Arab Media & Society

The Cultural Limitations of Censorship

The fifth annual Arab Media Forum took place in Bahrain in December and the three main themes under discussion were: how the Arab media are dealing with global changes, how Arab media are managing in the financial crisis, and where the Arab world should go from here. Amidst all that there were protocol events, networking and, for some, frustration over some of the year-to-year repetitiveness. To me, there was also an issue which in some ways stayed in the background: censorship.

Beyond the political considerations, there is a cultural dimension to censorship too. Politically a free press and free expression should be pillars of any society, even more so among those working towards developing ‘democracy’, but more broadly, when people are not allowed to speak for themselves, others will speak for them. This, as we have seen throughout time, whether in cases as simple as the caricatured portrayal of Arabs in popular and specialized media or as dramatic as foreign intercepted processes that result in social and political changes in the region, can be very dangerous.

On the censorship front the Arab world has been quite active in the past year. The 2009 censorship index compiled by Reporters Without Borders was filled with the names of Arab countries. Whether for politically sensitive journalism, politicized blogging or other alleged infractions, websites, newspapers, and journalists have been blocked, shut down and fined. So when the Arab Media Forum does not include censorship on the agenda, along with the three main topics, skepticism arises.

In the debate on finances, there seemed to be a consensus that funding in general was not a problem. With more than 500 satellite channels on air in the Arab world today, it seems on the contrary that TV channels are seen as lucrative businesses, thus indicating that the problem is actually the lack of agenda. Many of the channels have little communicative value (a common formula is to broadcast music videos with SMS messages from viewers ticking across the bottom of the screen, at minimal production costs). But if the theoretical basis or mission of media is, among other things, to communicate information, promote public policy, and generally create a space for a public sphere, it is hard to determine what many Arab media are working to achieve. With the possibility of censorship hanging over the heads of producers and editors, the limitations are tighter. This leads to a lack of integrity that should otherwise come with the profession.

Journalists, editors, media academics and Ministry of Information personnel from all around the Arab world made many interesting points at the forum. I heard a variety of proposals, such as more exchange between journalists in the Arab world, a push for more education, specialized colleges and training facilities, and more production of case studies and research. As a first-time participant in a conference of this type, I was very encouraged by the multiplicity of voices.

But over all the ideas, concerns, encouragements and so on lay a thick layer of what looked like censorship in action: censorship of the topic of censorship. It wasn’t that ‘press freedom’ didn't come up at all: it did, but it then got stuck in that web of layers that separate ideas from practice, and ended up unmentioned in the final communiqué.