society finds out.

All the journalists working with Kalima have been persecuted in their family life, in their job and so on. Every member of our team has faced a great many violations of their rights, reveals Sihem Bensedrine in conversation with Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak.