Uncivil War of Words: Media and Politics in the Arab World »

MAMOUN FANDY is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He was the editor of Qadaya 'Alamiyya (an Arabic bimonthly) and is the author of Kuwait as a New Concept of International Politics, The Road to Kandahar: On the Trail of bin Laden and Zawaheri, and Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent.

As the war on terror rages, another battleground has quickly taken shape and is being waged on daily newscasts around the world. In the Arab world, al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya are leading the fight. But do these news networks simply provide the news? Or, are they, as westerners suspect, tools used by governments and terrorists alike to relay their message to the man on the street as both Arab and Western leaders struggle to win the hearts and minds of millions of people? Fandy examines the impact that these and other news organizations have had on the war on terror, on the Arab world, and on the relationships that Arab nations share with each other, as well as those they share with the West.

Focusing on al-Jazeera and other Arab networks, Fandy examines the battle between the Arab world and the West through the popular medium of television. He explores how autocratic governments control the media in order to preserve their own power while simultaneously engaging in a war of words, with their neighbors, the West, or many times, both.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: The Politics of the Arab Media     1
National Press on the Eve of the Satellite Era     19
Arab Media and Interstate Conflict: Qatar vs. Saudi Arabia     39
Arab Media and Intra-State Conflict: The Case of Lebanon     66
Arab Journalists as Transnational Actors     82
Public Diplomacy and the Arab Media     103
Arab Media and Political Change in the Middle East     120
Conclusions     138
Notes     145
Index     161