Educational Media Reviews Online

The reverberations and ramifications of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, and its central locus within a series of seismic events that collectively became known as the “Arab Spring,” are still being felt and analyzed around the globe today. With The Battle for the Arab Viewer, director Nordin Lasfar examines the outsize role that Pan-Arabic media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya played in the Revolution by focusing on how and to what degree they chose to present the images and depict the events unfolding on the streets of Cairo; and how upon further investigation these coverage decisions reflect deeper agendas and biases embedded within the core of each television network.

The film briefly addresses the origins of Al Jazeera as a network created by the new Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, partially to establish a friendly voice in a region hostile to his emergence from a palace coup wherein he deposed his father, an trusted ally of the Saudi Royal family. Al Jazeera quickly became an influential global voice, often empowering segments of the Arab world whose voices were seldom heard prior to its existence. Eventually, Al Arabiya was launched in 2003 by Sheikh Waleed Al Ibrahim, a man with close ties to the Saudi monarchy, to serve as a more traditional, reserved counterpoint to Al Jazeera’s growing reach and influence. In simplistic terms, many of the film’s commentators broadly refer to Al Jazeera as progressive and Al Arabiya as conservative. Here then is the dichotomy Lasfar seeks to explore by focusing on the networks’ respective coverage of the Egyptian Revolution.

Lasfar is able to astutely position the Egyptian Revolution as a prism through which viewers of the film are able to see the ideological slants/biases of the two networks play out in real time, while they also shape and in some cases directly influence events on the ground. Through its coverage of the revolution, Al Jazeera, in particular, becomes a fascinating example of a media organization overtly assuming a form of agency, becoming a participant and directly influencing the events it is tasked with covering. There are numerous examples of Al Jazeera’s assumption of this agency throughout the film such as their coverage of the chaotic demonstrations at the Israeli embassy, an event essentially ignored by Al Arabiya. But perhaps the most telling is Al Jazeera’s decision to air an interview with a bloody, battered protester outside of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak’s trial in direct contrast to Al Arabiya’s explicit editorial decision to excise from their coverage an impassioned interview with the very same man. Decisions like these actually prompt an Egyptian man to characterize Al Jazeera as “being 90% responsible for the revolution” in a poignant scene near the end of the film.

The ideological dichotomy between the two networks is also compellingly laid bare in tangible human form as the two journalists interviewed most prominently in the film, Al Arabiya’s Randa Abul Azm and Al Jazeera’s Abdelfattah Fayed, neatly, almost eerily, represent the specific social strata each network seeks to communicate with in the Arab world. Abul Azm hails from a comparatively affluent background and represents what an expert in the film refers to as Al Arabiya’s appeal to those in the Middle East who “want security not change,” while Fayed, the son of an agricultural laborer, is emblematic of Al Jazeera’s strength in reaching those who hunger for a change to the status quo.

The Battle for the Arab Viewer ultimately poses important questions regarding issues of independence and the level of actual commitment demonstrated by each network to their supposed ideologies and constituencies, as Al Jazeera’s rigorous, relentless coverage of the Egyptian Revolution only serves to illuminate the glaring absence of such coverage by the network of a similar uprising in Bahrain, a close ally of the Qatari royal family. Al Arabiya’s lack of meaningful independence from the Saudi Arabian establishment is emphasized dramatically by former anchor, Hafez al Mirazi who asked, on air, for the channel to prove itself by objectively critiquing the Saudi government, prompting his abrupt dismissal from the airwaves.

These examples in tandem with significantly improved relations between Saudi Arabia and Qatar serve to underscore the film’s larger point that these tremendously important, influential Pan-Arabic media outlets sit precariously on top of an ever shifting firmament of delicate regional alliances and fragile political relationships susceptible to drastic change that is then reflected in the tone and tenor of the networks coverage and information dissemination. Lasfar’s film highlights the negative impact such sudden, jarring shifts in editorial perspective can have on public discourse in the Middle East, while underlining the need for authentic independent media outlets.

The Battle for the Arab Viewer would be an excellent addition to all media studies, journalism, communication and Middle Eastern studies collections.