Rapid TV News

TV and new media convergence key trend in Arab uprisings

Rebecca Hawkes ©RapidTVNews | 21-02-2012

Video taken by citizen journalists was a crucial aid to mainstream broadcast media in covering the Arab uprisings and allowed them to explore subject matter stifled by repressive regimes, says an independent media watchdog.

"The convergence of traditional and new media is among the major trends emerging [in the Middle East and North Africa] after the fall of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali's Tunisian regime in the opening days of 2011," says the report from The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

"Had the citizen content not been amplified by traditional media, particularly television, Tunisia's revolution might have been snuffed out."

Citizen generated video and blogging also had a similar effect in Egypt, and provided material for established media outlets. The rise and acceptance of social media in Egypt over the past year can be starkly illustrated by the fact its ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces now posts its communiqués to the Egyptian people on its Facebook page and nowhere else, says the CPJ.

"Broadcasters simply would not have been able to adequately cover the Arab uprisings without the daily contributions of citizen journalists," Mourad Hashim, New York correspondent and former Yemen bureau chief for Al Jazeera told the CPJ. "This is an instance where revolutionary technological changes enabled actual revolutions."

Since the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, a crop of new independent media ventures has sprouted. Libya, for example, now has seven television broadcasters, 30 radio stations and over 100 publications – as well as news websites, blogs and active citizen reporters. Eight new TV stations have emerged in Egypt – although they are still awaiting official licenses and are vulnerable to closure and harassment, according to the CPJ.

Five new television licenses and 12 radio licenses have also been approved by Tunisia's new regulatory body, however the stations are not yet operational as the applications had not been signed off by the prime minister's office at the end of 2011.

However, media diversity is not proving popular with regressive forces. In Tunisia, where private broadcast licensing lags, official media remain "largely off-limits to dissenting voices and in the grip of remnants of the deposed regime," Fahem Boukadous, the last journalist to be released from prison there, told the CPJ.

Likewise, pressure was put upon Egyptian broadcast and print editors to temper the coverage of recent demonstrations in Egypt. The private Egyptian TV broadcasters ONTV and CBC were each taken off the air multiple times in December as they reported on the confrontations between protesters and military.

"We are winning the fight for free expression, but there is plenty of resistance," Abu Fagr, the Egyptian blogger and novelist told CPJ. "As a result, there's no knockout punch here, but we are winning on points."