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international sanctions, with viewers and listeners taking significant
risks of official punishment for tuning in.
Even in the most authoritarian contexts, however, the curiosity of
international media audiences does not mean tolerance for
stereotypes of the Middle East’s cultural realities. Consumers want
international media to respect the region’s diverse customs and faith
traditions. Depictions of the region as monolithically Arab or
Muslim, uniquely prone to extremism and violence, and drowning
in barrels of oil wealth are all too common. Middle Eastern viewers
and listeners expect international media organizations to transcend
these over-simplifications and offer a more nuanced picture of their
and other societies. As regional satellite stations have demonstrated,
people are eager to express their views and have them heard.
Adopting a dialogical format to culturally sensitive issues is a
strategy like to succeed for international media producers too.
In short, a small but growing body of research on media consumption
patterns in the Middle East should make producers of international
TV and radio think twice about assumptions that have passed for
wisdom as they reach out to regional audiences. The complexities
of markets and sophistication of consumers should inspire and
indeed necessitates the boldness and creativity of media researchers
and producers in testing hypotheses among and conceiving
programming for regional viewers and listeners. Winning hearts
and minds may miss the point. Wooing the eyes and ears entails
earning the trust and respect of audiences ? a tall but not impossible
order, and one that media researchers and producers not only share
but would be wise to accomplish together in the Middle East as
soon as possible.
Dr. Haleh Vaziri has been with InterMedia since 1999 and prior to
that was an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Rhodes
College in Tennessee.
Yet political liberalization and increased free expression have their
opponents in the region, and the red lines delineating what is and is
not acceptable are unclear, shifting all too suddenly as editors,
journalists, and producers find themselves in trouble. Indeed,
sectarian bosses in Lebanon, conservatives among Iran’s ruling
clergy, and Afghan tribal chiefs have challenged free expression,
clamping down on domestic media that dare tread on what they
deem politically and religiously sacred. Arab governments have
likewise restricted coverage byAl-Jazeera and other satellite stations
that they find unflattering.
Media markets that swing like a pendulum between the extremes
of competition and control, freedom and fear produce chaos, but
also make audiences even hungrier for truthful and balanced
reporting. How do regional audiences define and identify the truth?
While consumers appreciate the newly free media they have in some
countries, they realize that freedom does not necessarily lead to
accuracy and fairness. As audiences in InterMedia’s in-depth
interview studies remark, freedom is the midwife to “warlord media”
inAfghanistan and “[Massoud] Barzani and [Jalal] Talabani media”
in Iraqi Kurdistan (referring to the Kurdish Democratic Party’s and
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s leaders).
Truth may prove an elusive concept, but regional audiences seem
to define it as the media’s best efforts to report all that happened
without omission or embellishment and to the best of the journalist’s
knowledge. This type of accurate reporting does not need to be
“objective” as the adjective is commonly used in theWest, especially
in the U.S. In fact, InterMedia’s studies indicate that Middle Eastern
consumers distrust if not reject claims to objectivity, whether by
the Voice of America or by CNN, because they believe that all news
sources reflect and represent politically and/or commercially
motivated, vested interests.
Regional audiences value sources that are balanced, examining a
story from as many angles as possible, or that are at least honest
about their perspective. This sense of balance and honesty enables
the consumer to exercise choice. As one interview participant in
Iran declared to InterMedia shortly after 9-11, “Political news is
like a puzzle. The more complicated the story, the more sources I
need to turn to. Each one provides its specific perspective on the
event and emphasizes what it sees as being important.” (Female,
25 years old, Tehran resident)
Besides looking for accurate and fair coverage of events, viewers
and listeners in the Middle East are curious about the world beyond
their geographical andmental boundaries. Studies show that audiences
consume international media, even those sources they regard as biased,
because they wish to understand cultural, economic, and scientific
developments outside their region. This is particularly so in the most
restrictive and repressive states Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, for
example. As Iraqi research respondents explain, international media
has been a crucial link for Iraqis living under Saddam’s terror and
Puzzling politics in Tehran
