Arab Media & Society The Arab Media Hub
Remarks by Peter Einstein, President and CEO of Showtime, at the MIT Arab Alumni Association Conference at Beirut's Sheraton Coral Beach on March 24, 2002. Good morning distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you to this session on regional television networks which I have called: The digital dilemma: …
Read More »Middle East TV Continues To “Baffle And Bewilder”
Middle East broadcasting has seen some major changes this past summer - and not all of them are good. First, John Tydeman, ADD (Arab Digital Distribution)'s president has departed the company. Tydeman is a well-known and highly-regarded figure in satellite pay-TV, having been one of Rupert Murdoch's key players in …
Read More »National Versus Pan-Arab Reach: Which Way for Egypt’s Private Commercial TV Channels?
The Egyptian pan-Arab television sector is enigmatic in more ways than one. Observers of the Egyptian media know very well that, at heart, it is profoundly more pan-Arab than any other Arab media area. Its pan-Arab reach, however, does not tally with its expectations and, consequently, its market share of …
Read More »The Role of Media in Defining Arab Culture—AUSACE’s 2002 Beirut Conference
"How are the modern media affecting Arab identity? And how is globalization affecting our culture?" These were among the questions posed by Dr. Ramez Maaluf, Director of the Beirut Institute for Media (BIMA), in his remarks at the opening of the seventh annual conference of the Arab-US Association for Communication …
Read More »The Minotaur of ‘Contextual Objectivity’: War coverage and the pursuit of accuracy with appeal
The pursuit of objective coverage has always been a cornerstone of the ideals of journalistic endeavor. Schools of journalism have consistently enshrined and standardized objectivity as the prime responsibility of a responsible reporter. Scholars in mass communication have also grappled with this concept for decades, articulating it in multiple contexts …
Read More »A Smaller Mediterranean? Satellite TV Channels and the Arab Community in Italy
From land of emigrants to new Eldorado There won't be streets lit up for the festivity. There won't be lanterns or local cakes or the traffic that precedes most iftars (meals taken at sunset to break the fast). But in Mazara del Vallo, the small Sicilian town that is now …
Read More »New Guys on the Block: Al-Majd 2 and Khalifa TV
If one believed that the region was drifting to polarization, which TBS is in no way suggesting, then the simultaneous entry of Al-Majd 2 and Khalifa TV would make a good argument for such a case. Names are deceiving. Khalifa TV does not take theirs from any aspiration to revive …
Read More »Super News Center Setting Up in London for Al-Hayat and LBC: An Interview with Jihad Khazen and Salah Nemett
Jihad Khazen has one of the most impressive track records in Arab journalism, both in Arabic and in English. Khazen was managing editor of Beirut's English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, until the civil war put that paper out of existence, then managing editor of Arab News in Jeddah, from where …
Read More »ZenTV Reaches Out to Arab Youth
Just a few seconds before going on air, 26-year-old Cat-Ramsey Fayad scurried to the edge of the stage at Zen TV's sprawling TV studio in Beirut, Lebanon and sank cross-legged before one of the roving cameras on the set of DardaChat. The show, set in a mythical loft somewhere in …
Read More »The Closing of Murr TV: Challenge or Corrective for Satellite Broadcasting in Lebanon?
Lebanon's satellite broadcasting industry has been seriously jolted, first by the government's closure in early September (2002) of Murr TV (LMTV, not to be confused with the international music channel MTV) and most recently (October 21, 2002) by the Lebanese High Court's denying the channel the right to appeal this …
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