The Arab media on Arab social issues: Fatemah Farag, in Beirut, tackles a difficult conjunction Commissioned by the British Council and undertaken by ACNielson, a new study has thrown unexpected light on one of the least discussed sides of the vexed issue of the media. Identifying unemployment as their most pressing social concern, 67 per cent of a 1,210 sample taken from five Arab states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Palestine) supported covering it in the media. For TV, newspapers and the radio, respectively, only 32 per cent, 39 per cent and 31 per cent thought they had access to adequate coverage of social issues. The study's findings were released at the "Social Issues through the Eyes of the Media" symposium, organised by the council earlier this month in Beirut. The event is part of a regional workshop project entitled "Media in Society in the Middle East"; and its aims include forming a partnership "with the media and other organisations in order to increase awareness of key social issues... to gain an understanding of the views of the target groups with regards to social issues covered by the media and especially unemployment". During the opening session of the symposium, Lebanese Minister of Information Ghazi Al-Aridi railed against what he claimed was the Arab media's unequivocal political focus; the media in this part of the world, he elaborated, all too often ends up being a pawn in the hands of governments who make use of it for political manoeuvring. "The media is gravely deficient in its coverage of social issues," he stated, listing those he felt should be among the media's top concerns: the condition of prisoners in Arab prisons, for example. "There can be no country which claims to be democratic where the conditions of prisons are not a focus of coverage as a social and human rights issue." Indeed. For two days media specialists from the five countries in question debated the limitations of the job. These included lack of technical skills, social and government censorship and even the nature of the Arabic language (a problem, as it turns out, that Arabs share with the Welsh). Participants considered ways to transcend these limitations, debating the role of the media as entertainment, educational tool and showcase of role models. At no time was the ministers' list contested. The question always was: in societies defined by incomplete, object-defeating reform efforts, how do journalists gain access to accurate information? And that done, how do they publish it in safety? Finally, how do they define their relationship to their audience? Media performance was brought into sharp focus following a frank consideration of social issues. According to Taleb Rifai, assistant to the director-general and regional director for the Arab States at the Beirut-based ILO, the Arab world suffers from weak economies and a surplus of labour: "new job opportunities are eaten away by the increase in unemployment, which among the young (the 15-25 age bracket) is double the international average." Rifai went on to point out inter- Arab disparities: an 88 per cent employment rate in the Gulf states masks the fact that much of the labour there is foreign, while chronic political turmoil in such countries as Iraq, the Sudan, Somalia and Palestine makes improvements well nigh impossible. "There are 12.5 million unemployed in the Arab world, and this figure represents by far the highest rate in the world. The only other figures that come close are those of sub-Saharan Africa. And we are conservative in our estimates." Nor is this all: "The Arab world continues to suffer the loss of freedom and human rights at a time when the world -- or large parts of it -- are achieving good governance. We remain in this sense isolated." As far as experts like Rifai are concerned, there are no easy solutions. To date, the governments' macro-economic reforms have yielded little job creation; hence the need for national employment policies that take the social dimension of economic reform into consideration, "employment- friendly macro-economic policies", in Rifai's coinage. Rifai also took issue with the quality of jobs created: "very low conditions of employment that lack adequate and respectful terms and offer very, very low wages"; and that is not to mention cultural factors that must change; for some jobs are looked down upon. How -- and this is the important point in this context -- does the employment challenge find its way into the Arab media? Candid reports on the experience of media people from across the five countries suggest that the public is right to be dissatisfied with media performance. In the words of Ramez Maaluf, director of the Beirut Institute of Media Arts at the Lebanese American University and former editor of the Beirut Daily Star, "the media has a social obligation. Let's face it: journalism impacts people and what we write and say does make a difference." But it was Aref Hijjawi, director of the Media Institute at Birzeit University and editor-in-chief of its paper Al-Hal, who, in a scathing presentation, described the Arab media as "weak on news and strong on national issues" and "in service of the state and not in service of the truth." And while the Arab world is full of what he describes as "half-truths", journalists are prohibited from dealing with these and deprived of access to information. "And so their merchandise has become: 'the president met' and 'the president bade farewell'. The media does not perform its role as a measure of accountability." The problem as defined by Hijjawi is multi-fold. On the one hand governments "ride the media wave to strengthen national unity... You have bankrupt nations and barefoot citizens, then you have a media that sings the glories of the present and the past and details future dreams as if they were facts beyond doubt." The pedagogic role of much Arab media is thus considerably degraded. "The official media is incapable of educating the nation because it has no vision for the future, no understanding of the past," Hijjawi went on, citing the tendency to confront fundamentalist movements by constantly airing religious programmes as an example. Everyone took issue with lack of access to information as a principal obstacle in the way of journalists trying to do their job well. Mohamed Omar, editor-in-chief of Albawaba.com, writer for AmmanNet and member of the editorial board of the independent Al-Mastour magazine, which specialises in poverty issues, detailed not only restrictions on information available to journalists but the particulars of a new law drafted in Jordan to regulate journalists' rights to information that practically "legalises the restrictions". Even when information is obtainable, Omar later confided, it is often unpublishable: "I have a complete corruption file on someone. But what can I do with it? If I publish it there will be dire consequences. So the information is rendered useless." Sometimes censorship is simply a function of social attitudes, however. According to Souad Garous, a young journalist from Syria representing the weekly magazine Al-Kifah Al-Arabi, "at times we want to broach subjects, such as the gay community in Syria, but do not because we fear a negative public reaction." At the end of the first day everyone was clear that the lack of democracy and healthy respect for freedom of expression were obvious impediments to effective coverage. Issues like media ownership were then brought up. And Omar made one of the more poignant remarks in this context: "private ownership in our experience does not always do the trick. When it is owned by a business, the media still caters to specific needs so, for example, there was recently a workers strike that was simply not covered by either state or private media. The problem is more general: professional weakness, the corruption of the media community and the ethics of journalism." Harsh words, perhaps, but urgently relevant: Aled Eirug, head of corporate social responsibility at BBC Wales, showed participants a method of community outreach used by his organisation: they invite the community into their offices to take part in the coverage of local events. Eirug suggested at least one cost-effective way of going beyond the restrictions discussed: supplying journalists with small cameras that they could both use and give to people to film news they felt was important. Stronger professional syndicates, journalists who understand their role and are willing to test the limits of censorship both governmental and societal, conscious efforts to root out non-stories and tune in to social concerns were all proffered as ways to the development of a more socially responsive media. In the words of Hijjawi: "Drown journalists in information, not prose; and leave the rest to them."
