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The Layalina Review

VOL. V NO. 11, May 08-May 21, 2009

New Media in the Middle East

Blogging takes communication to a new level of openness and makes a free form of dialogue between the Arab Muslim world and the West possible, according to blogger and journalist Faisal Abbas to Al-Arabiya.

Citizen journalism and ‘new media’ are filling a gap in public demand for firsthand news accounts in the Arab world, although credibility may be questionable, reports Gulf News.

“[Mainstream reporters] have to figure out a way to make social networking applications and tools part of their newsgathering system,” says Paul Knox of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University to Digital Journal. This might prove to be especially difficult for the Arab world, which according to Gulf News includes “four of the top ten countries for persecution of bloggers.”

One of the problems facing a transitioning news media in the Middle East is the lack of staff journalists at most of the region’s TV and radio stations which leaves them “stuck without the ability to develop their own new agenda,” Gulf News claims in an editorial.

“Too many TV stations, radio channels and websites have not invested in their own reporting staff…[and] condemn themselves to be mere aggregators,” the article continues.

But the question remains as to whether or not citizen reporting is as reliable as professional journalism. Gulf News quotes one participant in a discussion session hosted by BBC Arabia expressing his fears that new media credibility could be affected by “personal agendas” and the bias of individuals.

Non-traditional news must find a way to “maintain the standards of fact checking and verification…that have really stood the test of time,” Knox continued.

New media journalism was also the topic of a series of sessions at the recent Arab Media Forum in Dubai, according to Digital Journal. There are currently almost half a million Arab bloggers, says Gulf News, although Digital Journal contrarily points out that print media is actually growing in more than one Middle Eastern country.

Gulf News claims that the key to the survival of print journalism in the Arab world must be a commitment to “original content,” or else they “deserve to fail.” The opinion piece refers to a talk by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh at the Media Forum in which he asserts that “no reporter can do his or her job properly unless he or she really understands the subject.”

But as Faisal Abbas points out to Al-Arabiya, “Blogging certainly provides a fresh perspective that is free from establishment control…[although] we must also value and look to maintain ‘traditional’ journalism through which many brave journalists have brought to light critical issues.”

In related news Mohamed Abdel Dayem, program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Committee to Protect Journalists, reported on his experience in a panel discussion at the United Nations, in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day.

In his address, Dayem touched on the lack of institutional classification of bloggers. “The silver lining of the aforementioned lack of institutional protections is that internet-based journalists have been able to tackle issues that established media simply will not or cannot cover, like the courageous coverage provided by a small number of Egyptian bloggers documenting, at times supplemented with video footages, the systematic use of torture in Egyptian police stations.”

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