chapter will close by addressing how Arab governments began to view the channel with apprehension and rally against it. The backbone of this work was an oral narrative from a respect- ed group of journalists who participated in Al Jazeera’s establishment. Some of them joined a few short months after its launch and have left a distinct footprint in its path. Special care was taken when gathering oral narratives not to rely simply on well-known journalists but rather on different sources of information, unlike prior works on Al Jazeera. The oral narratives were compared to each other, then to written docu- ments, to fill in any blanks and catch any inconsistencies. Various me- dia, particularly those in Middle East served as an important resource for this work because they bore witness to Al Jazeera’s birth and closely followed its development. The Arab Media Scene before Al Jazeera’s Emergence Before Al Jazeera, the Arab media scene was limited to press or- ganisations used by Arab governments for their own benefit (hereafter “official channels” or “official Arab media”), with a tight grip on free- dom of expression and a total absence of citizen, much less opposition, voices. For decades, Arab citizens suffered an emotional assault as a result of the political propaganda from official Arab channels, a tactic practiced by all non-democratic governments in many places. When Al Jazeera emerged, most Arab media relied on sources provided to them by official Arab and western news agencies. It is worth emphasising here that western and international media outlets “are not at all impar- tial even if they are not under the control of a government, but they are subject to a value system and news sources that do not translate to the interests or benefit of Arab viewers. This bias is not limited to news and this prominent negative image of Arab and third-world citizens, with a focus on consumer values and upholding individualism are all embed- ded into dramatic productions and films by major companies” (1) . Despite the boom in the number of channels established in the Arab world during the 1990s, most were official government channels.
(1) Edmund Ghareeb and Khaled Mansour, “Arab Media at the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century”, Bahithat , (Book 6, 1999-2000), p. 18.
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