Hisham Milhem, the acerbic host of one of the best al Arabiya talk shows, made a point on PBS which I've been making in a number of different ways and contexts:
The whole Arab world, by the way, Gwen, is watching on Arab satellite stations, which are covering live the events unfolding in Beirut; and it's having tremendous effect on the Arab people, the Lebanese developments coming after the Palestinian elections and the Iraqi elections.
Arab satellite television has had an extraordinarily important role in the recent seeming 'cascade' of events from Baghdad to Ramallah to Cairo to Beirut. I would argue that Arab satellite television - including most especially al Jazeera - might be more important than the American invasion of Iraq in these events.
Part of it is a long term process: al Jazeera, and to a lesser extent to the other satellite stations, have been eviscerating the legitimacy of the Arab status quo for years. The al Jazeera talk shows are full to overflowing with critics of almost every Arab regime and of the entire Arab system more generally. Hardly a week has gone by in the last five years without a guest on some popular al Jazeera program denouncing some Arab leader as an authoritarian despot, or demanding greater democracy, or complaining about Arab backwardness. While the immediate effect of any individual program might only be to provoke a diplomatic crisis (Jordan getting pissy with Qatar when Asa'ad AbuKhalil criticizes King Hussein, for example) or to get people riled up - the sensationalism factor - the cumulative impact has been to create a vast public sense of frustration with the politically stagnant status quo and the expectation of something more.
There's also the cumulative effect of the way issues have been framed. One of the key things that al Jazeera (and,"
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