Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, and Director of the CAMRI Arab Media Centre. Her research focuses on the political economy of Arab-owned media, with particular reference to satellite television, development of journalism and human rights. Besides her academic writing, she has written background and/or policy papers for the UN Development Programme, European Parliament, Anna Lindh Foundation, UK House of Lords and British Council.

Sakr is the author of Arab Television Today (2007) and Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East (2001) and has edited two collections, Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression (2004) and Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life (2007), all published in London by I B Tauris. Her work has also appeared in refereed journals such as International Communication Gazette, Global Media and Communication, Mediterranean Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies and the Journal of Human Development.

Public Lecture: 22 February 2012

15:00-17:00, venue: JMK-salen

Possibilities for a Public Service Ethos in Arab Broadcasting after the Jasmine Revolution

International calls for a swift transition to public service broadcasting (PSB) in countries like Tunisia and Egypt have not been lacking since those countries’ dictators were overthrown in early 2011. UNESCO, which has espoused the PSB cause in Arab countries through periodic meetings (Yemen, Morocco, Jordan) since at least 1996, brought Tunisian and Egyptian broadcasters together in Paris in May 2011 to identify their most urgent needs in order to make PSB a reality. Other bodies eager to assist include the European Broadcasting Union and Permanent Conference of Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators (COPEAM), both of which count Arab Mediterranean countries among their members. But how easy is it really, or how desirable, to try to introduce an approach to broadcasting that has been conspicuous by its absence from the Arab region since radio and television were introduced? This paper draws on theoretical critiques of both PSB and external democracy promotion to assess the status of the PSB concept in Arab states. It considers developments in Arab television since the 1990s that may have contributed to elements of PSB, and explores whether there is any local appetite for a model of broadcasting based on levels of regulation and state involvement that many who have suffered decades of authoritarianism regard as unpalatable.

READING

• Aly, Ramy (2011) ‘Mediating ‘the Nation’ – From State to Public Service Broadcasting: Critically Engaging Egypt as a Complex Society’. Paper presented to the conference on Rebuilding Egyptian Media for a Democratic Future, Cairo 30 March. Available online at www.mediapolicy.org/PSB-Egypt.
• Ayish, Muhammad (2010) ‘Arab state broadcasting systems in transition: the promise of the public service broadcasting model’. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 3(1), pp.9-25.
• Dabbous, Dima (2005) ‘”Lost in translation” dans le monde arabe’. In Bourdon, J. (ed.) Une Télévision sans service public? (Special edition of MédiaMorphoses). Bry-sur-Marne, France: Institut national de l’audiovisuel, pp.135-143.
• Sakr, Naomi (2007) Arab Television Today (especially Chapter 2). London: I B Tauris.
• Sakr, Naomi (2012) ‘Public Service Initiatives in Arab Media Today’, in Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Jeanette Steemers (eds) Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media, Göteborg: Nordicom (in press, forthcoming early 2012)

Seminar: 23 February 2012

10:00-12:00, venue: Bangsalen

Pre-Revolution Glimpses of Desperation: Pan-Arab TV Treatment of Migration to Europe, 2007-2010

National news broadcasts were heavily censored in Arab countries that overthrew their dictators in 2011. As a result, television audiences turned to news on pan-Arab channels such as Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya or, in the case of Egypt, on locally-based privately-owned channels whose editors and presenters assiduously attracted audiences through their talk shows on current affairs. Indeed, such practices of media production and reception may count as examples of incremental, cumulative change that were theorised before the 2011 uprisings as ‘quiet encroachment’ by ‘nonmovements’ (Bayat 2009), whereby micro level actors ‘renegotiate autonomy’ vis-à-vis state institutions (Bechev and Schäfer 2010), thus intensifying an unsustainable contradiction between the’ societal base and political top’ (Korany 2010). As the number of television outlets increased, so did television coverage of undocumented (‘illegal’) migration from Arab Mediterranean countries to Europe and the perils it entails, especially after two shipwrecks in 2007 evoked divergent accounts and explanations from Egypt’s government-run and privately-owned channels. Based on recordings and transcripts of programmes that addressed the phenomenon of people-smuggling during and after 2007, this paper analyses contradictions in coverage between sources, and reflects on the extent to which some of the programmes succeeded in airing troubling representations of government neglect.

READING

• Bayat, A. (2009) Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.
• Bechev, D. and Schäfer, I. (2010) On change in the Mediterranean. In Bechev, D. and Schäfer, I. (Eds.) Agents of Change in the Mediterranean. Ramses Working Paper 14/10. Oxford, UK and Berlin, Germany: Ramses2 Network of Excellence on Mediterranean Studies.
• Korany, Bahgat (2010) ‘The challenge of change and the necessity of social engineering’ in Bahgat Korany (ed) The Changing Middle East: A New Look at Regional Dynamics, Cairo: AUC Press, pp 197-203
• Davide Vignati (2011) ‘Media’s role and influence on migratory policies in the Maghreb’, in Ivan Ureta (ed) Media, Migration and Public Opinion: Myths, Prejudices and the Challenge of Attaining Mutual Understanding between Europe and North Africa, Bern: Peter Lang AG, pp 49-92
• Middle East Report No 261, Vol 41, Winter 2011, e.g. Carolyn Nordstrom, ‘Extra-legality’; Greg Feldman, ‘Europe’s border control with a humanitarian face’.