The initial several decades of the Arab press history clearly grew in terms of modernization in terms of content in news. One key reason for such modernization was related to the initial journalists especially from Syria and Lebanon who entered the field of journalism to contribute their intellect without having any concerns of making profits. In fact at that time the profession of journalism was not even considered as profit making source. These pioneer journalists of Lebanon and Syria were forced to move out of their countries of origin to foreign countries like United States due to several restrictions and policy changes by the authorities in their respective countries. These journalists got warm welcome in Egypt and contributed their best efforts in journalism of Egypt while making it an attractive field for intellectuals .
The relatively stable political governments in new countries enables these journalists to practice their profession and groom up themselves while developing their expertise the field of journalism. The very first emigrated newspaper in Arab named Mir'at-al-Ahwal meaning The Events’ Mirror was published in Turkey during the year 1855. It was utilized as a platform for publishing its founder’s essays which were aimed at criticizing the Ottoman Empire’s policies. This resulted in grave consequence of closing up of the newspaper just after one year of its publishing. Another newspaper, Birjis Baris meaning The Paris Jupiter started its publishing from 1858. It was a good example of newspaper having modern publication style and rich content. Literary and political styles were included in these publications. The founder of these publications included the pioneers of Arab press who played their critical roles in modernizing the news media of Arab.
The intellectuals of Arab realized very soon that the power in the press in form of an instrument of political mobilization is also a way of disseminating their ideological and political beliefs. In the Western Arabic countries known as the ‘Maghrib’ countries, people paid due attention towards the function of the news media in enhancement of the Islamic identity. The rulers of Arabic countries also understood the importance of the news media and started patronizing the relevant publications in favor of their political image. The news media at that time served nationalist and political purposes in a number of Arab countries that included the late nineteenth century as well as the early twentieth century.
The political content that was expressed in most of the news media reflected only the politics related matter in favor of one or the other political figures rather than presenting the view points of intellectuals of the country. In Algeria, the country with news media quite unique as compared to the rest of the Arab countries, the royal press that was established for the purpose of serving the political figures was influenced by the settlers. They demanded more rights of the native people and presented them an opportunity of discussing few minor issues.
Inflamed by the nationalist resistance in the beginning of twentieth century, the Arab journalists didn’t use the news media to deliver the news but it was rather used to deliver views and opinion. It was a period in which questioning the national identity was not common while cultural heritage in respect of the journalist was not developed. That was one of the main reasons for the development of news media as the source of political debates in most of the Arab countries excluding Jordan and Saudi Arabia which were enjoying their independence from such issues and were politically stable. As a result, since its inception the Arab news media has mostly been linked with politics of respective countries. The other reasons for such poor conditions of news media in Arab countries included lack of sufficient advertising revenues and low literacy rate due to which the news media was quite dependent on the subsidies that they received from the political figures while promoting their agenda .
In many other countries then Arab, where political stability was present, the news media was a platform for the intellectuals to make public the literary productions while keeping little focus on the political agendas of the political leaders. The genre literary art dominated a number of publications in Egypt that formed the inspirational source for developing the news media throughout the Arab region. This is further confirmed through the fact that the first generation in respect of journalists in Arab countries were mostly from Egypt. Generally the ownership of news media in Arab countries after the independence of Arab states can easily be divided into following three main categories:-
1. The Private Ownership; it was mostly practiced in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Sudan, Kuwait, UAE and Jordan.
2. The Mixed Ownership which is also generally considered as a private ownership since it is under government’s control. It was practiced in Egypt, Yemen and Algeria.
3. The Public Ownership. It was practiced in Libya, former Iraqi regime and Syria which has now allowed some conditional kind of a private partnership.
I. Lack of qualified, and commercially oriented media as found in the Western countries.
2. Lack of centralized media due to conflicting policies amongst Arab countries.
3. Lack of economic resources.
4. Ideological differences among countries.
The characteristic of the Arab world and broadcast content including the extent to which the content is comprehended is a dare to the state legitimacy. A path of conventional information technologies like radio and print impedes the future. In the context of print, more importantly the newspapers and other publications have started to incorporate the information technology (IT) into the news media of Arab which is improving the conditions of the news media in Arab countries as compared to the past.
Radio broadcasting can be considered the very first transnational Arab news media that incorporated latest technology. Understanding the traditional values of the Arab society, BBC started and continued its broadcasts for a long time in the Arab countries. The BBC was broadcasted in Arabic to facilitate the Arab population; however it got supplemented by several radio stations from various countries both Western and Arab which included the famous Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radio station known as The Voice of Arabs. There was no other radio station present to compete with the Voice of Arabs at that time until the TV media came. The voice of Arabs was created in the year 1956 as the result of Suez conflict. The main chronicler of this station was popular for a special rhetorical style and the ability of captivating a large number of listeners. Many Arab listeners also tuned their radio sets to some foreign radio channels as well like the Voice of America etc but these channels never got any popularity among the Arabs like the Voice of Arabs got in the past. The main purpose of such listeners to turn towards other foreign channels was to get some authentic news from around the globe rather than getting a one sided opinion from the Voice of Arabs .
The news media in Arab has now started to diversify due to the presence of many TV and radio channels in Arabic language while all of these channels all completely available to the whole region without any restriction. The most famous of all is the Al-Jazeera news channel of Qatar which has influenced not only the whole Arab world through presenting high level of authentic news but it has also provided many breaking news to the rest of the world especially in relevance to the War on Terrorism.
Many Arabs have now moved towards internet based news media as well in order to capture the most from the news which is a good indicator of implementation of information technology in the news media of Arab. The Arabs have also stopped relying on the direct sources of information like the news media itself that are owned by the state authorities or private businessman and have moved to social media in order to understand the real situations. The revolution of Egypt and many other countries are the strong indicators of such transformation. Nowadays the Arab news media is facing challenges from the world news media in terms of authenticity and in time delivery of news. The same challenges are presented to the Arab news media by the social media as well.
Works Cited
Mellor, Noha. The making of Arab news. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
Mellor, Noha, et al. Arab Media. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
Tabar, Mary-Denise. Printing Press to Satellite: A Historical Case Study of Media and the Arab State. Thesis. Washington, 2002.
