and hearts of people. Before Al Jazeera, the Arab audience lacked that opportunity because of the limited capabilities, lack of courage and ab- sence of editorial policies regarding live coverage in the official Arab media. - Al Jazeera’s coverage proved that wars could be won on the TV screen as well as the battlefields. Although the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in the fall of the first Taliban government and Sadd- am Hussein respectively, this coverage equipped Al Jazeera’s audience with a new understanding of the nature of Arab governments and their relations with the United States. It also showed how media play an im- portant role in maintaining Western hegemony over those governments and how such hegemony can be dispelled. More importantly, the audi- ence has come to realise that the fall of Saddam Hussein was just the spark to a series of other events that would come later. Considering the two examples above, one may argue that the 1996- 2001 shock and provoke equation contributed to liberating the Arab au- dience from many presumptions regarding themselves and their reality as those presumptions were deeply rooted by state-run media narratives and Western prevailing agendas. The role played by Al Jazeera during that period contributed to breaking taboos, specifically in the fields of media and politics. This role paved the way for a new political and social awareness, highlighting the underlying structural contradictions between the reality and the public’s aspirations. Consequently, the ideas of social and political change increasingly gained ground among many Arab societies. The Al Jazeera news model, with its audacious coverage of events across the region, resulted in opening several fronts at the same time. Along with the coverage that went against the U.S. narrative in Iraq and Afghanistan by providing viewers with a counter media narrative, there were also domestic ramifications for its coverage, largely be- cause of its controversial talk shows. Open and heated debates in Talk shows, such as al-Ittijah al-Mu’akis (The Opposite Direction), Akthar min Ra’ay (More than One Opinion), Bela Hudood (Without Borders), distinguished Al Jazeera from the beginning. Through these types of programmes, the channel discussed openly the various social, political and economic issues across the Arab world. For the first time, an Arab
210
EN2.indd 210
20/02/2022 4:14 PM
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter