Television is the king of “sound bites”!
That’s all it is, everyone at this conference admitted that they – as television companies and editors – cannot offer full coverage, but at least try to provide context. Or at least they try to. But the depth of context actually can only come from media formats that people can actually peruse without the limitations of space and time requirements: books, and I personally thing, specialty blogs!
Or maybe specialty TV stations which concentrates on a specific subject, and that probably would be a “swarm TV” channel with various people contributing content, much like a specialised YouTube channel.
I’ve listened to respected and esteemed speakers for the last half hour since I wrote the above, and there is nothing new other than moans… “ooh mummy they won’t let me in and it’s so difficult” type of moans…
The Canadian CBC channel represented by Tony Burman showed the Arab television networks up by showing a clip of some of the things his TV and crew get up to and that is getting right in the event, like katyusha rockets going around them lobbed at the Israeli side by Hizbollah and talk shows which seemingly go deep in the issue.
Hosam El Sokkari (head, BBC Arabic Network) just confirmed by point above and that is blogs have become much more effective in broadcasting and researching news than established TV channels.
Samira Kawar (editor, Middle East Report, Reuters TV) disagrees and suggests (again!) that blogs and blogging cannot be used as a “source” but rather used just as a “tip off” for a real journalist to go after the news and confirm it!
It sounds like these TV channels need to reinvent themselves and do that very quickly or be gone with them!
Comments
Mahmood this is so fascinating to read! What a great live-blogger you are, I feel like I’m there. On the issues, I think the thing with blogs is that they are actually creating the news these days, reporting it through first-hand experiences as we have seen with Iraqi bloggers who post pictures and stories that we could otherwise never hear about or see. More recently I have been reading Afghan and Kurdish blogs, which is an entirely different story, but they offer a new face of the media. They talk about the issues that hardly (or never) make it to the mainstream’s gatekeepers, so blogs in many ways are putting things on the table and forcing us to think in ways that the mainstream media can’t.
How many Saudis can go on TV and discuss taboos within the region? Not many, yet they are doing this through blogs.
Also, we were so entirely ignorant before about so many parts of the world.. take Yemen for example, or take Tunisia, Morocco, etc, our youth were never connected to their youth through the media because we are completely separated. Different channels, different newspapers, different radio stations, and many times different languages spoken.
When I went to Ifrane recently for a conference, people asked me “do you all wear burqas in Bahrain?” and I wanted to ask them “are there any Jewish communities in Morocco?” and things that we should know but really don’t, so I am really learning a lot through blogs, because we exchange links and we are telling each other things that the news can’t.
I mean, I appreciate that the TV and many journalists are trying their best to cover the important matters but let’s ask ourselves how educational are they? They are good for awareness, but do they truly educate us in the end? Not really, and I don’t blame them because of the lack of participation/resources/time per program, and many other factors that blogs don’t suffer from… it’s a medium by the people for the people which is what makes it so incredibly powerful (and empowering, let’s not forget the minorities who are using blogs to gain a louder voice, a voice they were never allowed to get via the mainstream.)
I think podcasting and vlogging will be the next generation of blogs, of course many of them are already incorporating these into their blogs but I think they would be of more use in the future and would encourage more people to get involved … and when more people get involved then we can learn more, talk more, collaborate more, especially on a cross-cultural basis. I gained so many friends within the Tunisian and Moroccan blogosphere, and right now I am gaining friends within the Mauritanian blogosphere… and let’s face it, without them, and without their blogs, I would know nothing at all about the cultures and societal issues of these countries. Their politics maybe yes, through brief news stories, but never their actual opinions, real concerns, et al.
Blogs are really recreating the public discourse in our region.
Mahmood,
I think what we’re seeing… is pressure being put on traditional media outlets to revamp how/what they broadcast, so as not to play solely to the governments.
I think they are realizing that they are rapidly losing viewership due to more reality based news sources such as blogs, and that is what all the bitching is about.
In a sense, this entire thing might be cyclical. Arab media outlets go toe-to-toe with governments, broadcast BS. Blogs gain popularity, seeing massive shift of viewership. Arab media giants forced to adapt, begin to be more bold in their broadcasts, lobby governments for more freedoms. Viewership comes back to them.
In a sense, blogs have created a check-and-balance system with the traditional media outlets – if one begins to slip up, it loses viewership, and people migrate to the other, forcing itself to revamp and not continue to broadcast BS…
How interesting! Order out of chaos in a way.
-Ibn