REPRINTED FROM ADVANCED TELEVISION MAGAZINE

REPRINTED FROM ADVANCED TELEVISION MAGAZINE, 2001

Viewed from the East

There have long been calls from outside the west for a less Anglo-Saxon view of the world by international media agencies. However, despite some brave attempts, such as the Aga Khan's Compass news agency, the developing regions themselves either lacked the resources or the tradition of a free press to promote themselves as a viable alternative source of factual global information. As Afshin Rattansi (below) concedes, the Gulf States are seen by the West as an unlikely location for promotion of free opinion, but they do have the resources and in the Internet age, they increasingly recognise the importance of voicing an alternative perspective on world events.

Another view
By Afshin Rattansi

In the West, the Arabian Gulf states hardly have a reputation for a free press - with examples of heavy-handed press and television censorship all too frequently cited. But we may now be seeing a change underway which could transform that view.

Following the BBC's hasty exit from it's $150 million Orbit deal in Saudi Arabia, it was the newly gas-rich state of Qatar and its Al-Jazeera television station that became the most sought after satellite station in the Arab world. Indeed, it became infamous for its no-holds-bars approach to criticism of new policies by absolutist rulers - a policy it retained in the face of opposition by neighbouring countries.

It was perhaps with this in mind that the UAE's Finance Minister backed the funding for the world's first developing nation global business satellite TV station, broadcasting in Arabic and English. Designing the remit of the new channel was relatively easy in the era of protests against western-led 'globalisation,' one in which even chief economists of the World Bank have second thoughts over ideologically-driven, supranational business policy. Without the funds of a Bloomberg Television, this was to be a channel that showed how every event from the wars in Chechnya and the Balkans to earthquakes and hurricanes in Asia had a correlation with the Dow index and its constituents.

Training at the BBC may have been part of the venture, but the task of offering up 'business television' in a new way was certainly made easier by a natural wariness on the part of Arab leaders over selling off the family silver. To many, the Islamic world is well suited for a more critical analysis of the words of bank analysts who backed Southeast Asia in 1997, the reform process in Russia and the fundamentals of the NASDAQ.

After all, debates over Western cultural imperialism in the Islamic world, over the bias of the Western media against one of the world's leading religions is the stuff of everyday conversation. Not only that but where else could I have interviewed UK Trade Minister Stephen Byers, on the hoof, in the midst of the Rover factory debacle? Whilst British journalists struggled to get an answer over Rover's future, here he was in Dubai.

Perhaps, the most impressive aspect to the launch of the new channel is the emergence of a new generation of Emirati nationals, particularly Emirati women who have been quicker than their expat British colleagues to tackle the issues associated with the rise and fall of the financial markets. It was nearly a year since I guided the first programme to air aided by ex-executives from Financial Times Television and Granada as Israeli gunships began to raze Ramallah at the outset of the Al-Aqsa intifada. By the time senior Arab colleagues had commissioned a network of correspondents across the Arab world, it was revelatory to see our man in Ramallah already broadcasting such radically different news from that which was unfolding on Reuters and APTN.

It was not censorship by the Dubai authorities that was an issue in covering international business. Their commitment to the freedom of analysis of that area was absolute. It's telling that criticism of Al-Jazeera TV centres on the channel's avoidance of criticism of the Qatari authorities.

There were two main challenges. Firstly, the marshalling of British expat journalists, often seemingly more committed to tax avoidance than professionalism, some of whom saw business journalism as disconnected from everyday life. Secondly, there were the worries about the ability of a new independent media force to emerge in the face of a decreasingly competitive global multi-media subscription world peopled by just a few western based conglomerates.

We watched the arrival of Viacom boss, Sumner Redstone with real interest. He came shortly before the opening in Dubai of a spectacular bricks and mortar media initiative, just as he was backing the wrong horse at the US elections. Viacom was broadcasting our free-to-air channel amid rumours that it had plans to delete it at some future date. As we continued to try and revolutionise business journalism, it was also rumoured that new US and Saudi Arabian media investors were being sweetened to locate to the emirate. Certainly, the UAE has media courses that will be providing national talent rather than relying on expats to staff new television channels.

The youngsters talked of a new critical style being forged. Some Arab journalists bemoaned that in contrast to the generation that preceded them, in principle one that backs the aims of pan-Arab unity and a cultural and historical consciousness, younger nationals are keener to discard the past.

But this generational split was by no means pervasive. Only one executive at the station, a UAE national, disparaged our coverage of Dubai's Crown Prince as he patronised international conferences on the horrors of desertification and drought. Many more are brutally aware of their families' pre-oil poverty and indeed, the present living conditions of many of the non-resident Indians who comprise 80 per cent of the UAE's population.

Lucrative media opportunities in the Middle East have now attracted the attention of some of the world's biggest broadcasters, aided by government announcements over the need for a freer press. Journalists are responding with growing boldness. In the UK, swapping, for example, the patronage of the BBC to that of a public relations firm now seems to raise fewer eyebrows. Journalists in the Middle East, as in all developing regions will have to tread an increasingly precarious path of freer and more critical analysis even as those seeking to 'dumb down' content in the West sophisticate their techniques of seduction.

Now in talks with authorities in Dubai as well as international broadcasters over the launch of a new global news service, I feel the Business Channel's younger journalists and their growing understanding of intersections between global business and civil society are a source of great optimism. There are grave dangers of the patronage of government being exchanged for one murkier and more hegemonic. But as the Gulf region hosts critical meetings such as those of the World Trade Organisation later this year, in Qatar, and the IMF and World Bank in 2003 in Dubai, the region may well surprise established Western broadcasters with their innovation and perspective.

Afshin Rattansi is the former launch Business Editor of the Business Channel, broadcast from Dubai in the UAE. He and the core team that launched it are now setting up a new educational television consortium called The Transparency Project. They are currently in discussion with authorities in Dubai and London.

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